CIA Reportedly Warned FBI About One Suspect (6 Stories of Prior Knowledge By FBI & Government)

It is unclear, sources say, what the bureau did with the tip about Khalid al-Midhar, who was named as a hijacker.

MIAMI - The CIA alerted the FBI that at least one of the suspects in Tuesday's terrorism was either on his way to the United States or already here before the attacks, three U.S. government officials familiar with intelligence matters said yesterday.

Two officials said it was unclear whether the FBI acted on the tip about Khalid al-Midhar, identified by the FBI as a hijacker on American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon.

Another official said the FBI did check out the information and concluded the man was no longer in the country.

"It appears that the name of at least one of the terrorists was on a CIA watch list and that the CIA then handed off the notification to the FBI," one of the officials said. "In briefings so far, the FBI has not been able to say what it did with that piece of information."

The second U.S. official confirmed that the CIA had "some information" about a foreign national "that was troubling enough to be on a watch list." According to this official, the FBI checked the information and told the CIA that the suspect had entered the country but then departed.

It is unclear whether the CIA or the FBI became aware later that the person had returned, the official said.

The State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which are responsible for, respectively, issuing and verifying visas on the passports of foreign nationals, also declined to comment.

Since the attacks, the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have been poring over all information available to them before the attack to determine whether they missed any clue about what was coming and whether the suspects were connected to foreign terrorist organizations.

According to U.S. officials familiar with intelligence operations, the agencies involved in this reassessment include the CIA, the FBI, the INS, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Since Tuesday's attacks, Senate and House intelligence committees have been drilling the FBI and other federal agencies about suspects and how officials might have overlooked warnings, clues and other evidence that could have prevented the hijackings and plane crashes.

Officials familiar with intelligence matters say the CIA issued a secret report to senior policymakers that Islamic militant Osama bin Laden was shifting his strategy from attacking U.S. interests abroad to the domestic United States.

Federal law enforcement and the agencies "didn't have advance warning," said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA veteran who headed the agency's counterterrorism operations in the late 1980s. "The question is, how did they miss it?"

The 19 suspected hijackers' visas - and how they entered this country - might provide crucial evidence.

Generally, if a foreign national arrives with a U.S. visa on his or her passport, the agency responsible for issuing the visa is the State Department through a U.S. embassy abroad. The INS is then responsible for accepting the visa and admitting - or rejecting - the person.

On Thursday, federal officials confirmed that the State Department checked records showing that "approximately 15 names" linked to the suspects obtained visas without any background problems. But yesterday, the official added that the list was incomplete.

Various types of U.S. visas exist. They can be obtained by foreigners, with proper proof of birth, citizenship and residency, who do not plan to stay in this country illegally. But the applications can be denied if they have a criminal background or are suspected of being a danger to the United States.

Despite these safeguards, suspicious foreigners can still slip through U.S. borders if they obtain phony documents with aliases in their homelands.

One former federal agent familiar with the scrutiny of visa applicants said it was a porous process.

"Obtaining visas is incredibly easy; crossing the border is incredibly easy," said Thomas A. Habib, a retired Miami INS agent and former member of the FBI's counterterrorism task force. "Everybody has their own lookout books, but the government is notorious for not sharing information."

One federal investigator who is checking visas for some of the 19 suspected hijackers said there was no specific information that documents were forged, but investigators have strong suspicions they used false identification to obtain visas.

"Either that, or whoever is responsible sent people who have no background whatsoever, and would not appear on any government watchlists," the investigator said.

One underlying problem in tracking any suspicious foreigners seeking to enter the United States is that every government watchlist is not the same - nor is there one centralized database accessible to all agencies.

"Not all of the law enforcement information systems are linked up, and they don't all talk to each other," said a former Justice Department official. "You have to proactively call each agency and make sure they have these names on these lists. It doesn't necessarily take the click of a button."

The German authorities have rejected reports that an Iranian man detained in Hanover could have helped avert Tuesday's devastating attacks on New York and Washington. However, a French-Algerian identified by the French media as a radical with "a profile similar to the kamikaze pilots" is being held for further questioning by US investigators after his arrest last month.

The attackers and the background to the attacks are not and were not known to him German federal prosecutor

French media have claimed that the FBI failed to follow up information supplied by French secret services that the man, who was taking flying lessons in Boston, had links to Osama Bin Laden.

The German federal prosecutor said on Friday that the Iranian - who telephoned the White House warning of attacks that would "change the world order" - had no knowledge of Tuesday's attack.

"His warnings to US authorities were limited to vague claims about danger to world peace and the world order; he could not cite details," a statement from the federal prosecutor's office said.

