Pathways from September 11 to January 6th

Today’s focus is…

…on the 9/11 Commission Report, which gave us a dependable bipartisan
recounting of the lead-up events to the 9/11 attacks. President Obama’s
2014 tribute in this video is a welcome reminder of what government can
do when it acts together in unity. In one way, however, we can detect that
the report failed. That is, it failed to investigate fully the contents of footnote 44
(page 502 of the 9/11 report): one of the most chilling incidents in the lead-up
to September 11, for which thus far we have only rational theories from dependable
sources like Richard Clarke and Ali Soufan, but no clear answer as to why the
CIA clearly and deliberately withheld information from an active FBI criminal
investigation.

In January of 2000 the CIA received a photocopy of a known al-Qaeda member
whose passport contained a visa for travel to the United States. The FBI was not notified.

Read footnote 44:  (Page 502 of the 9/11 Commission Report, footenote 44)

The footnote reads:

44. CIA cable, “Activities of Bin Ladin Associate Khalid Revealed,” Jan. 4, 2000.
His Saudi passport—which contained a visa for travel to the United States—was
photocopied and forwarded to CIA headquarters. This information was not shared
with FBI headquarters until August 2001. An FBI agent detailed to the Bin Ladin
unit at CIA attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI headquarters.
A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information.
Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely
within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI. She
admitted she did not personally share the information and cannot identify who told                                                   her they had been shared. We were unable to locate anyone who claimed to                                                                  have shared the information. Contemporaneous documents contradict the claim                                                          that they were shared.

When the CIA subsequently learned of a second al-Qaeda member who had entered                                            the U.S in March 2000, again, the FBI was not notified.

See more “Recent Posts” in this blog series: Pathways from September 11 to January 6th

Please share your thoughts in Comments below…