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

[Octafish]

69. DU has no clue how lucky we are.

Same for the USA: leveymg spells out what the nation's press corpse is afraid to touch, the truth about Bush and 9-11:

Director Mueller: 9/11 Hijackers were, in Fact, Under NSA Surveillance

by leveymg
Daily Kos, FRI JUN 14, 2013

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 the file 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-Mihdhar 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.”

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/14/1216187/-Director-Mueller-9-11-Hijackers-were-in-Fact-Under-NSA-Surveillance

Thank you for all you do to keep us informed, leveymg. You do what the nation's media fail to do: Map out the Territory and Connect the Dots.