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.

[RLK]

When there were ads in the Washington post for programmers with high level clearances familiar with speech recognition algorithms to work at Fort Mead and some places nobody ever heard of, it was indication the government was putting together high speed computer programs to intercept the phone conversations transmitted through the microwave towers. The Soviets had been doing something similar for years here. There is a constant scanning of nearly everyone's conversations at this point for key words. If the scans don't hit a specific conversation or the programs aren't expanded to pick up certain key words, the computers don't send a warning to monitoring personnel.

[ASA Vet]

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.

Sounds like the No Such Agency complied with USSID 18.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

...A secretive U.S. spy agency ...

Congress is leaking like a '73 Pinto.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yes. I wonder with all the demoncrat congressmen and big media enablers trying to gain political points against Bush, how many of our intelligence gathering methods will be leaked? Don't they realize that when the terrorists learn from the press that their calls are monitored, or something is otherwise given away or publicized, that the said terrorists will know where they're compromised and therefore stop using that means of communications or kill the informant?

But I guess national security and protecting intellegence methods and sources aren't as important as getting leftists elected.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Dollars to donuts every one of the "stonewalling" intelligence operatives are a Clinton hire and a Clinton operative.

If these treacherous agents are not fired immediately from all of the agencies for gross incompetence and/or purposeful malfeasance - there is no guarantee such treacheries will be avoided in the future.

The Clinton Mafia's goal is to destroy President Bush and/or his administration. There is no higher goal for them. They do not care how many Americans are killed in attaining their goal. Every one who assists in meeting this goal is, no doubt, getting a Clinton payoff of some kind (promise of future Clinton bonuses once back in power???? Or under the table payoff today from some of the Clinton "speech" payoffs or some of the Clinton "money for New York" pork funds, or a payoff from some of the Saudi's or Chinese contacts well developed during the Clinton years.

PLEASE, MR. PRESIDENT, TAKE OFF THE BLINDERS RE: THE CLINTONISTAS. THEY ARE THERE TO DESTROY YOU AND YOU MUST NOT IGNORE THEM!

[OReilly]

U.S. officials said yesterday...

I noticed that the press did not say, an unnamed source at NSA, said yesterday.

It clearly was a congressional source.

[davidosborne]

Click here to sign petition asking Sen. Leheay to step down.....

FReegards,

David C. Osborne

[anniegetyourgun]

At some point all this leakage is going to compromise methods and sources.

[Woodstock]

I cannot help but to think back a few years ago to when the Feds announced that NSA/DOD was going to outsource a huge amount of their work. They were not talking about clerical work either! I wonder what impact this has now.

[Mo1]

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.

I guess this means the leaks have started???

[mikhailovich]

I saw a report on MSNBC (I believe)....which showed a reporter walking across the wilderness from Canada to the USA with incredible ease. There was a nice abandoned log road in the Aspens which Soviet spies used during the Cold War to gain entry into the US. The road is apparently seldom, if ever, checked by INS, etc.

To criticize the NSA for this failing seems moot when considering these guys could to this day walk into these country unchecked.

[swampfox98]

We can thank the 60s generation for this along with the Democrat traitors in Congress during the 70s -- headed by Ted Kennedy, who passed laws tying the hands of our homeland security people and our spy network. They hated the CIA with a passion since the CIA was always uncovering plots by the Communists to overthrow the country. Now Hillary says she is interested in Homeland Security. Bull, she and her no good husband and the rest of the traitorous pack are as anti-American as ever.

[ironman]

Microwave and satellite intercepts. An increasing amount of data is moved via fiber which is harder to intercept. And the processing is not real time. Most of it gets recorded for later signals analysis so I can't blame the NSA too much for that. They have the most supercomputers in the world crunching HUGE amounts of data. But if they uncover an intell nugget and don't share with the other agencies, then they should be held accountable.

[First_Salute]

Bump. Some of this story is true; some not. Go figure.

[KissOfTheSith]

>At some point all this leakage is going to compromise methods and sources.

Echelon has been infamous for years. Is anybody surprised that phones were monitored?

"Methods and sources?!" Every single "method" and "source" that was in place on 9/10 was compromised by 9/11, not by Fed leaks.

If you accept the official version of what happened, then we need to shine the light on every "method" and "source" that was in place on 9/10. We need to compromise every one of those utterly failed resources and force the Feds to move on to working, effective resources.

-- KotS

[aristeides]

Congress is leaking like a '73 Pinto.

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

[aristeides]

Righto, all the raw traffic in the world isn't going to do much good if it isn't properly analyzed. James Bamford argues for more emphasis on analysis in his recent second book on the NSA.

[anniegetyourgun]

I think you missed my point. I'm not willing for folks like Leahy to leak to media sources information that will result in the death of agents and operatives.

[LiberteeBell]

I nominate you to be their top analyst. Judging from your posts here, (and I'm sure I missed a few) you know more about this and are able to connect more dots than apparently anyone within the gubmint system.