After 10:03 a.m. September 11, 2001: FAA Liaison Refuses to Share the Passenger Lists for the Hijacked Planes with the CIA

Robert White, the FAA liaison at the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) at CIA headquarters, refuses to provide the CIA with passenger lists for the four planes that were hijacked this morning. Richard Blee, chief of Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, wants copies of the passenger lists for the hijacked planes. He, along with Alec Station’s analysts at the CTC, are now certain al-Qaeda was behind the attacks on the United States, but they need proof of this before they can pass on their assessment to the White House. White has the capability to access airline passenger manifests, and so Blee asks him to access the FAA’s computers and share the manifests for the hijacked planes with him. White, however, refuses. He maintains that “[t]hese were American airliners filled with American citizens and under the law the CIA could not access private information about US persons.” Blee is frantic when he is told this. He therefore asks FBI agents deployed to Alec Station to see if they can get the information he requires through their channels. [9/11 Commission, 10/8/2003 ; Coll, 2018, pp. 33] The FBI agents will subsequently obtain the passenger manifests and pass them on to the CIA (see (1:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [Daily Beast, 8/12/2011; Council on Foreign Relations, 9/12/2016; Coll, 2018, pp. 35]