Top Intel Experts: GOP ‘Covering Their Ass’ on Torture Investigation

February 4, 2002

The Battle Back Home

On the eve of the State of the Union address, the Democratic leader looks for chinks in a popular war president's armor

Author: Howard Fineman
With Debra Rosenberg and Martha Brant
Newsweek
Edition: U.S. Edition
Section: National Affairs
Page: 28

Dick Cheney was on the line, and it wasn't to chitchat. The vice president rarely calls the Senate leader--a Democrat he dismisses as an "obstructionist"--so Tom Daschle knew the topic was important when he hurried into his Capitol office. What he heard was a plea, and a warning. The Senate will soon launch hearings on why we weren't prepared for, and warned about, September 11. The intelligence committee will study the matter, but mostly behind closed doors. Cheney was calling to pre-emptively protest public hearings by other committees. If the Democrats insisted, Bush administration officials might say they're too busy running the war on terrorism to show up. Press the issue, Cheney implied, and you risk being accused of interfering with the mission. Daschle was noncommittal and, after the call, unmoved. "Intelligence is just a piece of it," he said. "People need to know what happened."

CONTINUED...

http://www.wanttoknow.info/020204newsweek

How U.S. Counterterrorism Failed on 9/11, and Why the Bush Administration Can't Fix It
September 26, 2002


PART 1: ANATOMY OF THE NOT SO UNTHINKABLE CRIME

On 9/11, a long and complex chain of events came together when four hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Central Pennsylvania, an attack which left 3,000 innocent people dead. That eventuality was neither unforeseeable nor unforeseen, which is the overwhelming message of the Congressional Joint Intelligence Committee Staff Statement released on Wednesday, September 18, 2002. Shocking testimony heard two days later by the panel showed that investigators in the FBI office in New York, then the Bureau's antiterrorism center, received orders from Washington on August 29, 2001 to abort a criminal probe of the hijackers after NY agents learned that one of the terrorist suspects ­ whose identity and intentions had been known to the CIA for 18 months - had reentered the US on July 4.

Contrary to repeated Bush Administration claims since September 11, 2001, US intelligence had specific, credible and corroborated forewarning that terrorists planned to use airliners to attack New York and Washington, DC area targets. The 9/11 mode of terrorist attack had, in fact, been known of and planned for by American intelligence years in advance. Among the findings of the Congressional staff report released last week:

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The Crimes of 9/11
March 1, 2003


The recently-concluded Congressional Joint 9/11 Inquiry confirmed that ranking Bush Administration national security and intelligence officials negligently mishandled counterterrorism operations, misconduct which makes them liable to criminal prosecution and huge civil damages .

Within days of the crime, the White House was hard at work obstructing an independent commission of inquiry, and drafting legislation which would indemnify federal agents for offenses that contributed to the loss of 3,000 innocent lives on September 11, 2001. A draft of the so-called "Patriot II Act" ("The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003") was leaked from the Justice Department in February. That document shows that the Bush Administration is now trying to legalize previously unlawful official acts, in particular, a domestic surveillance operation of al-Qaeda hijackers conducted without warrants, and other crimes of negligent homicide and obstruction of justice that flowed from that misguided operation. Taken together, the intelligence crimes of 9/11 and the legal cover-up that followed are an enormous and growing scandal just waiting to explode inside the Bush White House.

A Warrantless Domestic Surveillance Operation (01/15/00 - 9/11/01)

Testimony heard by the joint 9/11 committee in September and October revealed that the CIA and FBI had been running a foreign surveillance operation involving several key al-Qaeda hijackers and operations directors, and this covert operation apparently was allowed to spill over into the U.S. .

Criminal violations of federal law and agency regulations occurred when CIA and FBI counterterrorism officials assigned to the CIA's Counterrerrorism Center (CTC) failed to promptly obtain warrants to surveil al-Qaeda operatives who had reentered the US on January 15 2000 after attending a terrorist summit held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That meeting was closely watched by US intelligence, an operation that involved eight CIA stations and a half dozen allied agencies.

Tenet testified on October 17 that the CIA along with the FBI knew in advance that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi would be traveling to a planned al-Qaeda planning summit in Malaysia, and that the CIA informed the Bureau al-Mihdhar had been identified as an attendee:

"In December 1999, CIA, FBI, and the Department of State received intelligence on the travels of suspected al-Qa'ida operatives to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. CIA saw the Kuala Lumpur gathering as a potential source of intelligence about a possible al-Qa'ida attack in Southeast Asia. We initiated an operation to learn why those suspected terrorists were traveling to Kuala Lumpur" .
The Malaysia meeting seen by CIA as highly important - senior al-Qaeda figures were in Kuala Lumpur. The operatives there would have routinely been added to the terrorist watch list (denying them entry into the US) - if they had not already been under surveillance. Tenet acknowledges that al-Midhar was already being surveilled:

"In early January 2000, we managed to obtain a photocopy of al-Mihdhar's passport as he traveled to Kuala Lumpur. It showed a US multiple-entry visa issued in Jeddah on 7 April 1999 and expiring on 6 April 2000. We learned that his full name is Khalid bin Muhammad bin 'Abdallah al-Mihdhar.
"We had at that point the level of detail needed to watchlist him-that is, to nominate him to State Department for refusal of entry into the US or to deny him another visa. Our officers remained focused on the surveillance operation, and did not do this."

For unexplained reasons, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, who led the hijacking of AA Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon, were nonetheless subsequently allowed to enter the U.S., where they moved around the country, attending flight training, and in Al-Mindhar's case, was allowed readmission to the US on July 4, 2001 without a proper trainee visa. CIA Director Tenet testified on October 17:

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