The US intelligence community releases another National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) dealing with terrorism. It mentions Osama bin Laden on the first page as an emerging threat and points out he might be interested in attacks inside the US. However, the section mentioning bin Laden is only two sentences long and lacks any strategic analysis on how to address the threat. A previous NIE dealing with terrorism was released in 1995 and did not mention bin Laden (see July 1995). [Associated Press, 4/16/2004; 9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 54] The NIE also notes, “Civilian aviation remains a particularly attractive target for terrorist attacks.” [Tenet, 2007, pp. 104] There will be no more NIEs on terrorism before 9/11 despite the bombing of US embassies in Africa in 1998 (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998) and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 (see October 12, 2000). However, there will be some more analytical papers about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission, in particular executive director Philip Zelikow and staffer Doug MacEachin, will be shocked that this is the final NIE on terrorism before the attacks and that, in the words of author Philip Shenon, “no one at the senior levels of the CIA had attempted—for years—to catalog and give context to what was known about al-Qaeda.” MacEachin thinks it is “unforgivable” there is no NIE for four years and that, according to Shenon, “if policy makers had understood that the embassy bombings and the attack on the Cole were simply the latest in a long series of attacks by the same enemy, they would have felt compelled to do much more in response.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 314]
September 15, 2003: 9/11 Commission Staffer Apparently Agrees CIA Withheld Key Intelligence from FBI in Run Up to Attacks
In an interview, a key 9/11 Commission staffer, Doug MacEachin, reportedly agrees with an important witness, FBI agent Ali Soufan, that the CIA deliberately withheld from the bureau the knowledge that al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash had attended al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit and was therefore linked to 9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar. [Soufan, 2011, pp. 301-302] However, the Commission’s final report will call the non-passage of this intelligence “an example of how day-to-day gaps in intelligence sharing can emerge even when there is mutual goodwill.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 267] This interview appears to be the second time the Commission talks to Soufan, which is on September 15, 2003. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 507; Soufan, 2011, pp. 297-302] Soufan discusses the case of “Omar,” a joint FBI-CIA source inside al-Qaeda. At an interview of Omar in January 2001 the CIA learned that bin Attash had attended al-Qaeda’s Malaysia summit in early 2000 (see January 5-8, 2000 and January 4, 2001). However, it then failed to share this with the FBI (see January 5, 2001 and After). Soufan tells the Commission’s staff: “This shows that the CIA knew the significance of Malaysia, Khallad, and Almihdhar but actively went out of their way to withhold the information from us. It’s not a case of just not passing on information. This is information the FBI representative working with the source should have been told about. It was a legal requirement. Instead we were deliberately kept out of the loop.” A staffer responds that the CIA claims it shared the information, and Soufan asks whether the Commission checked the “regular cables” between the field and CIA headquarters. After the staffer says they have, Soufan asks whether the Commission has checked the “operational traffic,” and MacEachin responds, “That must be it.” Other staffers are initially puzzled by McEachin’s comment, but he explains it to them. Soufan will comment: “Operational traffic refers to cables sent during an operation. The officer will list procedures, leaving a record in case something goes wrong or something needs to be referred to. Because these cables are strictly procedural and not related to intelligence, they would not be sent to the FBI. If someone wanted to hide something from the FBI, that’s where he would put it. Because Doug had worked for the CIA, he knew what operational cables were, while other members of the team might not have.” The Commission later finds that the information about bin Attash was in an operational cable. [Soufan, 2011, pp. 301-302] The reason for the discrepancy between MacEachin’s attitude in the interview of Soufan and the Commission’s final report is unknown.
June 2004: Two More 9/11 Commission Staffers Review Largely Ignored NSA Material, Think It Is Important
9/11 Commission staffer Lorry Fenner, who has been reviewing material the NSA provided to the 9/11 Commission on her own (see January 2004), asks two colleagues to examine information she found in the files indicating some of the 9/11 hijackers traveled through Iran (see January-June 2004). The first is Lloyd Salvetti, the aging head of the CIA’s museum who is on loan to the commission. Fenner asks for his opinion because the review of the NSA information is not her official job at the commission and she is uncomfortable about approaching the commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, over the issue, which she feels is important. Salvetti soon finds that Fenner’s fears are “well-founded” and the NSA files are a “gold mine, full of information about al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups dating back to the early 1990s—material that the commission should have read through months earlier.” He also forms the opinion that there may have been some co-operation between al-Qaeda and elements of Hezbollah and Iran on travel issues. Salvetti then asks another commission staffer, former CIA analyst Doug MacEachin, to look over the material. MacEachin is just as alarmed as Fenner and Salvetti and they realize that, even though the commission must issue its final report very soon, something needs to be done. The three inform both Zelikow and NSA director Michael Hayden, and a group of commission staffers soon spend a day at the NSA (see Between July 1 and July 17, 2004). [Shenon, 2008, pp. 370-3]
After June 17, 2004: 9/11 Commissioners Unsettled by Cheney’s Media Attack over Lack of Al-Qaeda-Iraq Link; Staff Reviews Evidence Again
Several 9/11 Commission members, including chairman Thomas Kean and vice-chairman Lee Hamilton, are alarmed at Vice President Dick Cheney’s response to the commission’s claim that no link exists between Iraq and al-Qaeda (see June 17, 2004). They have no desire to go toe-to-toe with an enraged White House over the question. Hamilton privately asks Doug MacEachin, the principal author of that portion of the report, to go back and sift the evidence again to ensure that he missed nothing that might bear out the White House’s arguments. Publicly, Kean and Hamilton are much more resolute. If Cheney has information that he has not shared with the commission, as Cheney has implied, he needs to turn it over promptly. “I would like to see the evidence that Mr. Cheney is talking about,” Hamilton says. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 381-385] No more evidence is found, and the commission ultimately sticks by their conclusions.
Between July 1 and July 17, 2004: Small Group of 9/11 Commission Staffers Spend Single Day at NSA, Do Not Have Time to Review All Relevant Material
After 9/11 commission staffer Lorry Fenner discovers material apparently related to 9/11 in files made available to the commission by the NSA (see January 2004), a group of commission staff goes to the NSA to have a look at its archives. The group includes Fenner, as well as Lloyd Salvetti and Doug MacEachin, who have already looked at some of the material (see June 2004). The trip is at the weekend just before the commission is to complete its final report, and the group leaves Washington at 7:00 a.m. and stays “virtually all day.” They are given “huge piles of documents” to review. MacEachin will say: “There were stacks and stacks of paper. I was angry I hadn’t seen this before.” This appears to be the only trip made by the 9/11 Commission to the NSA to review documents and many NSA documents go unseen by the Commission. Author Philip Shenon will write: “[What the commission] staff knew… perfectly well, was that the NSA archives almost certainly contained other vital information about al-Qaeda and its history. But there was no time left to search for it. [Executive director Philip] Zelikow would later admit he too was worried that important classified information had never been reviewed at the NSA and elsewhere in the government before the 9/11 commission shut its doors, that critical evidence about bin Laden’s terrorist network sat buried in government files, unread to this day. By July 2004, it was just too late to keep digging.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 373]
