http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf
22 July 2004
The 9/11 Commission Report: Ch. 6.1: From Threat to Threat: The Millennium Crisis
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A Lost Trail in Southeast Asia
In late 1999, the National Security Agency (NSA) analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East, indicating that several members of "an operational cadre" were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000. Initially, only the first names of three were known--"Nawaf," "Salem," and "Khalid." NSA analysts surmised correctly that Salem was Nawaf 's younger brother. Seeing links not only with al Qaeda but specifically with the 1998 embassy bombings, a CIA desk officer guessed that "something more nefarious [was] afoot." 41
In chapter 5, we discussed the dispatch of two operatives to the United States for their part in the planes operation--Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. Two more, Khallad and Abu Bara, went to Southeast Asia to case flights for the part of the operation that was supposed to unfold there. 42 All made their way to Southeast Asia from Afghanistan and Pakistan, except for Mihdhar, who traveled from Yemen. 43
Though Nawaf 's trail was temporarily lost, the CIA soon identified "Khalid" as Khalid al Mihdhar. 44 He was located leaving Yemen and tracked until he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. 45 Other Arabs, unidentified at the time, were watched as they gathered with him in the Malaysian capital. 46
On January 8, the surveillance teams reported that three of the Arabs had suddenly left Kuala Lumpur on a short flight to Bangkok. 47 They identified one as Mihdhar. They later learned that one of his companions was named Alhazmi, although it was not yet known that he was "Nawaf." The only identifier available for the third person was part of a name--Salahsae. 48 In Bangkok, CIA officers received the information too late to track the three men as they came in, and the travelers disappeared into the streets of Bangkok. 49
The Counterterrorist Center (CTC) had briefed the CIA leadership on the gathering in Kuala Lumpur, and the information had been passed on to Berger and the NSC staff and to Director Freeh and others at the FBI (though the FBI noted that the CIA had the lead and would let the FBI know if a domestic angle arose).The head of the Bin Ladin unit kept providing updates, unaware at first even that the Arabs had left Kuala Lumpur, let alone that their trail had been lost in Bangkok. 50 When this bad news arrived, the names were put on a Thai watchlist so that Thai authorities could inform the United States if any of them departed from Thailand. 51
Several weeks later, CIA officers in Kuala Lumpur prodded colleagues in Bangkok for additional information regarding the three travelers. 52 In early March 2000, Bangkok reported that Nawaf al Hazmi, now identified for the first time with his full name, had departed on January 15 on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles. As for Khalid al Mihdhar, there was no report of his departure even though he had accompanied Hazmi on the United flight to Los Angeles. 53 No one outside of the Counterterrorist Center was told any of this. The CIA did not try to register Mihdhar or Hazmi with the State Department's TIPOFF watchlist--either in January, when word arrived of Mihdhar's visa, or in March, when word came that Hazmi, too, had had a U.S. visa and a ticket to Los Angeles. 54
None of this information--about Mihdhar's U.S. visa or Hazmi's travel to the United States--went to the FBI, and nothing more was done to track any of the three until January 2001, when the investigation of another bombing, that of the USS Cole, reignited interest in Khallad. We will return to that story in chapter 8.
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Notes
For simplicity, we have adopted the following citation conventions in these endnotes. Dozens of government agencies and other entities provided the Commission with more than 2.5 million pages of documents and other materials, including more than 1,000 hours of audiotapes. In general, we cite documents and other materials by providing the agency or entity of origin, the type of document (e.g., memo, email, report, or record), the author and recipient, the title (in quotes) or a description of the subject, and the date. We use the following abbreviations for the agencies and entities that produced the bulk of these documents: AAL--American Airlines; CIA--Central Intelligence Agency; DCI--Director of Central Intelligence; DHS--Department of Homeland Security; DOD--Department of Defense; DOJ--Department of Justice; DOS--Department of State; DOT--Department of Transportation; EPA--Environmental Protection Agency; FAA--Federal Aviation Administration; FBI--Federal Bureau of Investigation; FDNY--Fire Department of New York; GAO--General Accounting Office; INS--Immigration and Naturalization Service; NEADS--Northeast Air Defense Sector; NSA--National Security Agency; NSC--National Security Council; NTSB--National Transportation Safety Board; NYPD--New York Police Department; OEM--Office of Emergency Management, City of New York; PANYNJ or Port Authority--Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; PAPD--Port Authority Police Department; SEC--Securities and Exchange Commission; Treasury--Department of Treasury; TSA--Transportation Security Administration; UAL--United Air Lines; USSS--United States Secret Service.
Interviews, meetings, briefings, and site visits conducted by Commissioners or by members of the Commission staff are cited, for example, as "George Tenet interview (Jan. 22, 2004)." Testimony by witnesses at one of the Commission's 12 public hearings is cited as "Condoleezza Rice testimony, Apr. 8, 2004." Written statements for the record provided by witnesses at one of our public hearings are cited as "Thomas Ridge prepared statement, May 19, 2004."
At the request of intelligence community agencies (including the FBI), we use the first name and last initial, only the first name, or in a few instances an alias or title when referring to working-level employees in those agencies. At the request of several intelligence agencies, we cite most reports from the CIA and other intelligence agencies generically as "Intelligence report," followed by a description of the subject and date. In a few instances in which we were given access to highly sensitive documents or information, we cite generically to documents or information provided to the Commission.
