Khalid Almihdhar and His Connections to the USS Cole bombing

Why are the links between alleged Pentagon hijacker Khalid Almihdhar and the USS Cole bombing important? Because, according to recent revelations, officers at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, protected Almihdhar and his partner Nawaf Alhazmi from the FBI in January 2000, and this protection seems to have continued after this. If the CIA had simply been allowing Almihdhar to operate to see what connections they might uncover, then the Cole bombing showed clearly that this policy had been a complete disaster—a terrorist under their protection participated in the murder of 17 US sailors. However, the CIA continued to protect Almihdhar even after the Cole bombing.

One of the main arguments used by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a key speech on 4 October 2001 that held al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11 was that one of the 19 hijackers “has also been identified as playing key roles in both the East African Embassy attacks and the USS Cole attack.”

Two days later, the New York Times identified the mystery hijacker “as Mr. Almihdhar. United States investigators said they had clearly linked Mr. Almihdhar to the Cole attack and 'possibly' to the embassy bombings, senior American government officials said today.”

So what was Khalid Almihdhar's role in the USS Cole bombing? Was it a “key” role, as Tony Blair claimed? And how come a known al-Qaeda operative managed to evade surveillance, help blow up a destroyer, then enter the US and fly a plane into the Pentagon?

This is all the more interesting in the light of recent revelations (original here) that the CIA had protected Almihdhar and his partner Nawaf Alhazmi from the FBI in January 2000. There are some very pertinent questions that need to be asked here: If he had not been protected by the CIA, would the Cole bombing have occurred? Was he still being protected at the time of the bombing? And were any of the other Cole bombers protected by the CIA (as well as by the Yemenis)?

Despite these numerous questions, here I would only like to focus on evidence of Almihdhar's involvement in the Cole bombing and other ship-bombing operations planned by al-Qaeda. There is quite a lot of evidence indicating his involvement.

Continued here

Living with FBI informant

I for one do not believe that it is simply a coincidence that Alhazmi
and Almihdhar were living with an FBI informant. What does this mean? We know that they were helped by Omar al-Bayoumi who helped set them up with the informant and who is most likely a Saudi intelligence asset. Either high ups in the FBI did know, or this informant was a CIA asset as well. The fact that he was paid $100,000 of U.S. tax money by the FBI to keep his mouth shut and not cooperate with investigations speaks volumes.

Don't know about CIA asset

The informer, Abdussatar Shaikh, was connected to a diploma mill (plus a couple of legitimate educational institutions). The diploma mill was at one time called the William Lyon University, after a retired air force general. Don't know what the connection between Shaikh and Lyon was, if any, but, like you said, there's no reason Shaikh couldn't be working for somebody else as well as the FBI. Doubt it was CIA, though. We're probably looking at something semi-legit or completely off-the-books.