Director Mueller: Flt. 77 Hijackers were, in Fact, Under NSA Surveillance

[leveymg]

Last edited Sat Jun 15, 2013, 10:20 AM - Edit history (1)

NSA Surveillance of 9/11 Plot Was Known to FBI

Outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller made a startling claim yesterday to a Congressional Committee overseeing the NSA inquiry. The Director described how Khalid al-Midhar, one of the 9-11 hijackers, had called a Yemeni safe house from a phone in San Diego shortly before the attack. Mueller claims had today's surveillance system been in place, NSA surveillance of that call would have led to sharing of intelligence with the FBI and "derailed" the 9/11 attack. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/13/fbi-mueller-spy-tactics-9-11-boston

That isn't the complete truth, however. Court records from the trial of convicted co-conspiractor Zakaria Moussaoui shows the FBI was aware of NSA intercepts of Midhar and and his partner Nawaf al-Hazmi in the months leading up to 9/11, who went on to hijack Flt. 77 that slammed into the Pentagon. The pair had also met with the other principal 9/11 hijackers at various locations inside the US. Based in part on NSA wiretaps that were later withheld and suppressed, FBI agents had, in fact, located the pair inside the US in mid-2001, but the investigating agents were ordered to close their files after CIA refused to cooperate and pressured the Bureau to shut down several lines of field investigation that were focusing on the plotters.

Mueller's claims omit those key facts. The Director instead stated that Khalid al-Midhar was being monitored by intelligence agencies, but “they lost track of him,” Mueller said. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0613/Secret-NSA-program-could-have-derailed-9-11-attacks-FBI-director-says-video

FBI Director Mueller doesn't explain why. He instead told Congress that intelligence officials did not know that it was Midhar who called a Yemen safehouse to discuss progress of the plot. The NSA monitoring program could have changed that, Mueller argued, potentially leading to the "derailing" of the plot. In fact, the FBI field investigators had already tried to get CIA to reveal the NSA surveillance records they knew already existed, but that line of investigation was shut down by headquarters. Mueller's statement is completely misleading in view of the actual events and decisions taken by ranking intelligence officials to sidetrack ongoing FBI investigations into the al-Qaeda operation during 2001:

“If we had the telephone number from Yemen, we would have matched it up to that telephone number in San Diego, got further legal process, identified al-Mihdhar,” he said. “The 9/11 Commission itself indicated that investigations or interrogations of al-Mihdhar once he was identified could have yielded evidence of connections to other participants in the 9/11 plot.”

Moussaoui Court Records Show CIA Suppression of Ongoing FBI Investigation

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90962&sitesection=csmonitor&VID=24880556

We've learned a great deal about 9/11 that confirmed earlier information that points to sabotage of FBI field investigations of the 9/11 hijackers known by both CIA and FBI to be inside the U.S. We also see a chain of malfeasance and dereliction of duty that reaches up into the White House in the handling of the known threat presented by the presence of the soon to be Flt.-77 hijackers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar.

The following summary also sheds light on the role that previously unpublicized NSA surveillance had, and how willful misinterpretation of FISA requirements led to FBI surveillance of the Flt. 77 plot being shut down. The "DE" references, below, refer to specific Defense Exhibits in the Moussaoui trial.

(Note: Much of what we now know about the 9/11 plot the material introduced by the defense. http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/singleton/)

DE #939 entered into the Moussaoui trial on March 11, 2006: email from former CIA Deputy Chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit , Tom Wilshire, back to his CIA CTC managers, Richard Blee, Head of the CIA Bin Laden unit, Cofer Black head of the CIA CTC unit and likely George Tenet, on July 23, 2001. This email said that Khalid al-Mihdhar would be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda attack. Wilshire in the DOJ IG report had also already stated in his July 5, 2001 email back to his CIA CTC managers that he thought the people at the Kuala Lumpur meeting were connected to the warnings the CIA and FBI had been receiving since April 2001 of a huge al Qaeda attack aimed at the United States. These people would have been Mihdhar and Hazmi. Wilshire, as did the CIA already knew Hazmi had a US visa and was inside of the US, and knew Mihdhar had a US multi-entry visa.

