http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/fbi-j15.shtml
FBI inspector general’s report: more evidence of government
complicity in 9/11 attacks
By Patrick Martin
15 June 2005
A report released June 9 by the FBI’s Office of the Inspector
General raises new questions about the role of the US
government in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The
internal FBI study provides several important revelations
about how US intelligence agencies ignored and even suppressed
warnings in the period leading up to the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Press accounts published within hours of the report’s release
gave a very distorted picture of the document, which runs to
more than 400 pages. No follow-up reports, based on a thorough
study of the text, have yet appeared in the mass media.
The initial media commentary invariably voiced the
now-standard claim that the FBI and CIA were guilty of a
“failure to connect the dots,” due to bureaucratic lethargy,
individual incompetence, inter-agency rivalries, even poorly
performing software systems. This presentation of events is
utterly unserious.
The US intelligence apparatus is the most powerful instrument
for spying in the world, not a group of Keystone Cops. If it
ignored warnings and suppressed information, a legitimate
presumption is that it did so willfully. The question must be
posed: did one or more agencies or high-level officials
provide protection for known Al Qaeda associates who
ultimately participated in the hijack-bombings?
Exactly who knew what, and at what level of the government, is
not yet clear. But the political benefits of 9/11 for the Bush
administration are undeniable. It used the terrorist attacks
as a lever to swing American public opinion behind a major
shift in policy, both foreign and domestic. Without 9/11, it
would have been politically impossible for the government to
embark on military interventions in Central Asia and the
Middle East and launch an unprecedented attack on civil
liberties at home.
The Phoenix memo
The FBI internal report examines the three best-known episodes
in which the bureau, which is the lead agency for
counterterrorist activities within the United States, missed
or ignored important signals of the coming terrorist attacks.
Two of the cases involved local FBI agents who voiced
suspicions that were disregarded or suppressed by FBI
headquarters. In the third case, the CIA deliberately kept the
FBI in the dark—with the assistance of certain FBI officials.
The first instance is the electronic memo of July 10, 2001
from Kenneth Williams, an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona,
noting the number of students with ties to radical Islamic
fundamentalists enrolled at local aviation training schools,
and suggesting that a nationwide canvass of these schools be
carried out to determine if there was a pattern.
The second is the bureau’s response to the arrest of Zaccarias
Moussaoui, an Islamic fundamentalist who was detained by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service after his attempts to
obtain training on a Boeing 747 aroused suspicions at a
Minneapolis-area flight school. Moussaoui was detained on
immigration charges in early August 2001, but FBI headquarters
blocked efforts by Minneapolis agents to pursue an
investigation that could have identified other Al Qaeda
operatives at US flight schools.
The third is the case of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi,
believed to have participated in the hijacking of American
Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon on 9/11. Despite
being on a CIA watch list because of connections to Al Qaeda,
the two lived openly in San Diego, California for a year or
more. The CIA only notified the FBI of their presence in the
US on August 27, 2001, 20 months after their arrival, and only
two weeks before September 11.
The chapter in the inspector general’s report on the Phoenix
memo (called an Electronic Communication or EC, in FBI
jargon), reveals that the document was sent to the attention
of six people at FBI headquarters and two more at the New York
Division. The recipients included personnel and leadership of
both the Usama Bin Laden Unit and the Radical Fundamentalists
Unit, the latter comprising a separate group of agents
assigned to investigate Islamist militants not directly
affiliated to Al Qaeda.
None of the agents who received the EC took any serious
action. Several did not even read it. The report attributes
the inaction and inattention to the lack of resources
committed to anti-terrorist activities in the summer of 2001.
For instance, there was only a single research analyst
assigned to the FBI’s Bin Laden Unit in 2001, and she was
transferred to another unit in July 2001.
One agent at a field office who was sent the Phoenix EC
replied that it was “no big secret” that Arab men were
receiving aviation training in the United States. (Williams’s
concern, however, was not over “Arab men,” but rather
individuals affiliated with radical Islamic fundamentalists
who publicly justified terrorist attacks on US targets.) The
FBI’s New York Field Office, which had the lead role in
counterterrorism, flatly rejected Williams’s proposal for a
more in-depth study of the flight school issue.
In passing, the inspector general’s report notes that there
was already considerable information “contained in FBI files
about airplanes and flight schools at the time the Phoenix EC
was received at FBI HQ.” It mentions four examples, implying
that many more could be cited.
