Reply #2: re:FBI agent Ali Soufan has a book coming out in September called The Black Banners: 9/11 and the Wa

[rschop]

On September 12, 20001 the CIA Yemen Station chief gave Soufan a manila envelope with three surveillance photographs from the Kuala Lumpur meeting and a complete report about the this meeting, the very information that Soufan had been requesting from the CIA since November 2000. These were photos of Mihdhar, with one photograph showing both Mihdhar and Hazmi.

Soufan realized immediately that the CIA had known about at least two of the al Qaeda hijackers who took part in the attacks on 9/11 for at least 21 months, had even known that they had entered the US on January 15, 2000 and then had never given him or his team this information. When Soufan realized that the CIA had deliberately hidden this information from him, the very information he and his team had asked for numerous times and the very information that they could have used to have prevented the attacks that had taken place on 9/11 that had cost the lives of almost 3000 people, he went to the wash room and threw up in the sink.

But Soufan was never aware of the extent of the massive treachery that had taken place and even today is probably unaware of the extent of this treachery. I doubt if this information is even in his book.

Soufan was unaware when he asked FBI Director Louis Freeh in November 2000, to make a formal FBI request to the CIA and George Tenet for any information that the CIA had on Walid Bin Attash, or on any al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 and was told that the CIA did not have any of this information, that Freeh himself had received information from the CIA in January 2000, that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf were going to an important al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Because Soufan had attached Khallad’s passport photo to his request, to both the Yemen station and to his request to Freeh, and the CIA, the CIA would have immediately known that Khallad had also been at the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda meeting, with Mihdhar and Hazmi actually planning the Cole bombing.

Soufan was unaware that when he had flown out to Pakistan to talk to the FBI/CIA Joint Source in February 1, 2001, that CIA Yemen Station, the CIA Pakistan Station, and the CIA Bin Laden unit were all aware that Khallad had been identified by the Joint Source at the Kuala Lumpur meeting just the month before, and knew that Mihdhar and Hazmi had also been at that meeting with Khallad planning the Cole bombing. Yet none of these units ever gave this information to Soufan. The CIA handler for the CIA/FBI joint source was right with Soufan as Soufan presented his Yemen obtained passport photo of Khallad to the Joint source, and knew about the identification of Khallad and yet kept this information secret from Soufan

Soufan was unaware that his April 2001 request for information to the CIA went to both former CIA officer Tom Wilshire, who had been moved over to the FBI ITOS unit, and to CIA officer Clark Shannon. When Wilshire received Soufan's request, instead of giving him the information he had asked for, Wilshire asked FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi, to set up a meeting with Soufan’s own people so the CIA could find out what these Cole investigators knew about the Kuala Lumpur meeting and Mihdhar and Hazmi. The CIA wanted to know if they had found out in their search for Khallad, that Mihdhar and Hazmi had been at the Kuala Lumpur meeting with Khallad actually planning the Cole bombing.

Soufan was never aware that when FBI Agent Margaret Gillespie was told by the INS that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US on August 22, 2001, and gave this information to Tom Wilshire and Dina Corsi, that Wilshire knew immediately that these terrorists were inside of the US in order to take part in a massive al Qaeda attack that would kill thousands of Americans.

Soufan was unaware that even FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi, who had called him in Yemen on September 11, 2001 and had asked him to remain in Yemen, had known by August 22, 2001, and perhaps much before this date, that the CIA had a photograph taken at Kuala Lumpur of Khallad, and knew that the CIA had been keeping this photo secret from him and his team.

Soufan never found out that when Corsi shut down his teams investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi on August 28, 2001, claiming that she needed a release from the NSA for information in her EC before giving it to his team, that she had already been approved for this release the day before. He never even knew that Corsi had fabricated Attorney Sherry Sabol’s ruling, when she had told Bongardt, his assistant, and the rest of his team that they could not take part in any investigation for Mihdhar and Hazmi, when Sabol had ruled just the opposite and had ruled that since the NSA information had no connection to any FISA warrant, Bongardt and his team could take part in any investigation for Mihdhar and Hazmi.

Soufan never found out that Corsi’s supervisor, Rod Middleton, had been given the photograph of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur by the CIA on August 30, 2001, almost 2 weeks before the attacks on 9/11, a photograph that directly connected both Mihdhar and Hazmi to the planning of the Cole bombing and was more than enough time for his team to have been able to locate these terrorists prior to the attacks on 9/11.

While Soufan was just getting a glimmer of the extent of this treachery, he had no idea of how pervasive and wide spread and massive it had become, and that it ultimately had not only included many groups at the CIA but even groups his own FBI Head Quarters.

Soufan realized that the CIA, the very agency he had trusted, the agency that he thought would have given him critical information in his investigations when he requested it if they were aware of this information, had literally stabbed him in the back and at the same time had stabbed the American people in the back. Soufan realized that this profound treachery had cost the lives of almost 3000 people on 9/11. But Soufan also realized that FBI HQ must have also played a role in this profound treachery. Soufan was so disillusioned that he quit the FBI in 2005, bitterly angry that they had lied to him and his team many times.