After losing track of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they left Malaysia in January (they flew to Los Angeles via Bangkok), the CIA gets a belated response from Thailand’s intelligence service with three names, Mihdhar, Hazmi, and one Salah Saeed Mohammed Bin Yousaf. The Thai service reports that Hazmi traveled onward to Los Angeles, arriving on January 15.
It is the first positive identification of al-Hazmi, and certainly suggests that Mihdhar – a “known” jihadi – traveled to the United States as well but coming two months after the CIA so aggressively tracked the two, no one takes much notice of the dispatch, having moved on to other issues. The 9/11 Commission later determines that no one at CIA headquarters pays heed to the cable, and the Agency does not start checking to determine whether Mihdhar is in the U.S. until August 21, 2001, 17 months later.
CIA director Tenet later says: “CIA officers in the field sent this information back to headquarters but included it at the end of a cable that contained routine information. The cable was marked as being for ‘information’ rather than ‘action.’ Unfortunately, no one — not the CIA officers nor the FBI colleagues detailed to CTC — connected the name Nawaf al-Hazmi with the [Malaysia] meeting of eight weeks before.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 197)
(As for Yousaf, he is said to have left Bangkok on January 20 for Karachi, Pakistan. Sometime after 9/11, Yousaf is determined to be Walid bin Muhammad Salih bin Attash aka “Khallad,” the organizer of the USS Cole attack and a close associate of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.)