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t r u t h o u t - NEWSWEEK: FBI Informant Lived With the Hijackers

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The Informant Who Lived With the Hijackers By Michael Isikoff NEWSWEEK Week of September 16th. Issue

1

NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau's informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers.

At first, FBI director Bob Mueller insisted there was nothing the bureau could have done to penetrate the 9-11 plot. That account has been modified over time--and now may change again. NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau's informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers: he was their roommate.

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The connection, just discovered by congressional investigators, has stunned some top counterterrorism officials and raised new concerns about the information-sharing among U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were hardly unknown to the intelligence community. The CIA was first alerted to them in January 2000, when the two Saudi nationals showed up at a Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. FBI officials have argued internally for months that if the CIA had more quickly passed along everything it knew about the two men, the bureau could have hunted them down more aggressively. But both agencies can share in the blame. Upon leaving Malaysia, Almihdhar and Alhazmi went to San Diego, where they took flight-school lessons. In September 2000, the two moved into the home of a Muslim man who had befriended them at the local Islamic Center. The landlord regularly prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account. He was also, sources tell NEWSWEEK, a "tested" undercover "asset" who had been working closely with the FBI office in San Diego on terrorism cases related to Hamas. A senior law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK the informant never provided the bureau with the names of his two houseguests from Saudi Arabia. Nor does the FBI have any reason to believe the informant was concealing their identities. (He could not be reached for comment.) But the FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were renting rooms in the informant's house. (On one occasion, a source says, the case agent called up the informant and was told he couldn't talk because "Khalid"-a reference to Almihdhar-was in the room.) I. C. Smith, a former top FBI counterintelligence official, says the case agent should have been keeping closer tabs on who his informant was fraternizing with-if only to seek out the houseguests as possible informants. "They should have been asking, 'Who are these guys? What are they doing here?' This strikes me as a lack of investigative curiosity." About six weeks after moving into the house, Almihdhar left town, explaining to the landlord he was heading back to Saudi Arabia to see his daughter. Alhazmi moved out at the end of 2000. In the meantime, the CIA was gathering more information about just how potentially dangerous both men were. A few months after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, CIA analysts discovered -in their Malaysia file that one of

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5/15/03

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1 of 1 DOCUMENT Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company The New York Times October 6, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 24; Column 6; National Desk LENGTH: 767 words HEADLINE: THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE INQUIRY; Congress Seeks F.B.I. Data On Informer; F.B.I. Resists BYLINE: By JAMES RISEN DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 BODY: The Federal Bureau of Investigation had a confidential informer who rented rooms in California to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but the bureau is resisting a request from the Congressional committee investigating the attacks to interview the informer and his F.B.I, handler, government officials said. The joint Sept. 11 Congressional committee plans to hold a closed hearing on Wednesday focusing on the F.B.I.'s handling of its San Diego informer, who was the landlord of the hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi a year before the attacks. Several officials said the F.B.I, had rebuffed requests to make the informer available to the committee and would not authorize the agent who was his contact to testify. The F.B.I.'s resistance has led Congressional officials to become more aggressive in trying to find out whether the informer provided clues about the hijackers that the bureau ignored or failed to act on before Sept. 11. An F.B.I, official said the bureau had provided the committee with all the agent's reports on the informer's activities. The official said the F.B.I, was unwilling to allow the informer to testify on principle, fearing it could damage efforts to recruit sources from Arab-American communities. The official said the F.B.I, had not learned the identity of Mr. Midhar or Mr. Alhazmi from the informer, who was known as a "passive source," meaning he was not assigned to obtain specific intelligence but routinely passed on information. The official said the F.B.I, did not have any information indicating that the informer knew anything about the plot or had passed on any details that should have caused his F.B.I, contact to focus more closely on Mr. Midhar or Mr. Alhazmi. But Congressional investigators say the F.B.I.'s efforts to block their inquiry makes them skeptical of the bureau's assertions about the informer. They also say the Justice Department has joined the F.B.I, in fighting the Congressional requests for information related to the matter, escalating tensions. The fight over access to the informer is the latest bitter dispute between the committee and the Bush administration and the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that are the subject of the committee's investigation. Antagonism between the Central Intelligence Agency and the committee became public a week ago after the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, wrote a letter to the committee's leaders, protesting the treatment of a senior C.I.A. officer who had testified about the agency's record on fighting terrorism. Mr. Tenet's letter was in response to a disclosure that the committee's staff had written briefing papers predicting to committee members that Cofer Black, who was until recently the chief of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism center, would "dissemble" in his testimony. Separately, documents made public in federal court in Alexandria, Va., late last month showed that the Justice Department sought unsuccessfully to prevent F.B.I, agents, and the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, from testifying publicly before the joint inquiry.

