Lee Hamilton denies Michael Mukasey's claim about 9/11

[KJF]

From Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon:

I just received the following statement from the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Rep. Lee Hamilton, in response to my inquiries last week (and numerous follow-up inquiries from readers here) about Attorney General Michael Mukasey's claims about the 9/11 attack and, specifically, about Mukasey's story that there was a pre-9/11 telephone call from an "Afghan safe house" into the U.S. that the Bush administration failed to intercept or investigate:

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

That's the statement in its entirety, and it's hard to imagine how it could be any clearer. Hamilton's statement is consistent with the statement of 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, as well as the letter sent to Mukasey by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and two Subcommittee Chairs, none of whom have any idea what Mukasey was talking about.

More at link:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/08/hamilton/index.html

Hmmm, Hamilton read the Congressional Inquiry report, so he is being somewhat economical with the truth here.

[mhatrw]

1. Poor Mukasey. Won't some good Christian stand up for him? n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

2. What does a Congressional Inquiry report have to do with anything?

Did Mukasey claim the report had the info about the phone call?

Was that report supplied to the 9/11 Commission?

That's about the only reason I can see a Congressional Inquiry being relevant to what Hamilton said.

[mhatrw]

3. Nothing.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/04/doj/index.html

The DOJ's vague claim -- that "this call is also referenced in the unclassified report of the congressional intelligence committees' Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks" -- is baffling, given that three Democratic House Chairmen (including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers) said yesterday that they've never heard of any such thing ("I am aware of no previous reference, in the 9/11 Commission report or elsewhere, to a call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States which, if it had been intercepted, could have helped prevent the 9/11 attacks"), as did 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow ("Not sure of course what the AG had in mind"). It's extremely unlikely -- to put it mildly -- that if an episode of such obvious significance had really occurred, nobody would know what Mukasey was talking about.

There is only one reference in the Joint Inquiry report (.pdf) that has any remote similarity to what Mukasey described (p. 36), but that was a call that originated in the U.S., not in an "Afghan safe house":

Critically, the Report emphasized that FISA provided all of the authority needed to have intercepted that communication, to learn of its domestic origins and to disseminate it to the FBI and other domestic intelligence agencies. To the extent the NSA failed to do so, this had nothing to do with FISA or any other legal restraints or civil liberties, but rather, with poor intelligence practices:

The pre-9/11 failures, as the Joint Inquiry itself concluded, were failures resulting from how the NSA used its legal authorities, not from insufficient legal authorities or excessive legal restraints. Even if this were the call that Mukasey was describing -- and that is very dubious -- none of that has anything to do with FISA. Such an incident would not even have justified loosening the pre-9/11 safeguards, let alone -- after seven years of endless erosion of such safeguards -- justify any further erosion now.

[KJF]

4. Why don't you read it?

Did Mukasey claim the report had the info about the phone call?

The Justice Department implied just that.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/04/doj/index.html

My understanding is that the DoJ is correct in saying that the JICI report is relevant here.

Was that report supplied to the 9/11 Commission?

Yes. In addition, several members of the JICI staff went over to the 9/11 Commission.

[Bolo Boffin]

5. When you supply a link to it, perhaps I will.

Thanks for answering the questions, though. Maybe you should treat OPs as if they are the beginning of a discussion and supply context for your statements in the first place.

Mukasey did not, but the Justice Department did. And yet Greenwald and the people he asked haven't a clue what Mukasey or the Justice Department is talking about (although Greenwald found a similar reference to a story of an America-to-America phone call, as per mhatrw).

So obviously, Mukasey is full of shit. That wasn't so hard to say, was it? Can you say it with me?

Mukasey is full of shit.

Now does he actually think his shit is dark chocolate ice cream, or is he just hoping we'll think so? Either way, he's full of shit and demonstrating just how much of a Bush butt boy he is. I don't know what's worse - an Attorney General working up crocodile tears over a lie, or an Attorney General with the ability to fool himself so completely. Neither speaks very well for the man.

