This has been reported other places, such as:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/130227_terror10.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.com/news/936852.asp?0cl=c1http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/218.htmHere's some comments I made in another post:
The fact that Mohammed attended that pivotal meeting in Malaysia is old news. Take for instance this CNN article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/07/30/seasia.state/"In January of 2000, about a dozen of Osama bin Laden's trusted followers met here. The host was Hambali. Among those who attended: Tawfiq bin Attash, a key suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole 9 months later; Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, who nearly two years later crashed a plane into the Pentagon, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant, a key planner, U.S. officials say, of September 11."
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The CIA is covering this fact up big time, because if he was there, the failure to stop 9/11 is completely inexplicable. Note what else they learned about Mohammed after the meeting, but before 9/11 (from my 9/11 timeline):
June 2001 (I): US intelligence learns that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is interested in "sending terrorists to the United States" and planning to assist their activities once they arrive. The 9/11 Congressional inquiry says the significance of this is not understood at the time, and data collection efforts are not subsequently "targeted on information about that might have helped understand al-Qaeda's plans and intentions." (Committee Findings, 12/11/02, Los Angeles Times, 12/12/02, USA Today, 12/12/02)
Summer 2001: Around this time, the NSA intercepts telephone conversations between 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, but apparently does not share the information with any other agencies. (Knight Ridder, 6/6/02, Independent, 6/6/02) Additionally, the NSA either fails to translate these messages in a timely fashion or fails to understand the significance of what was translated. (Knight Ridder, 6/6/02)
September 10, 2001 (F): Mohamed Atta calls Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, in Afghanistan. Mohammed gives final approval to Atta to launch the attacks. This call is monitored and translated by the US, though it isn't known how quickly that takes, and the specifics of the conversation haven't been released. (Independent, 9/15/02)
So given their communication intercepts, they should have unravelled the plot easily. Mohammed was not some small potato at the time. He was already wanted for his role in the first WTC bombing, the Operation Bojinka plot, and many other plots. In 1997, the government of Qatar told the US that he was planning further airplane hijackings. By 1998, the US had a multi-million dollar bounty on his head, and he was easily one of the top 10 most wanted terrorists in the world by then.
He was able to attend that meeting in Malaysia, converse freely and repeatedly with Mohammed Atta, and talk about sending terrorists to the US, and the CIA and NSA didn't do anything with this info, or even give deciphering of communication with him a high priority??? (The NSA boasts of being able to decipher and translate top priority messages within an hour, so they should have had plenty of time with that last communication). And this is only what we know - the US gvmt is trying to keep all info about him classified. The Congressional 9/11 inquiry wasn't even allowed to refer to him by his name.
Sorry, I don't buy the "hopeless incompetence" argument. There's more here than meets the eye, including the likelihood that Mohammed was a double agent (read for instance this article, where his ties to the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, are laid out:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayksmcapture.html ).
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