According DE 939, Wilshire was not given permission to his two requests on July 13, 2001, and July 23, 2001 to turn the information on Kuala Lumpur meeting over to the FBI Cole bombing investigators (O'Neill's unit), even though his CIA managers, Richard Blee and Cofer Black along with George Tenet were holding an urgent meeting on July 10, 2001 with Rice and Clark in the White house warning Rice and Clark that the al Qaeda terrorists were planning an attack inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans. see State of Denial by Bob Woodward. On July 17, Blee, Black and Tenet gave the same warning to Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld. Whatever the warning, Ashcroft quite flying commercial aircraft on AJ business on July 26, 2001 due to some still unexplained threat from the FBI?

Less than one month after his July 23, 2001 email back to Blee and Black indicating that Mihdhar would be found at the location of the next big al Qaeda attack, on August 22, 2001 FBI Agent Margret Gillespie, aka Mary, working at the CIA Bin Laden unit tells FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi and CIA officer Tom Wilshire, working at that time as the FBI ITOS Deputy Chief, that the INS had discovered both Mihdhar and Hazmi inside of the US. It is clear that Wilshire and most likely Corsi know that that point that both Mihdhar and Hazmi are inside of the US to take part in the al Qaeda attack they are aware of that will kill thousands of Americans. It is clear that . . . they work together to shut down the only investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that could have prevented this attack. See description of DE 061/062 below.

On August 23, 2001 Gillespie had the CIA Bin Laden unit send out an alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi, and indicated that these al Qaeda terrorists are inside of the US. At that point anyone at the CIA who had received Wilshire’s July 23, 2001 and July 5, 2001 email, or who were aware of the massive warnings of an al Qaeda attack inside of the US would also know that al Qaeda terrorists Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US to carry out the al Qaeda attacks the CIA and FBI HQ had been warned about since April 2001.

See the following webs sites; http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notable...aoui/exhibits/ and www.eventson911.com.

In addition to DE 939, the most chilling of these is DE-0681 and DE 0682. In DE 681/682, FBI HQ IOS Agent Dina Corsi tells Bongardt on August 28, 2001, that he and his team must shut down any investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi because the information came from intelligence through the NSA. But on August 27, 2001 the day before, the NSA had already given Corsi written permission to give all of this NSA information to the criminal investigators on the Cole bombing investigation, see DE-0448 for this actual release from the NSA. (ON EDIT: See, link: "NSA approves sharing info" at http://prior-knowledge-of-9-11.blogspot.com/2008/09/nsa-release-from-nsa-caveats.html)


Corsi also tells Bongardt on August 29, 2001 that a FBI National Security Legal Unit (NSLU) attorney had ruled that Bongardt and his team could have no part in the investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi but per Sherry Sabol’s testimony to DOJ IG investigators, on November 7, 2002, in the DOJ IG report, it is clear that Sabol, the NSLU attorney Corsi had contacted, had ruled in fact just the opposite and had ruled that Bongardt and his team could be part of any investigation and search for of Mihdhar since the NSA information had no connection to any FISA warrant.

This was the exact argument that FBI Agent Steve Bongardt had raised when he asked Corsi on August 28, 2001 to get a legal ruling from the NSLU, the FBI legal unit, to see if he could investigate and search for Mihdhar and Hazmi. Bongardt even tells Corsi on August 29, 2001 as she is shutting down his investigation, that these terrorists are inside of the US to carry out yet another horrific al Qaeda terrorist attack, and people will die because of this ruling. See testimony of Sherry Sabol, aka Sherry S. 9/11 Commission report page 538, footnote 81.

Corsi also never tells Bongardt as she is shutting down his investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi that she is aware that the CIA had been deliberately hiding the photograph of Walid Bin Attash, mastermind of the Cole bombing, taken at Kuala Lumpur, from him and his Cole bombing investigating team, a photograph that directly connects both Mihdhar and Hazmi, who were at the same meeting, to the planning of the Cole bombing, see page 302 DOJ IG report. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=181411&page=3

CIA Ordered FBI Warning Cable Withheld - 9/11 Attacks Could Have Been Thwarted in Jan. 2000


On January 15, 2000, Flt. 77 hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Nidhar landed at LA Int'l Airport after attending an al-Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to testimony given by CIA Director Tenet to the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry, the CIA and a dozen allied agencies had that meeting under intensive surveillance. Shortly thereafter, an FBI liaison officer in the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center drafted a warning cable about the arrival in the US of the pair, but never sent it.

