June 10, 2005. The LA Times reports that in early 2000, the CIA intentionally withheld a memo from the FBI that reported the entry of key 9/11 hijackers into the US. See:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror10jun10,0,510936,print.story?coll=la-home-headlinesIn his testimony before the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee in September 2002, former head of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) stated under oath that his office had inadvertently neglected to inform the FBI when it became known in early 2000 that Flight 77 hijacker, Nawaf al-Midhar, had entered the U.S. However, it was revealed yesterday that a memo informing the FBI had actually been drafted at CTC, but an order was issued blocking transmission of that information.
In this sworn testimony, Cofer Black stated that he and Agency staff had simply missed the importance of reports that know al-Qaeda terrorists had entered the US after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit. According to Black, then CTC director -- who after 9/11 was promoted by President Bush to head State Department Counterterrorism -- the CIA Center failed to pass this information on to the FBI in early 2000 because staff were distracted and overworked. For more information see:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/01_crimes.htmlhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/p/26_failed.htmlhttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00257.htm However, as we learned yesterday, Black's testimony to Congress was a material misrepresentation of what is the most important question that Congress had for the CIA. Why wasn't the FBI informed in a timely way of this obviously critical development in tracking known al-Qaeda terrorists?
As ranking officer at CTC, Cofer Black was in a position to know about the Center's memo that had been prepared for transmittal to the FBI at the time. He was also clearly in the chain of command that would decide to block the memo's transmission to the FBI. Nonetheless, Black told Congressional investigators something quite different, and his testimony under oath before the Joint Committee was patently false, in light of the facts that were released yesterday.
US intelligence first became aware of Nawaf Al-Midhar in 1995, when he was referenced in a telephone call from a major al-Qaeda communications center in Yemen intercepted by the NSA. That communications post was run by Nawaf's uncle. The Al-Midhar family has long been prominent within the militant Yemeni Islamic opposition. Osama bin Laden's family is originally from Yemen, which has been the center of armed opposition to westerners for many decades since the British occupied the key port city of Aden and built a huge naval base there, which in the late 1990s was again visited by US naval forces after a long absence. This was viewed as a serious provocation by local Islamic radicals. The USS Cole was blown up in Aden harbour in October, 2000 during a "refueling stop".
In January 2000, The Agency had trailed the al-Midhar and his partner, Khalid al-Hazmi, as they traveled to a meeting with top al-Qaeda planners in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That meeting. at which 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole were planned, was surveilled by multiple US and allied intelligence agencies. Al-Hazmi and Al-Midhar reentered the US on the same flight from Bangkok on January 15, 2000.
Somehow -- and this has been a major gap in the record -- the CIA neglected to notify FBI of the entry.
Now we know that this failure to notify the FBI was no oversight. A command decision was taken by the CIA -- Director Tenet had been briefed on multiple occasions about al-Midhar and al-Hazmi and the Kuala Lumpur meeting. The only question that remains is, why did the CIA allow known al-Qaeda terrorists to run free across the US, and complete their mission on 9/11?
The Bush Administration must now appoint a special counsel to immediately investigate Black's apparent perjury. Any delay can be viewed as obstruction of justice, and as an impeachable offense.
Copyright 2005. Mark G. Levey
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