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washingtonpost.com The Washington Post October 11, 2002, Friday, Final Edition SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A14 LENGTH: 590 words HEADLINE: 9/11 Panel Discusses Informant; FBI Handling of Man Who Lived With Hijackers at Issue BYLINE: Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writer BODY: A congressional panel investigating intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks met in closed session yesterday to discuss the FBI's handling of information from a San Diego informant who lived for a time with two of the hijackers. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and CIA Director George J. Tenet appeared before the joint House-Senate intelligence panel behind closed doors. On Wednesday, the panel questioned an FBI agent who received information from Abdussattar Shaikh, a San Diego man who rented a room in his house in 2000 to Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the suicide hijackers. Shaikh, a retired educator, has said publicly he met the men when they responded to a room-for-rent notice he posted at the Islamic Center in San Diego. He said in interviews last year that Alhazmi moved into his home in Lemon Grove, Calif., a workingclass suburb of San Diego, in August 2000. Almihdhar, whom the U.S. government has linked to planners of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, moved in later that month, he said. Both men left at the end of the year. Shaikh said he believed the men were seeking an education in this country and that he saw no signs of radical beliefs. At the time, according to government sources, Shaikh was providing information informally to the FBI. Shaikh, who was recently identified by name as an informer in a San Diego newspaper, has publicly objected to that characterization. He did not return a call for comment yesterday. Government officials familiar with the matter said it did not appear that Shaikh had provided substantive information about his housemates to his FBI handler. Neither Almihdhar nor Alhazmi turned up in the FBI's San Diego files, the officials said, adding that the joint panel has been given access to all the informant reports relating to Shaikh.

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C6S News Transcripts October 11, 2002 Friday Copyright 2002 Burrelle's Information Services CBS News Transcripts SHOW: CBS Morning News (6:30 AM ET) - CBS October 11, 2002 Friday TYPE: Newscast LENGTH: 330 words HEADLINE: Confrontation between Congress and the FBI over key information about 9/11 ANCHORS: JON FRANKEL REPORTERS: JIM STEWART BODY: JON FRANKEL, anchor:

A tense confrontation is brewing between Congress and the FBI over the Bureau's handling of a witness who may have had key information prior to the September llth attacks. Jim Stewart reports. JIM STEWART reporting: A congressional committee investigating the September the llth hijackings met behind closed doors to hash out what appears to be an increasingly ugly confrontation with the FBI. At issue is the testimony of an FBI informant, who apparently played landlord to two of the 9/11 hijackers and never informed his case agent of the renters until after the attacks. The two hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid AI-Midhar, were the only members of the group to enter the US through the West Coast. For several months, they lived in this San Diego residence, where their landlord was this man, identified as Abdussattar Shaikh, a prominent San Diego Muslim leader. Shaikh has denied he was an informant, although the FBI has confirmed, without identifying him by name, that the man the hijackers rented from was an informational asset to the Bureau. Now Congress wants him to testify, apparently in secret, closed session, about what he knew and what he told his FBI handlers. Congressional sources called his story 'highly specific, factual and significant' and that it opens another chapter in the story of the 9/11 plot. The FBI said it is drawing a line in the sand over the issue. This is about subjecting people who would provide information to the government to undue scrutiny and protecting their identification,' a spokesman said. Both AI-Midhar and Alhazmi began flight training shortly after arriving in California. The informant has reportedly explained that he never attached any significance to his young tenants until after the 9/11 attack when he recognized their pictures. That's when he called his FBI case agent and said, 'Hey, I know these guys. They were my roommates.' Jim Stewart, CBS News, Washington.

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CNN.com - Sources: Hijackers' ex-landlord was FBI informant - September 11, 2002

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Sources: Hijackers' ex-landlord was FBI informant September 11, 2002 Posted: 4:33 AM EOT (0833 GMT) From Dana Bash, Kelli Arena and David Ensor CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former landlord of two of the September 11 hijackers was an FBI informant at the time, knowledgeable sources confirm to CNN.

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The two hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, lived in San Diego in the fall of 2000 and were taken in by a Muslim man after he met them at a local Islamic center. The landlord had been an informant for the FBI, supplying • information about the Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

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"The FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were renting rooms in the informant's house," Newsweek reported.

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Some members of the congressional committee investigating the intelligence failures and the September 11 attacks knew about the relationship between the landlord and the FBI, and the point will probably come up when the panel holds public hearings, expected later this month. U.S. intelligence officials said that in January of 2000, when Almidhar and Alhazmi attended a meeting of known terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that fact was communicated by the CIA to the FBI. Yet it was not until August 23, 2001, that the CIA warned the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to watch for the two men, and that they might try to enter the United States.