Why? She was ordered to withhold it by the CIA-CTC Assistant Director.

If that cable had been sent, the presence of the Flt. 77 hijackers and the other 9/11 attack groups would have been known to a much wider group of FBI agents and offices, including John P. O'Neill's I-95 anti-terrorism unit in New York, who would have immediately understood the significance, and ordered both human surveillance and FISA warrant coverage, which would have certainly been granted under the law then in place. Contrary to the testimony yesterday given by Director Mueller, FISA law as it existed before the Patriot Act would have allowed the FBI access to any electronic surveillance of al-Hazmi and al-Midhar, who were foreign nationals and known terrorists. Units of the FBI did obtain access to some of the NSA "take", but under pressure from CIA, these investigators were denied use of this intelligence and access to further electronic coverage.

Here's what the Wiki page for O'Neill says about that:

In 1999, O'Neill sent a close associate named Mark Rossini to work in CIA's Bin Laden Issue Station in Virginia. He had a conflict with station chief Richard Blee; O'Neill wanted Rossini to stay at station and feed him information about what the CIA was doing, while Blee wanted him out working in the field. Later on, the CIA Bin Ladin station learned that Bin-Ladin associates Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were headed to the US with Visas. Rossini and his associate Doug Miller attempted to alert O'Neill but the message was blocked by Blee. Mihdhar and Hazmi became two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

[hobbit709]

1. Fat lot of good that did.

[ellie]

10. Thank you

This is just what I was going to post.

[BlueStreak]

28. If only we could have had a database of 480 trillion phone calls, we would have swooped in

[JackN415]

2. OK 9/11 was a surprise. Nobody connected the dots...

How about trying to stop, or follow up faster on lesser event like Boston bombing? Try to swat a fly before try to catch an elephant.

[leveymg]

3. If only it were so simple as "surprise" and "nobody connected the dots".

How about one giant multi-agency, "Okay, you've covered your ass now"?

?zz=1

[KurtNYC]

13. Not entirely. Bush gota daily briefing memo 36 days prior to 9/11/01, famously headlined:

"Bin Laden determined to strike within US" and it specifically mentioned airplanes, NYC, DC and Chicago.

Hard to be "faster" than 36 days prior to the event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US

[JackN415]

15. I'm giving them a big mulligan on 9/11. What they did in Boston bombing was not acceptable.

[Fawke Em]

37. Yep. Something smells like spoiled tea there.

[johnnyreb]

4. truthout: (Clarke) Accuses Tenet, Other CIA Officials of Cover-Up

We give them all these powers and all our money, and then whut?

Former Counterterrorism Czar Accuses Tenet, Other CIA Officials of Cover-Up
11 August 2011
"I know how all this stuff works I've been working it for 30 years," Clarke said. "You can't snowball me on this stuff. If they announce on September 4 in the Principals meeting that these guys are in the United States and they told the FBI a few weeks ago I'm going to say 'wait, time out. How long have you known this? Why haven't you reported it at the daily threat meetings? Why isn't it in the daily threat matrix?' We would have begun an investigation that day into CIA malfeasance and misfeasance that's why we're not informed."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2614:former-counterterrorism-czar-accuses-tenet-other-cia-officials-of-coverup

[leveymg]

11. Thank you for that. Pretty well sums up the 9/11 aftermath to date.

[noise]

22. The problem with Clarke's theory

He would have us believe CIA officials let the attacks go forward because it would be better to allow a massive terrorist attack than have CIA officials suffer some embarrassment or a slap on the wrist reprimand. IMO his theory doesn't make sense as there were obviously less drastic solutions than allowing a terrorist attack to succeed.

[leveymg]

24. It was Bush and Cheney who refused to have the terrorist network rolled-up

To their credit, Black, Blee and Tenet apparently tried repeatedly to convince Bush, Condi and the inner-circle to pull the plug on the operation.

Part of it was BushCo's fear of offending the all-important House of Saudi who are old business partners, and another part of it was . . . well, you can connect that dot, yourself.

