Footnote 44

George Tenet (Mr. "I failed to tell the FBI for 18 months that two known al Qaeda killers were living in San Diego and planning the 9/11 attacks") - Kristen Breitweiser

44. CIA cable,“Activities of Bin Ladin Associate Khalid Revealed,” Jan. 4, 2000. His Saudi passport—which contained a visa for travel to the United States—was photocopied and forwarded to CIA headquarters.This information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August 2001. An FBI agent detailed to the Bin Ladin unit at CIA attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI headquarters. A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information. Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI. She admitted she did not personally share the information and cannot identify who told her they had been shared.We were unable to locate anyone who claimed to have shared the information. Contemporaneous documents contradict the claim that they were shared. DOJ Inspector General interview of Doug M., Feb. 12, 2004; DOJ Inspector General interview of Michael,Oct. 31, 2002; CIA cable, Jan. 5, 2000; DOJ Inspector General report,“A Review of the FBI’s Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the 9/11 Attacks,” July 2, 2004, p. 282.

Tom Wilshire...

... ("John" in the 9/11 CR) is the man who blocked the passage of the information at that time, when he was deputy chief of Alec Station. It is covered here:

January 4-6, 2000: CIA Prevents FBI from Learning about Hijacker’s US Visa; Other CIA Agents Are Deliberately Misled about This
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a010400ciamislead&sc...

He instructed the CIA desk officer ("Michelle" in the DoG OIG report) to tell the FBI detailee not to send it. Nice of the 9/11 Commission to leave him out of the endnote altogether.

He also failed to release the cable the second time the FBI detailee (Doug Miller, "Doug M" in the endnote) asked to send it, failed to alert the FBI when Alec Station learned Alhazmi had entered the country in March 2000 (and Tenet lied about this to the Congressional Inquiry, when he falsely claimed under oath three times that nobody read the cable that said Alhazmi entered the US), failed to alert the FBI that Alhazmi and Almihdhar had entered the US when he reread all the cables about them in May 2001, telling the 9/11 Commission this was because he was "focused on Malaysia" (although he was the CIA's liaison to the FBI, not the Malaysian special branch at this time), orchestrated a sting operation to find out whether the FBI had already found out about Almihdhar and Alhazmi at the June 11 meeting (which even Lawrence Wright half admits - "Wilshire did want to know, however, what the FBI knew"), withheld information from an FBI agent (Margaret Gillespie) reviewing the Malaysia meeting, disparaged the Minneapolis Field Office when it tried to get a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings (the "Minneapolis Airplane IV crowd" - Wilshire was the highest manager at the FBI who was seriously involved in the Moussaoui case), etc., etc.

By late August 2001 he knew that there would be a major al-Qaeda attack, knew Almihdhar would probably be involved, and knew Almihdhar was in the US, but it took him and one of his subordinates, Dina Corsi, 5 days to pass on the lead for Almihdhar to be investigated, and, despite numerous protests from the FBI's New York field office, they insisted it was only given to one rookie agent, who already had work to do, whilst lying about an attorney's opinion on the search for Almihdhar, withholding wiretap information that the NSA's general counsel had specifically cleared for the Cole criminal investigators, and withholding information about Khallad bin Attash and his connection to Almihdhar.

And that's just a brief summary.

And his boss at Alec Station, Rich B (just possibly Richard Bissell Jr.'s son - my feeling is very much that Rich B. was in on whatever Wilshire thought he was doing), is the CIA officer who started all this crap with flying terrorists to countries that do torture, when, as chief of the CIA's station in Kabul in December 2001, he had al-Libi taken away from the FBI and flown to Egypt - one of the cabal of CIA officers who prevented the FBI from getting to Almihdhar, Alhazmi and the others before 9/11 is the same guy who stopped the FBI interviewing their alleged terrorist associates after 9/11.

Thanks Kevin...

There's a scene from 9/11: Press For Truth where Kristen and Lorie are looking at the 9/11 Report, and Lorie's mouth is wide open. This is what they were looking at when that picture was taken.


Who Is? Archives

Coming at it from the other angle...

... Rich B. is the guy who is briefing the CIA's leadership and even the President. He knew that a major al-Qaeda attack was coming (lots of details of briefings he gave in Tenet's book). He may well have received Wilshire's July 23 e-mail saying that Almihdhar was "high interest" in connection with the "next big op" by "UBL hardcore cadre" (he is the logical recipient, plus he received Wilshire's previous e-mail on the topic). In addition, it was one of his subordinates (Margaret Gillespie), who "discovered" Almihdhar was in the US in late August and realised it was a big deal, so, presumably, he knew about that. Yet there is no record of him actually pointing this out to anyone. This makes no sense - they're talking about a major al-Qaeda attack, Wilshire and Rich B. know that one of the probable attackers arrived in New York last month and they keep forgetting to mention it? What did Rich B. know and when did he know it? These two people, Wilshire and Rich B., have a lock on information coming up through the bureaucracy and they filtered the important stuff out.

In Tenet's book (p. 145) he writes “during one of my updates in late July when, as we speculated about the kind of [al-Qaeda] attacks we could face, Rich B. suddenly said, with complete conviction, ‘They’re coming here.’ I’ll never forget the silence that followed.” I'm not surprised he had "complete conviction," he must have known.

Thanks for the info about the picture - I know exactly which one you mean.

Thanks again...

Here's the picture...



Who Is? Archives

Tom Wilshire

Kevin's information was good but left out a few minor details.

