Former CIA Director George Tenet noted that “In December 1999, intelligence collected…indicated that several men would be traveling to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting to be held in Malaysia early the next month. …With the help of a local intelligence agency, on January 4, 2000, one person whom we initially knew only as ‘Khalid’ was identified. …The local intelligence service copied the man’s passport, which identified him as [future 9/11 hijacker] Khalid al-Mihdhar. …once Khalid al-Mihdhar’s picture and visa information was received by CIA and three FBI officers detailed to the Counterterrorism Center, everyone involved thought it had been sent on as a formal transmission to the FBI. Unfortunately, the transmission was never cleared and not sent to FBI, who could have put Khalid on the watchlist of suspicious persons entering the U.S.”
– George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, Page 195