|
Cia knew wp { June 3 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49366-2002Jun2.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49366-2002Jun2.html
CIA Failed To Share Intelligence On Hijacker
Data Could Have Been Used to Deny Visa
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A01
The CIA possessed disturbing information about one of the Sept. 11 hijackers months before it was previously disclosed and could have used that knowledge to prevent him from renewing his visa to enter the United States prior to the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, a senior administration official said yesterday.
Khalid Almihdhar, who was on Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, could have been put on a watch list earlier, a government official said. The list is used by the government to hold up visa applications or prevent individuals from entering the United States.
The CIA in late 2000 or early 2001 received information from another intelligence service that would have deepened their suspicions about Almihdhar and likely caused them to decline his visa extension.
It has been previously reported that the CIA knew Almihdhar had attended a January 2000 meeting of suspected terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At that time there was not enough information to put him on the watch list, used by the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to screen visa applications.
The CIA now acknowledges that Almihdhar went from Kuala Lumpur to the United States in January 2000, left in June 2000, and was outside the United States when the CIA counterterrorism center learned that in addition to associating with possible terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Almihdhar had more than once entered the United States.
Frequent reentry into the United States is a factor that causes authorities to take a second look at a visa applicant. When combined with his attendance at the Kuala Lumpur meeting, his reentries would have put him on the watch list and prevented him from getting a new visa in June 2001. There are hundreds of people on this list.
"At best, we could have prevented his return," the senior official said.
Instead, the senior official said, the CIA did not tell other agencies, and it was not until Aug. 23, 2001, that Almihdhar was put on the watch list. By then, the State Department had granted Almihdhar another visa and he reentered the country on July 4.
Yesterday, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that better coordination of such intelligence would not likely have halted last year's attacks. "The information we now have does not indicate that there was a substantial likelihood of detecting this," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Nonetheless, there are increasing signs that leaks emanating from the CIA, FBI, other government agencies and Congress raise questions about how much the government knew before the Sept. 11 attacks killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
This week, congressional hearings will try to determine what failures or shortcomings took place before Sept. 11 and what reforms may be needed to prevent another tragedy.
Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday warned that such leaks could lead investigators and public opinion "down the wrong path." Goss, a former CIA intelligence officer, said, "This is serious business, and we want to go on the basis of fact, not on opinion or spin."
Newsweek reported yesterday that the CIA identified two of the eventual hijackers, Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, immediately after they attended the Kuala Lumpur meeting. The magazine also reported that the CIA did not inform the INS or the FBI of the two alleged terrorists, who flew to the United States after the Malaysia meeting. It quoted unnamed "U.S. counterterrorism officials" saying that the agency's failure "may be the most puzzling and devastating intelligence failure in the critical months before September 11."
Last week, the FBI drew heavy criticism for its failure to respond to two memos from its own agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis. They were seeking permission to investigate Islamic fundamentalists who were trying to take pilot training, one of whom was Zacarias Moussaoui, since indicted as a conspirator in the attack.
The CIA did not comment on the Newsweek report.
But a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that although the CIA had the names of the attendees, the Malaysia meetingdid not take on significance until months after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. The FBI investigative team in Yemen identified Tawfiq bin Attash, aka Tawfiq Attash Khallad, as one of the leading Cole bombing suspects. Khallad had also been at the Malaysia meeting.
Authorities sought to find out who else Khallad had met with, and Almihdhar and Alhazmi turned up. It was not until Aug. 23, 2001, that the CIA alerted other agencies, including the INS and FBI, about the two men, who by then were already in the United States.
CIA Director George J. Tenet ordered up a review shortly after the CIA on Aug. 6 gave President Bush an intelligence analysis that discussed possible attacks by Osama bin Laden's organization in the United States and mentioned a previous al Qaeda discussion of hijacking a U.S. plane.
He "ordered the counterterrorism center to go back and see if anything could be pieced together from the material received from the FBI on the Cole investigation." Kuala Lumpur photos of Khallad and Almihdhar were found along with the additional visa information.
Newsweek notes that if Almihdhar and Alhazmi had been on the INS watch list in early 2000, the FBI could have kept track of them and identified the others "given their frequent contact with at least five other hijackers." The magazine quotes an FBI official as saying, "There's no question we could have tied all 19 hijackers together." It also says FBI officials have prepared a chart showing how that would have been done.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday he did not know such a chart had been prepared. Asked about it on CBS's "Face the Nation," he said, "I am unaware of any document that would fit that description."
Mueller also said that with new cooperation among intelligence agencies "we have prevented a number of terrorist attacks around the globe since September 11th," but he refused to identify them.
He also discussed his daily morning meeting with Bush during which he and Tenet discuss the "threat matrix." He described that as a "listing of the threats that have come in the night before and the day before." He said that Bush generally asks what the two agencies had done "in the last 12 hours to assure the safety of the American public."
Mueller also gave new details on what led to a warning within the United States last week about the possibility of aircraft being attacked by portable hand-held antiaircraft missiles such as Stingers. The United States gave the Afghan fighters Stingers in the 1980s when they were fighting the Soviet Union.
He said there was a report indicating that a broken-down missile, called a "man pad," for man portable, was found near an airfield overseas, said by others to be the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The alert was only over one missile that was found overseas, Mueller said, but other sources said there were also exchanges on an Islamic Internet chat room indicating that some had been smuggled into the United States.
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Mueller said he believed there would be other attacks on U.S. soil, but that "we are working together in ways that we hadn't previously, and we are absolutely safer."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
|
|
