Congress Looks Into Pre-9/11 Intercepts of al Qaeda Communications
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Now to the fall-out from those pre-9/11 intercepted al Qaeda conversations that were brought to light yesterday by CNN. Some high-ranking members of Congress are lamenting what may or may not have been another missed opportunity. That's as Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge makes rounds in pursuit of cabinet status for his department, if not for himself. CNN'S Kate Snow joins us; she's got the latest from Capitol Hill. Hi there, Kate.</s>KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka. Governor Ridge making his first formal appearance here on Capitol Hill. Remember, he was reluctant to come up here and testify. Well, here he is today, presenting President Bush's new plan to restructure the government to deal with homeland security. He was here this morning. Right now he is testifying before a House panel. Earlier today he was testifying before a Senate panel, the Government Affairs Committee. Governor Ridge being asked by senators about many different things, a couple senators who have specific concerns. This is the House hearing that you are looking at now. But earlier today, a couple of senators asking about specific things, like for example, the Coast Guard. Two of them saying, if you roll the Coast Guard into this new department, do you take away from their search and rescues capabilities, the sort of job of maintaining fisheries, and that sort of thing? But most of the senators this morning focused on one particular issue, and that is intelligence. How will this new Homeland Security department be involved with intelligence reviewing? Several senators raising concerns that the new department won't have access completely to every bit of raw intelligence. There is a provision in the bill that says, in the president's proposal, that says that the president would have to sign off on certain information before it would get handed over to the new cabinet level secretary, and one senator said that might mean this new agency still wouldn't be able to connect information and a prevent terrorist plot.</s>SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: I am still troubled by the failure to connect the dots, the information dots, in any one entity, because it leaves unaccountable. There is no accountability here.</s>TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR: Specific direction from the president of the United States is to see to it, and I believe the language in the president's proposal assures that this department gets the series of reports, the work product of the intelligence community. and they have the capacity to perform or provide their own competitive analysis.</s>SNOW: Now other senators came to Ridge's defense. They said, look, you don't inundate this new agency, this new department. You don't want them to be getting truckloads of data; Senator Joe Lieberman saying that that was part of the problem over at the NSA, the National Security Agency, in that they had so much coming in that they didn't translate those two intercepts, those two messages we have been talking about, Fredricka, for two days until after the September 11 attacks -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: Now, those intercepts came up in closed door sessions yesterday. What more do we know about what was discussed?</s>SNOW: Yes, they came up in a hearing of the intelligence panel. They have been working behind closed doors looking at 9/11. Congressional sources told CNN that the NSA director, Michael Hayden, was put on the spot about this, asked a lot of questions about these two messages. They read as follows, according to congressional sources. One: "The match begins tomorrow." And the other: "Tomorrow is zero hour." Those are two messages intercepted. We now know, based on sources that David Ensor has, that both of these messages were in Arabic originally. Again, they arrived, or were intercepted, rather, on September 10, but weren't translated by the agency until September 12. We also understand from sources that the two messages, separately, in Arabic, were sent from people inside Afghanistan to other individuals in Saudi Arabia. Now the NSA, it's important to note, they are the main eavesdropping agency of the U.S. government. They're called the "Big Ear" around here in Washington. They get literally millions of intercepts every day, millions of messages that they intercept -- intercede every day. So it's not that surprising, Fredricka, that they wouldn't have acted immediately on these two messages. But lawmakers are raising some questions now, saying that this just points to the need to make things better, to make sure that this does not happen again -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. A lot of second guessing now. Thank you very much. Kate Snow from Capitol Hill. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com Communications>