[KJF]

7. Congressional Inquiry report:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_rpt/911rept.pdf

There is a dollop of truth in what Mukasey said, but he garbled it. I know what Mukasey is talking about. I bet Hamilton and Zelikow do too, but because Mukasey got the location of the "safe house" wrong, they can plausibly pretend they don't. Conyers should know what he is talking about as well. I have a video of DNI Mike McConnell talking to Conyers about it. McConnell says it is the reason 9/11 should have and could have been prevented and Conyers thanks him politely.

[Diane_nyc]

17. Thanks for posting this.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Why doesn't Congress ask Mukasey some real questions. For

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-dont-democrats-ask-mukasey-some.html

Its headline news that top Democrats are asking Attorney General Mukasey to explain his comments about a pre-9/11 phone call from a terrorist to the United States.

Why doesn't Congress ask Mukasey some real questions. For example:

* Mr. Attorney General, since the U.S. government knew the date and method of the 9/11 attacks, why weren't the attacks stopped?

* Mr. Mukasey, because the government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers' own mouths, why wasn't anything done to stop them?

* Sir, since U.S. and allied intelligence services had penetrated the very highest levels of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, why wasn't 9/11 stopped?

* U.S. and allied intelligence services seem to have actually employed or at least protected many of the hijackers prior to 9/11. Uh . . . why did they do that?

[rschop]

8. Reply to KJF

There is only one reference to calls overseas by the Joint Inquiry investigation, so this has to be the calls Mukasey was referring to. These were the calls made by Khalid al-Mihdhar when he was in San Diego to the safe house in Yemen, to the every same phone the NSA had tapped to learn about the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting that was to take place from January 5, 2000 to January 8, 2000.

Mihdhar had called this number several times to find out the status of his wife and coming baby. There were at least 9 separate calls by Mihdhar to this number in the spring of 2000, just before he quit flight training and returned to Yemen to work on the bombing of the USS Cole. Since everyone even the CIA, FBI and NSA top people knew this number had been connected to the bombing of the east Africa embassies, and the US number was connected to Mihdhar who was known to be along time al Qaeda terrorist, and the NSA had already been monitoring this number in Yemen for years, although it is true prior calls were to phone numbers out side of the US, it is unclear why the NSA did not give this information to both the CIA and FBI. If needed at time they could even have requested FISA warrants for calls to this number when they knew calls from this number went into the US. The FISA warrants were more than enough legal authority have been able to give the information on calls to this number from the US and Mukasey knows this.

[rschop]

9. re:re: to KJF

Actually Mukasey probably already knows this but wants to make the case to do away with the FISA warrants and this administration has already been known to deliberately ignore or play loose with the facts when they want a law changed that will do away with our rights. It is however kind of funny that Mukasey has everyone on Capital Hill running around trying to find this mysterious phone call no one can find when it almost certainly this call that Mukasey is referring too that is also referenced in the Joint Inquiry Committee report. When they find this out he can just say he was having a senior moment and he could be right!

[KJF]

10. Mukasey: it wasn't Afghanistan

He doesn't specify where it was though:

"One thing I got wrong. It didn’t come from Afghanistan. I got the country wrong."
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2008/04/senators-grill.html?cid=110340778#comments

See also:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/11/MNRH103EK8.DTL&hw=mukasey&sn=001&sc=1000
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/11/mukasey/index.html

It must be the Yemen hub associated with Ahmed al-Hada.

Some questions for Michael Hayden:
(1) How many calls were there between the Yemen hub and the hijacker and their associates in the US between 15 January 2000 and 9/11?
(2) You had the power to trace these calls - why didn't you use it?
(3) What was your response when you were told al-Hada would be named in court (together with his phone number) in the embassy bombing trial in February 2001?
(4) What was al-Hada and Almihdhar's role in the Cole bombing and why has there been an information embargo?
(5) With reference to the fact that al-Hada had killed 240 people including 29 Americans by October 2000, why was he not arrested?
(6) The Judy Miller warning - what was the number in Yemen she is talking about? One end of the call was in Yemen - where was the other end?
(7) Where is the NSA inspector general's report on the NSA's performance before 9/11?

