US CIA Failed to Share Intelligence on Hijacker: Reports

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, June 04, 2002

US CIA Failed to Share Intelligence on Hijacker: Reports

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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tracked one of the September 11 hijackers months before it was previously disclosed, but failed to share the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other agencies, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

The report quoted a senior administration official as saying that if the FBI or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)had been told of the information, Khalid Almihdhar, who was on theplane which crashed into the Pentagon, might have been denied entry into the U.S. or monitored while in the country.

The report said the CIA knew Almihdhar had attended a January 2000 meeting of suspected terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The CIA now acknowledged that Almihdhar went from Kuala Lumpur to the United States in January 2000, left in June 2000, and was outside the U.S. when the CIA counterterrorism center learned thatin addition to associating with possible terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Almihdhar had more than once entered the U.S.

Frequent reentry into the U.S. is a factor that causes authorities to take a second look at a visa applicant, the Washington Post said. When combined with his attendance at the Kuala Lumpur meeting, his reentries would have put him on the watch list and prevented him from getting a new visa in June 2001.

However, the CIA did not tell other agencies, and it was not until August 23, 2001, that Almihdhar was put on the watch list. By then, the U.S. State Department had granted Almihdhar another visa and he reentered the country on July 4.

Failure of the CIA to share its information on Almihdhar and another hijacker Nawaf Alhamzi was first reported by Newsweek magazine on Sunday.

Newsweek reported that the CIA identified the two terrorists immediately after the Kuala Lumpur meeting.

The performance of agencies like the CIA and FBI is under intense scrutiny as the House and Senate intelligence committees prepare for hearings, starting Tuesday, into the lapse that becameknown only after the September 11 attacks.

Much of the criticism to date has focused on the FBI, the disclosures about the CIA's knowledge of the terrorists are the first to draw questions about the CIA actions.

Republican Senator Richard Shelby complained of "massive failures of intelligence at the CIA."

"I believe you are going to see a lot more instances like this where, if they had acted on the information they had and followed through, maybe things would be different," Shelby said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday.

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