as did several "friendly" foreign intelligence services. The top echelon in several agencies were well aware that al-Qaeda had plans to attack targets in NY and DC by air, and the identity of specific operatives inside the U.S. preparing to carry this out.
But, here's the rub, the CIA was running illegal domestic operations employing warrantless NSA surveillance, which was also illegal. Bush refused to roll-up the attack cells when Tenet strongly urged him that option in the middle in August. The worst-case happened. Everyone was implicated in this catastrophic policy and intelligence failure. So, everyone had to pretend afterwards that nobody knew about the attack plans.
I've written extensively about this since 2003. Here's a relevant section:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htmUQ Wire: THE CRIMES OF 9/11 (Part 4)
Friday, 31 October 2003, 11:58 am
Article: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
Sign up for the wire at:
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/headlines.phpUnanswered Questions : Thinking for ourselves.
THE CRIMES OF 9/11 (Part 4):
Bush White House, CIA, FBI Bungled Risky Warrantless Surveillance Operation - 3,000 Died
© Copyright 2003.
All rights reserved.
Mark G. Levey
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CRIMES OF 9/11 (Pt. 2) ;
CRIMES OF 9/11 (pt. 3) ]
MORE QUESTIONS FOR A GRAND JURY:
# Were the Flight 77 Hijackers Actually Under Saudi Intelligence “Control”?
# Did the FBI Destroy the Record of Al-Qaeda Wiretaps Obtained in March 2000?
# Did Federal Officers Provide Material Support to Terrorists Without Legal Authorization?
# Did the White House and Top Intelligence Officials Lie to Congress?
*****************
BACKGROUND:
In early summer 2001, US officials received numerous warnings from domestic and foreign intelligence agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists planned “spectacular” air attacks on prominent landmarks inside the US. At that time, CIA Director George Tenet became “frantic with worry”, according to subordinates. During the first week in July – as President Bush prepared to fly to Genoa to attend the G-8 summit -- the US armed forces and federal agencies, including the Pentagon’s Central European Command and the FAA, were placed on the highest terrorism alert.
But, nobody bothered to let the American people know about any of this.
Then, as quietly as it had been raised, the federal terrorism alert was stood-down after the summit concluded on the 22nd, and Bush safely returned to the US. The President then retired to his well-guarded Crawford, Texas ranch where he received his August 6 briefing about the al-Qaeda attack plans.
Ranking national security officials were already acutely aware that a major al-Qaeda operation was in the works. On July 5, a high-level meeting to discuss the terrorist threat had been convened in the White House situation room. The conference was attended by the heads of all major national security agencies. Richard Clarke, NSC counterterrorism chief, directed every counter-terrorist office to a high level alert.
By early August, however, all of these emergency measures are no longer in effect. A briefing prepared for senior US government officials in July had warned:
"Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
http://intelligence.senate.gov/0209hrg/020918/hill.pdf >
As the clock counted down to 9/11, intelligence information given to senior officials showed that US intelligence continued to expect an imminent al-Qaeda attack on US interests.
On August 6, George W. Bush was briefed by his national security advisor, Condaleeza Rice at the President’s Crawford, Texas ranch. The ominous title of that still-classified briefing read to him was "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US". The memo focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the US. The White House denied the President had warnings about terrorist attacks inside the US, keeping that briefing secret until Congressional investigators learned about it in May of the following year. The White House has fiercely resisted all subsequent efforts to obtain a copy of that memo or to release its contents. A Congressional report later describes it as based on the memo discussed in July by Clarke and other high-level national security decision-makers. The Senate Intelligence Committee summarized that memo, as follows:
"embers of al-Qaeda, including some US citizens, had resided in or traveled to the US for years and that the group apparently maintained a support structure here. The report cited uncorroborated information obtained in 1998 that Osam bin Laden wanted to hijack airplanes to gain the release of US-held extremists; FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks and the number of bin Laden-related investigations underway; as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the US with explosives." .
Meanwhile, that August, FBI investigators in New York and Minneapolis were trying desperately to gather sufficient evidence to obtain FISA warrants to track down four al-Qaeda members known to be at large in the country and information for a warrant to open the computer files of a fifth suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been arrested at a Norman Oklahoma flight school. FBI requests that summer to the CIA for information contained in the Agency’s files were repeatedly stonewalled.
