San Diego-based Hijackers Were al-Qaeda 'Veterans'

by Toby Eckert
Copley News Service
October 17, 2002



Two Sept. 11 hijackers initially based in San Diego were al-Qaeda "veterans" possibly groomed to carry out a different attack before being drawn into the hijacking plot, CIA Director George Tenet said in congressional testimony released Thursday.

Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar "received special training in Afghanistan in the latter half of 1999," along with a key planner of the attack on the USS Cole and one of the men who carried out the suicide bombing of the destroyer as it refueled in Yemen in October 2000, Tenet said.

He did not indicate what type of attack al-Midhar and Alhazmi may have been preparing for before becoming part of the Sept. 11 plot or why it may have been aborted. Other law enforcement officials have said they believe the pair were targeting a nuclear aircraft carrier at San Diego's naval base, presumably the John C. Stennis. "It's just speculation," said a CIA spokesman. "They went to San Diego, they were hanging around there and we don't know what they did."

Tenet's comments on what the CIA has learned about Alhazmi and al-Midhar since the attacks were contained in secret testimony he gave to a joint House-Senate intelligence panel in June. A declassified version was released Thursday.

Alhazmi and al-Midhar, who were aboard the plane that smashed into the Pentagon, have emerged as central figures in the panel's investigation of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures. New details have also emerged about the central role investigators believe the two Saudi nationals - who Tenet said grew up together in Mecca - had in the plot, including al-Midhar's possible coordination of the non-pilot hijackers.

Although al-Midhar and Alhazmi received some flight training, they proved inept and were replaced as possible pilots by Hani Hanjour, Tenet said. Hanjour also spent time in San Diego.

Congressional investigators have zeroed in on the CIA's failure to relay crucial information about Alhazmi and al-Midhar - including their known or presumed presence in the United States - to the FBI and other agencies for more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks.

In public testimony before the panel Thursday, Tenet acknowledged that the CIA's handling of intelligence about Alhazmi and al-Midhar was "one of our mistakes" and that the two should have been put on terrorist watch lists sooner than three weeks before the Sept. 11 attack.

A March 2000 cable alerting CIA headquarters that Alhazmi had entered the United States went unread because it was labeled "information only," Tenet said.

But he stood behind claims that the agency provided a copy of al-Midhar's passport, including his multiple-entry U.S. visa, to the FBI "for further investigation" in January 2000, after al-Midhar and Alhazmi were spotted at an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia.

Eleanor Hill, who is directing the congressional probe, said none of the CIA or FBI personnel directly involved in the matter recalls the information about al-Midhar being sent or received.

Hill has also testified that the National Security Agency did not immediately share information it had linking Alhazmi with Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network.

NSA Director Michael V. Hayden said Thursday that the 1999 information was "unexceptional in its contents." But by the time of the Malaysia meeting, al-Midhar, Alhazmi and Alhazmi's brother Salim were "in our sights," known to be associated with al-Qaeda "and we shared this information with the (intelligence) community," Hayden told the congressional panel.

Salim Alhazmi was also aboard the plane that hit the Pentagon.

In his June testimony, Tenet said Nawaf Alhazmi and al-Midhar were "involved with al-Qaeda for several years before" Sept. 11. After traveling in the mid-1990s to Bosnia, where Muslims were embroiled in an ethnic war, their involvement with al-Qaeda intensified, he said.

Both went to Afghanistan and swore loyalty to bin Laden. They returned to Saudi Arabia in early 1999 and, in April of that year, obtained visas from the U.S. consulate in Jeddah.

Tenet said the training they received in Afghanistan later in 1999 "may have been facilitated" by Khallad bin-Atash, thought to be a key planner of the Cole attack. Bin-Atash also attended the January 2000 Malaysia meeting with Alhazmi and al-Midhar.

The CIA learned in 1999 that Alhazmi and al-Midhar were planning to meet in Malaysia, but at that point knew only their first names and that they were suspected bin Laden operatives, Tenet said.

Al-Midhar was placed under surveillance and in early 2000, just before he arrived in Malaysia, the CIA obtained a copy of his passport, including his U.S. visa, Tenet said.

"It was not until 5 March 2000 that we obtained information from one of our overseas stations that enabled us to identify "Nawaf"' as Nawaf Alhazmi, Tenet said, referring to the cable to CIA headquarters that went unread.

Al-Midhar and Alhazmi entered the United States through Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000.

The Malaysia meeting "took on greater significance" in December 2000, when the investigation of the Cole bombing linked some of al-Midhar's "Malaysia connections with Cole bombing suspects," Tenet said.

Through a human intelligence source, the CIA was able to confirm the link between al-Midhar and Alhazmi and one of the suspected chief planners of the Cole attack.

"This was the first time that CIA could definitively place (Alhazmi and al-Midhar) with a known al-Qaeda operative," Tenet said.

Still, the CIA did not forward their names for inclusion on terrorist watch lists until Aug. 23, 2001, after a review of intelligence about the Malaysia meeting.

The suspicion that Alhazmi and al-Midhar were initially plotting a different attack stems from the fact that they didn't fit the profile of most of the other Sept. 11 hijackers, Tenet said.

Alhazmi and al-Midhar were involved with al-Qaeda for years, received special training, obtained U.S. visas far earlier, interacted more with the local Arab population in San Diego and did not start flight training until after they had been in the United States for three months.

Copyright 2002 Copley News Service

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