In late December 1999, Khalid Almihdhar was in Yemen and Nawaf Alhazmi was in Karachi, Pakistan. Nawaf planned to leave Karachi for Kuala Lumpur on January 2, and Almihdhar would leave Yemen around the same time and change planes in Dubai. Later, however, Nawaf altered his plans so he would arrive in the Malaysian capital on January 4. CIA officials, working with their Pakistani intelligence counterparts, planned to have Nawaf’s passport scrutinized as he passed through the Karachi airport on that date.
But officials in the CIA’s Islamabad station and its Karachi base never considered the possibility that Nawaf might again change his schedule. Thus, they never bothered to have alternative flights placed under surveillance. As a result, when Nawaf decided to keep to his original schedule and depart Karachi on January 2, no one was watching. By the time Pakistani intelligence agents were in place two days later, Nawaf was long gone. Nawaf apparently flew to Singapore for two nights and continued on to Kuala Lumpur on the fourth.
CIA officials had more luck with Khalid Almihdhar. As planned, he boarded a plane on January 5
at Sana’a’s hulking international airport, leaving behind the sharp smell of wood fires drifting across Yemen’s dry, rocky landscape in winter. Landing at Dubai, the flashy business capital of the United Arab Emirates, he was in the process of transferring to his flight to Kuala Lumpur when he was pulled aside by customs officers. At the request of the American embassy, they took his Saudi Arabian passport and secretly photocopied it before letting him go on his way. UAE officials then passed the copy to the CIA station chief in Dubai, who faxed it on to Alec Station.
What was striking was that Almihdhar’s passport had a multi-entry visa in it for the United States. It was a worrisome fact that he was associated with Al Qaeda and was on his way to what appeared to be a major terrorist meeting. Seeing that the visa had been issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in April 1999, analysts in Alec Station requested that the embassy there fax them a copy of Almihdhar’s visa application, which indicated that his ultimate destination was New York. That Almihdhar, a member of Al Qaeda, had intentions of traveling to the United States, and in particular New York, was obviously something in which the FBI would have been very interested.
When Almihdhar arrived in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, the Malaysian security service, Special Branch, placed him under constant visual surveillance on behalf of the CIA. That same day, Alec Station notified officials around the world that “we need to continue the effort to identify these travelers and their activities . . . to determine if there is any true threat posed.” The cable added that the FBI had been notified. It also said that copies of Almihdhar’s passport and visa were given to the bureau. But this is a point FBI officials vigorously deny. It is a critical issue. An Al Qaeda member was headed for the United States, quite possibly New York, and Alec Station had a copy of his passport and visa.
The issue of whether Alec Station passed the critical Almihdhar passport and visa photocopies to the FBI remains white-hot. “We have documents within the agency that said a photocopy of the passport was sent to the bureau,” said a senior intelligence official. “The bureau says they don’t have any record of getting it. It was sent from Alec Station—the operator who was working the case, the person who was organizing the whole operation. The point is we have the message that says that was done. What we say about it is there is no reason in the world that she would create a contemporary e-mail and then not do it.”
But FBI officials familiar with the issue are just as adamant, and angry, that nothing was passed. “They refused to tell us because they didn’t want the FBI, they didn’t want John O’Neill in particular, muddying up their operation,” said one in a December 2003 interview. “They didn’t want the bureau meddling in their business—that’s why they didn’t tell the FBI. Alec Station worked for the CIA’s CTC. They purposely hid from the FBI, purposely refused to tell the bureau that they were following a man in Malaysia who had a visa to come to America. The thing was, they didn’t want John O’Neill and the FBI running over their case. And that’s why September 11 happened. That is why it happened. . . . They have blood on their hands. They have three thousand deaths on their hands.”
Congressional investigators came down on the side of the FBI. “The weight of the evidence does not support [the CIA’s] assertion.”