On August 23 2001, the CIA finally informed the Bureau that two intending terrorists– Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar -- had entered the US in January 2000 – information it had in its files for some 17 months. As they tried to get evidence for warrants, FBI agents in New York and Minneapolis were particularly in need of what the CIA knew about these two al-Qaeda members. In refusing to turn over information the previous month, a CIA officer told FBI investigators attached to the FBI’s New York National Security office he would not turn over “operational” information. In a now famous e-mail message, one of the New York Bureau investigators remarked about the seeming meltdown in US counterterrorism, “Someone is going to die”. Colleen Rowley, a lawyer in the Minneapolis FBI office frustrated after the CIA refused to provide materials supporting warrants to open Moussaoui’s laptop -- and by the obstruction of FBI headquarters – later conjectured that her own investigation was being sabotaged by “moles”.
For reasons that have not yet been satisfactorily explained, the federal terrorism alert was relaxed after Bush received his briefing. Five weeks later, 19 hijackers armed with box cutters were able to board four commercial airliners, flying them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and into a crash site in western Pennsylvania.
Three thousand people died in what was possibly, at high levels of the US Government, the most widely anticipated mass murder in American history.
Why did the President and his senior national security officials behave as they did in the face of these warnings? Was US intelligence simply deceived into believing that any al-Qaeda attack would occur abroad, as has been claimed, or was there an unstated reason officials took the enormous risks they did? What were top
Administration officials thinking?
***************
1. THE CIA GOES IT ALONE
"They Had It Covered." - Anonymous Aide to NSC Counterterrorism Chief, Richard Clarke
What could have been the line of reasoning behind the terrorism alert stand-down in the weeks before 9/11? The final report of the Congressional Joint Inquiry, released in September 2003, casts some new light on these key questions.
http://www.governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread= *Main&url=
http://www.governmentguide.com/ams/clickThruRedirect.ad...http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.htmlThe 27-page gap in the record -- a section on foreign intelligence matters that remains classified at the insistence of the Bush Administration -- is most notable, along with numerous shorter sections in the report censored by the White House. Almost immediately, leaks revealed that the main subject of the censor was the role of Saudi Arabia -- nearly everyone, including the Saudis, assumed the material was redacted to protect the deteriorating reputation of members of the Royal family who had been tied to terrorist finance. The fact that this section was censored, of course, reinforced those suspicions. The official reason given to censor the report -- which was ultimately not challenged by committee leaders, who could have on their own authority declassified every word -- was the standard disclaimer of protection of US intelligence methods and sources. It turns out, ironically,the official explanation is closer to the truth and tells us more about why 9/11 actually happened.
A close reading of the final Joint Inquiry report, along with other authoritative sources reveals that vulnerabilities to catastrophic terrorist attack were clearly understood by top national security advisors at that time. Yet, decision-makers thought that these risks were manageable.
Congressional findings show that much of the problem with US counterterrorism stemmed from the CIA’s vigorous efforts to withhold information from the FBI. This was portrayed in the familiar terms of bureaucratic "turf wars" between the two agencies. But, the issue was actually more complex.
What really stands out is that both the CIA and the FBI went to sometimes irrational lengths to evade warrant requirements, and the oversight by the Courts and Congress that goes along with them. Avoiding warrants in counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, intelligence officers took unacceptable risks in carrying out surveillance through other methods, particularly the consensual monitoring of unreliable informants within al-Qaeda and the foreign intelligence agencies tasked to watch them. Right up to 9/11, the CIA pursued its prime directive of protecting the Agency's "methods and sources" from disclosure, even if this obviously raised the risks of a catastrophic terrorist attack.The Joint Inquiry found that for 18 months leading up to the attacks, the CIA withheld specific information from the FBI and military intelligence that pinpointed the identities of the principal 9/11 conspirators. <9/11 Report, Sec. 1, p. 12, Finding 5b>. From January 2000 until August 23, 2001, the CIA did not reveal visa information and photos of attendees at the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda meeting to FBI counterterrorism investigators. Even when confronted by angry FBI agents at an interagency meeting on June 11, 2001, the CIA refused to pass key information about al-Mihdhar to the FBI . This long delay and obstruction of FBI investigations allowed this key al-Qaeda operative to renew his visa at the US Embassy in Jeddah two days later, and then to reenter the US on July 4, the same day Mohamed Atta flew to Spain for a final set of meetings with senior al-Qaeda backers. Finally, 15 days later, Mohamed Atta, who had traveled in and out of the US several times during 2001, reentered this country for the final time.
This withholding of evidence left the US singularly reliant on the Agency’s own counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, and these operations were carried out largely in secret without consulting other parts of the government. In the latter part of the 1990s, the CIA reorganized itself with a far greater emphasis on counterterrorism (CT). While the rest of the Agency shrank during the decade following the end of the Cold War, the budget and staff devoted to CT doubled and then redoubled. In 1998,George Tenet declared “The Plan” -- the war plan to kill Bin Laden .