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D The Bulletin's Frontrunner October 11, 2002 Friday Copyright 2002 Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc. The Bulletin's Frontrunner October 11, 2002 Friday SECTION: Terrorism News LENGTH: 327 words HEADLINE: FBI, Congress At Odds Over Informant Who Knew Two 9/11 Hijackers. BODY: CBS (10/10, story 7, Rather) reports, "In the investigation of intelligence failures before 9/11," there is "a tense standoff between the FBI and Congress over a witness." CBS (Stewart) adds, "A congressional committee investigating the September llth hijackings met behind closed doors today to hash out what appears to be an increasingly ugly confrontation with the FBI At issue is the testimony of an FBI informant who apparently played landlord to two of the 9/11 hijackers and never informed his case agent of the renters until after the attacks. The two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almiihdar, were the only members of the group to enter the US through the West Coast. For several months they lived in this San Diego residence where their landlord was this man, identified as Abdussattar Shaikh, a prominent San Diego Muslim leader. Shaikh has denied he was an informant, although the FBI has confirmed without identifying him by name, that the man the hijackers rented from was an 'informational asset' to the Bureau. Now Congress wants him to testify, apparently in a secret, closed session about what he knew and what he told his FBI handlers." The Washington Post (10/11, Schmidt) reports that "government officials familiar with the matter said it did not appear that Shaikh had provided substantive information about his housemates to his FBI handler. Neither Almihdhar nor Alhazmi turned up in the FBI's San Diego files, the officials said, adding that the joint panel has been given access to all the informant reports relating to Shaikh. The FBI, which is seeking to find sources and build relationships in Arab communities, has resisted a request from Congress to bring Shaikh before the intelligence panel to testify." And "it was not clear yesterday what information the committee was seeking from Mueller and Tenet. But it postponed until next week a public session with the two officials that was scheduled for yesterday." LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2002

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D The San Diego Union-Tribune, November 27, 2002 Copyright 2002 The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune November 27, 2002, Wednesday SECTION: NEWS;Pg. A-l LENGTH: 950 words HEADLINE: Local FBI chief defends office, decries search for 9/11 blame BYLINE: Kelly Thornton; STAFF WRITER BODY: Critics have said San Diego's FBI may have bungled a chance to prevent 9/11. Now they say the local office failed to vigorously pursue the terrorists' funding sources. Bill Gore has remained silent. Yesterday, the local FBI chief defended his agents and dished out some criticism of his own about the congressional committee looking into the attacks. "It bothers me when they accuse the FBI of not being aggressive enough," Gore said. "I believe the facts of the investigation indicate we were as aggressive as we should have been and followed all logical leads to their conclusion. If this is ever declassified, their investigation will reveal that." Gore was referring to a draft report from the committee, which, among other things, found that San Diego-linked hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar may have received money indirectly from a Saudi princess, through two Saudi men living in San Diego. Gore's comments were made during a question-and-answer meeting with the Union-Tribune editorial board, attended by editors and reporters from the newsroom. The board regularly invites people in the news to discuss current events. Although he declined to discuss the details, Gore said the FBI has thoroughly and doggedly pursued the money trail from the start of the Sept. 11 investigation, and agents are confident they know how the San Diego-linked hijackers were funded, even if they lack enough evidence to bring charges. Leading up to Sept. 11 and after, Gore said, the bureau has done the best it could with limited staffing levels and under legal constraints that prevented the sharing of information between the FBI and CIA. Gore said he is disheartened by attitudes of some committee members who he sees as looking for scapegoats. "We don't necessarily have to find somebody in the government to blame for Sept. 11," said Gore, who recently spent about four hours testifying before the committee. "I was

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Copley News Service September 18, 2002 Wednesday. Copyright 2002 Copley News Service Copley News Service September 18, 2002 Wednesday SECTION: WASHINGTON WIRE LENGTH: 659 words HEADLINE: Investigators taking hard look at failure to find San Diego-based terrorists BYLINE: Toby Eckert Copley News Service DATELINE: WASHINGTON BODY: Congressional investigators plan to shine a spotlight on how two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived openly in San Diego escaped detection despite being identified in 1999 as "possible associates" of al-Qaeda, the terrorist network that launched the attacks. But one top member of a joint Senate-House committee probing pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures appeared uncertain about when the matter would be aired publicly. "Again, this goes to the issue of can we get the individuals that we need as witnesses and the information that we need declassified to have a public hearing precisely on that issue," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla. "We are not there yet." One member of the panel, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said intelligence information that should have alerted authorities to Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi was "bungled" and they were "inexplicably" kept off a State Department watch list until just three weeks before the attacks. The FBI's Los Angeles field office did not receive a request to search for the two men until the day of the attacks, Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the congressional investigation said during the first open hearing on the probe. "We're going to go into that particular case in much more detail when we present our testimony or statement on the hijackers," she said. "We will... tell you what we've heard from people who were handling that information at the time and why it slipped by them. But I think you may hear everything from they had too many things to do, it wasn't considered that significant, they were overwhelmed and it was simply a mistake." Appearing before the committee, spouses of two victims of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center complained bitterly about the failure of intelligence agencies to track down al-Midhar and Alhazmi, who helped commandeer the plane that slammed into the Pentagon. The two men lived in the San Diego area for all or part of 2000. "Two of the hijackers... were known to the CIA before they entered the country, were living as roommates with an FBI informant/' said Stephen Push, whose wife, Lisa Raines, died in