[noise]

25. If the issue

was not offending the Saudis then there were less drastic solutions than allowing a massive terrorist plot to go forward. After all they had months to find a solution.

I don't get the idea of the CIA giving the White House the option of either stopping the attack or letting it go forward. As FBI agent Steve Bongardt said, "They aren't going to f****** Disneyland!" The CIA had to know what would happen if they didn't do anything.

Also the FBI UBLU was involved in the obstruction. Though their conduct has been presented as a series of low level decisions I find it almost impossible to believe it didn't go to the top of the bureau (i.e. interim Director Pickard). Should the public believe that the CIA and FBI deferred to a bizarre White House decision to let an al Qaeda plot go forward?

[leveymg]

29. This is the way it was explained to me by someone who knows when I asked exactly the same

questions you are:

"Nobody rolls up anything (a codeword protected compartmentalized CIA operation, see http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/codeword.html ) until the President orders it."

The CIA and some of the top echelon FBI people in DC knew the risk of what was likely about to happen. They aren't dummies. But, until the President orders such a program terminated, nobody -- not even the DCI -- can do anything to jeopardize its operational integrity. To arrest the AQ cell members known to be inside the US would have compromised something very, very sensitive. One highly plausible candidate is ongoing joint US-Saudi operations against the Russians still employing parts of the UBL network as paramilitary assets in the Transcaucasus and Kosovo. Another possibility, more Cheneyesque, is an effort to exploit sudden events and divisions within the Saudi state with the goal of forcing privatization of upstream Aramco supplies (a "reform" sought by the oil majors that Abdullah was considering at the time).

A third plausible explanation is that 9/11 occurred because a Counterterrorism operation run out of CIA-CTC that had penetrated AQ with numerous double-agents was simply allowed to run overly-long and 9/11 was a preemptive strike by UBL, a sucker punch, in anticipation of the WH plans to "roll out" its new Afghanistan policy that was due in mid-September. The WH underestimated the risks and extent of the damage that occurred on 9/11.

It's possible that elements of all these entered into events.

[noise]

30. The secrecy enables exploitation

It's so easy for intelligence insiders to claim all this top secret stuff and then avoid any accountability after a bunch of people are murdered. There is so much secrecy that the public has no way to know who is telling the truth. IMO corruption is just as likely an explanation as a secret operation that somehow went bad.

One of the sickest aspects of post 9/11 is the way intelligence agents and officials went along with the Bush administration solution of a massive power grab. So they were silent as to why 9/11 really happened and remained silent as all sorts of horrible policies were enacted based on "the lesson of 9/11." I don't see why the public should be understanding of this. The CIA agents who took part in the doc Manhunt went around as heroes who stayed the course to find Bin Laden. To me it is grotesque for them to do so (and for the media to join in) considering they have not told the truth about pre-9/11.

[leveymg]

31. Absolutely. 9/11 was cultivated in overclassification and overcompartmentalization

and lack of effective oversight and controls. After Boston, we can't be so readily assured it's all been fixed. The fact that the al-Awlaki flytrap stayed up for so long and that AQ operatives were allowed to continue entering and operating inside the US (Underwear Bomber, Times Square Bomber, Ft. Hood Shooter) does not give one great confidence that things have really changed.

I'm really not sure if elected officials, even the smart and relatively uncorrupted ones, have an adequate grasp of the dangers of such operations. I read that Obama was upset after the 2009 Xmas Bomber episode, and I had hoped for some major changes. But, it took a long time and a number of fatal and near-fatal events before they rolled up the al-Awlaki program.

[Hydra]

5. "We need more power to protect you from learning too much about us!" n/t

[City Lights]

21. Bingo! nt

[Historic NY]

6. Fragmented turf wars between agencies & personalities...

everyone had his/her piece of the pie. In a post 911 world were told that not suppose to happen now that we have a Dept of HS.

[leveymg]

8. In this case, "turf war" is just a euphemism for Obstruction of Justice

And "intelligence failure" is a nice term for Negligent Homicide, 3000 counts.

[librechik]

7. thank you--there are many undercurrents and cross plots going on

almost impossible to tell what is really going on in all the confusion. (I think it's purposeful)

[leveymg]

9. On the contrary, I think it's now clear that a wider crime took place on 9/11.

Those officials whose criminally negligence contributed to that mass casualty event have not yet been charged.

