Posted on 07/23/2003 4:01:14 PM PDT by knighthawk
THE US government had intercepted conversations by early 1999 indicating that two September 11 hijackers-to-be were connected to a suspected al-Qaeda facility in the Middle East.
But the National Security Agency did not pass on the information to other agencies, a congressional report on intelligence failures said.
The NSA interception was the first evidence in American possession that eventual hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were connected to each other and to al-Qaeda, but some of that information was not brought to the attention of other agencies until early 2002 after Congress began investigating pre-September 11 failures, according to excerpts of the report to be released tomorrow.
The Associated Press obtained excerpts from officials who had read it after it was declassified.
The report states that NSA began intercepting conversations in the northern autumn of 1998 from an undisclosed al-Qaeda location in the Middle East, and that analysis of those communications in early 1999 divulged that al-Hazmi was mentioned by name and al-Mihdhar was mentioned as "Khaled".
NSA subsequently concluded that "Khaled" was the eventual hijacker, al-Mihdhar, the report states.
"These communications were the first indication that NSA had of a link between al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi," the report says. "They were not reported in NSA SIGINT (signal intelligence) reporting because the persons were unknown, and the subject matter did not meet NSA reporting thresholds," the report says.
It adds that the standards inside NSA for when to report such information varied greatly depending on the analyst.
Beyond its own interception, the NSA also received similar electronic eavesdropping information in 1999 from another unnamed intelligence agency and did not pass that information on either.
"For an undetermined reason, NSA did not disseminate the report," the excerpts stated. "It was not until early 2002 during the joint inquiry, that NSA realised it had the report in its databases and subsequently disseminated" the information to CIA, Congress and other intelligence agencies.
In testimony before the joint congressional intelligence committee, NSA Director Lieutenant General Michael Hayden conceded "our performance in retrospect could have been better". But he added, "This was not some culturally based failure to share information."
Hayden said that despite the fact that NSA did not share the 1998-99 interceptions, US intelligence by 2000 had al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar "in our sights. We knew of their association with al-Qaeda". Before that time, he said, the information about their connections to al-Qaeda in the intercepts was "unexceptional".
The interception by the super-secretive NSA, the government's premiere electronic eavesdropping agency, is one of numerous signs of growing terrorist threats against America that were missed by US intelligence before September 11, the report states, citing examples in which different agencies had pieces of the puzzle.
For instance, the CIA separately received information that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were present at a January 2000 meeting of al-Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpur that was monitored by Malaysian authorities. By the time, the CIA recognised the significance of the information and shared it with the FBI, the two hijackers had slipped into the United States.
The joint congressional committee that conducted the inquiry, however, concludes none of the US agencies had information that "would have provided specific, advance warning" to uncover the September 11 hijackings, the report says, according to the excerpts provided to the AP.
The report spends substantial time discussing failures by the FBI to adapt to the growing terrorist threat.
Officials said it portrays an agency that had not yet shifted its priorities from crime-fighting, which had been at the heart of its mission for decades, to preventing terrorism before September 11.
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