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D Copley News Service September 9, 2002 Monday Copyright 2002 Copley News Service Copley News Service September 9, 2002 Monday SECTION: WASHINGTON WIRE LENGTH: 543 words HEADLINE: San Diego Muslim leader denies he served as an FBI informant BYLINE: Kelly Thornton and Sandi Dolbee Copley News Service DATELINE: SAN DIEGO BODY: A prominent San Diego County Muslim leader who unwittingly rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 was a trusted FBI informant who worked with agents before Sept. 11 on terrorism cases, according to law enforcement sources. However, the leader, Abdussattar Shaikh of Lemon Grove, last night repeatedly denied he was an FBI informant and said he was shocked by the suggestion. He said he has many FBI friends - agents he met through community committees that he serves on - but he was not feeding them information on fellow Muslims. "It's not me, no, no, absolutely," Shaikh said last night. "We talked about many things, but nothing like this man is a questionable character or anything like that." Asked why a federal official might say he was an informant, Shaikh replied: "I don't know. I think I'm going to ask them (the FBI)." It's unclear how the revelation will reflect on the San Diego FBI office, if it's true that Shaikh was acting as an informant while the hijackers lived with him before their deadly attack. The FBI declined to comment Sunday. Sources said the FBI does not believe Shaikh was deceiving them. Shaikh, a longtime Lemon Grove resident who has acknowledged that hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar lived with him a year before the hijackings, has said repeatedly that he had no inkling of their intentions and thought they were just two students from Saudi Arabia. The head of the FBI in San Diego, Bill Gore, who was not commenting publicly on any aspect of the investigation, has repeatedly taken the unusual step of confirming to reporters that Shaikh, who serves on many community boards, is not a suspect. Gore has not done the same for anyone else. The 68-year-old retired businessman and educator met Alhazmi and al-Midhar at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the county's largest mosque. They moved into his east San Diego County home in September 2000. Al-Midhar stayed about six weeks and Alhazmi left in

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SAN DIEGO -- Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived in San Diego in 2000 rented a room from a man who reportedly worked as an undercover FBI informant.

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Newsweek magazine reports that Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi lived with a "tested" undercover "asset" who had been working closely with the FBI office in San Diego.

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The magazine does not name the informant. Alhazmi and al-Midhar lived in a house in Lemon Grove for several months in 2000. The owner of the home was Abdusattar Shaikh, 68, a leader of the local Muslim community. Shaikh has acknowledged that the two hijackers stayed at his home, but he has said he did not know they were involved in the terror strikes until their names were read on a radio report a few days later. He said that he met Alhazmi and al-Midhar at the Islamic Center of San Diego, a mosque in Clairemont.

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Fear of being watched, of talking freely is rampant By Kelly Thornton UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER September 10, 2002

There's a new guy at Friday prayers, asking questions. There's a Crown Victoria parked across the street from the Islamic Center, incognito. The new guy shows up again, seeming eager.

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That's how they know. Whether it's paranoia or a simple fact of life a year after Sept. 11, many Muslims in San Diego County believe the FBI is constantly watching mosques and those who attend.

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One year later

Suspicion is rampant that the FBI has sent informants to infiltrate services, and anxiety is high that if a Muslim praying in the corner is connected to the terror investigation, anyone who speaks to him will become an FBI target, too. A look at the year that was.

Life for the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Muslims in San Diego County has changed dramatically since authorities discovered that hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour lived among them, attended their mosques, dined in their homes, prayed beside them. "They are afraid to be in big congregations because they fear Big Brother is watching them," said Mohamad Nasser, president of the San

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, continue to reverberate across America and the globe. This week, the Union-Tribune will present a series of stories on the events and their lingering effects. MONDAY: The presidency and government TUESDAY: Diversity and distrust WEDNESDAY:

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(CBS) Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived in San Diego in 2000 rented a room from a man who reportedly worked as an undercover FBI informant, highlighting the lack of cooperation by the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Newsweek magazine reports that Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi lived with a O "tested" undercover "asset" who had been The Pentagon after the attack (AP) working closely with the FBI office in San Diego.

Law enforcement and investigative agencies worldwide work together to catch those behind the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

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The magazine does not name the informant. The connection was discovered by congressional investigators, reports Newsweek, and raises more questions about information-sharing among government intelligence agencies.

America looks back at its darkest morning and ahead to a changed world.

Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar (CBS/AP)

A senior law-enforcement official told the magazine that the informant never provided the Bureau with the names of his two houseguests from Saudi Arabia — but his FBI contact never asked, either. The CIA was keeping an eye on the men after the two had attended an al Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000. Alhazmi and Almihdhar moved into the house in September of 2000. Almihdhar left six weeks later and Alhazmi left at the end of the year. While there, the FBI informant prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account. Alhazmi and Almihdhar took lessons at a flight school while living in San Diego. The two men were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. There is no evidence the informant concealed the identity of the two men. In fact, after their names were reported in the news media following the attacks, the informant contacted his FBI case agent to say the two men had been his roommates.

