Foiled by the CIA

The affidavit outlines the overlapping claims of numerous agents that the CIA impeded law enforcement efforts that could have prevented the attacks. Several former agents recalled being blocked by the agency from sharing intelligence about the hijackers with the rest of the FBI.

The CIA knew from wiretaps that two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Halid al-Mindhar, had multiple entry visas letting them travel to the United States, one former agent said, but didn’t pass it on to the bureau. Two other agents alleged that the CIA withheld information about the two men’s connection to the planner of the October 2000 al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole, which, if known, would have turned the case into a criminal investigation for the FBI to pursue.

One of those agents recalled a meeting with the CIA in which they were shown photos of three suspected terrorists, two of which would turn out to be future hijackers al-Hazmi and al-Mindhar. When the agent, referred to in the affidavit as CS-12, asked who was placing border crossing alerts on the suspects, which would have notified law enforcement about their entry into the United States, they were told no one was.

Later, when that same agent came across an electronic communication flagging that the two hijackers had entered the country, they were ordered to delete it immediately, because, having been obtained from intelligence sources, the dispatch could only be read by intelligence agents.

A “former senior FBI official” likewise told Canestraro that the CIA sat on the news that the hijackers had entered the United States in 2000. Why did the CIA so intensely gatekeep information on the future hijackers? That same official bluntly asserted that the agency was trying to recruit the two as intelligence sources. CS-12 recounted that he was frustrated in a conference call with FBI headquarters, in which they were ordered to “stand down” and stop looking for al-Mindhar, because the government was pursuing an intelligence gathering investigation on the suspect — something outside of the agent’s law enforcement remit.

In fact, multiple other witnesses told Canestraro that the CIA was hell-bent on infiltrating al-Qaeda. That includes not only two former FBI special agents, but also Bush’s chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke, who recalled that deputy CIA director Cofer Black told him prior to September 11 that the agency had no human intelligence sources in the terrorist group, and that “he was resolved to address this situation and penetrate Al Qaeda with informants,” Canestraro recounted.

It also included a former CIA official who had worked in the agency’s “Usama bin Laden [UBL] station,” tasked with keeping an eye on and combating the terrorist leader, who told Canestraro “there was extensive pressure from CIA management to develop human sources inside of Al-Qaeda,” according to the affidavit.

Though far from definitive, these allegations line up with theories about the lead-up to September 11 that have long floated around, including in Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy’s 2018 book, The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror. Drawing similarly on claims from former officials and agents — some of whom, Hettena points out, almost certainly overlap with Canestraro’s own sources — Nowosielski and Duffy had at the time made a somewhat speculative case that a failed CIA recruitment effort had accidentally facilitated the attacks.

Friends in High Places

The disclosure may also shed further light on the role of the Saudi government, whose complicity in the attacks was confirmed last year in a declassified 2017 report from the FBI. According to Canestraro’s sources, since the CIA is legally barred from conducting intelligence operations on domestic soil, they circumvented this by having the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), the principal Saudi intelligence agency with which the CIA had a close relationship, do their work for them.

What this meant in practice was that Omar al-Bayoumi — the Saudi national who helped the two hijackers settle in the United States and was revealed as a GIP asset in last year’s disclosures — was paid generously via the Saudi embassy. That embassy was run by Prince Bandar “Bush” bin Sultan Alsaud, nicknamed for his close relationship with the Bush family, and through whom al-Bayoumi was being paid to co-opt al-Hazmi and al-Mindhar by pretending he was in favor of their cause, so they could become CIA sources on the inside of al-Qaeda.

This is allegedly the context for al-Bayoumi’s highly suspicious chance meeting with the two hijackers in a Los Angeles restaurant, as well as the extraordinary assistance he lent them afterward, which included helping them get housing, bank accounts, and driver’s licenses, cosigning their lease, giving them financial help, and even paying their first month’s rent and security deposit. This was the theory Clarke put out publicly, disclosing to Canestraro that it earned him an angry phone call from then CIA director George Tenet, who didn’t deny the charge.