“I know someone who did lie,” said an FBI official, “and said she brought documents down to the FBI, and you check the visitors logs and she had never got into the building. . . . She lied about her role. She was a DI person, not an operations person. She lied to the Joint Committee about saying that she went to the FBI saying she brought them information about Almihdhar. And we checked the visitors logs and she was never in the building—[the] headquarters in Washington. Then she said she gave it to somebody else, she said ‘I may have faxed it down—I don’t remember.’”
When Almihdhar and Alhazmi arrived in Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000, the Malaysian security service, Special Branch, placed them under constant visual surveillance on behalf of the CIA. From the airport, they traveled twenty miles south to Evergreen Park, a secluded, palm-rimmed condominium complex next to an eighteen-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The home was the weekend getaway for Yazid Sufaat, who earned a degree in biological sciences from California State University, Sacramento, in 1987. His wife also graduated from the school, with degrees in medical technology and biochemistry.
Although the intelligence service was not able to listen in on what was taking place, the activities of the men seemed suspicious. “We were able to watch what they were doing,” said the senior intelligence official, “but we never knew what they said at that meeting. We were just able to track them, we didn’t know what they were talking about—they acted suspiciously, they were making phone calls outside the apartment, so it looked a little dirty.” Yazid Sufaat was later arrested by Malaysian authorities, who said he had ties to Riduan Isamuddin, a major local terrorist also known as Hambali. They believe that Sufaat was simply a foot soldier who provided housing and false identification letters and helped obtain explosives for members of Al Qaeda.
In Washington, the Kuala Lumpur operation was being followed at the highest levels of the intelligence community and the White House. Updates were circulated to senior officials on January 3 and 5. Rich, the chief of Alec Station, apparently gave briefings on the developments to senior CIA officials. The updates were usually reviewed every day by both Tenet and President Clinton’s national security advisor, Sandy Berger. On January 5 and 6, FBI Director Louis Freeh and other top bureau officials were also briefed. As part of the turf battle, they were told that the CIA was the lead agency for the operation and that if an FBI angle to the case happened to develop, they would let the FBI know. In other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Aside from the issue of whether the CIA told the FBI about the visa, Alec Station was clearly seeking to keep the FBI at arm’s length from the operation, according to a senior intelligence official. “We said to the bureau,” he said, “the guys are here [Kuala Lumpur], this is how many people are involved, we’re tracking them, but it doesn’t look like this has become a criminal matter that should be worrisome to you.” On January 7 and 10, they notified operations officers working on the case in Asia that they had run database searches on the few names that had turned up but thus far no “hits” had developed.
But inexplicably, Alec Station never asked NSA to run the names through its much larger database. And the NSA never bothered to take the initiative when they first obtained the intercepts. If they had, its analysts would quickly have identified “Nawaf” as Nawaf Alhazmi. Then someone could have asked the State Department to run a check on the name. That would have produced the disturbing news that he also had a visa for the United States issued in Jeddah on almost the same day as the one issued to Almihdhar. Thus, at this point, two dangerous members of Al Qaeda were set to come to the United States, but because of turf battles and sloppy work, no alarms had been sounded by Alec Station.
On January 8, Malaysian Special Branch officers following the suspected Al Qaeda members saw three of them suddenly go to the airport and board a flight for Bangkok, Thailand. They quickly notified the local CIA station chief, who asked the Bangkok station for help. The next day, a Sunday, officials in Alec Station sent a message marked “NIAC [for Night Action Required] Immediate”—the second-highest priority under Flash—to Bangkok to emphasize the importance of the operation. NIAC Immediate messages are required to be acted upon no matter what time of day they are received.
From the flight manifest, Special Branch was able to determine that one of them was named Khalid Almihdhar and that another had the name Alhazmi. But no one yet had connected the name “Nawaf” with “Alhazmi.” For the third person, all they were able to get was part of a name—“Khallad.” It was the Arabic word for “silver.” In reality, Khallad was Khallad bin Attash, a Yemeni and hardened member of Al Qaeda who had lost his leg training in bin Laden’s Afghanistan camps and had replaced it with a silver prosthetic leg. He had just come from a failed attempt to sink a U.S. warship, USS
The Sullivans,
in Yemen’s harbor, but it would be an operation that would eventually succeed nine months later against the USS
Cole,
killing seventeen American sailors.