Sept. 11 And Since

Chart the sequence of events on Sept. 11 and look back on the challenging days that followed.

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Story Sept. 11 ID Seller Flees U.S. D Story | Suspected al Qaeda Operative Detained pl Story | The FBI's Hijacker List HI Story | Feds: Hijackers' Helper Hated U.S.

A bigger questions, said one counter-intelligence expert, is why the case agent, who knew that two Saudi men were staying with the informant, didn't show more curiosity about them. If nothing else, he should have considered them as possible informants themselves.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/09/attack/main521223.shtml

5/15/03

Search -17 Results - abdussattar w/2 shaikh & informant

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D U.S. News & World Report December 9, 2002 Copyright 2002 U.S. News & World Report U.S. News & World Report December 9, 2002 SECTION: NATION & WORLD; Vol. 133 , No. 22; Pg. 32 LENGTH: 1037 words HEADLINE: The road to Riyadh BYLINE: By Gloria Borger; Edward T. Pound; Linda Robinson; David E. Kaplan; Chitra Ragavan; Randy Dotinga DATELINE: San Diego HIGHLIGHT: A stillborn FBI inquiry and a money trail from the Saudi Embassy to two of the 9/11 hijackers; BODY: On October 9, members of the special congressional committee investigating the 9/11 attacks met privately with a key FBI witness. The next day, panel members were to meet in open session with CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller. After the FBI agent finished testifying, the open meetings with Tenet and Mueller were summarily canceled. Several members were "appalled" at what informed sources described as the "explosive" testimony of Special Agent Steven Butler, who recently retired from the FBI after his final posting in the bureau's San Diego field office. Government officials told U.S. News that Butler disclosed that he had been monitoring a flow of Saudi Arabian money that wound up in the hands of two of the 9/11 hijackers. The two men had rented a room from a man Butler had used as a confidential informant, the sources say. According to officials familiar with his account, Butler said that he had alerted his superiors about the money flows but the warning went nowhere. "Butler is claiming . . . that people [in the FBI] didn't follow up," says a congressional source. Adds another: "He saw a pattern, a trail, and he told his supervisors, but it ended there." Roommates. In a conversation outside his home in the gated Rancho Penasquitos community in San Diego, Butler told U.S. News, "It's very sensitive stuff." Wearing a Buffalo Bills cap, Butler said, "I'd love to talk to you guys," but added that he couldn't without permission from the Justice Department. Butler's testimony comes after disclosures that FBI executives failed to take action in response to memorandums by agency lawyers and agents in Minneapolis and Phoenix about suspicious activities involving young Muslim men enrolled in flight schools. One of the men, Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, is awaiting trial on charges stemming from the attacks. In his closed-door appearance on Capitol Hill, Butler described his dealings with a leader in

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=ec0127cfD1162aOa529014de48e44c31&docnu... 5/15/2003

Search -17 Results - abdussattar w/2 shaikh & informant

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D Agence France Presse November 30, 2002 Saturday Copyright 2002 Agence France Presse Agence France Presse November 30, 2002 Saturday SECTION: Domestic, non-Washington, General News LENGTH: 360 words HEADLINE: Ex-FBI agent says his warnings about Saudis were ignored: report DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov 29 BODY: A retired FBI agent has informed a congressional committee probing the September 11 attacks that his superior had ignored his warnings about a flow of Saudi money into the hands of suspected hijackers, US News and World Report magazine reported Friday. Steven Butler, who worked at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's San Diego field office, told the committee the money went to two of the September 11 hijackers -- Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, the magazine reported, quoting unnamed government officials. In his testimony, Butler described his dealings with a leader in San Diego's Muslim community, a 68-year-old man named Abdussattar Shaikh, who served as an FBI informant, according to US News. In 2000, Shaikh rented a room in his house in the San Diego suburb of Lemon Grove to Almihdhar and Alhazmi, who later helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon. According to officials familiar with his account, Butler said that he had alerted his superiors about the money flow but the warning went nowhere, the report said. The FBI is currently investigating how thousands of dollars of charitable donations from Saudi Princess Haifa AI-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, ended up in the hands of Almihdhar and Alhazmi. The princess has denied any knowledge of these transfers. The indirectly went to Saudi nationals Osama Basnan and Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived in the United States and helped Almihdhar and Alhazmi pay their rent. According to US News, FBI and Treasury Department investigators believe that as much as 100 million dollars has flowed from Saudi Arabia to terrorist organizations in recent years. "We're talking about major-league businessmen who have ties to the royal family," the report quotes a senior Treasury official as saying. "Over the years, they've put funds into a lot of different mechanisms -- business charities, moneymaking ventures -- and routed them through offshore havens," the official said.

