From the prior post:
To look deeper into whether my web site is a "idiotic nut case web site of woo", I am listing one of the more important facts from this site that shows the information on this web site, where it came from and what interpretation I made from this information. The material is transcribed directly from US government web sites and sources, without edit or modification other than being shortened to fit this post:
The following is found in the Account of FBI Agent Ali Soufan: page 66-67 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 10, 2006. This information was given to Lawrence Wright by FBI Agent Steve Bongardt, FBI Agent Ali Soufan's assistant on the Cole bombing investigation, and was vetted by John Miller, information officer at the FBI.
"In November, 2000, a month after the Cole bombing, Soufan sent the agency (the CIA) the first of several official queries. On Soufan's behalf, the director of the F.B.I. sent a letter to the director of the C.I.A., formally ask*ing for information about Khallad, and whether there might have been an Al Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia before the bombing. The agency said that it had nothing. Soufan trusted this response; he thought that he had a good working relationship with the agency."
From the DOJ IG report: Pages 238-239:
"In the midst of the Millennium period concerns in late 1999, the NSA analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to Al Qaeda activities directed against U.S. interests. The communications indicated that several members of an "operational cadre" were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early January 2000. Analysis of the communications revealed that persons named Nawaf, Khalid and Salem were involved. In early 2000, the NSA analyzed what appeared to be related communications concerning a "Khalid." The NSA's reporting about these communications was sent, among other places, to FBI Headquarters, the FBI's Washington and New York Field Offices, and the CIA's CTC. At the FBI, this information appeared in the daily threat update to the Director on January 4, 2000."
From the 9/11 Commission report, page 181:
“The Counterterrorist Center,(CTC CIA was headed by Cofer Black) had briefed the CIA leadership on the gathering in Kuala Lumpur and the information had been passed on to Berger, the NSC staff and to Director Freeh and others at the FBI.”
It is clear that Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, knew about the al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur that took place in January 2000, and even the first names of the several of the people who were to attend this meeting because the CIA had given him this very information in January 2000, before FBI Agent Ali Soufan’s request. In fact the CIA had photographs of Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and even Walid Bin Attash (the mastermind of the Cole bombing) that had been taken at that meeting, and even knew at this time that they had been actually planning this al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole at this meeting. This was because Soufan had already given the passport photo of Bin Attash to the CIA Yemen station earlier in November and had identified Bin Attash as the master mind of the Cole bombing. When the CIA compared this photograph to the one they had taken at Kuala Lumpur, they immediately knew that Bin Attash had been at Kuala Lumpur planning the Cole bombing with Mihdhar and Hazmi and that if this came out the CIA would look culpable in this attack.
Soufan was told that the CIA had none of this information. Freeh not only withheld this same information from FBI Agent Soufan, but even knew that the CIA had actually given him the very information Soufan was asking for. When Freeh withheld this information from Soufan, his own lead Cole bombing investigator, in November 2000, this was clear evidence that FBI Director Louis Freeh, and the CIA, had criminally obstructed the FBI investigation of the Cole bombing by withholding the critical information on the Kuala Lumpur meeting. Had this information been passed to the Cole investigators, they could have had the enough time to have prevented the attacks on 9/11.
Had Freeh told Soufan that the CIA had given him this information in January 2000, that Khalid, Nawaf, and Salem , thought to be Nawaf’s younger brother, and all long time al Qaeda terrorists connected to the east Africa bombings, were all traveling to an al Qaeda planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, Soufan might have prevented the attacks on 9/11.
Soufan and the Cole bombing investigators already knew that Walid Bin Attash had flown to Bangkok, on January 8, 2000 from Kuala Lumpur. By checking the flight manifest for this flight, Soufan would have found Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi sitting right next to Bin Attash, using one of his aliases, on this flight, since they already had had Mihdhar and Hazmi's first names.
Soufan and the Cole bombing investigators also already knew that Fahad al-Quso had been blocked from continuing his travels in Bangkok while trying to deliver money to Bin Attash in Kuala Lumpur, and that he had stayed at the Washington Hotel in Bangkok. Had Soufan and the Cole bombing investigators checked the Washington Hotel they would have found Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had both stayed at this hotel, the week after January 8, 2000 just before they flew to the US.
It is highly likely that Soufan could have saved the lives of the almost 3000 people killed on 9/11 had Freeh given him the very information he was asking for and which he was in possession of. Unfortunately this was not to be and this criminal obstruction by Freeh and the CIA of the Cole bombing investigation and the murder of 17 US sailors has never been explained.