I could go on, but you get the picture. Hayden is worse than Tenet, much worse.

Essentially, the NSA engaged in criminal negligence, to put it mildly, by repeatedly failing to trace calls between the 9/11 hijackers in the US and a phone they knew was registered to a mass murderer. They then used this blatantly obvious criminal negligence (at least) as an argument to free themselves from judicial oversight. In a sane world, the criminal negligence would have resulted in greater oversight of the NSA, not less.

[rschop]

11. RE:KJF

Kevin , good post, finally some of these guys are getting exposed, if only in blogs for the crimes they committed prior to 9/11. One question, we now know that this phone number was the communication switch board for the attacks in east Africa, and the NSA had monitored the phone call that lead the CIA to the Kuala Lumpur meeting and to photograph every one at that meeting. We also know Mihdhar had called that number 9 times when he was in San Diego and when he bombed out of flight school he left the US to go back to Yemen and work on the Cole bombing attack. If this phone referereced Mihdhar prior to the Cole bombing and he then worked on the Cole bombing, and the number is in Yemen where the attack on the Cole took place how is even remotely possible that these terrorists never discussed the bombing of the Cole using this number, when they felt secure in using this number for a period of years. Does this make even the slightest bit of sense?

rschop

[KJF]

12. It makes no sense

Transcripts from the New York trial of four men eventually convicted of bombing the two U.S. embassies in Africa showed that al-Hada’s number — 011-967-1-200-578 — figured prominently in al-Qaida operations. The transcript indicates that bin Laden, or at least someone using his satellite phone, as well as bin Laden deputy Mohammed Atef and several of the embassy bombers, called Ahmad al-Hada’s number in Yemen to relay information.

As far as the Cole bombing, a U.S. investigator said the phone was used by the bombers to “put everything together.”
http://www.bouwman.com/911/Operation/Yemen/Feb-15.html

The NSA must have been listening in to them "put everything together," but took no action.

[rschop]

13. Reply to It makes no sense by KJF

It looks like as more and more information finally leaks out of the CIA, DOJ, and other government agencies the whole story is finally coming together. It was clear that the NSA was listening to this number in Yemen, this is how they found out that long time al Qaeda terrorists Khalid, Nawaf and Salem were traveling to Kuala Lumpur for an important al Qaeda planning meeting. The book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" came to the conclusion that this meeting in Kuala Lumpur was originally focused on the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers. The hijacking of Air India 814 had taken place just the week prior to this meeting and this hijacked aircraft was flown to Kandahar Afghanistan, the headquaters of Mohammed Atef, the military commander of the al Qaeda terrorist. It was only after the attack on the USS the Sullivans failed on January 3, 2000, that al Qaeda had some of the terrorists who had worked on the Sullivans attack travel to Kuala Lumpur to re-plan the attack on the next US ship to dock in Yemen, which turned out to be the Cole. The NSA had monitored the calls in December 1999, the attack on the USS the Sullivans failed on January 3, 2000 and the Fahad al-Quso had tried to travel to Kuala Lumpur on January 6, one day after the meeting in Kuala Lumpur had already started, and got stuck in Bangkok because he failed to have a visa for Malaysia.

Your new information in the prior post indicates that the NSA was culpable to the attack on the USS Cole, a conclusion that was suggested by the fact that the NSA was monitoring this number, which was the main phone number in Yemen called the al Qaeda switch board. It was just inconceivable that after getting information on the meeting where the attack on the Cole was planned from that number, that they did not later talk about this attack, this just made no sense. It is now clear why Hayden was moved from the NSA to the CIA, to keep the secrets in the family so to speak.

