Posted on 07/22/2003 12:58:47 PM PDT by Princeton
War on Terror
San Diego FBI team denies it missed chance to thwart 9/11
San Diego FBI officials, bracing for a congressional report that criticizes their handling of an informant who rented rooms to two Sept. 11 hijackers, said yesterday they could not have uncovered the plot with the information they had at the time.
Officials acknowledged for the first time that an informant, whom they refused to identify, had provided the first names of two men who would later become hijackers, the Associated Press reported. But the names did not raise any red flags before the terror attacks.
"There was no information whatsoever that we had two folks that were in any way related to al-Qaeda terrorists living in the community," said Patrick Connolly, supervisor of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego County.
The comments were made yesterday in response to the July 28 issue of Newsweek magazine, which details some of the conclusions in the declassified 900-page congressional report, scheduled to be released Thursday.
The FBI was not aware that Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with two al-Qaeda members suspected in the 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole, because the CIA did not share that information. The meeting occurred shortly before the two arrived in San Diego.
"We did have information with regard to the first names," Connolly said. "But at that time and even now, that information in and of itself would have been insufficient to warrant opening up any type of inquiry."
Daniel R. Dzwilewski, the special agent who took charge of the FBI's San Diego office three weeks ago, made a similar assertion.
"Given all the factors that the San Diego division knew, even with the benefit of hindsight, Sept. 11 could not have been prevented," he told the Associated Press.
The report is also expected to scrutinize San Diego FBI officials for the investigation of Omar Al-Bayoumi, then a prominent Muslim suspected of being the advance-man for Alhazmi and al-Midhar.
Al-Bayoumi, thought to be a Saudi spy by local Muslims, financed apartments for the hijackers and used his popularity and influence to introduce the hijackers into the San Diego County Muslim community. Al-Bayoumi left for England in July 2001 and was held briefly by British authorities and released.
Al-Bayoumi has been indicted on a charge of visa fraud by a San Diego grand jury, retired San Diego FBI chief Bill Gore said in a November interview. But, Gore said at the time, visa fraud is not an extraditable offense.
According to Newsweek, al-Bayoumi attended a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles in 2000, then went directly to a Los Angeles restaurant where he picked up the two hijackers. He arranged for an apartment near San Diego's main mosque and paid their rent for the first two months, the magazine reported. They lived in the Clairemont apartment for a few months before renting rooms in the informant's home.
"Clearly before 9/11 we were aware of al-Bayoumi," Connolly said, declining to say why. After 9/11, Connolly said, agents spent thousands of hours investigating al-Bayoumi. "We took the appropriate steps at that time to ascertain his role or connection with 9/11 and found none."
FBI officials in San Diego said they welcomed the scrutiny from Congress and have made changes since the attacks, but insisted that they did not botch an opportunity to prevent the terrorist attacks by mishandling the informant.
Though FBI officials refused to discuss details about the informant, sources have identified him as Abdussattar Shaikh, a retired college professor and community leader from Lemon Grove. Sources have said Shaikh did not regard his tenants with suspicion and therefore did not identify them as such to his FBI contact, now-retired agent Steve Butler.
Shaikh has denied being an informant.
According to the Associated Press, the congressional report cites the case of Butler, who was unhappy with the way the FBI handled some of the information gathered on the hijackers before the attacks.
His criticisms were outlined in an e-mail to another law enforcement official that wound up in the hands of Congress. After the attacks, Butler was transferred, but chose instead to retire in February 2002, said FBI spokeswoman Jan Caldwell.
She described the transfer as part of a shake-up of the bureau after Sept. 11 and said Butler was not singled out.
In testimony before the congressional committee issuing the report, Butler said that had the CIA provided the FBI with more information, he might have uncovered a hint of the plot through his informer network, the New York Times reported.
Shaikh has said repeatedly that he had no inkling of their intentions and thought they were just two students from Saudi Arabia. Shaikh could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Alhazmi and al-Midhar were identified as two of the Sept. 11 terrorists who crashed an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon.
Although I believe the FBI dropped a few balls leading up to 9/11, the fact they had the FIRST names of two men does not seem to warrant this story.
Plenty of Mohammeds and Akbars out there, kinda like saying Joe and John were involved.
This is a non-story...
Doing the real work is much harder.
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