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LIKE MANY GREAT SPY STORIES, this one begins with a brief, mundane scene whose significance only becomes apparent later on. Around lunchtime on February 1, 2000, a man dropped a piece of paper near a table in a Middle Eastern restaurant outside Los Angeles and paused long enough to strike up a conversation with two Arabic-speaking men dining nearby. It would take FBI agents nearly 20 years to understand the full meaning of that small event. The man who dropped the piece of paper was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset, recently declassified FBI documents show. And the two Arabic-speaking...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions. Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested...

The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days. The FBI denied Rossini...

AHMED HIKMAT SHAKIR IS A shadowy figure who provided logistical assistance to one, maybe two, of the 9/11 hijackers. Years before, he had received a phone call from the Jersey City, New Jersey, safehouse of the plotters who would soon, in February 1993, park a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center. The safehouse was the apartment of Musab Yasin, brother of Abdul Rahman Yasin, who scorched his own leg while mixing the chemicals for the 1993 bomb.When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact...

9/11 Panel Questions Two Hijackers' Help Sept. 11 Commission Wonders Why Two Hijackers Got Help From Two Muslim Men When in U.S. The Associated Press WASHINGTON June 27, 2004 — The FBI long has contended that not a single al-Qaida operative in the United States collaborated with the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the commission investigating the attacks has identified two Muslim men who may have had advance knowledge of the plot. The commission found that two hijackers got substantial help from Mohdar Abdullah and Anwar Aulaqi after settling in California in 2000. The bipartisan panel created...

According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. investigators after his capture last year that a high-ranking Qaeda lieutenant known as Khallad originally was "selected" to participate in the 9/11 attacks as a "bouncer"--one of the musclemen assigned to corral and subdue passengers on a hijacked plane. Khallad, a one-legged Yemeni also known as Tawfiq bin Attash, attended a January 2000 "summit" meeting in Malaysia at which he allegedly went over plans for 9/11 with two future hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. After the meeting, Almihdhar and Alhazmi traveled to the United States....

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...

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...

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...

ASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — An F.B.I. account of the Sept. 11 plot disclosed today that Mohamed Atta, known to other hijackers as the "boss," met monthly with an associate before the attacks. The account also told of how one hijacker coordinated the so-called muscle hijackers who kept passengers on the airliners at bay.The account said a hijacker who crashed into the Pentagon and who was tracked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the months before the attacks, Khalid al-Mihdhar, organized the travel to the United States for the hijackers who helped seize the flights and who in some instances...

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...

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...

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...

PATERSON, N.J., Jul 31, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A man who authorities said sold fake identification to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers apparently left on a flight to Egypt hours before authorities raided his home and businesses Wednesday, officials said. Mohamad El Atriss operated businesses in Paterson and Elizabeth where he sold the IDs, said Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale. Authorities raided his home and business Wednesday afternoon and were told Atriss had took a flight from Newark to Egypt earlier that morning, Speziale said. Atriss sold a fake identification card to Khalid Almihdhar, who was...

Admitting Terror The immigration service's own describe how America failed to protect its borders from the September 11 terrorists By Bob Norman The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had terror ringleader Mohamed Atta in its grasp before the September 11 attacks. Then the agency, which stands at the domestic frontline in the war on terrorism, let him go. The 34-year-old Egyptian arrived at Miami International Airport earlier this year on a flight from Spain. His intention, he told immigration inspectors, was to learn to fly planes. Because he planned to go to school, the tourist visa he had used ...

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...

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 ...