The information in the book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" clearly proves that after monitoring this number, the CIA went on in 12 separate occasions to deliberately hide from the FBI criminal investigators the information that the CIA had derived from that meeting, that Khallad Bin Attash had been at that meeting with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and even Salem al-Hazmi, knew they were long time al Qaeda terrorists, knew after November 2000 that all of these terrorists had been involved in the planning of the Cole bombing at that meeting. It is clear now that the CIA even knew they also had been planning aircraft hijacking right at that meeting even while this meeting was taking place. But what is the horror story of all horror stories is after the CIA knew that these terrorists were inside of the US on August 22, 2001, knew they were going to take part in the huge al Qaeda terrorist attack they had been told was going to kill thousands of Americans, and as is clearly indicated in emails between CIA managers in July 2001, that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the US in order to take part in this huge al Qaeda attack, they not only did not give this information to the FBI criminal investigators, but even sabotaged the only FBI investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that could have found them quickly. They did this by continuing to hide the photograph of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur until after the attacks on 9/11 were over and by directing FBI HQ agents to specify an intelligence investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi only with absolutely no sense of urgency. It is impossible to believe that the CIA did not know by shutting down the Mihdhar FBI investigation that it was going to make it all but impossible for the FBI to find these terrorists in time and that thousands of Americans were going to perish in these attacks. Since Wilshire had been denied twice in July from giving this information to the FBI as indicated in emails to his CTC mangers and since FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie had issued the world-wide alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi on August 23, 2001, many other people at the CIA also knew this information including the entire CIA Bin Laden unit and the entire CIA hierarchy including Black and Tenet. They all knew Mihdhar and Hazmi were going to take part in this huge attack and did nothing.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle,

Before Sept. 111, 201, Mukasey said, we knew there had been a call from some where that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan, and we knew that it came to the United States, but we did not know precisely where it went.

He paused seemed to sniffle tears, then continued, "You've 3000 people who went to work that day, and didn't come home, to show for that".

All of Capital Hill, is now in an uproar over this, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Among the questions posed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. to Mukasey is whether any such call actually occurred and if so, why the government wasn't able to use its legal and technological powers to monitor it."

So we now know this was the call to Yemen to his father-in-law by Mihdhar in the spring of 2000, and now know it was not the fact that this call was not monitored that allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place but the fact that a criminal conspiracy had existed at the CIA, who along with two units at the FBI they had enlisted to help carry out this conspiracy, the director of the FBI Louis Freeh and the ITOS unit run by Michael Rolince, with Maltbie and Frasca who sabotaged Harry Samit's investigation of Moussaoui, and the Bin Laden unit with FBI Agent Dina Corse working with the liaison to Rolince, former Deputy Chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit, Tom Wilshire, sabotaged any chance FBI Agent Steve Bongardt and his Cole investigators would have to be able to investigate and search for Mihdhar and Hazmi, that in the end had allowed these attacks to take place.

Freeh had obstructed FBI Agent Ali Soufan's investigation of the Cole bombing in November 2000, by not giving information to Soufan's direct request, the information that that both the NSA and CIA had given to him in January 2000 on the al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur and the fact that both Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been at that meeting.

So while these complete idiots on capital hill, are all running around trying to figure out what Mukasey was referring to with a reference to this call, the rest of America is now finally becoming aware that it was the monitoring of that call that had started the long criminal conspiracy at the CIA that had ultimately allowed the attacks on 9/11 to take place. What is the biggest horror story of all is that all of this information is now in the public domain and in the governments own records of the events prior to 9/11 and is now all detailed in the book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11". Maybe Conyers could start by reading the governments own documents.

But the biggest question of all is why has main stream news media not exposed this story when the record is all there in plain view for all to see. By not doing this is clear that even the people on capitol hill who are suppose to be in the know are still confused!

GO FIGURE!

