Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins on Tuesday

ASHINGTON, June 3 — Early on Sept. 11, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter J. Goss were having a quiet breakfast meeting in the Capitol with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss, the chairmen of the two Congressional intelligence committees, were quizzing their guest about Osama bin Laden and other issues when an aide to Mr. Goss rushed in with a note.

A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Goss furiously scribbled a reply, asking his aide to find out more. A few moments later, the aide came back with another note — a second plane had crashed into the trade center. "We're out of here," Mr. Goss announced.

Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, have been immersed in the attacks ever since. On Tuesday, they begin joint oversight hearings to examine the painful subject of a colossal intelligence failure and who in the government knew what before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fingerpointing, some of it pitting the F.B.I. against the C.I.A., already threatens to overshadow the joint committee's actual hearings. Today, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency moved quickly to counter new accusations that it had identified two Sept. 11 hijackers as Al Qaeda operatives months earlier than previously believed but had not shared the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A C.I.A. official said today that the agency had found proof — e-mail messages from January 2000 — that at least some F.B.I. officials had been told what the agency knew at the time about the two men.

But other officials said the agency failed to share with the bureau more significant information it learned later, including that the two men had visited the United States, one of them showing multiple entry stamps on his Saudi passport. Moreover, the C.I.A. did not tell the F.B.I. in December 2000 or January 2001 that the two men were linked to suspects in the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole.

In addition to the intelligence hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony on Thursday from the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, as well as from Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who protested the refusal by F.B.I. headquarters to seek a search warrant to examine a laptop computer belonging to Zacarias Moussaoui, who the authorities say was to have been the "20th hijacker."

Ms. Rowley, whose impassioned 13-page letter accused Mr. Mueller of failing to candidly acknowledge the mistakes by F.B.I. officials in the Moussaoui case, is to arrive in Washington on Tuesday and is expected to meet privately with lawmakers on the intelligence committees before her appearance at Thursday's hearing, officials said.

President Bush, responding to new disclosures that his administration missed crucial clues to the attacks, today said that the F.B.I. was doing a better job of sharing intelligence findings with the C.I.A.

"When you read about the F.B.I., I want you to know that the F.B.I. is changing its culture," Mr. Bush said during a political appearance in Arkansas. "The F.B.I. prior to Sept. 11 was running down white-collar criminals — and that's good — was worrying about spies — that's good. But now they've got a more important task, and that is to prevent further attack."

The unusually close friendship between Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss across party lines, meanwhile, is sure to be tested by the growing rift between the parties over whether the signals the administration missed before Sept. 11 should become an election-year issue. Both men must also deal with criticism that they are too close to the intelligence community, and will not hold the C.I.A. and F.B.I. fully accountable.

Congressional critics of the two agencies — most notably Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who is the party's ranking member on the Senate intelligence panel — chafe at the Graham-Goss alliance and yearn for a more freewheeling and aggressive investigation than the two Florida lawmakers seem likely to conduct.

Mr. Goss, a former C.I.A. case officer, and Mr. Graham, a former governor of Florida, both disdain the highly confrontational style that has become the hallmark of other recent Congressional investigations, and both prefer to conduct Congressional oversight of the intelligence community the old-fashioned way: behind closed doors. Tuesday's hearing, for example, during which their newly hired 24-member staff will brief members on the progress of their investigation, will be closed, as will sessions on both Wednesday and Thursday, when one witness might be called. The first public hearings will not be held until late June, when both Mr. Mueller and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, are expected to testify.

"There are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who know that the American people want us to do a responsible, adult job in looking into this," Mr. Goss said in a recent interview. "I think that is the mood that has prevailed now. We have members from both sides thanking us for avoiding the partisan mines."

But their reticence has left a political vacuum, one others are stepping into. The staff of the joint committee has, for example, already conducted private interviews with Ms. Rowley.

Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, and other Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are still pushing for an independent commission to conduct a separate investigation of Sept. 11, apparently out of a fear that the joint committee will not be aggressive enough.

Mr. Goss's background as a C.I.A. officer and his longtime public support for Mr. Tenet fuel many of the doubts about the joint committee. Mr. Goss played a quiet but influential role in persuading the Bush administration to keep Mr. Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He has also emphasized that he wants the joint committee to focus on looking forward at needed reforms, not back on missed clues.

Of course, Mr. Goss's belief in the gravity of the Sept. 11 review has not halted the typical Washington cycle of leak and counterleak. Today, the C.I.A. responded to the charges that it had waited too long to notify the F.B.I. about the two hijackers by disclosing that it had found e-mail traffic between C.I.A. and F.B.I. employees showing that the bureau was notified that a man named Khalid al-Midhar was about to attend a meeting in Malaysia.

The C.I.A. passed along Mr. Midhar's name and Saudi passport number to an F.B.I. official, according to agency records. In a Jan. 6, 2000, e-mail message between a C.I.A. employee and an F.B.I. official working for the counterterrorism center at C.I.A. headquarters, the C.I.A. employee noted that the bureau already had the information about Mr. Midhar.

"It wouldn't surprise me, however, if different people continue to ask you for updates, not having gotten the word that the F.B.I. already has the facts," the e-mail message said, according to the C.I.A.

A C.I.A. official said such correspondence about Mr. Midhar showed that "to say we held out information on him is wrong."

In the midst of the leaking, Mr. Goss's caution appears to have influenced Mr. Graham. The senator, for example, has frequently said he believed that Mr. Tenet should remain at the C.I.A. despite the intelligence failure on Sept. 11.

Mr. Graham took over as chairman of the Senate intelligence panel only a few months before Sept. 11, after Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party and tilted control of the Senate to the Democrats. Though he had been on the committee for some time, Mr. Graham was still getting used to running the panel and immersing himself in the details of the intelligence world when the attacks occurred.

