Tag: Malaysia

13 January 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

A CIA operational cable, “Efforts to Locate al-Mihdhar,” is issued, admitting that “known” terrorist Khalid al-Mihdhar (spotted in the United Arab Emirates and in Malaysia, and then lost thereafter) is on the loose.

The CIA’s understanding of al-Mihdhar, and their evident lack of concern that the Saudi national possesses an American visa, is one of the great mysteries of 9/11.

The Agency sleuths state in their cable that Mihdhar flew to Bangkok, Thailand with at least two other al Qaeda operatives. The cable also speculated that Mihdhar met with an Iraqi Fedayeen Colonel in Malaysia, later found to be a case of false intelligence and mistaken identity. But the Iraqi connection would dog and confuse U.S. intelligence for another four years.

The CIA also speculated that Mihdhar was in Malaysia to discuss some kind of maritime attack plan (now known to be false), though “Khallad” (who was shepherding around Mihdhar and his partner Nawaf al-Hazmi) was later involved in the attack on the USS Cole.

8 January 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar leave Malaysia on a flight to Bangkok. It is the last time that the CIA “sees” the two. There is much written about the two: about the Malaysia meeting, about their visas, about intelligence not read, not passed on, and about mistakes in not recognizing their true purpose. It is worth a book in itself, but suffice it to say that the post-9/11 recriminations about the CIA not telling the FBI, and about the two not sharing information, is only a small piece of the multiple failures, ones that ultimately allowed everyone to say that domestic rules were to blame for the gigantic failure, rather than that the officers involved—and their bosses—just didn’t do their jobs, didn’t recognize the terrorists, didn’t understand the plotting, didn’t follow them into the United States, and didn’t, even a year later, see Mihdhar leaving the United States prior to 9/11 and then returning as a tourist in July 2001.

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.

19 October 2000

Posted on by William Arkin
Zacarias Moussaoui

 

A Frenchmen named Zacarias Moussaoui (who was arrested on August 16, 2001 in Minnesota and considered by many to be the “20th” 9/11 hijacker) shows up in Malaysia and stays at the same condo that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi stayed at in January before they flew to the U.S. (At the time, Malaysian police surveilled the condo and shared information with the CIA about the mysterious arrival of two jihadis.)

The CIA had already concluded that the owner of the condo, Yazid Sufaat, was associated with al Qaeda, but the January trip had been forgotten by October and Sufaat was no longer being watched. He provides Moussaoui with fake identification papers in anticipation of his undertaking flight training in Malaysia. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 225), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was dissatisfied with Moussaoui’s own terrorist plotting and recalled him to Pakistan, then directing him to go to the United States for flight training.

Moussaoui then received fake papers from Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company, stating that he was appointed Infocus Tech’s marketing consultant in the United States. He arrives in the U.S. in the beginning of 2001 and starts flight training in Norman, Oklahoma.

Moussaoui was a student at Airman Flight School until May 2001 but he is not believed to ever have actually crossed paths with any of the 9/11 hijackers. His initial arrest a month before 9/11 was for immigration violations, not terrorism related. Had the FBI or the intelligence community (IC) been able to “connect the dots”—al Qaeda connections, training in Afghanistan, direction from KSM, the same condo in Malaysia, flight school in the U.S.—perhaps the 9/11 plot could have been unraveled. The conventional history of 9/11 is that legal constraints impeded the sharing of information and that structural deficiencies in organization were to blame for very narrow mistakes made in Washington and around the IC. The truth is that incompetence, sloth, and disbelief masked the connections, only discovered after 9/11.