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32.The names of at least three of the hijackers (Nawaf al Hazmi, Salem al Hazmi, and Khalid al Mihdhar) were in information systems of the intelligence community (((NOT ABLE DANGER - ANOTHER INFORMATION SYSTEM??))) and thus potentially could have been watchlisted. Had they been watchlisted, the connections to terrorism could have been exposed at the time they applied for a visa or at the port of entry.
Had they been watchlisted, their terrorist affiliations could have been exposed either at the time they applied for a visa or at the port of entry.Two of the hijackers (Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari) presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner that has subsequently been associated with al Qaeda.
Based on our review of their visa and travel histories, we believe it possible that as many as eleven additional hijackers (Wail al Shehri, Waleed al Shehri, Mohand al Shehri, Hani Hanjour, Majed Moqed, Nawaf al Hazmi, Hamza al Ghamdi,Ahmed al Ghamdi, Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi) held passports containing these same fraudulent features, but their passports have not been found so we cannot be sure.
Khalid al Mihdhar and Salem al Hazmi presented passports with a suspicious indicator of Islamic extremism.There is reason to believe that the passports of three other hijackers (Nawaf al Hazmi,Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi) issued in the same Saudi passport office may have contained this same indicator; however, their passports have not been found, so we cannot be sure.
33. Khallad Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Zakariya Essabar,Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Saeed al Ghamdi (not the individual by the same name who became a hijacker) tried to get visas and failed. Kahtani was unable to prove his admissibility and withdrew his application for admission after an immigration inspector remained unpersuaded that he was a tourist. All the hijackers whose visa applications we reviewed arguably could have been denied visas because their applications were not filled out completely. Had State visa officials routinely had a practice of acquiring more information in such cases, they likely would have found more grounds for denial.
For example, three hijackers made statements on their visa applications that could have been proved false by U.S. government records (Hani Hanjour, Saeed al Ghamdi, and Khalid al Mihdhar), and many lied about their employment or educational status.
Two hijackers could have been denied admission at the port of entry based on violations of immigration rules governing terms of admission--Mohamed Atta overstayed his tourist visa and then failed to present a proper vocational school visa when he entered in January 2001; Ziad Jarrah attended school in June 2000 without properly adjusting his immi- gration status, an action that violated his immigration status and rendered him inadmissible on each of his six sub- sequent reentries into the United States between June 2000 and August 5, 2001.
There were possible grounds to deny entry to a third hijacker (Marwan al Shehhi). One hijacker violated his immigration status by failing to enroll as a student after entry (Hani Hanjour); two hijackers overstayed their terms of admission by four and eight months respectively (Satam al Suqami and Nawaf al Hazmi).
Atta and Shehhi attended a flight school (Huffman Aviation) that the Justice Department's Inspector General concluded should not have been certified to accept foreign students, see DOJ Inspector General's report,"The INS' Contacts with Two September 11 Terrorists:A Review of the INS's Admissions of Atta and Shehhi, its Processing of their Change of Status Applications, and its Efforts to Track Foreign Students in the United States," May 20, 2002.
And another agency, another "secret" group who knew about all of this, besides Able Danger? Holy Cow!
But on December 21, the day after principals decided not to launch the cruise missile strike against Kandahar, the CIA's leaders urged strengthening the language to allow the tribals to be paid whether Bin Ladin was captured or killed. Berger and Tenet then worked together to take this line of thought even further.
They finally agreed, as Berger reported to President Clinton, that an extraordinary step was necessary. The new memorandum would allow the killing of Bin Ladin if the CIA and the tribals judged that capture was not feasible (a judgment it already seemed clear they had reached). The Justice Department lawyer who worked on the draft told us that what was envisioned was a group of tribals assaulting a location, leading to a shoot-out.
Bin Ladin and others would be captured if possible, but probably would be killed. The administration's position was that under the law of armed conflict, killing a person who posed an imminent threat to the United States would be an act of self-defense, not an assassination.
On Christmas Eve 1998, Berger sent a final draft to President Clinton, with an explanatory memo. The President approved the document.