In the months since, Mr. Graham and his staff forged an alliance with Mr. Goss and his aides to get the C.I.A. and the rest of the intelligence community billions of dollars in more financing as well as new powers to fight terrorism. "Senator Graham and I have been through a lot, and we are comfortable working together," Mr. Goss said.

Senator Shelby and his staff felt increasingly isolated as Mr. Graham was able to circumvent them to forge an alliance with the House Republican leadership.

Both Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss said they have no objection to the creation of a Sept. 11 commission, perhaps because they both know that the proposal seems destined to die in the Republican-controlled House.

"It doesn't really affect what we are doing," Mr. Graham said recently. "We will continue to do our investigation whether or not there is a commission."

What did the media know, and when did it know it?
Listening to the press brouhaha over the CIA's and FBI's 9/11 'failures', you'd get two distinct impressions:
1) Law enforcement, broadly speaking, had all the information necessary on September 10 to preempt September 11.
2) That the media -- shocked, stunned and amazed, of course (wink, wink) -- is only now uncovering this mother-of-all scandals.
Both -- 1 & 2 -- are absolute bunk.
"The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught", screams Newsweek's latest cover (Extra! Extra! Read all about it -- now available at newstands near you! Get your copy today!)
Two years before the 9/11 attacks, "the CIA tracked two suspected terrorists", Newsweek breathlessly declares, "then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11. Inside what may be the worst intelligence failure of all."
Wait a second: If CIA, a whopping two years before 9/11, was tracking two of the hijackers, how is that "the worst intelligence failure of all"? (The 'report' is bejeweled with gems like 'the CIA already knew', 'the CIA had linked', 'the CIA tracked', 'the CIA...certainly knew it', 'agents discovered', 'U.S. intelligence began listening...on the telephone line', 'U.S. intelligence picked up repeated signals', 'intercepted conversations' -- all, inexplicably, in the context of a massive 'intelligence failure').
Go figure.
Granted Newsweek "reporters" aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, but this is getting ridiculous. It gives new meaning to the phrase *Intelligence failure*. Among 'reporters', brilliance has never been a strong suit, apparently.
That CIA declined to notify INS and FBI when Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had re-entered the country reflects, not a 'failure' of intelligence, but traditional, inter-agency rivalry.
Among federal bureaucracies, turf wars and hoarding secrets are as old as the agencies themselves; only the profiteer editors at Newsweek -- who thrive on sensationalism -- would find anything stunning or earth-shaking about it.
Moreover, we're led to believe all of this is really new 'news', don'tchaknow -- part of a massive 'cover-up', only now being unearthed, thanks to the unflagging and assiduous folks at Newsweek magazine.
The editors must be laughing all the way to the bank. Speaking of profiting from 9/11.........
But is this stuff really new news, as Newsweek would have us all think?
Reed Irvine, media watchdog and Chairman of Accuracy in Media speaking at the group's annual conference, said the following (according to a summation of his remarks in the "AIM Report"):
"The FBI had not demonstrated great skill in finding possible Middle Eastern terrorists". He [Mr. Irvine] cited a high priority request from C.I.A. last August that two Arabs, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, be placed on a special watch list. Almidhar had been videotaped conferring with a bin Laden agent in Malaysia in Dec. 2000 or Jan. 2001. He and Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles on the same plane on Jan. 15, 2001. It took over 20 months for the C.I.A. to ask that they be watched. They lived together at several different addresses in San Diego while going to a flying school. Alhazmi was listed in the 2001 San Diego phone book. The F.B.I. was unable to locate either one in the two weeks prior to Sept. 11."
Oops...when exactly did Mr. Irvine say this?
After the Newsweek "bombshell", of course -- right?
Wrong.

Mr. Irvine made these remarks back, way back, in October. Indeed, New York Times scribes David Johnston and Philip Shenon were well on to this story 7 months ago, filing a special report in the paper's October 6, 2001 edition.
The thrust of Newsweek's supposed 'bombshell' "revelations", to wit, the meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, the attendance of hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar, the C.I.A.'s tracking their whereabouts and the agency's belated notification of I.N.S. and other agencies -- all were reported on by Johnston and Shenon back in October.
New "news", eh? Yeah, right.
But could September 11 have been prevented, given what CIA and FBI were working with on September 10?
After hyping their story to death to sell magazines, even Newsweek meekly admits -- at the very end of their "report", of course -- it's a stretch to think so:

"But would even that have been enough? There's no doubt that Alhazmi and Almihdhar could have been stopped from coming into the country if the CIA had shared its information with other agencies. But then two other hijackers could have been sent to take their place. And...it's possible that agents could have identified all 19 hijackers and still not figure out what they were up to. That, one former FBI official suggests, could have led to the cruelest September 11 scenario of all: 'We would have had the FBI watching them get on the plane in Boston and calling Los Angeles', he says. 'Could you pick them up on the other end?'"

So where's the story here, then -- why the media ballyhoo over old news?
I'll tell ya what this tempest in a teapot is about: It's the press's on-going effort to cripple the Bush administration politically, and to profit financially from the tragedy of 9/11. That's what. Nothing more complicated than that.
Despicable isn't strong enough a word for it, however.
But it ain't working; in fact, all attempts, whether by media slugs or political opponents, to weaken or hobble this President have boomeranged -- backfired, big time, and will continue to do so.
Incidentally, the Newsweek "bombshell" is already falling apart with reports late tonight that CIA, in fact, had notified FBI months earlier than the story implied.
So who is to blame for 9/11 -- who bears full responsibility?
Hey, here's a novel idea: The terrorists, that's who.
Anyway, that's....
My two cents....
"JohnHuang2"

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June 4, 2002

Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins on Tuesday