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We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige. But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday. If Jamie Gorelick were a Republican, you can be sure our colleagues in the Fourth Estate would be leading the chorus of complaint that the Commission's objectivity has been fatally compromised by a member who was also one of the key personalities behind the failed antiterror policy that the Commission has under scrutiny. Where's the outrage? At issue is...

Last week, 9-11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that "it was the policy (before 9-11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory." Hmmm ... Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I'm no security expert, but I'm pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack. In a sane world, Lehman's statement...

IT makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of US skyscrapers when planning the operation. Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles – which was "blown up" in the film Independence Day – were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of al-Qa'ida operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors. He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday the terrorists behind the attacks on the United States likely received support from foreign governments and that it was too early to tell if surprise arrests in Michigan were a major break in the case.</p>

As early as Thursday the Justice Department and the FBI will announced the indictment of two men who carried out the attack on the USS Cole which killed 17 United States Sailors more than two years ago, ABC News has learned.One of the men, Fahd Mohammad Ahmed Al Quoso, may also be linked to the 9/11 terrorist plot, sources invloved in the investigation told ABC News.Sources said Al Quoso said an operative who would eventally become a suicide bomber in the Cole attack each carried $18,000 in cash money belts to Bangkok, Thailand in 1999, and gave it to Waleed...

War on Terror San Diego FBI team denies it missed chance to thwart 9/11 San Diego FBI officials, bracing for a congressional report that criticizes their handling of an informant who rented rooms to two Sept. 11 hijackers, said yesterday they could not have uncovered the plot with the information they had at the time. Officials acknowledged for the first time that an informant, whom they refused to identify, had provided the first names of two men who would later become hijackers, the Associated Press reported. But the names did not raise any red flags before the terror attacks. "There...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Thirteen days before the Sept. 11 attacks, a frustrated FBI agent warned headquarters that "someday, someone will die" after he was denied permission to pursue a man who would become one of the hijackers, a congressional panel was told Friday. The agent's efforts were among many missed opportunities to stop two of the hijackers after they were spotted attending an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, according to the report to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It was the latest revelation of apparent failures by intelligence and law enforcement authorities before the attacks. In...

In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") report concluded that the reason for Mohammed Atta's and Zacarias Moussaoui's inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was planning an "unbelievable" biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM") the previous month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.    Many people have argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative is behind the earlier Fall...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A veil of secrecy will begin to rise Wednesday when a congressional committee reveals some of the information that U.S. spy agencies knew about suspected terrorist activity before the September 11 attacks -- including the disclosure that analysts knew al Qaeda had previously plotted to use aircraft as terrorist weapons. The recently declassified documents will be made public for the first time during an open hearing of the joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee. One of the main questions investigators are probing: Could the September 11 attacks have been prevented? Joint Senate House Intelligence hearings CNN plans coverage of...

Warnings on Saudis 'ignored' From correspondents in Washington A RETIRED FBI agent has informed a congressional committee probing the September 11 attacks that his superior had ignored his warnings about a flow of Saudi money into the hands of suspected hijackers, US News and World Report magazine reported today. Steven Butler, who worked at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) San Diego field office, told the committee the money went to two of the September 11 hijackers - Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, the magazine reported, quoting unnamed government officials. In his testimony, Butler described his dealings with a leader...

Agent: FBI Never Got 9/11 Data By Bill Gertz The Washington Times | September 23, 2002 An FBI agent told Congress yesterday that days before September 11 he complained to FBI headquarters that "someone will die" because senior bureau officials refused to permit him to pursue one of the men who later took part in the Pentagon suicide attack. The New York-based FBI agent told a joint House-Senate hearing on the intelligence failures of September 11 that he and other FBI agents were denied CIA intelligence information on Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. The two al Qaeda terrorists would end...