Because the White House considered this operation highly sensitive, only a tiny number of people knew about this Memorandum of Notification. Berger arranged for the NSC's legal adviser to inform Albright, Cohen, Shelton, and Reno. None was allowed to keep a copy. Congressional leaders were briefed, as required by law. Attorney General Reno had sent a letter to the President expressing her concern: she warned of possible retaliation, including the targeting of U.S. officials. She did not pose any legal objection.
A copy of the final document, along with the carefully crafted instructions that were to be sent to the tribals, was given to Tenet.
A message from Tenet to CIA field agents directed them to communicate to the tribals the instructions authorized by the President: the United States prefer red that Bin Ladin and his lieutenants be captured, but if a successful cap- ture operation was not feasible, the tribals were permitted to kill them. The instructions added that the tribals must avoid killing others unnecessarily and must not kill or abuse Bin Ladin or his lieutenants if they surrendered.
Finally, the tribals would not be paid if this set of requirements was not met. The field officer passed these instructions to the tribals word for word. But he prefaced the directions with a message:"From the American President down to the average man in the street, we want him [Bin Ladin] stopped."
If the tribals captured Bin Ladin, the officer assured them that he would receive a fair trial under U.S. law and be treated humanely. The CIA officer reported that the tribals said they "fully understand the contents, implications and the spirit of the message" and that that their response was,"We will try our best to capture Bin Ladin alive and will have no intention of killing or harming him on pur pose."
The tribals explained that they wanted to prove that their standards of behavior were more civilized than those of Bin Ladin and his band of terrorists.
In an additional note addressed to Schroen, the tribals noted that if they were to adopt Bin Ladin's ethics,"we would have finished the job long before," but they had been limited by their abilities and "by our beliefs and laws we have to respect."
Schroen and "Mike" were impressed by the tribals' reaction. Schroen cabled that the tribals were not in it for the money but as an investment in the future of Afghanistan. "Mike" agreed that the tribals' reluctance to kill was not a "showstopper." "From our view," he wrote, "that seems in character and fair enough."
Policymakers in the Clinton administration, including the President and his national security advisor, told us that the President's intent regarding covert action against Bin Ladin was clear: he wanted him dead.This intent was never well communicated or understood within the CIA.Tenet told the Commission that except in one specific case (discussed later), the CIA was authorized to kill Bin Ladin only in the context of a capture operation. CIA senior man- agers, operators, and lawyers confirmed this understanding.
"We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him," a former chief of the Bin Ladin unit said.
In February 1999, another draft Memorandum of Notification went to President Clinton. It asked him to allow the CIA to give exactly the same guidance to the Northern Alliance as had just been given to the tribals: they could kill Bin Ladin if a successful capture operation was not feasible. On this occasion,however, President Clinton crossed out key language he had approved in December and inserted more ambiguous language. No one we interviewed could shed light on why the President did this.President Clinton told the Commission that he had no recollection of why he rewrote the language.
Later in 1999, when legal authority was needed for enlisting still other collaborators and for covering a wider set of contingencies, the lawyers returned to the language used in August 1998, which authorized force only in the context of a capture operation. Given the closely held character of the document approved in December 1998, and the subsequent return to the earlier language, it is possible to understand how the former White House officials and the CIA officials might disagree as to whether the CIA was ever authorized by the President to kill Bin Ladin.
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Dear Lord .. this evil, spineless quibbler is unbelievable!! Those poor trusting tribals .. how many times were they led, mislead and confused. The American, coalition and tribal lives gone, families griefstricken, our eminent standing in the world ... all at risk or gone .. from stunning vanity and selfish incompetence and negligence.
Even with attempts at scrupulous whitewashing, these situations peek through that are undeniably descriptive of just how badly he screwed up ..just imagine what we DON'T KNOW. And now he travels the world, treated with great deference and worship, earns an est. $15-20M a year and fantasizes about his legacy when he should be ostracized, prosecuted and left to rot in a hellhole of a prison. LET THERE BE JUSTICE IN OUR LIFETIMES.