Posted on Tue, Feb. 24, 2004
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — U.S. investigators received the first name and the telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers 2 1/2 half years before the attacks on New York and Washington.
The United States, however, appears to have failed to aggressively pursue the lead, U.S. and German officials say.
The information — the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers — has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, officials said Monday.
The information is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for U.S. officials to penetrate the German terror cell that was at the heart of the plot.
In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the CIA the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi and asked the Americans to track him.
After the Germans passed the information on to the CIA, they never heard back from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.
After receiving the tip, the CIA decided that “Marwan” was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden but never tracked him down, U.S. officials say.
The information concerning Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers.
A U.S. official said: “The Germans did give us the name ‘Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything.
It was an unlisted phone number in the UAE, which he was known to use.”
Close surveillance of Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Shehhi's roommate.
U.S. and European authorities believe that Shehhi played a critical role in the Sept. 11 plot and was actively involved in its planning and logistics.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA, the FBI and other government agencies have been heavily criticized for failing to put together fragmentary pieces of information they received from a wide array of sources in order to predict or prevent the terrorist plot.