For Alec Station, things went from bad to worse. Despite the importance of the operation, Rich had never bothered to write up and distribute an intelligence report on it—what is known as a TD, or Telegraphic Dissemination. “A TD would have gone to a lot of people,” admitted the senior intelligence officer, “but we didn’t do that.” As a result, when the three members of Al Qaeda arrived in Bangkok, no one had been alerted to watch for either Khalid Almihdhar or Nawaf, the two names they had. And by the time the alert from Kuala Lumpur with the newly acquired names reached the CIA station in Bangkok, the plane had already landed and the passengers had disappeared into the crowded streets of the city.
It was a serious blunder. It was later discovered that the purpose of the meeting was for Khallad bin Attash to rendezvous with two other Al Qaeda members who were to pass him a wad of cash, a portion of which would go to Almihdhar and Alhazmi for their American 9/11 terrorist operation.
Despite losing the key suspects, Rich told senior CIA officials four days later, on January 12, that the surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was continuing. Two days later, he again told his superiors that they were continuing to track the Al Qaeda suspects, but by then Alec Station had no clue where Almihdhar, Alhazmi, and Khallad were and all tracking had ceased.
The agency then asked the Thai intelligence service to put the names on its watchlist and also, belatedly, asked NSA to include the names on its expansive watchlist, but the results were disappointing. Alec Station made no further attempts to locate the missing suspected terrorists.
The sole purpose for setting up Alec Station was to keep track of bin Laden and members of Al Qaeda—and most important, to keep them out of the United States. Yet after NSA managed to pick up the first clue, and after a successful worldwide operation that tracked Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi to Kuala Lumpur, and discovered that at least Almihdhar had a multi-entry visa to enter the United States, Rich completely dropped the ball.
More important, despite the likelihood that Almihdhar was headed for the United States, and possibly New York, Rich never even bothered to submit his name to the State Department’s terrorist watchlist—TIPOFF. It was a dangerous oversight. “What we had was an Al Qaeda guy, all his passport information, and a visa to the U.S.,” said the senior intelligence official. “If you look at the State Department standard for watchlisting, that met it, not a question about that. And we didn’t do that.”
TIPOFF is an intelligence database that receives information on suspected terrorists from U.S. law enforcement, intelligence, and other agencies. By 2001, it contained more than 70,000 names of suspected terrorists who were either members of foreign terrorist organizations, known hijackers, car bombers, assassins, or hostage-takers. It was designed to enhance border security by using secret intelligence and law-enforcement information to identify terrorists. When a Customs officer submits a name into the database, if the name is on the TIPOFF watchlist, a double zero—00—will appear on the officer’s computer. Consular officers must certify that they have checked the TIPOFF systems before issuing visas, and are liable to criminal penalties if they do not. There are no criminal penalties for failure to submit the names of suspected terrorists, however.
Not only did Alec Station not submit Almihdhar’s name, it was later discovered that the agency was chronically delinquent in its submission of such information. Around the same time, the agency was sitting on at least fifty-eight other suspected terrorists without submitting their names. “Sometimes you’re focusing on a question, one question—What were they up to in KL?” said the senior intelligence official. “And you miss another question, which is: What should I do about these guys, what’s the opportunity that I have here?, and they [Alec Station] didn’t focus on that.”
Thus, on January 15, 2000, the first two members of the 9/11 plot, including its leader, Khalid Almihdhar, boarded a United Airlines jet in Bangkok, flew to Los Angeles, and were admitted to the United States with a smile and a wave. They eventually moved into an apartment in San Diego and began their plotting.
At Alec Station, CIA officials assumed the Al Qaeda members were still in Bangkok but never made any follow-up inquiries or pressed the Thai government for more information. Incredibly, the matter was completely dropped. Every now and then, an NSA intercept would turn up with some personal information relating to Almihdhar or Alhazmi, but nothing to indicate where they were or what they were doing. As for Rich, once the Al Qaeda members dispersed and things began falling apart, he simply paid no attention.