[noise]

20. Many people don't realize

that this issue has not been addressed by Alec Station or UBLU agents. They simply won't talk about it and reporters won't ask them about it. For example an HBO documentary called Manhunt was recently released. None of the Alec Station agents in the documentary were asked to explain what happened.

We are expected to accept vast government intrusion for the purpose of preventing another 9/11 but still don't know why two known al Qaeda guys were not apprehended.

[leveymg]

32. +1

[Savannahmann]

12. Through the years, there has been one overwhelming truth

That truth is that no matter who is in charge of the CIA, there are a flood of lies that come pouring out of it. The same is true of the NSA, and all the other alphabet soup agencies. So now we're told to trust them, because they would never do anything illegal, immoral, or wrong.

Why should we doubt them? After all they've given us their word that they are dedicated to protecting this nation and it's people.

[leveymg]

14. Should we have trusted all that CIA and NSA did because we liked JFK and LBJ?

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 04:16 PM - Edit history (1)

We're presented with the same paradox, today. We like the Presidents we elect, but not a lot of what the IC does during their Administrations. Presidents who tried to do somethings to reign in the power or resist the ambitions of the agencies met bad ends. I'll include Carter and to some degree Clinton in that.

JFK, well, everyone has their own opinion on that.

[DevonRex]

18. The CIA was never theirs. Never. You know that.

And soon it would be in Bush the Elder's hands.

[johnnyreb]

16. Kick for the Billionaire Control Complex Inc.

If we would just give them more power, they'll be able to protect us and start trickling down!

Historical puzzles are as often explained by screw-ups as by darker truths. What is known of the evidence on Hazmi and Mihdhar, however, makes the screw-up version hard to swallow. Not least because the CIA version of events suggests its officials blew chances to grab the two future hijackers time and time and time again.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/12/richard-clarke-9-11-interview-was-there-a-cia-coverup.html

Complete 911 Timeline: CIA Hiding Knowledge of Alhamzi and Almihdhar
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&complete_911_timeline_alhazmi_and_almihdhar__specific_cas=complete_911_timeline_cia_hiding_alhazmi___almihdhar

Snowden Vs NSA - mp3 music collage
http://popdefectradio.blogspot.com/2013/06/snowden-vs-nsa.html

[burnodo]

17. What? Again?

9/11 could have been prevented?? The shock.

[DirkGently]

19. Yep. They can't handle the data they already have. They don't need more. n/t

[reformist2]

26. Some might even want to tell them that less is, in fact, more.

Nobody wants to believe that these days, but it's true.

[kentuck]

23. Now, who do you think Mr Mueller is going to work for when he leaves the FBI??

Booz-Allen? Carlyle Group?

Or his local charitable organization?

[elleng]

27. 'Wall' between FBI + CIA no surprise,

but one of the many problems publicized after 9/11.

[leveymg]

33. "The Wall" is a convenient scapegoat and was never as high as some wanted the public to believe

Even Pre-Patriot Act FISA allowed for electronic monitoring of non-US persons inside the US. There was far more than probable cause to obtain FISA warrants for the AQ operatives known to be inside the US, yet a warrant was never sought, which somewhat complicated the job of keeping them under surveillance.

I do not accept the explanation that Jamie Gorlick's legal interpretations were the real reason that warrants weren't sought. I believe instead there was an operational culture within CTC and its partner agencies of simply ignoring warrants, as that avoided an unwanted paper trail.

Certainly, that in itself, made the activities of this unit unlawful. What else they may have done in the name of operational secrecy?

[Lint Head]

34. Screw the NSA flap why the fuck has this been ignored and downplayed since GWB and Cheney?

&feature=player_embedded

[leveymg]

35. Condi made misleading statements under oath, as did Tenet.

Please, see, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/258

They weren't alone in their perjury. No accountability means the same abuses will be repeated.

[Fawke Em]

36. So Tamerlan Tsarnaev was, as well, and now

the brother who was threatened is going to jail for the rest of his life or death for this shit.

No wonder people believe in CTs.

My husband, who worked as an Army linguist speaking Russian, told me years ago this shit was happening. What he could tell me.

Friends, it's not CT, we've just been had.