The expansion and consolidation of CT into the hands of the CIA was hardly proactive, and it was not based on any record of singular success in preventing terrorist attacks abroad, which is the Agency’s jurisdiction. The Plan followed a string of deadly terrorist operations against American targets, coming on the heels of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. Al-Qaeda preparations for the 9/11 attacks actually began two years earlier < AP, 9/22/2003, John Solomon, “Terrorist Says 9/11 Plot Began in '96: Mastermind Reveals bin Laden Revised Several Plans”>. In 1995 and 1996, al-Qaeda was implicated in bombings of US targets inside Saudi Arabia, particularly the destruction of US barracks at Kobhar Towers. Key elements of the 9/11 attack – an attack on multiple targets in the US using hijacked aircraft -- dates from the 1994 “Bojinka” plot hatched in the Philippines by Ramzi Yousef, a Bin Laden associate, who was also convicted of building the truck bomb that blew up inside a parking garage of the World Trade Center in February, 1993.
An integral part of Tenet’s Plan, and one of its greatest weaknesses as noted in the Congressional findings, was the CIA’s reliance on foreign intelligence agencies for much of its coverage of terrorist organizations.
The Saudis and Pakistanis had long before proven unreliable partners in the battle against terrorism. Even the Israeli Mossad seems to have been late and surprisingly ineffectual in its warnings and assistance in coverage of the 9/11 hijackers. It is reported that barely three weeks before the attacks, Mossad informed the US about 19 identified al-Qaeda terrorists, the same day the CIA issued its own first warning to other federal agencies about the al-Qaeda operatives. That day, the US immigration authorities watchlisted Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salim, along with Mohamed Atta.
Within days after the attacks, Fox News carried a four-part series of reports that Israeli intelligence operatives had been shadowing some of the 9/11 hijackers inside the US.
http://100777.com/node/view/180 In April 2001,the so-called Israeli Art Students ring was broken up by US counterintelligence (CI), and dozens of Mossad operatives were deported after a federal task force found these individuals had attempted to enter secure US Government facilities. This US action may have indeed hindered Mossad operations watching al-Qaeda operatives in the period leading up to 9/11. Nonetheless, on August 23, Israel seemingly prompted the US government to take its only visible step against the al-Qaeda hijacking cells. Why the Bush Administration then took the minimalist action of watchlisting the four suspects identified -- which would have merely stopped their departure from the US -- has not been explained. Strangely, these reports were never followed-up on by Fox or any major US news organization. Similar stories have, however, appeared in European papers. Die Zeit, a conservative German daily, reported:
“The Mossad also had its sights on Atta's accomplice Khalid al-Midhar, with whom the CIA was also familiar, but allowed to run free. The Mossad apparently warned their American counterparts several times about the terrorists, especially about al-Midhar. The American government later admitted that they had received such warnings prior to September 11. But at most that there were attacks planned against American installations outside the United States."
Furthermore, the Israelis may have taken the only active measures to try to physically prevent the hijackings on 9/11. There have been credible reports that a "former" Israeli intelligence officer was killed by the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that Mohamed Atta piloted into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Four hijackers got out of their seats and stabbed or shot passenger Daniel Lewin, who once belonged to the Sayeret Matkal, a counter-terrorist unit of the Israeli Defense Force. He was sitting in front of one of the three hijackers in business class. An early FAA memo says Lewin was shot
The Congressional report reveals little about CIA activities from August 23 until September 11 that might have contributed to the FBI’s belated manhunt or prevented the hijackings. We do know that the FBI investigation was effectively paralyzed, having run into “The Wall”, very serious operational problems later portrayed as “misunderstandings” about warrant requirements. The President’s inner circle seems to have been operating under certain misassumptions of its own about al-Qaeda, and this may have contributed to decisions to relax terrorism alert status and not to issue a public warning:
# the Bin Laden organization had been penetrated by double-agents, an and these, it was thought, were controlled by intelligence officers working for the CIA and intelligence agencies of several “friendly” countries;
# In addition, these multiple intelligence agencies were watching each othother, and it was believed, rivalries, informants and US surveillance of communications would reveal the attack plans to the CIA before the al-Qaeda Operation was completed.
Thus, the Bush White House did nothing publicly in response to the crisis, even in the last days as the FBI was unable to turn up the known suspects. No doubt, ranking officials when they are compelled to talk about it, will say in their own defense that they had been told al-Qaeda network’s global finances and operations were so throroughly “mapped out” that US intelligence continued to control terrorist cells known to be inside the country, despite numerous warnings that suicide air attacks were imminent. That assumption, of course, proved dead wrong.
*****************
SNIP
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