Disturbing Report Shows FBI Overlooked Clues Before 9/11 Attacks

In a report that was released to the public Thursday, the Justice Department’s Inspector General Glenn Fine acknowledged that the FBI may have handled intelligence operations badly in the weeks and months before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. "The way the FBI handled these matters was a significant failure that hindered the FBI's chances of being able to detect and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks," Fine said. The report discloses that the FBI had some clues, such as a lead from one of its own agents and five specific opportunities to uncover vital information, but didn’t recognize those bits of information as being threatening enough to pursue them vigorously. The sobering report was discussed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Friday in an appearance on NBC’s "Today" show. Gonzales acknowledged that a large part of the problem was due to laws on the books that discouraged the sharing of information among federal intelligence agencies and local law enforcement. Gonzales added that many of those laws have now been dismantled, making the government more able to avert such attacks in the future.

The events detailed by the report seem to show the nation’s critical intelligence agencies as being shockingly naïve. The most disturbing event it describes is the suggestion by an FBI agent two months before the attacks that he had discovered a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States in order to study and learn ways to take down aircraft. The agent’s theory was dismissed by the agency, which failed to give it any strategic analysis for its viability. The bureau also had hard information shortly before the attacks took place that two of the eventual hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, had arrived in the United States. Mihdhar was known to the CIA as a potential terrorist, but the FBI investigation of Mihdhar was assigned to a single inexperienced agent, who conducted the investigation "without much urgency or priority," according to the report.

The report was held up in court for a year while lawyers for conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui fought over how much of it should be disclosed to the public. The report was finally released after the portions dealing with Moussaoui were deleted. According to the report, cables to the CIA’s bin Laden unit in January of 2000 contained a substantial amount of information about Mihdhar, including the disclosure that he was traveling and that he had a U.S. visa. But those facts were never passed along to the FBI although they were written up by one of the FBI agents assigned to the CIA’s bin Laden unit. That agent asked for the go-ahead to send the draft of his report to the FBI, but the deputy chief of the CIA unit never gave him permission to do so. Ten days later, Mihdhar and Hazmi were in Los Angeles, preparing to carry out their plan of attack. All of the CIA and FBI personnel involved in the events now claim no knowledge of the document that was never sent.

The report says that Mihdhar and Hazmi lived openly in San Diego after their arrival in the United States, where they rented a room in the home of a longtime FBI terrorism informant and befriended another Saudi who was well known to the FBI as a potential terrorist. Although the informant passed along information about the men to his contact at the FBI, the agent was "not particularly thorough or aggressive" in following up, according to the report, and they "should have drawn some scrutiny from the FBI." But the head of the FBI office in San Diego refuted that comment, saying that the suggestion the attacks could have been prevented is greatly exaggerated. In its response to the damaging report and the Inspector General’s comments, the FBI has issued a statement saying that since the 9/11 attacks, it has taken substantial steps to deal with the issues raised by the report. In its statement, the FBI said that today, "no terrorism lead goes unaddressed." Americans will certainly consider such reassurances to be considered worthwhile now, even though they come four years and thousands of lives too late.