[ppi] [ppiindia] CIA given data long before Sept. 11

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      CIA given data long before Sept. 11
         James Risen and Eric Lichtblau/NYT  February 24, 2004




German tipped U.S. on future hijacker

WASHINGTON U.S. investigators were given the first name and telephone number
of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on
New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to
aggressively pursue the lead, according to U.S. and German officials.
.
The information - the earliest known signal that the United States received
about any of the hijackers - has now become an important element of an
independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11,
officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it
may have represented a missed opportunity for U.S. officials to penetrate
the German terror cell that was at the heart of the plot. And it came
roughly 16 months before the hi jacker showed up at U.S. flight schools.
.
.
The warning to U.S. intelligence authorities about Shehhi was first reported
last August in Germany by the magazine Stern and the public television
station ARD.
.
In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the CIA the first name and
telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.
The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by
the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic
extremist in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important plotters behind
the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.
.
After the Germans passed the information on to the CIA, they never heard
back from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior
German intelligence official said. ''There was no response'' at the time,
the official said. After receiving the tip, the CIA decided that ''Marwan''
was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but never tracked him down,
U.S. officials say.
.
The information concerning Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of
United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World
Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other
hijackers, including two others who were discovered to have attended a
meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000.
.
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has received
information concerning the 1999 Shehhi tip, and is actively investigating
the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission.
.
U.S. intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are
uncertain whether Shehhi's phone was ever monitored. A U.S. official said:
''The Germans did give us the name 'Marwan' and a phone number but we were
unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the
U.A.E., which he was known to use.''
.
The incident is of particular importance because Shehhi was an important
member of the Qaeda cell in Hamburg at the heart of the Sept. 11 plot. Close
surveillance of Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot
leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Shehhi's roommate.
.
A native of the United Arab Emirates, Shehhi moved to Germany in 1996 and
was almost inseparable from Atta in their time there. Both men attended the
wedding of a fellow Muslim at a radical mosque in Hamburg in October 1999 -
an event considered an important gathering for the Sept. 11 hijacking teams
just as the plotting was getting under way.
.
U.S. and European authorities believe that Shehhi played a critical role in
the Sept. 11 plot and was actively involved in its planning and logistics.
.
''The Hamburg cell is very important'' to the investigation of the Sept. 11
attacks, said Zelikow. The intelligence on Shehhi ''is an issue that's
obviously of importance to us, and we're investigating it,'' he added.
.
Asked whether U.S. intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the
information about Shehhi, Zelikow said, ''We haven't reached any
conclusions.''
.
The joint congressional inquiry that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was
told about the matter by the CIA, but only a small part of the information
was de classified and made public in the panel's final report in December
2002, several officials said. The public report mentioned only that the CIA
had received Shehhi's first name, but made no mention that the agency had
also obtained his telephone number.
.
Officials involved with the work of the joint congressional investigation
made it clear that the publication of a more complete version of the story
was the subject of a declassification dispute with the CIA. A former
official involved with the joint congressional inquiry acknowledged that
having a telephone number for one of the hijackers was far more significant
than simply having a first name.
.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA, FBI and other government agencies have
been heavily criticized for failing to put together fragmentary pieces of
information they received from a wide array of sources in order to predict
or prevent the terrorist plot.
.
The joint congressional panel that investigated the attacks concluded that
the U.S. authorities ''missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by
denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel
the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United
States; and finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden
the homeland against attack.''
.
Until now, the most highly scrutinized failure has related to the CIA's
handling of information about a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January
2000 that involved two of the men who would become hijackers, Khalid
al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi. (it has also been spelled Nawaf al-Hazmi in
Times stories) Although the CIA identified the two men as suspected
extremists, the agency did not request that they be placed on the government
's watch lists to keep them out of the United States until late August 2001.
.
By that time, they were both already in the country. In addition, while the
two men lived in San Diego, their landlord was an FBI informant, but the
bureau did not learn of their terrorist links from the informant.
.
But unlike the leads to Midhar and Alhazmi in San Diego, the earlier
information about Shehhi could have taken investigators to the core of the
Qaeda cell at a time when the plot was probably in its formative stages. In
addition to Atta, Shehhi also shared an apartment in Hamburg with Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, another plotter who was blocked from entering the United States
and so missed out on joining the hijackers.
.
According to testimony in Germany in December in a criminal case related to
the Sept. 11 attacks, Shehhi was one of only four members of the Hamburg
cell who knew about the attacks beforehand.
.
Shehhi, a native of the United Arab Emirates, and Atta traveled to
Afghanistan in 2000 to train at a camp with several other Sept. 11 plotters.
And after re turning to Germany, Shehhi made an ominous reference to the
World Trade Center in a conversation with a Hamburg librarian, saying:
''There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me,'' according to
German authorities.
.
Soon after, Shehhi, Atta and another plotter, Ziad al-Jarrah, began
e-mailing several dozen U.S. flights schools from Germany to inquire about
enrollment, and they arrived in the United States later in 2000 to begin
flight training.
.
The connection that the Germans established between Shehhi and Zammar, the
Islamic extremist in Hamburg, is also significant because of Zammar's role
in the Hamburg cell. An imposing man known as the Bear because he weighed
more than 140 kilograms, or about 300 pounds, Zammar was a advocate of jihad
during talks in Hamburg mosques, and he gave Muslims advice on how to go to
Afghanistan for military training. He is in custody in Syria. The New York
Times


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