"The attackers and the background to the attacks are not and were not known to him," it added.

The White House hung up when the man said he was in detention, but he was interviewed by German authorities and US intelligence services in the wake of the attack.

The French newspaper, Liberation, reported on Friday that the French-Algerian arrested in Boston was due to have been deported, but was now being held "to check any possible links with the fanatic pilots".

On Thursday a correspondent in Washington for the Europe 1 radio station said the man had been arrested with comprehensive documentation about Boeing aircraft and flight manuals.

"He belongs to the Pakistani-Afghan network that trains Osama Bin Laden's soldiers, his best soldiers, soldiers without borders," the correspondent said, adding that all this information had been passed by French investigators to their American colleagues.

However, the US authorities did not follow up the lead, he said: "The investigation that might have prevented everything was not launched."

The 31-year-old man, who was born in St Jean de Luz, had been living in Britain before going to Boston.

Time magazine has also reported that two of the suspected terrorists were on an FBI border watch list, but had nonetheless slipped into the United States.

The two men, who were associated with Islamic Jihad, were on the American Airlines flight which crashed into the Pentagon.

The CIA now believes the first warnings about a "spectacular" act of terror against the US came as early as June.

"A lot of this reporting we had in the summer that gained our attention and had us concerned, but wasn't specific, could have been tied to this," an intelligence officer told Time.

German police have confirmed an Iranian man phoned US police from his deportation cell to warn of the planned attack on the World Trade Centre.

The Lower Saxony Justice Ministry has confirmed the man warned of the impending series of terrorist attacks, but had not been believed.

Spokesman Frank Woesthoff said the man phoned America "several times", but refused to give further details.

He said the US Secret Service had not told the ministry about the calls received from the Langenhagen prison until after the attacks.

"I cannot say anything about the man and the ministry does not know the content of the conversations," he added.

The Hanover daily newspaper Neue Presse reported the 29-year-old was dismissed as mentally unstable when he gave the warning of a terrorist attack to occur this week.

BERLIN (Reuters) - An Iranian man in Germany had warned German and U.S. authorities about a global danger less than a week before the terror attacks in the United States, justice ministry sources said on Friday.

The man, who was in custody in the northern city of Hanover awaiting deportation, had insisted on ringing the White House to warn them of the danger.

``The man was allowed to ring the White House, but there, as well as at the CIA, he was not taken seriously,'' an official from the justice ministry of Lower Saxony told Reuters under condition of anonymity.

The official said the justice ministry was informed of the man and his warnings on Wednesday, the day after hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office said it would issue a report on the matter later in the day.

One newspaper said the man was now being interviewed by German authorities and by the CIA.

The official said there was still doubt, even after the attacks, that the man really knew about the plot.

Germany has become a focal point for investigations into Tuesday's attacks after it emerged three of the suicide hijackers may have belonged to a Hamburg-based extremist group committed to attacking symbolic U.S. targets.

German authorities have to decide on Friday about whether to keep in custody an airport worker as they extend a probe into a German link to the terror attacks.

Reports of a second man being held were denied by the federal prosecutors office on Friday.

BOSTON (AP) -- Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has strong family ties and a group of supporters in Boston, where the two hijacked airliners that demolished the World Trade Center took off.

One of bin Laden's brothers set up scholarship funds at Harvard, while another relative owns six condominiums in an expensive complex in the Charlestown section of Boston. Two bin Laden associates once worked as Boston cab drivers, including one who was jailed in Jordan on charges of plotting to blow up a hotel full of Americans and Israelis.

Bin Laden's ties to Boston are now being closely scrutinized as authorities focus their investigation on terrorist cells with possible ties to him, said Robert Fitzpatrick, the former second-in-command at the FBI's Boston office.

"The activity of this group here is obviously significant," Fitzpatrick said Wednesday.

Investigators are interviewing drivers from Boston Cab Co., where two known associates of bin Laden once worked, to see if they had ties to baggage handlers, who in turn may have supplied weapons to the hijackers, Fitzpatrick said.

"They are going to look at the cab drivers again -- since they are predominantly Middle Eastern -- and they are going to look at a possible link between them and the baggage handlers," Fitzpatrick said, based on his information from law enforcement colleagues.

"They could thwart the security by having a baggage handler put the material aboard the plane. That link is being investigated."

Last year, the FBI investigated the Boston activities of the two cab drivers, Bassam A. Kanj, a Lebanese native, and Raed M. Hijazi, a Palestinian. The men were tied by investigators to separate military and terrorist plots allegedly financed by bin Laden.

