consulted the Saudi authorities—after learning from an intercept on the Yemen phone “hub” that Mihdhar was headed to Kuala Lumpur (Wright, 310, 376n, 448,
45 Scheuer/?“fabrication”: Scheuer,
46 Bandar/Commission: MFR of int. Prince Bandar, Access Restricted, Item (3 pages) withdrawn, 10/14/08, CF.
47 Turki/“I can”: corr. Kristen Wilhelm. This reply to the authors’ inquiry is known as a “Glomar Response” to a request under the Freedom of Information Act—so called after the first occasion on which it was used, when the CIA sought to prevent publication of a
48 “penetrated al Qaeda”:
49 returned to Saudi/disclosed: Report, JI, 131–.
50 “presented with”: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” 12, 15, 37. Before 9/11, according to the Commission’s staff report on terrorist travel, neither State Department personnel processing visa applications nor immigration inspectors were aware of such indicators. Even two years after the attacks, the information had “yet to be unclassified and disseminated to the field.”
51 Commission footnote: The Commission footnote appears to distinguish the cases of Mihdhar, the Hazmi brothers, and two other hijackers from those of the other ten Saudi hijackers. This may reflect the possibility that only the passports of Mihdhar and his named comrades were marked by the Saudi authorities. Absent fuller and clearer information, it is impossible to know (CR, 563n32).
52 “contained a secret”: Bamford,
53 Trento account/“We had been”: Joe Trento, “The Real Intelligence Cover-up,” 8/6/03 & Joseph Trento & Susan Trento, “The No Fly List,” 1/11/10, http://dcbureau.org, & Trento & Trento, refs., conv. Joseph Trento.
54 Kuala Lumpur “to spy”: Trento & Trento, 7–. The administrator of the Islamic Center of San Diego, whom Mihdhar and Hazmi asked for assistance following their arrival in early 2000, said after 9/11 that he had “suspected that Mihdhar might have been an intelligence agent of the Saudi government” (CR, 517n29, 220).
55 Mihdhar multiple-entry visa: Trento & Trento, 8. According to the Trentos, citing Michael Springmann, who had years earlier served as head of the visa department in the Jeddah consulate, the CIA would have known this fact even sooner—because a CIA officer in the Jeddah consulate “routinely approved visas for Saudi intelligence operatives as a courtesy” (Trento & Trento, 8—see Michael Springmann, “A Sin Concealed—the Visas for Terrorists Program,” 12/13/07, http://visasforterrorists.blogspot.com).
56 “were perceived”: Trento & Trento, 9;
57 “Many terrorists”: ibid, 187;
58 “because they were”: Joe Trento, “The Real Intelligence Cover-up,” 8/6/03, http://dcbureau.org;
59 “In fact”: Trento & Trento, 9.
60 account bumps facts?: The Trento account, for example, asserts that the “complacency” of the Bush administration in summer 2001 is explained by CIA assurances that it had high-level penetration of al Qaeda via the GID. In fact, as documented in this book, the CIA leadership was far from complacent that summer, desperately worried and telling the White House—notably Condoleezza Rice—as much (Trento & Trento, 193; see—re far from complacent—pp. 315–16).
61 “[name redacted]”: Executive Summary, Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks, 6/05, www.cia.gov;
62 “hostile service”/passed to al Qaeda: Risen,
63 “On some occasions”: Report, JI, 274;
64 Rahman defense:
65 screen saver: The intelligence counterparts who told the CIA about bin Laden’s picture being used as a screen saver were those of Jordan—apparently in the late 1990s (Risen, 182);
66 “80% sympathetic”:
CHAPTER 33
1
tens of thousands:
Reuters, 9/11/01;
2
honked horns:
transcript,
“Saudi Time Bomb,”
www.pbs.org
;
3
killed camels:
int. of Saad al-Fagih for
Looking for Answers,”
www.pbs.org
;
4
screen savers/“somebody”:
int. of person in Saudi Arabia who asked to remain anonymous;
5
Ahmed/?“muted”/?“So, they lost”:
Qanta Ahmed, 395.
6
survey/Prince Nawwaf:
The survey was conducted by the Saudi GID, the intelligence service, and leaked to
a year later by a U.S. administration official. Prince Nawwaf had become GID chief following the resignation of Prince Turki. In a 2004 interview, Prince Bandar was to claim the situation was very different, that a Zogby poll “showed 91 percent of Saudis said they like America.” What the poll actually said was that 91 percent of Saudis said they had “no quarrel with the people of the United States, yet their overall impression of the American people is 70% unfavorable, 24% favorable” (leaked survey:
, 1/27/02,
, 9/14/01; Bandar: int. Bandar,
, NBC, 4/25/04).
7
“Almost unanimously”:
Kean & Hamilton, 113.
8
