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Subject: FBI PENTTBOM documents re: San Diego

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Bulletin EdDesk Article
Preview Basics Brief Copy Classification We>rkflow Paper Web CD Log C lean
Subject: Newsweek: 9/1 1 Vol. 121 No. 31
Section: News > Stories By Newsweek
Headline: 9/11: Failure to communicate Word count: 1831
Intro:
Web link: /bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/All/6D85B 1 20C9 142 1 4FCA256D7 1 00 1 73 A62

In January 2000, FBI agents tailing a suspected Qaeda operative in San Diego
thought they'd gotten a break. Their target was spotted chatting with the manager
of Sam's Star Mart, a local Texaco station.

The agents later called the manager, hoping he would tell them about the
conversation, and maybe point them toward other suspicious characters. But the
man wanted nothing to do with them. "It would be a strain" to come in for an
interview, he told them, and refused to give the agents his home address. Faced
with a reluctant witness, the agents called it a day and dropped the matter.
Looking back, maybe that wasn't the best call. Had the G-men hung in just a little
longer, they might have run across one of the manager's recent hires at the Star
Mart: Nawaf Alhazmi, a young Saudi national who was already planning for the
day 20 months later when he would hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it
into the Pentagon.

This is just one of dozens of revealing snapshots to be found in last week's

mammoth congressional report on the failures of 9/11. Many of the stories spelled
out in its 900 pages are by now, nearly two years after the attacks, familiar: the
FBI agent in Phoenix who reported to Washington that large numbers of possible
terrorists were signing up for flight school; the bureau lawyers in Washington who
refused to let agents search the computer of accused 9/11 conspirator Zacarias
Moussaoui; the CIA's failure to tell the FBI that two of the future 9/11 hijackers had
entered the country 20 months before the attacks. Yet the report comes closer
than ever before to answering the painful, lingering question: could the attacks
have been prevented?

The investigation turned up no damning single piece of evidence that would have
led agents directly to the impending attacks. Still, the report makes it chillingly
clear that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies might very well have
uncovered the plot had it not been for blown signals, sheer bungling - and a
general failure to understand the nature of the threat. Richard Clarke, who served
as White House coordinator for counterterrorism under President Clinton, told
congressional investigators that in 2000, he visited a half-dozen FBI field offices
and asked agents what they were doing about Al Qaeda. "I got sort of blank looks
of, 'What is Al Qaeda?1" he said.

Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller responded to the report, declaring the
bureau "a changed organization" that now makes fighting terrorism its top priority.

http://bulletin.mnemsn.com.au/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/0/6d85bl20c914214fca256d7100173a62?Op... 11/19/2003