One of these examples is the following: “In August 1998, an
intelligence agency advised the FBI’s New York Division of an
alleged plan by unidentified Arabs to fly an explosive laden
aircraft from Libya into the World Trade Center.”
This previously unreported warning directly contradicts the
claims, made repeatedly by Bush administration officials,
especially Condoleezza Rice, that “no one could have imagined”
hijacked airplanes being used as flying bombs against US
targets.
The Moussaoui case
The entire chapter on Moussaoui, 115 pages long, is redacted
from the version published last week, at the order of the
federal judge who has been presiding over Moussaoui’s
terrorism trial. Only a few references to Moussaoui survive in
other parts of the report.
A fuller analysis of this episode awaits the release of the
redacted chapter, after Moussaoui’s sentencing. But the gist
of the situation is that local Minneapolis FBI agents asked
for permission to conduct further inquiries, including
searching Moussaoui’s computer, while supervisors at FBI
headquarters cited the necessity for a warrant from a special
court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA). The supervisors refused to apply for the FISA
warrant, saying the case did not meet the court’s criteria.
In one passage, the inspector general’s report cites a top FBI
lawyer’s statement that “he had never seen a supervisory
special agent in Headquarters so adamant that a FISA warrant
could not be obtained and at the same time a field office so
adamant that it could.” The report also notes that the
Minneapolis field office sought an “expedited FISA,” which
“normally involved reports of a suspected imminent attack or
other imminent danger.”
While FBI supervisors were blocking action on Moussaoui, a CIA
liaison officer in Minneapolis was reporting his arrest to the
CIA. George Tenet, the CIA director, was briefed on the
matter.
By the end of August, French intelligence officials had
provided the US government with information on Moussaoui’s
connections to Islamic fundamentalist groups, but the FBI
still took no action. Moussaoui, who was being held on
immigration violations, was not even transferred from the
Immigration and Naturalization Service to FBI custody until
after September 11.
The San Diego hijackers
By far the most damning material in the FBI inspector
general’s report relates to Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf
al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers who lived in the San Diego
area for much of 2000 and 2001. The report details at least
five instances during this period when the FBI could have or
should have become aware of their presence and purpose.
The two men entered the United States on January 15, 2000,
flying from Bangkok, Thailand to Los Angeles International
Airport. Mihdhar was a participant at a January 5, 2000
meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia, where he and
others were photographed by an unnamed intelligence service.
These photos were supplied to the CIA.
The US National Security Agency had separately identified
Hazmi as an associate of Mihdhar. The two men were tracked by
the CIA traveling from Malaysia to Thailand.
CIA cables contemporaneously discussed Mihdhar’s travel and
the fact that he had a US visa in his Saudi passport. So
intensive was the surveillance that agents obtained a
photocopy of the passport and visa stamp and delivered it to
CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Two months later, the
Bangkok CIA station identified Hazmi as Mihdhar’s traveling
companion and reported that he had traveled on from Bangkok to
Los Angeles on January 15, 2000.
The most critical information about Mihdhar and Hazmi was
withheld from the FBI for more than a year and a half. The FBI
was informed about the Malaysia meeting as soon as it
happened, and even about Mihdhar’s presence at it. But there
was no mention of his passport with a multiple-entry US visa,
giving him easy access to American territory, where the FBI
had the principal responsibility for counterterrorism. Nor did
the CIA tell the FBI that Hazmi had actually entered the
country, which would certainly have triggered an alert. The
CIA itself did not put either man on any other security watch
list.
Two weeks after their arrival in Los Angeles, Mihdhar and
Hazmi moved to San Diego, apparently at the urging of a new
acquaintance, Omar Bayoumi, a man once under FBI surveillance
and believed to be an operative or asset of the Saudi
intelligence service. He invited the two newly arrived Saudis
to San Diego, where they rented an apartment in the complex
where he lived. Bayoumi co-signed the lease and even wrote a
check for the rent because the two had only cash.
In May 2000, the two men rented a room from another San Diego
man who was an FBI informant, and who reported their arrival
and their first names to his handler. The handler did not ask
the last names or show any other interest.
The informant is not named in the inspector general’s report,
but he has been identified in previous press accounts as
Abdussattar Shaikh, another Saudi immigrant. (Both Shaikh and
his FBI handler, now retired, refused to speak with the FBI
inspector general probing the bureau’s response to 9/11, a
remarkable circumstance that is recorded in the report only in
a footnote, and without explanation.)
The actions of Hazmi and Mihdhar strongly suggest that they
were being protected and were themselves aware of it. They
conducted themselves, not as underground conspirators, trying
to keep one step ahead of the most powerful spy apparatus in
the world, but as men seemingly indifferent to threats to
their security.
