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In reply to the discussion: 9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report; Congressmen Push For R [View all]Ace Acme
(1,464 posts)inside the USA--Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar.
Al Mihdhar was here in the USA, then he went to Yemen and lived for a year in a known al Qaeda communications hub that was monitored both by the NSA and the CIA and also by audio bugs.
Then he returned to the USA, no problem, and he and al Hazmi were both known by the CIA and the FBI to be in the country. There was a debate within the FBI about whether they should open an intel investigation or a full-scale criminal investigation. They decided on an intel investigation and assigned one rookie to the job. Within a few days he was asking if he could run a credit-card check on them to see what they were up to, but his superior, Dina Corsi, discouraged him. Bob Woodward said that if this credit card check had been run it would have revealed that al Mihdhar and al Hazmi together bought ten airline tickets dated 9/11/01 under their own real names.
The only explanation (former counterterrorism czar) Richard Clarke could offer for this cockup was that CIA had a hands-off policy on these two because they were hoping to recruit them as double agents.