Our investigation built on the work of many others, including the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, which we refer to as the "Joint Inquiry." We cite as "Joint Inquiry report, Dec. 2002" the Report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, S. Rep. No. 107-351, H.R. Rep. No. 107-792, 107th Cong., 2d sess. (2002), indicating "classified version" where appropriate. Testimony presented during hearings conducted by the Joint Inquiry is cited as "Joint Inquiry testimony of George Tenet, Oct. 17, 2002," indicating "closed hearing" where appropriate. We cite interviews conducted by the Joint Inquiry staff as "Joint Inquiry interview of Cofer Black," with the date of the interview.
Another major source for our investigation were the thousands of interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its investigation of the 9/11 attacks, which it refers to as "Penttbom." FBI agents write up their interviews on forms called 302s, which we cite as "FBI report of investigation, interview of John Smith, Oct. 4, 2001," using the date of the interview. We cite interviews conducted by other agencies by agency name and date of the interview; for example, an interview conducted by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General is cited as "DOJ Inspector General interview of Mary Jones, July 9, 2002."
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Notes to Chapter 6
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41. Intelligence report, Activities of Bin Ladin associates, Dec. 29, 1999; Intelligence report, review of 9/11 hijackers' activities, Sept. 23, 2002; CIA cable, "Activities of Bin Ladin Associate Khalid Revealed," Jan. 4, 2000.
42. Intelligence report, meetings between Khallad and perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, May 30, 2003.
43. Intelligence report,Activities of Bin Ladin associates, Jan. 2, 2000; CIA cable, "Activities of Bin Ladin Associate Khalid Revealed," Jan. 4, 2000; CIA email, CTC to NSA, Another UBL related report, Jan. 3, 2000.
44. CIA cable, "Activities of Bin Ladin Associate Khalid Revealed," Jan. 4, 2000. His Saudi passport--which contained a visa for travel to the United States--was photocopied and forwarded to CIA headquarters. This information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August 2001. An FBI agent detailed to the Bin Ladin unit at CIA attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI headquarters. A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information. Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI. She admitted she did not personally share the information and cannot identify who told her they had been shared. We were unable to locate anyone who claimed to have shared the information. Contemporaneous documents contradict the claim that they were shared. DOJ Inspector General interview of Doug M., Feb. 12, 2004; DOJ Inspector General interview of Michael, Oct. 31, 2002; CIA cable, Jan. 5, 2000; DOJ Inspector General report, "A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the 9/11 Attacks," July 2, 2004, p. 282.
45. CIA cables, "Identification of UBL Associate Khalid Transiting Dubai," Jan. 4, 2000; "UBL Associate Travel to Malaysia--Khalid Bin Muhammad bin 'Abdallah al-Mihdhar," Jan. 5, 2000; "Arrival of UBL Associate Khalid Bin Muhammad bin 'Abdallah al-Mihdhar," Jan. 6, 2000.
46. CIA cable, "UBL Associates Travel to Malaysia and Beyond--Khalid Bin Muhammad bin 'Abdallah al-Midhar," Jan. 6, 2000.
47. CIA cable, "UBL Associates Depart Malaysia," Jan. 8, 2000.
48. CIA cable, "UBL Associates: Flight Manifest," Jan. 9, 2000. None of the CIA personnel at CIA headquarters or in the field had checked NSA databases or asked NSA to do so. If this had been done, on the basis of other unreported intelligence associated with the same sources, analysts would have been able to quickly learn "Nawaf " was likely Nawaf al Hazmi. Such analysis was not conducted until after 9/11. After 9/11 it also was determined that Salahsae was part of a name being used by Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Khallad. One reason he was traveling around East Asia at this time is that he was helping to plan possible hijackings on aircraft in connection with an early idea for what would become the 9/11 plot.
49. CIA cable, "Efforts to Locate al-Midhar," Jan. 13, 2000. We now know that two other al Qaeda operatives flew to Bangkok to meet Khallad to pass him money. See chapter 8. That was not known at the time. Mihdhar was met at the Kuala Lumpur airport by Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi national. Reports that he was a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi Fedayeen have turned out to be incorrect. They were based on a confusion of Shakir's identity with that of an Iraqi Fedayeen colonel with a similar name, who was later (in September 2001) in Iraq at the same time Shakir was in police custody in Qatar. See CIA briefing by CTC specialists (June 22, 2004); Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen, "Al Qaeda Link to Iraq May Be Confusion over Names," Washington Post, June 22, 2004, p. A13.
50. Richard interview (Dec. 11, 2003); CIA briefing materials, UBL unit briefing slides, Jan. 3--Jan. 14, 2000; Intelligence reports, "UBL Situation Report," Jan. 5, 10, 12, 2000; CIA email, Rob to John and others, "Malaysia--for the record," Jan. 6, 2000.
51. CIA cable, "Efforts to Locate al-Midhar," Jan. 13, 2000.
52. CIA cable, "UBL Associates: Identification of Possible UBL Associates," Feb. 11, 2000.
53. CIA cable, "UBL Associates: Identification of Possible UBL Associates," Mar. 5, 2000. Presumably the departure information was obtained back in January, on the days that these individuals made their departures. Because these names were watchlisted with the Thai authorities, we cannot yet explain the delay in reporting the news. But since nothing was done with this information even in March, we do not attribute much significance to this failure alone.
54. See, e.g., Joint Inquiry testimony of George Tenet, Oct. 17, 2002, pp. 110-112; DOJ Inspector General interview of John, Nov. 1, 2002.
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