According to the FBI report: “... they did not attempt to hide
their identities. Using the same names contained in their
travel documents and known to at least some in the
Intelligence Community, they rented an apartment, obtained
driver’s licenses from the state of California Department of
Motor Vehicles, opened bank accounts and received bank credit
cards, purchased a used vehicle and automotive insurance, took
flying lessons at a local flying school, and obtained local
phone service that included Hazmi’s listing in the local
telephone directory.”
Even though this is not the first time the actions of Hazmi
and Mihdhar have been detailed, one rubs one’s eyes in
astonishment at this passage. Hazmi could only have made
himself more obvious if he had taken out an ad in the Yellow
Pages under “T” for terrorist. But the CIA, which knew who he
was, chose not to expose him to the FBI.
In June 2000, Mihdhar left the US, not returning until July 4,
2001, when he flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport
in New York City. Hazmi lived in San Diego for several more
months, then moved to Phoenix and eventually the East Coast.
Following the bombing of the USS Cole in December 2000,
interest in Mihdhar and Hazmi revived. A US intelligence
source identified one of the participants in the January 2000
Malaysia meeting as the ringleader of the Cole attack, and the
FBI, which had lead responsibility for the investigation,
began to review all those who attended that meeting.
However, in discussions in January 2001 and again in May and
June 2001, CIA officials did not tell the FBI that Mihdhar,
now known to be associated with the suspected organizer of the
Cole bombing, had a US visa, or that Hazmi, Mihdhar’s
associate, had entered the United States.
Much of this material in the report is difficult to follow,
partly because of bureaucratic complexities, partly because of
the large amount of redaction, apparently to conceal the
nationality of the intelligence agency that had monitored the
Malaysia meeting (most likely the Israeli Mossad). The
inspector general’s report cites cooperation by Malaysian,
Thai and Yemeni security services without redaction.
The CIA finally told the FBI what it knew about Mihdhar and
Hazmi on August 27, 2001, five days after the FBI had
discovered independently, on August 22, that Mihdhar might be
in the US, and the agency had opened its own investigation.
The New York FBI office was notified, but the job of tracking
down Mihdhar was assigned to a novice agent as his first
intelligence case, an indication of the low priority given to
the investigation. Only perfunctory steps to locate Mihdhar
and Hazmi had been taken by September 11, when the two men
boarded the American Airlines jet.
Indications of a CIA cover-up
The FBI inspector general’s report reveals for the first time
that the CIA not only failed to inform the FBI about Mihdhar,
but that CIA officials intervened to suppress a memorandum
drafted by an FBI agent detailed to the CIA-run
Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), who wanted to notify the FBI
about the suspected terrorist with a US visa. The blow-by-blow
account of this incident in the FBI report strongly implies a
CIA cover-up.
The FBI agent, dubbed “Dwight” in the inspector general’s
report, drafted the memorandum, a Central Intelligence Report
(CIR), on January 5, 2000, only hours after the Malaysia
meeting had taken place. The same day, a CIA desk officer,
dubbed “Michelle,” relayed instructions from her supervisor
barring distribution of the CIR to the FBI.
Three hours later, “Michelle” drafted and circulated an
internal CIA cable which summarized the information on
Mihdhar, including his multiple-entry US visa. This cable
declared that his travel documents had been copied and passed
“to the FBI for further investigation.” This was a lie, which
was later used by the CIA to substantiate its initial claim
that it had notified the FBI about Mihdhar.
This cable could not possibly be an innocent mistake, since it
was sent out after its author had relayed the instructions to
“Dwight” that his memo to the FBI not be sent. Under
questioning from the inspector general, no one at the CIA or
the FBI could corroborate the claim in the cable by “Michelle”
that the CIA had notified the FBI about Mihdhar—a claim that
was diametrically opposed to what the CIA was doing in
practice.
The report notes that the CIA initially withheld information
about the existence of the January 2000 memorandum by “Dwight”
from the inspector general’s office. Quoting from the report:
“In February 2004, however, while we were reviewing a list of
CIA documents that had been accessed by FBI employees assigned
to the CIA, we noticed the title of a document that appeared
to be relevant to this review and had not been previously
disclosed to us. The CIA OIG [Office of the Inspector General]
had not previously obtained this document in connection with
its review. We obtained this document, known as a Central
Intelligence Report (CIR). This CIR was a draft document
addressed to the FBI containing information about Mihdhar’s
travel and possession of a US visa. As a result of the
discovery of this new document, a critical document that we
later determined had not been sent to the FBI before the
September 11 attacks (see Section III, A, 4 below), we had to
re-interview several FBI and CIA employees and obtain
additional documents from the CIA. The belated discovery of
this CIA document delayed the completion of our review.”