First when Wilshire was moved to the FBI from the CIA, in mid-May 2001 it was by the order of Tenet and Black and it was done because the CIA had received FBI Agent Ali Soufan's request for information on Khallad Bin Attash. The CIA thought because of that request and the FBI search for Khallad that the FBI criminal Cole investigators had found out about Mihdhar and Hazmi, information the CIA and Tom Wilshire had been trying to kept hidden from the FBI since January 5, 2000 when Wilshire first blocked the CIA cable on Mihdhar from going to the FBI.

Wilshire's first job at the FBI after being transferred to the job as liaison to Michael Rolince head of the FBI ITOS section, was to set up the meeting between the FBI and the CIA at FBI New York field office on June 11, 2001 to find out if FBI Agent Steve Bongardt and his Cole investigating team, the very team that worked for Soufan, could identify Mihdhar and Hazmi in the three photos of Mihdhar taken at Kuala Lumpur, photos that FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi presented to them at this meeting. [NOTE, not one single government investigation ever reported that Wilshire and Shannon had Soufan's request asking for any information the CIA had on Khallad. Instead of giving Soufan the information he had requested the CIA set up this meeting with Soufan's own people to find out what exactly the FBI knew!]

His next job was to make sure the information from the Kuala Lumpur meeting, that Khallad had been photographed at this meeting with Mihdhar and Hazmi, remained hidden from the FBI criminal investigators under any and all circumstances. Even at the time of the New York meeting Corsi and Wilshire were well aware that both Khallad and Mihdhar had been identified at this Kuala Lumpur meeting, directly connecting Mihdhar to the planning of the Cole bombing. At the time of this meeting Wilshire and CIA officer Clark Shannon who ask these investigators "Do you recognize anyone in these photos" knew Hazmi was already inside of the US and knew Mihdhar had a multi-entry visa for the US, a visa that could only mean he was going to entering the US to carry out a horrific al Qaeda attack with Hazmi.

But the horror of all horror stories is that when FBI IOS Agent at the CIA Bin Laden unit Margaret Gillespie found that Mihdhar and Hazmi were both inside of the US on August 22, 2001, information she then took to Corsi and Wilshire, Wilshire knew immediately that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US for no other reason that to take part in the massive al Qaeda attack the CIA had been warned about from April 2001. Wilshire had sent e-mail on July 5, 2001 and July 23, 2001 to his CTC managers saying just exactly that, that Mihdhar and by association Hazmi were connected to the warnings of this huge attack, and they would be found at the point of the next big al Qaeda operation.

When Gillespie forced the Bin Laden unit on August 23, 2001 to issue a world wide alert for Mihdhar and Hazmi all of Wilshire's managers including his CTC managers, and even Cofer Black, and George Tenet were all aware that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US for no other reason than to take part in this huge attack that they knew would kill thousands. Yet none of these people said anything to the FBI criminal investigators about what they knew.

In fact Wilshire conspired with Corsi to sabotage the last chance Bongardt and his team of criminal investigators would have to be part of the search for Mihdhar in spite of the fact that Bongardt desperately wanted to take part in this investigation and knew that Mihdhar was inside of the US in order to take part in an al Qaeda terrorist operation. They sabotaged Bongardt's investigation of Mihdhar by with holding from the FBI for 8 days after the photos of Mihdhar and Hazmi were sent to the FBI, the photo of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur.

Bongardt could have used this photo to prove that Mihdhar had been part of the planning of the Cole bombing and thus prove the investigation of Mihdhar should go to his team of experienced investigators. But this photo of Khallad remained hidden from the FBI until August 30, two days after Corsi blocked any chance Bongardt could be part of the search for Mihdhar. Had Bongardt been given this investigation it is inconceivable he could not have found Mihdhar and Hazmi in time and prevented the attacks on 9/11!

Corsi not only told Bongardt that he could not be part of any investigation of Mihdhar, even when she knew the CIA was hiding the photo of Khallad taken at Kuala Lumpur, but that he had to destroy the information he already had on Mihdhar and if even one piece of paper was found at the FBI with his name and Mihdhar's name on it, his career was over at the FBI. She sabotaged any chance he could be part of the search for Mihdhar even when she knew this investigation should have gone to him and his team.

At this point all of the people killed at the WTC Towers and the Pentagon and on the hijacked flights were doomed, any last chance to save them was deliberately blocked by the CIA and the people at FBI headquarters who has cooperated with the CIA in blocking critical FBI investigations of known al Qaeda terrorists inside of the US!

When Wilshire was deliberately sabotaging Bongardt's investigation of Mihdhar he and in fact much of the chain of command at the CIA were aware that this would keep the FBI from preventing the huge attack everyone at the CIA was aware of and that as a result thousands of Americans would perish.

Incredibly and almost beyond belief on August 24, 2001 Wilshire makes email contact with Michael Maltbie and David Frasca, the two FBI managers who also worked for Michael Rolince and who were sabotaging Harry Samit's investigation of Moussaoui, ( in what can only be called the coincidence of the century) to find out about the progress of the Moussaoui investigation. So on August 24, 2001, Wilshire knows Mihdhar and Hazmi are inside of the US to take part in this huge al Qaeda attack, knows that Moussaoui has been arrested by the FBI who thought he was a al Qaeda terrorists that wanted to hijack a large US aircraft to fly it into the World Trade Center Towers, information that was also known by the top people at the CIA . Yet none of these people ay any thing to the FBI or anyone to raise any alarm in order to prevent this huge attack.

What is even more horrific is that all of this information came be found in publicly available documentation, which raises an even bigger question. Why did the 9/11 Commission say that they could never understand why the CIA never connected Mihdhar and Hazmi to the warnings of a huge al Qaeda attack when they had connect them together in numerous emails that the 9/11 Commission could have gotten by just asking for them!

You can find all of the details behind this and the source information for this information which all comes from government documents in a new book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" on the web site www.eventson911.com.