Terrorists' Calls Were Monitored

New York Daily News ^ | 6/07/02 | KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON

A secretive U.S. spy agency monitored phone calls between the suspected organizer of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings and the chief hijacker, but did not share the information with other agencies, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The officials said on condition of anonymity that the conversations between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta were intercepted by the National Security Agency, which monitors and decodes foreign communications.

Mohammed is a known leader of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and is on the FBI's Most Wanted List. He is thought to be hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

In addition to failing to share the intercepts with the CIA or other intelligence agencies, the NSA also failed to promptly translate some of the Arabic-language conversations, a senior intelligence official said.

The officials declined to disclose the nature of the discussions between Mohammed and Atta, who piloted one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.

An NSA spokeswoman would not talk about them.

"We neither confirm or deny actual or alleged intelligence operations," she said.

The disclosure marks the first time the NSA has been dragged into the controversy about whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies may have had information before Sept. 11 that could have helped avert history's most deadly terrorist attacks.

House and Senate intelligence committees are scrutinizing the NSA, CIA and FBI as they examine what the government knew or should have known before the attacks.

Committee investigators are aware of the NSA's intercepts and of the agency's failure to share them, the senior intelligence official said.

The official said investigators had determined that some intercepts were not translated in a timely fashion. In other cases, he said, NSA analysts apparently did not recognize the significance of what they had.

The congressional investigators' initial conclusion is that the NSA's human and technical systems are not up to the job of translating, sorting, analyzing and disseminating the ever-increasing avalanche of data the agency collects, the official said.

[bybybill]

How do we know ANY of this is true?

[OldFriend]

Since the Chechen terrorists are islamic fundamentalists I would hope that Russia would share the technology with us.

[Chu Gary]

"Well, if the result is to provide the NSA with enough linguists, analysts, and funding, that will be one good result."

The lead time to accomplish the above task is about two years if you want people who know their vents from a hole in the ground, one year or so if you're satisfied with rubes who don't know/understand squat. For really competent folks, the lead time is more like three years. Sad, but true. One+ year for classroom work, then gain experience (understanding) out in the field doing the job.

[aristeides]

Well, we're told this is going to be a long war, aren't we?

[RLK]

Since the Chechen terrorists are islamic fundamentalists I would hope that Russia would share the technology with us.

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We have the technology. The Soviets were ideally positioned to use it because the Soviet embassy in Washington was physically located to have access to government microwave transmissions.

[OldFriend]

Sorry if I misread this.

[RLK]

No problem. The point is, there are tens of thousands of people from the Middle East in this country. As a practical matter, it's impossible to monitor all their activities. Automated systems of monitoring may be used. With 20-20 hindsight it's easy to go back and say what phone calls should have been interpreted differently. At the time, it wasn't so easy and there were blank spots in the system.

[Chal]

Were they monitoring Clinton's Bosnia jihadist boys in the USA?

[Chal]

these terrorists were men involved in the Bosnian and Chechen jihads and they had freedom of movement in this nation since Clinton...hmmmmmm

[OldFriend]

The most amazing criticism I read was the other day.......that we should have monitored the financial activities of those who were DENIED entry into our country.

[RLK]

The most amazing criticism I read was the other day.......that we should have monitored the financial activities of those who were DENIED entry into our country.

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The problem with this entire scene is that it has brought out every nut in the valley who believes the impossible should have been done, or who siezes upon endless small events that it is claimed should have been interpreted as exact warnings.

I can foresee the time, with the advancement of technology and computers running at clock speeds of trillions of operations per second feeding other computers processing trillions of operations per second, that agencies will be able to monitor every phone call and conversation in the world, and every bank account in the world. That's enough to give the Clintons and those like them reason to drool. Hence, the prospect frightens me. We can't even get accountability now. God knows what will happen in the future. To the extent we don't have such capability now, I view it as a margin of personal safety.