Missed Calls: Is the NSA lying about its failure to prevent 9/11? (James Bamford)

[leveymg]

24. But, you know, CIA was designed to be the "fall guy" for Presidential covert activities. Plausible

deniability for the CIC when operations go bad. It's right there in the Charter. This one went very, very bad.

Obviously, this operation was interagency and international. Tenet said there were half a dozen allied agencies monitoring the late December 1999 Kuala Lumpur AQ planning summit attended by al-Midhar, al-Hazmi, and several other named co-conspirators at which the 9/11 and USS Cole attacks were mapped out.

Again, we get the wholely implausible story that US intelligence was unable to get a microphone or video camera inside (or to read the window vibrations) of the golf course condominium where these known al-Qaeda operatives met, despite having at least 10 days advance notice when al-Midhar "phoned home."

We already knew that immediately after their arrival at LAX in early January, the Flt. 77 hijackers met an official of Saudi Consulate in LA operating under cover as an employee of Dallah AVCO, who gave them funds from an account at Riggs Bank operated by the wife of Ambassador before passing them over to Anwar al-Awlaki, the Iman of the Saudi-supported San Diego Islamic Center. Al-Awlaki was in frequent contact as one and then both met with the other hijackers during the months that followed.