Kanj, 35, was killed in Lebanon last year in an attack against the Lebanese army. Hijazi was charged in Jordan with plotting a New Year's Day 2000 hotel bombing.

Bin Laden, a rich Saudi exile who is believed to be living in Afghanistan, also has had family members living in the Boston area for the past decade.

In 1994, one of his brothers, Sheik Bakr Mohammed bin Laden, made a large donation to Harvard Law School to fund visiting scholars to do research in Islamic legal studies.

Harvard Law spokesman Michael Armini would not disclose the amount of the gift, but typically it takes about $1 million to establish a research fellowship. The sheik established a second scholarship at the Harvard School of Design.

Harvard officials were quick to distance the school from Osama bin Laden, emphasizing that he has no role in the scholarship programs.

"This is in no way connected to Osama bin Laden, who has been ostracized from his family and from Saudi Arabia," Armini said. "The purpose of this gift was to foster mutual understanding between the western and Islamic legal worlds."

"I think that bin Laden is responsible for his action, but his brother is not responsible for Osama's actions, and vice versa," Walt said.

Another relative, Mohammed M. bin Laden, owns six condominiums in the ritzy Flagship Wharf condominium complex in Charlestown. His relation to bin Laden could not immediately be determined. A woman who answered the telephone at the management company for the complex refused to answer questions.

The condos were bought in the mid-1990s and range in assessed value from $296,000 to $877,000, The Boston Globe reported.

Juliette Kayyem, a former member of the National Commission on Terrorism, said Boston has several factors that may have attracted bin Laden's supporters.

"Our proximity to the Canadian border and Boston being a big city where people can hide is likely why Boston became the center," Kayyem said. "Also being on the Eastern Seaboard, we have wide-bodied jets with large fuel tanks. When you don't have other weapons, that's your weapon."

F.A.Z. FRANKFURT. Hamburg authorities on Friday released a man suspected of having been involved in this week's terrorist attacks on the United States.

The man, an employee at the Hamburg airport, was detained on Thursday after police searched apartments in the city's Harburg district while looking for clues leading to the terrorists who carried out the U.S. attacks. A legal spokeswoman said the man was not suspected of committing any crime.

Hamburg police are also searching for another man with an Arab background, officials said.

The apartments were searched after U.S. investigators included among the roughly 50 suspects in the attacks three men from the United Arab Emirates who lived in Hamburg temporarily, studying engineering at a Hamburg technical university in the Harburg neighborhood. Two of them also attended flight school in Florida from July 2000 until January 2001.

The federal public prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said on Thursday that German prosecutors had taken over the investigation of the three men, all of whom died aboard two flights that crashed on Tuesday into the World Trade Center and in Pennsylvania. The Federal Prosecutor's Office said the men were thought to have been involved in an Islamic terrorist cell founded in Hamburg early this year, which, working with other Islamic groups, planned spectacular U.S. attacks.

Also on Friday, German authorities discounted the claim of an Iranian who tried to warn U.S. authorities of impending terrorist attacks, Hannover's Neue Presse newspaper reported. The paper said the man, identified only as Ali S., 29, was jailed in Germany after having entered the country illegally and had been awaiting deportation. He had claimed to have "important information" on attacks that he insisted were to occur this week.

Lower Saxony's top justice official, Christian Pfeiffer, said the illegal immigrant was allowed to call the United States 12 times to relay his information. He also made two calls to U.S. officials in Germany. On one of the calls to the United States, he reportedly reached an operator at the White House, who hung up after learning he was a prisoner.

Mr. Pfeiffer said Ali S. was examined last week by doctors who found him to be psychologically disturbed. He also was questioned by German investigators, with FBI representatives in attendance.

"He knows nothing about the terrorists or the background to the attacks, the German Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement. "His warnings to U.S. authorities were based on vague assertions about a danger to world peace and the world order -- he could provide no details.

In Berlin on Friday, Interior Minister Otto Schily, a Social Democrat, rejected the suggestion by Saarland's premier, Christian Democrat Peter Müller, that the Schengen Agreement be suspended and border controls be strengthened. The agreement permits citizens of any of the 15 participating European countries to travel freely among those countries.

"We have already introduced a great number of measures that compensate for the lessening of border controls," Mr. Schily said during a television interview on Thursday night. But he called for increased means of personal identification, saying that "I don't think it would hurt anyone if there were not only a photograph in passports, but also a fingerprint.

