Report: Hijackers should have drawn FBI scrutiny in San Diego

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 6/9/05 | Seth Hettena - AP

[NormsRevenge]

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Two Sept. 11 hijackers "should have drawn some scrutiny from the FBI," when they lived openly in San Diego in 2000, the Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a report that chronicles the bureau's failures to connect the dots leading up to the attacks.

The head of the San Diego FBI office took issue Thursday with the inspector general's report, saying it "greatly exaggerates" the possibility that local agents could have prevented the attacks.

The 368-page review found that the FBI missed opportunities to learn about the al-Qaida operatives when they lived in the San Diego area in 2000. The two Saudis rented a room in home of a longtime FBI terrorism informant and they also befriended a fellow Saudi who had drawn FBI scrutiny in the past.

But the San Diego FBI did not learn of the presence of the two men, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, until they boarded American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing 190 people on the ground and on the plane.

At the time, the report states, agents in San Diego, like their FBI counterparts in bureaus around the country, were not focused on al-Qaida. The San Diego bureau's No. 1 priority was drugs and terrorism ranked fourth.

"In sum, we believe that Hazmi and Mihdhar's presence in San Diego should have draw scrutiny from the FBI," the report stated. "If San Diego's focus on counterterrorism and al-Qaida had occurred earlier ... there would have been a greater possibility, though no guarantee, that Hazmi's and Mihdhar's presence in San Diego may have come to the attention of the FBI before Sept. 11."

The inspector general's report is the first critical internal review of the San Diego FBI's performance to be made public. It was filed Wednesday in federal court in Virginia as part of the government's terrorism case against Zacarias Moussaoui.

Dan Dzwilewski, who took over in 2003 as special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI, disputed the report's conclusion that local agents should have learned about the two hijackers. Under guidelines in place at the time, the San Diego FBI lacked the grounds to open an investigation. Doing so would have broken the law, Dzwilewski said.

The San Diego office did not have a role in what the report identified as the most critical breakdown in the handling of intelligence information on Hazmi and Mihdhar: The FBI's failure to learn in time that the CIA identified the men as al-Qaida operatives, that Hazmi had entered the United States and Mihdhar had a U.S. visa.

"How could have found these people when we didn't know we were looking for them?" said Bill Gore, a retired FBI agent who ran the San Diego office on Sept. 11, 2001 and is now an assistant San Diego County sheriff. "The first place we would have looked is the phone book .... I sumbit to you we would have found them."

Hazmi spent most of 2000 in San Diego, while Mihdhar remained in the area for less than six months. The two men took flight lessons, bought a used Toyota, obtained driver's licenses and Hazmi was listed in the local phone book. But the report notes they did nothing that would draw attention.

Both men boarded in the home of Abdussattar Shaikh. The report did not name Shaikh, but noted that the "asset" who rented rooms to the hijackers had since 1994 provided information to the FBI. The asset identified the two men to his FBI handler only by their first names, and the report criticizes the handler as "not particularly thorough or aggressive" in following up.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI investigated whether the asset was involved in the attack. A polygraph was inconclusive, but the San Diego FBI concluded he had not been part of the plot. According to the report, the asset was paid $100,000 in 2003 and is no longer an FBI source. Shaikh could not be reached for comment, but he told The San Diego Union-Tribune that he did not receive the money.

The two men also befriended Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who had established himself in the area. The FBI briefly investigated him in 1998 when the manager of his apartment complex reported that al-Bayoumi had received a suspicious package, had strange wires in his bathroom and hosted frequent weekend gatherings of Middle Eastern men. The FBI closed its inquiry the following year, a decision the report found appropriate.

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On the Net:

http://notablecases.vaed.uscourts.gov/1:01-cr-00455/docs/70656/MultiDoc.html

[Isabelle]

I wonder if the F.B.I. or anyone in charge knows that our border's are open and muslim types are walking through.
Or will they figure that out 4 yrs. after the next attack.