Congressional report cites 'missed
opportunities' prior to 9/11
'No one will ever
know what might have happened'
[Keep
researching the facts and come up with your own opinions. Don’t trust these bastards.
They’re liars. Check the lists to see who owns these corrupt, evil
politicians.]
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Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, addressed
reporters.
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WASHINGTON
(CNN) -- U.S.
intelligence agencies, including the FBI and CIA, "missed
opportunities" to disrupt terrorism prior to the September
11, 2001,
attacks, according to a critical congressional report released Thursday.
And, according to the report, senior military
officials were poised to attack terrorist mastermind Osama
bin Laden prior to September 11, but lacked the intelligence they needed to
execute their plans. The report also questions Saudi Arabia's cooperation in earlier terror probes and examines its
link to the hijackers.
The roughly 800-page report does not point to
any single clue that could have definitely thwarted the September 11 plot,
but says "various threads and pieces of information" were either
overlooked or not put together.
"No one will ever know what might have
happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of
information. ... The important point is that the intelligence community, for
a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of
information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and
preventing bin Laden's plan to attack the United
States on September 11, 2001," says the report.
As an example, the report cites contacts some of
the hijackers had with individuals in the United States -- some of whom were already on the FBI's radar screen.
At least 14 people who had contact with six of
the hijackers before the attacks had come to the FBI's attention during
counterterrorism or counterintelligence inquiries.
The report says four of the 14 people were the
focus of active FBI investigations while the hijackers were in the United States. The contacts helped them find housing, open bank
accounts, obtain driver's licenses and locate flight schools, the report says.
But a government official told CNN the FBI doesn't believe any of those
individuals knew of the hijacking plot.
San Diego connection
The report singles out as the intelligence
community's "best chance" to unravel the plot connections that two
of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi
and Khalid Almihdhar,
made as they settled in the San Diego area in January 2000. Both men were among the hijackers
who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
CNN previously reported Alhazmi
and Almihdhar, while in San Diego, lived in a house
belonging to a man who was an FBI informant but who, sources have said, had
no information about the men's intentions.
But one FBI agent who was responsible for the
informant in San Diego told the joint inquiry that he was unaware that
intelligence information was available on the two hijackers before September
11.
"It would have made a huge
difference," the agent said. "We would have immediately opened
investigations."
The intelligence community, for a variety of
reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of
information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering
and preventing Osama bin Laden's
plan to attack the United States on September 11, 2001.
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The report pointedly
notes that 15 of the 19 hijackers "were Saudi nationals who received
visas in Saudi
Arabia,"
and says that some U.S. government personnel described Saudi officials as
"uncooperative" in terror probes prior to September 11, 2001.
The Saudi references -- many details of which
were redacted from the report -- drew an angry response from Prince Bandar
bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, who said the report was being used to "malign our
country and our people."
Redacted
information
One organization representing families who lost
loved ones in the attacks called on the Bush administration to release the
redacted information, particularly details on Saudi Arabia.
"We
seek to uncover facts some powerful people may want hidden, but we are serious about stopping the flow of money from
Saudi Arabia to al Qaeda," said the statement
from 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism.
The report is the result of a 10-month joint
investigation by House and Senate intelligence committees looking into
intelligence and security lapses leading to the mass killings when 19
terrorists commandeered four commercial jets and crashed two of them into the
World Trade Center in New
York and one into
the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people.
Much of the information in the report was
previously made public. But the report -- the product of 5,000 interviews and
a review of nearly 1 million documents -- contains new details and examples.
"The attacks of September 11th could have
been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and
some good luck had been brought to the task," said Sen. Bob Graham, a
former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and one of the leaders
of the joint investigation.
Graham, a Democratic presidential hopeful,
faulted the White House for what he described as its reluctance to declassify
some material, a sentiment that was echoed by House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi, D-California, who also served on the joint panel.
Republican lawmakers, who joined Graham at a
news conference releasing the report, did not criticize the White House, but
said the report highlighted intelligence failures and underscored the need
for further reform.
The report included some 19 recommendations to
bolster counterterrorism efforts; those recommendations were originally
released last year.
"I think the basic tenet that we learned is
a lack of coordination and sharing of information, different cultures in the
community of intelligence," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, a
former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "We have done our
job, and now we have got to do more legislatively and the people who run the
intelligence community have got to do theirs."
In the wake of the September 11 attacks,
Congress approved the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to
increase cooperation between the CIA and FBI and serve as an umbrella for
other agencies that deal with homeland security.
In a written statement, FBI Director Robert
Mueller thanked the joint committee for the report, saying it would generate
a "constructive discussion." He also said the agency has already
implemented or is in the process of implementing many of the recommendations
on improving counterterroism.
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