[seemslikeadream]

14. “Conyers, Nadler, Scott Demand Answers, Not Spin from AG”

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1283
April 14th, 2008 by Jesse Lee

On April 3rd Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers along with Judiciary Committee Members Jerrold Nadler and Robert “Bobby” Scott wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey regarding recent comments which implied 9/11 could have been prevented had the government had the far-reaching and unchecked surveillance powers the Administration is now demanding. On April 10 the Members received a response from Brian Benczkowski, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLC), which failed to answer several of their specific questions. Today they again write to Attorney General Mukasey, releasing the letter under the header “Conyers, Nadler, Scott Demand Answers, Not Spin from AG”:


April 14, 2008

The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey
Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

We are writing about the April 10, 2008, letter from Brian Benczkowski in response to our letter of April 3, 2008, concerning disturbing recent revelations about apparent pre-9/11 failures and subsequent abuses of civil liberties by the Administration. While we appreciate the promptness of the April 10 letter, we are extremely concerned about its failure to address several of our specific inquiries. In addition, the April 10 letter indicates that, far from supporting the Administration’s position on reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the incident referred to in your March 27 speech leads to precisely the opposite conclusion. We ask that the Department respond equally promptly to this letter, both by providing answers to our specific questions and by agreeing to undertake meaningful discussions to help bring about effective FISA modernization.

Based on the April 10 letter and other information from the Department, it now appears that the incident mentioned in your March 27 remarks concerned phone communication between a future 9/11 hijacker while in the U.S. and a known terrorist facility in the Middle East, which was in fact discussed by the Congressional intelligence committees in their report on 9/11. As the committees explained, however, the failure to utilize the information in this call had nothing to do with limitations in FISA, contrary to what your March 27 speech appeared to suggest. Instead, the problem was NSA’s narrow interpretation of its authority to collect and disseminate data on U.S. persons following its acquisition under Executive Order 12333. Your letter to Chairman Reyes recognizes this. As the Congressional intelligence committees’ joint inquiry pointed out, “NSA adopted this policy even though the collection of such communications is within its mission and it would have been possible for NSA to obtain FISA Court authorization for such collection…. NSA did not, however, develop a plan with the FBI to collect and to ensure the dissemination of any relevant foreign intelligence to appropriate domestic agencies.”1 In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the NSA changed this policy. Although a number of changes to FISA have been enacted since the attacks of September 11, this change in NSA policy did not require Congressional action, and FISA had nothing to do with the failure to intercept and utilize effectively the intelligence at issue. We hope that you will clarify your remarks accordingly.

In addition, however, the April 10 letter does not respond to several of our requests. Our letter did not, as you characterize it, generally inquire “why FISA’s emergency provisions were not an adequate substitute for the authorities the Government has obtained under the Protect America Act.” Rather, our inquiry concerned the specific phone call about which you spoke. We asked whether the then-existing emergency provisions would have allowed interception of the specific call at issue, if indeed the foreign portion of the call was a known terrorist location. To the extent that your response set forth an argument for the PAA or the Administration’s preferred version of FISA reform, it was non-responsive to our request for information. Based on the clarifications in the April 10 letter, we understand that the answer to our actual question was that, in fact, then-existing FISA provisions would have allowed the interception and dissemination of the phone call, but that it was NSA’s then-existing narrow interpretation of Executive Order 12333 that was the problem. Please explain promptly if that is not the case.

Our April 3 letter also asked for a copy of the secret Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum of October 23, 2001, concerning the purported authority to conduct certain military or other activities within the United States. Quite recently, you testified to a Senate Committee that the portion of that memorandum that has been publicly revealed – the claim that “the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations” – may no longer be operative, though you did not state whether this or other conclusions in the memo have been withdrawn.2 This testimony underlines further the need for release of this memorandum, and we ask that you promptly reply to our request that you do so.