The aggrieved tone is unmistakable. First the CIA withheld the
document from the FBI, then the CIA attempted to conceal the
existence of the document from the FBI’s postmortem probe.
The cover-up was followed by a curious epidemic of amnesia. No
one who worked on, received or read the draft CIR from
“Dwight,” including “Dwight” himself, could remember anything
about it. Again the report:
“When we interviewed all of the individuals involved with the
CIR, they asserted that they recalled nothing about it. Dwight
told the OIG that he did not recall being aware of the
information about Mihdhar, did not recall drafting the CIR,
did not recall whether he drafted the CIR on his own
initiative or at the direction of his supervisor, and did not
recall any discussions about the reason for delaying
completion and dissemination of the CIR. Malcolm said he did
not recall reviewing any of the cable traffic or any
information regarding Hazmi and Mihdhar. Eric told the OIG
that he did not recall the CIR.
“The CIA employees also stated that they did not recall the
CIR. Although James, the CIA employee detailed to FBI
Headquarters, declined to be interviewed by us, he told the
CIA OIG that he did not recall the CIR. John (the deputy chief
of the Bin Laden Unit) and Michelle, the desk officer who was
following this issue, also stated that they did not recall the
CIR, any discussions putting it on hold, or why it was not
sent.”
Again, the tone of incredulity is clear. None of these people
remember anything, and one of them actually refuses to be
interviewed! And this is not about a minor matter, but
concerns the first report on a man who was one of the 19
hijackers on 9/11.
A politically motivated whitewash
The FBI inspector general’s report is, like all previous
official investigations into the events of 9/11, a cover-up
for the state apparatus. These investigations share one common
feature: they completely exclude, a priori, any question of
government complicity in terrorist attacks. Instead, we have
the familiar litany of breast-beating over mistakes,
complacency, inattention and inadequate resources.
Despite the all-purpose explanation that “mistakes were made,”
names are never named in any of these probes. No one is ever
held accountable. No one is shamed or punished.
There is a definite reason for this: the US government does
not want to generate a Watergate syndrome, in which punishment
meted out at a lower level leads to people implicating
higher-ups and focuses attention on the role of top officials.
There can hardly remain any serious doubt that a section of
the American intelligence apparatus functioned as the guardian
angels for at least some of the suicide hijackers. The
question is: why?
Until there is an investigation of 9/11 by a genuinely
independent body—one wholly free of the US
military/intelligence apparatus—it is impossible to specify
precisely the role of the government in these events.
But on the basis of a political analysis alone, it is clear
that 9/11 did not come as a bolt from the blue. As in the
investigation of any crime, a critical question to be posed
is: who benefits? For powerful sections of the US ruling elite
and its state apparatus, a major terrorist attack on US soil
was anticipated, desired and, most probably, facilitated in
order to provide the necessary climate of fear and patriotic
fervor to implement a sweeping program of political reaction,
both at home and abroad.
Without 9/11, there would be no US occupation of Iraq, putting
an American army squarely at the center of the world’s largest
pool of oil. Without 9/11, there would be no US bases across
Central Asia, guarding the second largest source of oil and
gas. And without 9/11, the Bush administration would have been
unable to sustain itself politically, faced with a
deteriorating economy and widespread opposition to its tax
cuts for millionaires and social measures to appease the
fundamentalist Christian Right.
The Democratic Party is deeply implicated, supporting both the
war in Iraq and the cover-up of the role of the state in the
9/11 attacks. The Clinton administration sought to provoke a
confrontation with Iraq in 1998, but had to back off in the
face of public opposition to a new war in the Middle
East—opposition that was only overcome in the wake of
September 11. Moreover, the connection between US intelligence
agencies and reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like bin
Laden goes back nearly two decades, involving Democratic and
Republican administrations alike.
Despite its tactical differences with the White House and
squabbles over positions of influence, the Democratic Party
accepts the basic program of the Bush administration. Should
the Democrats return to power, they would not withdraw US
forces from Iraq or Central Asia, nor rescind Bush’s tax cuts
for the wealthy, nor repeal the USA Patriot Act or attacks on
democratic rights.
----
Also see:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/911-a22.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/sept-j16.shtml
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