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=ec0127cfD1162aOa529014de48e44c31&docnu... 5/15/2003

Saudi Perceptions of the United States since 9-11 F. Gregory Cause, III University of Vermont [email protected] prepared for the conference on "Western and Non-Western Perceptions of America in the Aftermath of 9-11" CERI-Sciences Po, Paris September 30-October 1,2002 There is no bilateral relationship that was more affected by the attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington than the Saudi-American relationship. On the American side, the reason is obvious: 15 of the 19 hijackers of the four planes which crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in central Pennsylvania were from Saudi Arabia. 'Usama bin Ladin, the leader of the group behind the attacks, also is from Saudi Arabia. As Americans learned more about the hijackers, bin Ladin and the more general salafi movement, popular anger against Saudi Arabia grew. According to a poll by Zogby International, in January 2001 56% of Americans polled viewed Saudi Arabia favorably, 28% unfavorably. In December 2001, those numbers had basically reversed, with only 24% viewing Saudi Arabia favorably and 58% unfavorably.1 Much of the American political and media elite, which had generally accepted the US-Saudi relationship - an exchange of security for oil, to simplify - began to question the value for the United States of a close relationship with Riyadh. While the Bush Administration has asserted since 9-11 that the relationship with Saudi Arabia remains solid, there is no question that the unprecedented public focus on Saudi Arabia (even greater than during the 1973-74 oil embargo, I would argue) has shaken the foundations of the bilateral relationship. A similar process took place in Saudi Arabian public opinion after the 9-11 attacks. Popular disaffection with the United States was already substantial before the attacks. American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on Iraqi sanctions was generally unpopular. Bin Ladin and other Saudi dissidents had successfully raised the issue of the American military presence in the Kingdom. Reacting to the intense media scrutiny on Saudi Arabia in the United States that followed the attacks, the Saudi government took a number of steps to distance itself from the United States. These moves, in effect, opened the door to more open expression of anti-Americanism in Saudi Arabia than is usually permitted. The Saudi government, perhaps taken aback by the vigor of those sentiments, began in the spring of 2002 to send signals that there are limits to the anti-Americanism that it will tolerate at home. While this was happening, 'Poll cited in Dr. James J. Zogby, "New Poll Shows Damage Done," December 24, 2001. Accessed via "GulfWire" e-newsletter, www.arabialink.com.

9-11 Hijackers: A Saudi Money Trail?

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The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar (center) attends a memorial service at the Pentagon on March 11, 2001

9-11 Hijackers: A Saudi Money Trail? The Feds probe a possible new Saudi link to Al Qaeda By Michael Isikoff NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Nov. 22 — The FBI is investigating whether the Saudi Arabian government—using the bank account of the wife of a senior Saudi diplomat— sent tens of thousands of dollars to two Saudi students in the United States who provided assistance to two of the September 11 hijackers, according to law-enforcement sources. E-MAILTHIS

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3 of 9 DOCUMENTS Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company The New York Times November 23, 2002, Saturday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 1212 words HEADLINE: THREATS AND RESPONSES: TRACKING TERRORISM; 9/11 REPORT SAYS SAUDI ARABIA LINKS WENT UNEXAMINED BYLINE: By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 BODY: A draft report by the joint Congressional committee looking into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that the F.B.I, and the C.I.A, in their investigations, did not aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the terrorists to Saudi Arabia, senior government officials said today. The report charged among other things that the authorities had failed to investigate the possibility that two of the hijackers, Saudis named Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, received Saudi money from two Saudi men they met with in California in the year before the attacks. The committee's preliminary findings, which also accuse the Saudi government of a lack of cooperation with American investigators, have caused a bitter behind-the-scenes dispute between the panel's staff and officials at the F.B.I, and the C.I.A. At each agency, officials have disagreed with the draft findings, saying investigators vigorously pursued all available information related to Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, but little is known about their backgrounds and how they were recruited for the attacks. Most of the Saudis were part of a group that investigators refer to as the "muscle." These were men recruited late in the planning for the operation, not as pilots, but as an unskilled security force for the hijacking operation. Their job was to keep passengers at bay as the planes were commandeered and flown to their intended targets. In a rebuttal report sent to the committee in recent days, the F.B.I, has tried to disprove several specific allegations by the committee. One of them was about Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi, who lived in San Diego a year before the attacks. While in California, the two met with Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, each of whom was receiving financial support from the Saudi government. The men were receiving stipends, although officials said it was not exactly clear what kind. The committee staff concluded in its draft findings that investigators should have followed up on the meetings of the four men to determine whether there might have been a Saudi link to the hijacking plot. The F.B.I, is still investigating how much financial support, if any, was provided by Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan to the two men who later turned out to be hijackers. The bureau is also looking into whether senior Saudi officials in the United States may have played some role in distributing funds to Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan. Today, the F.B.I, said in a statement that it had "aggressively pursued investigative leads regarding terrorist support and activity." It added that Mr. Bayoumi and Mr. Bassnan had both been charged with visa fraud after the attacks. But by that time, Mr. Bayoumi was already in Britain, where he was temporarily detained and then released because visa fraud was not an extraditable offense. The F.B.I, statement did not say where the two men were now or clarify the status of the cases against them. Although the disagreement has not been publicly disclosed until now, the debate over possible Saudi connections raises a very sensitive political issue for the Bush administration. Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producer in the world

Saudi envoy, Sept. 11 figures linked

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May 14 — NBC's Lisa Myers has details of a NBC News investigation, trying to answer the question: Do Saudi officials have ties to alQaida?