Finally, our letter did not, as the April 10 letter suggests, “question the very premise for the joint congressional and executive branch effort over the past year to modernize FISA.” To the contrary, we have been deeply involved in that effort, conducting numerous hearings and passing two separate bills in the past six months. In those bills, developed in close collaboration with our colleagues on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and adopted by the House, we have responded to concerns of the intelligence community. The House versions of FISA reform provide flexible means of collection that are not limited to individualized probable cause determinations. Given our track record of action on this issue in the last year, for the Department to suggest that we do not understand FISA or the need for flexibility is disingenuous at best.

The Administration’s refusal to engage in meaningful discussions with House Democrats on FISA reform has become untenable. The time has come for meaningful negotiations on this important subject. We remain willing and able to have such discussions, and we urge that you and others in the Administration agree to do so promptly.

Please provide your responses and direct any questions to the Judiciary Committee office, 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515 (tel.: [phone]; fax: [phone]). Thank you for your attention to this matter, and we look forward to hearing from you promptly.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary

Jerrold Nadler
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Robert C. “Bobby” Scott
Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security

cc: Hon. Lamar S. Smith
Hon. Trent Franks
Hon. Louie Gohmert
Hon. Brian Benczkowski

[rschop]

15. re: “Conyers, Nadler, Scott Demand Answers, Not Spin from AG”

We now have the fax number for the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Chairman, John Conyers, Jr. and these other Hon. members of this committee, 202-225-7680;

( Jerrold Nadler
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Robert C. “Bobby” Scott
Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security

cc: Hon. Lamar S. Smith
Hon. Trent Franks
Hon. Louie Gohmert
Hon. Brian Benczkowski)

Maybe some one can fax my replies on April 9, 2008 and April 12, 2008 to this number so these folks who are suppose to be in the know and clearly aren't can finally have it all explained them in plain English so they are no longer left out in the dark.

The big issue is not that doing away with the FISA law could have prevented the attacks on 9/11 but that doing away with blatant and now obvious criminal behavior at the CIA and even FBI HQ by hiding and keeping secret from the FBI criminal investigators the information from the Kuala Lumpur meeting that came out of monitoring that phone call could have prevented the attacks that took place on 9/11. This is the information that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and even Salem al-Hamzi, known long time al Qaeda terrorists were photographed for the CIA attending that meeting with Khallad Bin Attash, later known to be the mastermind of the Cole bombing, actually planning the bombing of the USS Cole. The essence of this information was kept secret from the FBI Cole investigators in a wide ranging criminal conspiracy until after the attacks on 9/11.

It is now also clear that CIA managers, including perhaps almost everyone in the CIA hierarchy was involved in ordering the FBI ITOS unit to completely shut down every single investigation by any means possible of the FBI criminal investigations of known al Qaeda terrorists inside of the US.

This included completely shutting down the investigation of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi by CIA former deputy chief Tom Wilshire, and at the time, liaison to Michael Rolince head of the ITOS, working with FBI Agent Dina Corsi, at the ITOS Bin Laden unit, and Michael Maltbie and David Frasca working at the ITOS RFU unit at the FBI who completely shut down the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui. It was this criminal behavior that has never been explained that allowed the attacks to take place on 9/11, not the failure to monitor the phone number which the NSA had more than enough authority to do using the FISA warrants.

It was this criminal behavior that the 9/11 Commission attempted to explain away and then cover up with the most bizarre record of any investigation in history. The CIA photographed at least four al Qaeada terrorists at this al Qaeda planning meeting on January 2000 and some how over 21 months later they still have not given the most significant details of this information to the FBI even when they knew several of these terrorists were just about to take part in a huge al Qaeda attack inside of the US, and knew by continuing to hide this information, that thousands of Americans would perish in this attack! How is it possible that these people in congress are still so completely clueless when all of this information is now in publicly available records of 9/11 in the government's own files!

GO FIGURE!

[noise]

16. IMO their ignorance is feigned

They seem to have no respect for the public.