Security remained at top level on Friday in Berlin, where authorities said daily bomb threats were being received. Source:

http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/docmain.asp?rub={B1311FCC-FBFB-11D2-B228-00105A9CAF88}&doc={1D78E75C-934C-4C09-8852-20D65A78A5D8}&width=768&height=547&agt=explorer&ver=4&svr=4

I could be wrong, but since Tuesday my gut feeling is that there might be more to this than meets the eye... Are we being deceived (again)? This is why I'm hesitant to blindly jump into the "NUKE EM!" mentality that we're seeing from most people around here. To those people - I'm sorry if I don't have complete trust in the government & media. We've been lied to many times, on major things, can you blame me?

In situations like this, there is always more than meets the eye. Deceived? I'm sure that there is a lot information that is being withheld. Who said anything about blindly jumping into a "NUKE EM!" mentality, I don't recall saying or implying we should "NUKE" anyone. (If that is how you feel fine, but please don't try to project that on anything I have said.)

We should find who is responsible and make them pay for this atrocious act on our country and people. The guilty parties should pay dearly and pay forever for this act of WAR.

As for your theory that the CIA is somehow responsible for this act I can only tell you that your theory is missing a very important component, motive. Why would our own government want to take out some of the most intellectual financial minds on the planet? Why would our government want to put such a great financial burden on our own economy? Why would our own government want to kill so many civilians? (Are you trying to imply "Wag the Dog"?)

I don't think anyone here is asking you to have complete trust in the government & media or to blindly jump on the "NUKE EM" menality bandwagon, how are you coming to these conclusions?

>If "global power brokers" are willing to sacrifice hundreds of Wall Street big shots and hundreds more of children of their class, then who are these global power brokers who are willing to make such a sacrifice?

To me, this is the most interesting political issue of the modern world. Who are these people? (And what, exactly, are their goals?)

I simply don't know -- I don't believe it's fascists after a police state or socialists after a One World (although those people are certainly used as part of the business of moving the project forward).

I think the ultimate answer -- if we ever figure it out -- will be much weirder than those two possibilities.

In the past, I've put up one or two tin foil threads about what I think might be happening, but just now I find it very hard to speculate about tin foil stuff because so many people are suffering such real, daily grief as a result of the WTC attack. I mean, conspiracy theories are fun, and may, ultimately, be useful. But because there's such a high content of bogus in even the best tin foil conjecture, I think it's best to put off extended and specific rambling until things settle down. (Unless they, in fact, continue to get even weirder...) Mark W.

A correspondent sent me this:

O'Neill, a 31-year FBI agent who headed the counterterrorism section in the bureau's New York field office, retired last month. At the time, FBI sources confirmed that he was under investigation for leaving his briefcase filled with classified information in a Tampa hotel last year. The briefcase was stolen but found in another hotel a short time later, the sources said.

(from "FBI Agents Resume Cole Probe In Yemen More Cooperation, Security Pledged," By Vernon Loeb Tuesday, September 4, 2001; Page A12 )

FAA checking report of suspected terrorist visiting airport control tower

By ROBERT O'NEILL The Associated Press 9/16/01 11:11 PM

BOSTON (AP) -- Federal authorities are checking whether a suspected terrorist took a tour of the control tower at Logan International Airport three days before planes from the airport were hijacked, the FAA confirmed Sunday.

The FAA initiated an internal investigation after receiving a tip, said Jim Peters, spokesman for the New England regional office of the Federal Aviation Administration.

There is no log kept of tower visitors, and no security video. That means everyone who worked at the tower must be interviewed, Peters said.

The FAA, as a courtesy, allows pilots to tour the tower, though access is restricted. An air traffic controller at Logan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said foreigners usually need permission from an FAA regional office before being allowed into the tower. The controller said he had not seen anyone matching the description of the hijackers in the tower.

The FAA regional office in Burlington, Mass., refused to comment, referring questions to spokesmen in New York.

The FBI says 10 men hijacked two passenger jets bound from Boston to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City. Two other hijacked jets crashed into the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international politics at the JFK School of Government at Harvard, likened the relationship of the bin Laden brothers to that of University of Massachusetts President William Bulger and his brother, reputed mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, who is among the FBI's 10 Most Wanted. "I think that bin Laden is responsible for his action, but his brother is not responsible for Osama's actions, and vice versa," Walt said

This fountain of knowledge just put the noose around the BinLaden Clan's neck.

It has been common knowledge on the streets of Boston that by crossing one Bulger you crossed them both. Just ask the Massachusetts State Trooper whose career was ruined after he arrested a Bulger bagman with $100,000.

The Boston FBI let this guy's brother murder informants at will!!!

Given their performance over the last 30 years I'm not suprised they didn't find anything amiss here.

These guys at the Kennedy School are diconnected at the neck when it comes to common sense.

RICO statutes have to be employed against this crime family.

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