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WASHINGTON, May 14— A Saudi diplomat was asked to leave Germany last month after authorities questioned his ties to an al-Qaida operative. The business card of the diplomat, Mohammad Fakihi, was found in the apartment of Mounir El Motassadeq, convicted in Germany of helping plan the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a friend of hijacker Mohammed Atta. A U.S. official tells NBC the Saudi is "a pretty bad guy," citing evidence he gave money to Islamic militants and may have met with al-Qaida members who carried out the 9/11 attacks.

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= THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

THE FALL OF THE

HOUSE OF SAUD Americans have long considered Saudi Arabia the one constant in the Arab Middle East—a source of cheap oil, political stability, and lucrative business relationships. But the country is run by an increasingly dysfunctional royal family that has beenfunding militant Islamic movements abroad in an attempt to protect itself from them at home. A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn from his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer—and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous BY ROBERT BAER Illustrations by John Ritter

n the decades after World War II the United States and the rest of the industrialized world developed a deep and irrevocable dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest and most important producer. But by the mid-1980s—with the Iran-Iraq war raging, and the-OPEC oil embargo a recent and traumatic memory—the supply, which had until that embargo been taken for granted, suddenly seemed at risk. Disaster planners in and out of government began to ask uncomfortable questions. What points of the Saudi oil infrastructure were most vulnerable to terrorist attack? And by what means? What sorts of disruption to the flow of oil, short-term and long-term, could be expected? These were critical concerns. Underlying them all was the fear that a major attack on the Saudi system could cause the global economy to collapse. The Saudi system seemed—and still seems—frighteningly vulnerable to attack. Although Saudi Arabia has more than eighty active oil and natural-gas fields, and more than a thousand working wells, half its proven oil reserves are contained in only eight fields—including Ghawar, the world's largest onshore oil field, and Safaniya, the world's largest offshore oil field. Various confidential scenarios have suggested that if terrorists were simultaneously to hit only a few sensitive points "downstream" in the oil system from these eight fields—points that control more than 10,000 miles of pipe, both onshore and offshore, in which oil moves from wells to refineries and from refineries to

I

ports, within the kingdom and without—they could effectively put the Saudis out of the oil business for about two years. And it just would not be that hard to do. The most vulnerable point and the most spectacular target in the Saadi oil system is the Abqaiq complex—the world's largest oilprocessing facility, which sits about twentyfour miles inland from the northern end of the Gulf of Bahrain. All petroleum originating in the south is pumped to Abqaiq for processing. For the first two months after a moderate to severe attack on Abqaiq, production there would slow from an average of 6.8 million barrels a day to one million barrels, a loss equivalent to one third of America's daily consumption of crude oil. For seven months following the attack, daily production would remain as much as four million barrels below normal—a reduction roughly equal to what all of the OPEC partners were able to effect during their 1973 embargo. Oil is pumped from Abqaiq to loading terminals at Ras Tanura and Ju'aymah, both on Saudi Arabia's east coast. Ras Tanura moves only slightly more oil than Ju'aymah does (4.5 million barrels per day as opposed to 4.3 million barrels), but it offers a greater variety of targets and more avenues of attack. Nearly all of Ras Tanura's export oil is handled by an offshore facility known as The Sea Island, and the facility's Platform No. 4 handles half of that. A commando attack on Platform 4 by surface boat or even by a Kilo-class submarine—available in the global arms bazaar— 53

In-a-Gadda Da-Vida We Trust

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y rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties.

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The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway. Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos. In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian, American culture fast-forwards from Elvis's blue suede shoes to John Travolta's white polyester suit. Whatever else has gone awry in the Mideast so far, the administration may have succeeded in exorcising American queasiness about using force, and any vestigial image of the military as "baby killers." As Robin Toner wrote in The Times yesterday, trust in the military is brimming, up to 79 percent from 58 percent in 1975, according to Gallup. The tactical efficacy and moral delicacy of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq solidified a trend: the children of Vietnam-scarred boomers trust the government, and especially the military, far more than did their parents, whose generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30."

