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FBI Agent Warned About 9 / 11 Hijacker
Sat Sep 21 18:54:55 2002
208.152.73.193


Whistleblower Complains of FBI Obstruction


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Intelligence.html

FBI Agent Warned About 9 / 11 Hijacker
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thirteen days before the Sept. 11 attacks, a frustrated
FBI agent warned headquarters that ``someday, someone will die'' after he
was denied permission to pursue a man who would become one of the hijackers,
a congressional panel was told Friday.

The agent's efforts were among many missed opportunities to stop two of the
hijackers after they were spotted attending an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia
in January 2000, according to the report to the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees.

It was the latest revelation of missed clues by intelligence and law
enforcement authorities before the attacks.

Poor communications between the CIA and FBI -- partly caused by legal
restrictions -- and limited counterterrorism staff kept authorities from
aggressively pursuing the two hijackers, lawmakers were told.

The committees have been meeting since June, conducting an inquiry into
intelligence agencies' counterterrorism efforts before the attacks. On
Friday, President Bush reversed course and backed efforts by many lawmakers
to have an independent commission conduct a broader investigation.

But Stephen Push, a leader of a group of Sept. 11 relatives, said Bush's
proposal isn't good enough because it apparently wouldn't include an
investigation of the intelligence agencies themselves.

``This is disgraceful, what we're learning about intelligence failures, and
the White House is trying to cover it up,'' he said.

In her report Friday, inquiry staff director Eleanor Hill said two
hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were able to live openly in
San Diego even after they were spotted in the Malaysia meeting. They used
their true names on an apartment lease and al-Mihdhar obtained a driver's
license. They also took flight lessons. They could obtain and renew visas,
and leave and re-enter the United States.

Not until Aug. 23, 2001, were they put on the State Department's watch list
for denying visas. Even after that, the New York-based FBI agent was denied
permission by headquarters to use his office's full resources to find
al-Mihdhar.

In an e-mail, headquarters denied the request because al-Mihdhar was not
under criminal investigation. It cited the ``wall'' between intelligence and
law enforcement.

The unidentified agent replied: ``Someday someone will die -- and wall or
not -- the public will not understand why we were not more effective and
throwing every resource we had at certain problems.''

The agent appeared at Friday's hearing, sitting alongside an unidentified
CIA officer. Their backs and sides were shielded by a screen, revealing
their faces only to lawmakers and their staff.

He recalled learning the hijackers' identities after Sept. 11.

``When I heard the name Khalid al-Mihdhar, I was upset,'' he said. ``I
remember explaining this is the same Khalid al-Mihdhar we had talked about
for three months.''

Through hearings this week and some in the future, Hill is painting a
picture of missed opportunities. Individually, none may have prevented the
attacks. But collectively, they might have unraveled the plot.

The missed opportunities also include the FBI's failure to follow up a memo
by a Phoenix agent warning that U.S. flight schools may be training
terrorist pilots and its refusal in August 2001 to pursue a warrant to
search the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, now charged with conspiring in
the attacks.

Against that is the backdrop of a report Hill presented Wednesday: that U.S.
intelligence agencies were receiving many vague reports of possible
terrorist attacks. At least 12 suggested the use of airplanes as weapons.

In neither the CIA nor FBI ``did anyone see the potential collective
significance of the information, despite the increasing concerns throughout
the summer of 2001 of an impending terrorist attack,'' Hill said.

In May, Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had said no one
could have predicted terrorists would try to use an airplane as a missile.
On Friday, she acknowledged ``somebody did imagine it.'' But she said she
did not know about the intelligence until well after May.

Asked if she should have known about it, she said, ``There are always shards
of intelligence and of different kinds of analysis. I mean, how do you stack
it up against hundreds of reports about car bombs? So I wouldn't make that
claim.''

In her report Friday, Hill said she has found no indication that authorities
had information about 16 of the 19 hijackers. It had limited information
about al-Hazmi's brother, Salim-al-Hazmi, who, like the other two, was on
the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Hill said CIA interest in the Malaysia meeting faded after January 2000,
gradually resurfacing after a participant was linked to the October 2000
attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

But the CIA gave limited information about the Malaysia meeting to FBI
agents investigating the Cole attack, Hill said. Part of the reason was the
legal restriction on the use of foreign intelligence in criminal
prosecutions. Congress modified those restrictions shortly after the Sept.
11 attacks.

CIA officials have acknowledged they could have handled intelligence on the
Malaysia meeting better, but maintain they provided the FBI information on
al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi well before the attacks.

The FBI agent who sent the Aug. 23 e-mail urged intelligence committee
members to ease those restrictions.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., praised the agent's work and lamented his
anonymity.

``You will never receive the public recognition that you deserve for what
you tried to do, for your e-mails, for your efforts to break down walls,
reals and imaginary, for your effort to break through bureaucracy,'' he
said.
Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller
An edited version of the agent's 13-page letter
==========================================
OOPS, THEY'RE ALIVE?!
Citing sources compiled from the mainstream media, the UK-based Mujahideen
website claims that 7 of the 19 men identified as the 9-11 hijackers are still
alive. "It was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing
to do with what happened," Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud
al-Faisal told the Arabic Press after meeting with President Bush last Sept. 20,
according to the website. The site also claims the Saudi embassy told the
Orlando Sentinel that accused hijackers Saeed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri,
Abdul aziz Alomari and Salem Alhazmi "are not dead and had nothing to do
with the heinous terror attacks in New York and Washington."

Dates and live links are provided for other of the claims. For instance, on Sept.
23, 2001, BBC reported: "Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of
five men that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11
into the World Trade Center on 11 September. His photograph was released,
and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around the world.
Now he is protesting his innocence from Casablanca, Morocco... [T]here are
suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may also be alive."

One Saeed Alghamdi, also bearing the name of an accused 9-11 hijacker, told
the UK Telegraph Sept. 23, 2001: "I was completely shocked. For the past 10
months I have been based in Tunis with 22 other pilots learning to fly an Airbus
320. The FBI provided no evidence of my presumed involvement in the
attacks." The Telegraph story also stated: "Mr. Salem Al-Hamzi is 26 and had
just returned to work at a petrochemical complex in the industrial eastern city of
Yanbou after a holiday in Saudi Arabia when the hijackers struck. He was
accused of hijacking the American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon."

But the claims are not as alarming as they first appear. Stolen identities are likely
at the root of the snafu. Ahmed Alnami told the Telegraph: "I'm still alive, as you
can see. I was shocked to see my name mentioned by the American Justice
Department. I had never even heard of Pennsylvania where the plane I was
supposed to have hijacked." He said he had never lost his passport and found it
"very worrying" that his identity appeared to have been "stolen" and published
by the FBI without any checks.

The UK Independent reported Sept. 17, 2001: "Mr. [Abdul Aziz] Al-Omari, a
pilot with Saudi Airlines, walked into the US embassy in Jeddah to demand why
he was being reported as a dead hijacker in the American media." According to
ABC News: "a Saudi man has reported to authorities that he is the real
Abdulaziz Alomari, and claims his passport was stolen in 1995 while he studied
electrical engineering at the University of Denver. Alomari says he informed
police of the theft."