Tag: Louis Freeh

5 January 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

The famous Malaysia meeting of “known” terrorists begins. Khalid al-Mihdhar, a Saudi national who was expected to be one of the 9/11 pilots, arrives in Kuala Lumpur from Dubai—going to Evergreen Park, a condominium complex 20 miles south of the city. There he is joined by Nawaf al-Hazmi, another Saudi (and another designated pilot); as well as by Walid bin Attash (“Khallad”), a bin Laden confidant.

The purpose of the meeting is still unclear, though the CIA was tipped off by Emirati intelligence that suspected terrorist al-Mihdhar was traveling via Dubai to an al Qaeda meeting. The Emiratis photograph his passport and provide it to U.S. intelligence—it contained a multiple-entry visa for the United States, something that no one seems to take note of until much later.

During the Kuala Lumpur meetings, Malaysian authorities provide surveillance and photographs of the participants. CIA officers in Malaysia write several contemporaneous reports over multiple days of an important al Qaeda meeting, and the meeting is prominent enough that FBI director Louis Freeh is personally briefed on February 6th. Somehow though, the FBI is never “formally” alerted as to Mihdhar’s American visa, and by the time the two (Mihdhar and Hazmi) fly from Malaysia to Thailand to Los Angeles, they are lost to U.S. intelligence, no one having thought of informing authorities to watchlist them.

Mihdhar and Hazmi would go on to San Diego a few days later and begin English-language and flight training. They would fail at both and were eventually converted into being “musclemen” aboard the hijacked airliners. There would be a last-minute flurry in August 2001 to locate the two.

13 December 1998

Posted on by William Arkin

 

FBI director Louis Freeh briefs White House national security advisor Sandy Berger about the conclusion that Iran and Hizballah were behind the terrorist attack at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

According to Freeh, Berger asks, “Who knows about this,” saying the Bureau’s conclusions seem to be hearsay. Later, Berger convenes a meeting including Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Henry (Hugh) Shelton, and CIA director George Tenet.

Freeh writes: “I thought that we were meeting to discuss what our next move would be, given the fact that we now had solid evidence that Iranians, with involvement at the highest official levels, had blown up nineteen Americans. But I was wrong. The meeting started with how to deal with the press and Congress, should news of Iranian involvement in the Khobar murders leak outside of the room.”

Freeh says that Shelton invited him to the ‘tank’ at the Pentagon to brief the Joint Chiefs on Iranian sponsorship. There, Marine Corps commandant Chuck Krulak said he would do whatever was necessary to bring the Khobar bombers to justice, “even if that meant taking on the White House.” (My FBI, pp. 29ff) Nothing was really ever done. The Iran connection faded into history.

19 November 1999

Posted on by William Arkin

 

FBI Director Louis Freeh announces that he is creating a new “Investigative Services Division” to “coordinate the FBI’s international activities, integrate and substantially strengthen its analytic capabilities, and oversee the Bureau’s crisis management functions.”

The reorganization is the beginning of a long road on the part of the Bureau to build up its intelligence capacities, a shift that did not really occur until after 9/11. The FBI’s importance as an intelligence producer was made all the more central given its role in investigating overseas terrorism strikes and in pursuing terrorist suspects in the United States, particularly in the terrorism expertise of the New York field office. But it saw its collection of information solely as part of building cases for prosecution and the “intelligence” derived was generally not shared with the rest of the government.

The post-9/11 Congressional Joint Inquiry (p. 113) labeled the FBI’s “chronic inability to perform serious intelligence analysis,” even internally, as a problem. There have been many post-9/11 reorganizations of the FBI’s intelligence infrastructure, and field intelligence groups have been created in every field office. But ultimately the greatest impact—two decades later—is the FBI’s domestic intelligence apparatus that is focused on immediate and not “strategic” analysis. Much of that effort has little to do with terrorism, or at least with foreign terrorism.

1 October 1997

Posted on by William Arkin

 

FBI director Louis Freeh warns that Russian organized crime networks are growing and that they pose a menace to U.S. national security. He says that Russian syndicates are forging ties with the Italian mafia and Colombian drug cartels. Though Freeh would become personally involved in terrorism investigations after the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, 1998 African embassy, and October 2000 USS Cole attacks, his personal focus remains organized crime, and—under Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft before 9/11—on pornography.

Freeh would leave office on June 25, 2001 seven years into his ten-year term. The FBI then had an acting director until September 4, when Robert Mueller was confirmed as the sixth director, just a week before 9/11.