Terrorists Booked Flight to Portland September 19, 2001, 05:00 PM By John Becker and Jim Parker, KGW Staff Federal authorities told KGW Wednesday that a credit card belonging to a Texas doctor may have been used to buy airline tickets for terrorist suspects to fly to Portland. Al-Badr Al Hazmi, 34, of San Antonio, was in FBI custody undergoing questioning Wednesday. Sources said his credit card was used to buy a ticket for one of the terrorist flights that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and now the FBI is looking into tickets he may have purchased ...

Excerpted: NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau’s informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers THE CONNECTION, JUST discovered by congressional investigators, has stunned some top counterterrorism officials and raised new concerns about the information-sharing among U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were hardly unknown to the intelligence community. The CIA was first alerted to them in January 2000, when the two Saudi nationals showed up at a Qaeda “summit” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. FBI officials have argued internally for months that if the CIA had more quickly passed...

German investigators say they have evidence that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two accomplices trained at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000. They have also established a clear link between Al Qaeda and a recent attack on a Tunisian synagogue, a top official said. The timing of the Afghanistan training, outlined yesterday by a senior investigator, provides the strongest evidence so far that plans for the attacks on the United States were worked out there. Less than six months after leaving Afghanistan, Mr. Atta and the other two men...

Hijackers Said to Seek Navy Targets Tue Aug 20, 3:29 PM ET By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer SAN DIEGO (AP) - Investigators believe the San Diego-based Sept. 11 hijackers who helped crash an airliner into the Pentagon ( news - web sites) initially were sent to California to pinpoint targets in the Navy's largest West Coast port, a federal law enforcement source told The Associated Press. Investigators believe al-Qaida operatives Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who arrived in California in January 2000, most likely were assigned to identify San Diego-based Navy ships to attack, said the federal official, who...

TARRAGONA, Spain -- On the morning of July 9, 2001, Mohamed Atta drove a silver Hyundai rental car east out of Madrid toward this Mediterranean beach area, a ribbon of resorts crowded with vacationers. The attacks on New York and the Pentagon were just weeks away and Atta was headed to a secret meeting to complete the planning, according to U.S. officials and a Spanish police investigation of the lead hijacker's movements.As Atta drove 300 miles across the country, his old roommate in Germany, Ramzi Binalshibh, was boarding a budget flight from Hamburg to Reus, the small airport that serves...

Detention transformed doctor into man of peace Saudi carries no bitterness home as he ends San Antonio stay 05/25/2002 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO - Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi sits easily on the carpeted floor of the mosque. He speaks with a soft intensity, the words spilling out as he describes the day his life was turned upside down. Stony-faced FBI agents whisked him from his San Antonio home a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was flown to New York and secreted in a detention cell for nearly two weeks. Like hundreds...

At the top-of-the-hour newsbreak it was reported a "material witness" being held since Sept related to the 9/11 attacks has gone missing. His lawyer has reported he has no information on the whereabouts of his client. The client has not been seen since last Wednesday morning when he appeared in NY to give testimony. He was told then, apparently, that he faced charges back in San Diego for falsifying information on his application for asylum. The suspect is a student at San Diego State University.

A U.S.-Based Al Qaeda 'Sleeper Cell' Was Poised to Launch a Post-Sept. 11 Attack on a Major Washington Target; Would-Be Terrorists Went Underground or Fled U.S. NEWSWEEK The December 17 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, December 10) details the saga of John Walker, the American citizen who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Newsweek also examines the survival of Al Qaeda following the military campaign. Plus: Yasir Arafat facing his greatest threat and an interview with Ariel Sharon. Also: Parsons in his new post and Enron's downfall. A look at Ocean's 11 and music group No Doubt. (PRNewsFoto)[TK] Evidence ...

MILWAUKEE (AP) Federal authorities have found seven people in Wisconsin suspected of bribing U.S. embassy officials in the Persian Gulf to obtain illegal visas. Six of the seven don't appear to have terrorist ties, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis D. Schmitz. He said little is known about the seventh person, Ahmad Abed Atia, 23, who had been living in Milwaukee. Atia was uncooperative with investigators and has been transferred to Chicago on a federal visa fraud charge, Schmitz said. The seven are part of a larger group of foreigners from Jordan, Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh suspected to have paid at...