PR Newswire
Monday, June 3, 2002

Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman reveal what some U.S. counterterrorism officials say may be the most puzzling, and devastating, intelligence failure in the critical months before Sept. 11.

A few days after a pivotal, secret planning meeting of al-Qaeda in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000, Newsweek has learned, the CIA tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf Alhazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles.

Agents discovered that another of the men, Khalid Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple-entry visa that allowed him to enter and leave the U.S. as he pleased.

Yet the CIA did nothing with this information. Agency officials didn't tell the INS, which could have turned the men away at the border, nor did they notify the FBI, which could have covertly tracked the men to find out their mission.

Instead, during the year and nine months after the CIA identified them as terrorists, Alhazmi and Almihdhar lived openly in the U.S., using their real names, obtaining driver's licenses, opening bank accounts and enrolling in flight schools – until the morning of Sept. 11, when they walked aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.

While recent attention has been focused on the shortcomings of the FBI, all along the CIA's Counterterrorism Center – the base camp for the agency's war on bin Laden – was sitting on information that could have led federal agents right to the terrorists' doorstep, report Isikoff and Klaidman. Almihdhar and Alhazmi, parading across America in plain sight, could not have been easier to find.

Newsweek has learned that when Almihdhar's visa expired, the State Department, not knowing any better, simply issued him a new one in July 2001 – even though by then the CIA had linked him to one of the suspected bombers of the USS Cole in October 2000.

Lost Roadmap

The two terrorists' frequent meetings with the other Sept. 11 hijackers could have provided federal agents with a roadmap to the entire cast of 9-11 hijackers.

But the FBI didn't know it was supposed to be looking for them until three weeks before the strikes, when CIA Director George Tenet, worried an attack was imminent, ordered agency analysts to review the files. It was only then, on Aug. 23, 2001, that the agency sent out an all-points bulletin, launching law enforcement agents on a frantic and futile search for the two men.

Why didn't the CIA share its information sooner? "We could have done a lot better, that's for sure," one top intelligence official told Newsweek.

CIA officials preparing to testify before the Senate intelligence committee this week seem at a loss to explain how this could have happened.

The CIA is usually loath to share information with other government agencies, for fear of compromising "sources and methods." CIA officials also say that at the time Almihdhar and Alhazmi entered the country, in January 2000, they hadn't yet been directly identified as bin Laden terrorists – despite their attendance at the Malaysia meeting.

"It wasn't known for sure that they were al-Qaeda bad-guy operators," says one official. CIA officials also point out that the FBI agents assigned to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center were at least informed about the Malaysia meeting and of Almihdhar's and Alhazmi's participation. But FBI officials protest that they only recently learned about the most crucial piece of information: that the CIA knew Alhazmi was in the country, and that Almihdhar could enter at will.

'Unforgivable'

"That was unforgivable," said one senior FBI official. This led to a series of intense and angry encounters among U.S. officials in the weeks after Sept. 11. Meanwhile, to bolster their case, FBI officials have now prepared a detailed chart showing how agents could have uncovered the terrorist plot if they had learned about Almihdhar and Alhazmi sooner, given their frequent contact with at least five of the other hijackers.

"There's no question we could have tied all 19 hijackers together," the official said.

The links would not have been difficult to make: Alhazmi met up with Hanjour, the Flight 77 pilot, in Phoenix in late 2000; six months later, in May 2001 the two men showed up in New Jersey and opened shared bank accounts with two other plotters, Ahmed Alghamdi and Majed Moqed. The next month, Alhazmi helped two other hijackers, Salem Alhazmi (his brother) and Abdulaziz Alomari, open their own bank accounts.

Two months after that, in August 2001, the trail would have led to the plot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, who bought plane tickets for Moqed and Alomari.

What's more, at least several of the hijackers had traveled to Las Vegas for a meeting in summer 2001, just a few months before the attacks. "It's like three degrees of separation," insists an FBI official.

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