NSA knew Nawaf Al Hazmi intended to hijack US airliners?

[KJF]

I noticed this today regarding Nawaf Al Hazmi, one of the alleged hijackers of American 77, which hit the Pentagon:

"Al Hazmi was also well known to the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. Their signals intelligence operators had intercepted a message in 1999 proving that al Hazmi was an al Qa'ida terrorist and that he was plotting to hijack American airlines. They had, however, apparently not told the CIA or FBI."

It's taken from page 386 of a book called "Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups", by Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, a veteran UK and NATO intelligence officer. Colonel Hughes-Wilson devotes a chapter of the book to 9/11 and mostly buys the official conspiracy theory, with a couple of reservations.

It is well-known that the NSA intercepted some calls made by Nawaf Al Hazmi (as well as at least one of the other hijackers) and that it knew he was an Al Qaeda operative, but I've never seen the bit about them knowing he was planning to hijack planes before. Has anyone else seen this anywhere else?

[Sinti]

1. Yep, you can find a story about it via Reuters

This is not the only "blunder" regarding 9/11. The number of "blunders" is so voluminous it will make your head spin. At some point you have to say they are more than just honest mistakes.

Here's a story:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/cia_knew_about_3_hijackers_in_2000.htm

This is the original link but it's now dead. Can't bring it up via Archive.org or I would have given you that one.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020920/ts_nm/attack_intelligence_dc_20

[KJF]

2. Thanks

The story you linked to doesn't mention the NSA intercept about Nawaf Al Hazmi intending to hijack planes, but it does contain this very good quote:

"The failure to watchlist al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi or, at a minimum, to advise the FBI of their travel to the United States, is perhaps even more puzzling because it occurred shortly after the peak of intelligence community alertness to possible millennium-related terrorist attacks," Hill said.

btw, have you seen this:
http://www.outragedmoderates.org/2006/02/dod-staffers-notes-from-911-obtained.html
Click on the link for 9:53 and read Cambone's 5 lines about AA 77.

[Sinti]

4. Thanks, that's a great link.

It kind of makes me want to beat my head against a wall, yet I feel compelled to know. There's an overwhelming quantity of evidence proving they purposefully ignored the threat under their nose. I just can't see how anyone can claim it was a series of honest mistakes.

[KJF]

6. There was one MSM story about the FOIA request

It was in the Guardian, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,,1716841,00.html
Unfortunately, it took the Saddam Hussein angle and didn't mention that 3 AA 77 hijackers had been followed "since Millenium and Cole".

My guess is that the 3 hijackers they (whoever "they" is) were following were the Al Hazmi brothers and Al Mihdhar. According to the 9/11 CR, they were only followed for about a week in early 2000, then the CIA lost interest.
One of them could also be Hani (maybe instead of Salem Al Hazmi), who was known to the FBI, as were Nawaf Al Hazmi and Al Mihdhar. AFAIK no intelligence agency was aware of Majed Moqed Al Harbi before 9/11, although his family is apparently big in Saudi Al Qaeda, which his cousin headed at one point.

The Cole bomber one of them associated with was either Khallad (operational commander) or Fahad Al Quso (supposed to video the attack, but fell asleep, was arrested in autumn 2000). Probably Khallad - the CIA and FBI apparently had pictures of him with Al Mihdhar (taken in Malaysia in January 2000).

Given the storm about the Downing Street Memos - "fixing the facts around the policy" - it is really strange that there hasn't been more action on this. I've only seen it blogged a couple of times, but it's front page news really.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Interesting...wouldn't Richard Clarke have been aware of this?

If this was in '99, where was Clinton's team on this? Wouldn't they have passed it on?

You have to wonder how much the Bush administration really knew, but chose to ignore on purpose.

[KJF]

5. Good point

I don't recall Clarke mentioning it in his book and I can't find any mentions of it now (I just had a quick look). A brief search on the internet didn't reveal any mentions of the Al Hazmis and Al Mihdhar by Clarke. Now that is a little odd.

The most obvious time to watchlist the Al Hazmis and Al Mihdhar was in January 2000, after they were (temporarily?) lost in Bangkok (if they were lost at all), which was a year before Bush came into office. To me, the jury is still out on whether some organisation (probably the CIA) was trying to do something with the hijackers (like follow them), whether they LIHOP, or something else that hasn't occurred to me yet.

[gbwarming]

7. He says it was intercepted by signals intelligence..

I think sigint is by definition not very interested in the contents of messages except to identify the members of the network, and is useful against coded communications which can't even be decrypted at the time. It must be far easier to use computers to monitor satellite and telephone routing signals than to actually human translate, interpret and collate the message content.

It could be that the conversation was recorded but not translated/analyzed for content until after 9/11. One could read the quote above as meaning he was "well known to the NSA" as a phone number or voice signature without knowledge of either his name or exact physical location in the same way that a fingerprint found at a string of crime scenes may not be on file until its owner gets arrested and printed for something else at a later date.

That's one possibility - OR maybe they actually had the message interpreted in '99. We deserve to know.

[KJF]

8. Hard to be 100% sure...

... but the NSA was intercepting, translating and disseminating Nawaf Al Hazmi's calls in 1999 - this is how the CIA found him and al Mihdhar.

The 9/11 Commission Report says:
"In late 1999, the National Security Agency (NSA) analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East, indicating that several members of "an operational cadre" were planning travel to Kuala Lumpar in early January 2000. Initially, only the first names of three were known - "Nawaf", "Salem" and "Khalid". NSA analysts surmised correctly that Salem was Nawaf's younger brother. Seeing links not only with al Qaeda but specifically with the 1998 embassy bombings, a CIA desk officer guessed that "something more nefarious (was) afoot."
(p. 181)

So either:
(1) The call actually took place and it was not translated at the time (although some other calls were translated) and this has been covered up (I haven't found any mention of it elsewhere, although it should have been mentioned);
(2) The call actually took place and it was translated at the time (as well as some other calls) and this has been covered up;
(3) The call never took place (although other similar ones did) and Hughes-Wilson is just a little mixed up.

I can't decide. If the same information could be found elsewhere, then that would make (3) less likely.