“In the middle of August [2001], prompted by repeated warnings that al Qaeda was about to strike, CIA director George Tenet ordered investigators to scour their files for any clues to possible upcoming attacks. At that point, the CIA apparently remembered [future 9/11 hijackers Khalid] al-Midhar and [Nawaf] al-Hazmi, and after checking with INS [Immigration […]
Category: quotes
8/23/2001
“On August 23 [2001], DCI [Director of Central Intelligence George] Tenet was briefed about the [potential terrorist Zacarias] Moussaoui case in a briefing titled ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.’ ” The FBI had arrested Moussaoui for overstaying his visa, but Tenet, seeing this as an FBI case, “did not discuss the matter with anyone at […]
8/23/2001
Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “This [information that future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar might be in the U.S.] alarmed us sufficiently that on August 23 [2001] an immediate message went out alerting the State Department, FBI, INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services], Customs and others about the pair. …Even though they were […]
8/23/2001
“In late August [23, 2001], the [potential terrorist Zacarias] Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet] and other top CIA officials under the heading ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.’ Because the [Counterterrorist Center] system was not tuned to comprehend the potential significance of this information, the news had no […]
8/23/2001
Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “CIA did not watchlist [future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf] al-Hazmi and [Khalid] al-Mihdhar until August 23, 2001. FBI did not get into [suspected terrorist Zacarias] Moussaoui’s luggage. The famous Phoenix memo, outlining concerns about terrorists being trained at flight schools, was not shared. The FBI’s effort to find al-Hazmi and […]
8/23/2001
“…for seven months George Tenet’s CIA had been hand-delivering warnings to the president [Bush] about al-Qaeda at a rate of nearly two a week. Tenet might have volunteered one or two additional pieces of information–for example, the report he received on August 23 [2001] that FBI field agents in Minneapolis wanted to investigate an ‘Islamic […]
8/23/2001
“On August 23 [2001]…the CIA finally sent a cable to the FBI warning that [future 9/11 hijackers] Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, photographed at the Malaysian [terrorist summit] meeting in January 2000, were now in the country.” – Peter Lance, 1000 Years For Revenge, Page 410 […]
8/21/2001
After making an unsuccessful warrant request to search potential terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop, FBI Agent and general counsel in the Minneapolis field office, Coleen Rowley, sent an email to FBI headquarters on August 21, 2001, “saying it was ‘imperative’ that the Secret Service be warned that unknown terrorists working with Moussaoui might try to hijack […]
8/21/2001
“The FBI had learned that Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi who had been chief of operations for Al Qaeda since 1996 and was in charge of training thousands of Muslim terrorists, was in touch with a Middle Eastern student at a flight school in Arizona. That alarming piece of information, however, was never forwarded to the […]
8/21/2001
“In the reporting after the [9/11] attacks, the government acknowledged that the CIA had notified the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services] on August 21 [2001] that two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, should be put on the terrorist watch list. Both had been identified on a surveillance tape meeting with an al-Qaeda […]