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Mon. Sep 09, 2002

The Hijackers and the FBI Informant

The Hijackers and the FBI Informant – "At first, FBI director Bob Mueller insisted there was nothing the bureau could have done to penetrate the 9-11 plot. That account has been modified over time�and now may change again. Newsweek has learned that one of the bureau’s informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers: he was their roommate [...] The two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were hardly unknown to the intelligence community. The CIA was first alerted to them in January 2000, when the two Saudi nationals showed up at a Qaeda ‘summit’ in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia [...] But it wasn’t until Aug. 23, 2001, that the CIA sent out an urgent cable to U.S. border and law-enforcement agencies identifying the two men as ‘possible’ terrorists. By then it was too late. The bureau did not realize the San Diego connection until a few days after 9-11, when the informant heard the names of the Pentagon hijackers and called his case agent. ‘I know those guys,’ the informant purportedly said, referring to Almihdhar and Alhazmi. ‘They were my roommates.’ "

Has anyone else noticed that one year after the attacks, the failures of the FBI and CIA have cost no one their jobs? Nick Denton sure has: "If US intelligence is to become as flexible, ruthless and coordinated as its opponents, bureaucrats will have to be taught a lesson. They respond only to personal reward and punishment, mainly punishment, and it’s time for the training to begin."

"So if you’re the low-level US diplomat who failed to pass on a warning from a Taleban official, you’re fired. Lots of noise? Unfair? Tough. You were the director of the CIA during the greatest intelligence failure in 50 years: you’re out, notwithstanding your personal chemistry with the president. Find out where the memos stopped, and eliminate everyone in the vicinity."

"What the US security services need, just like US corporate world, is a purge so bloody that the lessons will be etched into the minds of trainees for the next 100 years. Let them be terrified, not of the mewling of politically correct children, but of the fierce rage of taxpayers who spend $30bn a year and expect a modicum of competence."

Amen to that. But don’t hold your breath for it to happen.