Columnist Page: Maureen Dowd Forum: Discuss This Column E-mail: liberties® nvtimes.ex

TIMES NEWS TRACKE Topics Cheney. Dick Rumsfeld. Donald H Military Personnel United States Armament and Defense Create Your Own I Alerts

As Ms. Toner noted, a Harvard poll found that 75 percent of college kids trusted the military "to do the ri either "all of the time" or "most of the time." Two-thirds of the students supported the Iraqi war, with hav beating doves 2 to 1. Mr. Bush runs a "trust us, we're 100 percent right" regime. So we've got a young generation that wants t( faith. And an administration that wants to be taken on faith. The beginning of a beautiful friendship? Maybe. Unless the White House politicizes 9/11 so much it squ£ that belief. Karl Rove's re-election strategy is designed to tug 9/11 heartstrings, and his ads will be heroic images of chasing down the bad guys.

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• Classified: Censoring the Report About 9-11?

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Classified: Censoring the Report About 9-11? Bush officials are refusing to permit the release of matters already in the public domain—including the existence of intelligence documents referred to on the CIA Web site. By Michael Isikoff NEWSWEEK

June 2 issue — Why is the Bush administration blocking the release of an 800-page congressional report about 9-11? The bipartisan report deals with law-enforcement and intelligence failures that preceded the attacks. For months, congressional leaders and administration officials have battled over declassifying the document, preventing a public release once slated for this week. NEWSWEEK http://msnbc.com/news/917942.asp ?0sl=-41&cpl=l

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To: "" # Subject: interesting torn friedman article ^ 1 unnamed text/html 5.31 KB {HJ Friedman: Saudi Rulers Too Dysfunctional, Divided to Undertake Reform By Thomas Friedman New York Times News Service In the wake of the recent terrorist bombings in Riyadh, Saudi officials seem to have -- pardon the expression -- gotten religion. They say they now understand that suicide terrorism in the name of Islam is as much a threat to them as it is to the open societies of the West. This time, they insist, they're going to crack down on their extremists. I hope so, but I fear we have a deeper problem with Saudi Arabia. I fear it is the Soviet Union. I fear it is unreformable. I fear that the ruling brothers of Saudi Arabia are like the Soviet Politburo. I fear the 6,000 Saudi princes are like the Communist Party Central Committee. I fear that Riyadh is Red Square. I fear the al-Sauds used Islamism to unite 40 fractious tribes in Arabia the way Lenin used communism to unite 100 fractious nationalities across Russia. And I fear that Osama bin Laden is just the evil version of Andrei Sakharov -- the dissident Soviet scientist who exposed the system from within. Sakharov was exiled to Gorky, Bin Laden was exiled to Kabul. And both systems meet their end where? In Afghanistan. Even if this parallel is off, and the Saudi system could be reformed without collapsing, I fear that the Saudi ruling family has become too dysfunctional, divided and insecure to undertake this task. Surely one test is whether Saudi officials and spiritual leaders can condemn Islamic suicide terrorism, not just when it is against them, but when it is against people of other faiths - no matter what the context. Saudi Arabia's neighbors -- Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman -- are experimenting with elections, a freer press, women's rights and free trade with America. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has been drifting under an ailing king, trying to buy a different perception of itself with better advertising rather than with deeper reform. Frankly, I have a soft spot for the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, who is a man of decency and moderation. But he's too nice for his own good. He needs to break heads at home, force some sustained reforms on his religious establishment, revive his own peace initiative and begin to empower his women -• because women's empowerment is the best antidote to extremism. The problem with Saudi Arabia is not that it has too little democracy. It's that it has too much. The ruling family is so insecure, it feels it has to consult every faction, tribe and senior cleric before making any decision. This makes Saudi Arabia a very strange autocracy: it's a country where one man makes no decisions. If this continues, we must protect ourselves -- by telling the Saudis, and ourselves, the truth. In private, Bush aides have been fuming: The United States gave the Saudis intelligence warnings before the recent attacks, but they took no steps to deter them. Publicly, though, the Bush team bites its tongue. We never talk straight to Saudi Arabia, because we are addicted to its oil. Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers. If we were telling the Saudis the truth, we would tell them that their antimodern and antipluralist brand of Islam -- known as Wahhabism -- combined with their oil wealth has become a destabilizing force in the world. By financing mosques and schools that foster the least tolerant version of Islam, they are breeding the very extremists who are trying to burn down their house and ours. But we also need to tell ourselves the truth. We constantly complain about the blank checks the Saudis write to buy off their extremists. But who writes the blank checks to the Saudis? We do -- with our gluttonous energy habits, renewed addiction to big cars, and our president who has made "conservation" a dirty word. In the wake of the Iraq war, the EPA announced that the average fuel economy of America's cars and trucks fell to its lowest level in 22 years, with the 2002 model year. That is a travesty. No wonder foreigners think we sent our U.S. Army Humvees to control Iraq, just so we could drive more GM Hummers over here. When our president insists that we can have it all - big cars, big oil, lower taxes, with no sacrifices or conservation - why shouldn't the world believe that all we are about is protecting our right to binge? And so the circle is complete: President Bush won't tell Americans the truth, so we won't tell Saudis the truth, so they won't tell their extremists the truth, so they can go on pumping intolerance and we can go on guzzling gas. Someday, our kids will condemn us for all of this.

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