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On February 1, 2000, Bayoumi traveled by car from San Diego to Los Angeles, to resolve a visa issue at the Saudi consulate.
Bayoumi invited an associate, Isamu Dyson, to accompany him.125 Dyson provided the following account to the FBI of the trip with Bayoumi.126 Dyson said that at the time of the invitation, Bayoumi mentioned a Los Angeles restaurant serving halal food where they could eat lunch after Bayoumi�s meeting at the consulate.127 After Bayoumi spent approximately one hour at the Saudi consulate, he and Dyson went to the restaurant but discovered it had been converted to a butcher shop.
The butcher shop employees recommended another nearby halal restaurant, the �Mediterranean Gourmet.� Bayoumi and Dyson walked to that restaurant.
While they were eating there, Hazmi and Mihdhar entered the restaurant and the four talked in Arabic.
Although Dyson had limited Arabic language skills, he said that Bayoumi kept him apprised of the content of the conversation.
Hazmi and Mihdhar told Bayoumi that they were in the United States to study English, but they did not like living in Los Angeles.
Bayoumi invited the men to visit San Diego and offered to assist them.
Bayoumi provided the men with his phone number.
Bayoumi and Dyson left the restaurant, and after stopping at a nearby mosque for sunset prayers, returned to San Diego.
Dyson asserted that the encounter with Hazmi and Mihdhar seemed to be a coincidental meeting.
Within several days of the meeting, Hazmi and Mihdhar accepted Bayoumi�s invitation and traveled to San Diego.
In San Diego, Bayoumi arranged for Hazmi and Mihdhar to rent an apartment on Mount Ada road in the same apartment complex where Bayoumi lived.
Bayoumi also co-signed their lease.
Shortly after Hazmi and Mihdhar moved into the apartment, Bayoumi hosted a party to introduce them to the local Muslim community.
Within a few weeks of moving into the apartment, Hazmi and Mihdhar filed a 30-day notice to vacate the apartment, apparently to move to another apartment.
However, they later rescinded the vacate notice and continued to lease the apartment until June 2, 2000.128 The apartment manager told the FBI that Bayoumi paid Hazmi and Mihdhar�s first month�s rent and security deposit because they had not yet established a local bank account and the apartment complex would not accept cash.
A review of Bayoumi and Mihdhar�s financial records after September 11, 2001, indicate that Bayoumi was reimbursed for this expense on the same day it was paid.129 Hazmi and Mihdhar�s communications On March 20, 2000, a long distance telephone call was placed from Mihdhar and Hazmi�s Mount Ada apartment to a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East linked to al Qaeda activities.
(See section III, A, 2 above.) A record of the call was captured in the toll records.
After the September 11 attacks, the call was identified through a record check.
Hazmi and Mihdhar�s association with an FBI asset beginning in May 2000 Sometime in May 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar moved out of the apartment Bayoumi had found for them on Mount Ada Road and moved as boarders into the home of an asset of the FBI�s San Diego Field Office.130 Hazmi and Mihdhar met the asset at the mosque they attended.131 Mihdhar stayed at the asset�s residence until June 10, 2000, when he left the United States.
Hazmi resided in the asset�s house until December 10, 2000, when he moved to Arizona.
Background on the FBI asset In 1994, the asset was recruited by San Diego FBI Special Agent who we call �Stan.� The FBI had interviewed the asset in connection with a bombing investigation several years before.
Stan remained the asset�s handling agent � or �control agent� � until Stan retired in February 2002.132 The asset was opened as an asset on May 14, 1994.133 He worked as an informational source, providing to the FBI information acquired in his normal daily routine.
He normally was questioned about specific individuals who were under investigation by the FBI, although he occasionally volunteered information that he thought might be relevant.
According to Stan, during some periods, he would talk to the asset several times per day, but there were periods in which he did not talk to him for several weeks or months.
Stan said that many of their conversations were about family matters, the informational asset�s health, and other non-substantive issues.
In 1996, the asset began renting out rooms in his home.
Prior to September 11, 2001, he had 14 different boarders in his house, including Hazmi and Mihdhar.
When Hazmi and Mihdhar rented rooms from the asset in 2000, two other persons also were renting rooms there.
Information from asset on Hazmi and Mihdhar It is not clear what information the asset provided to the FBI about Hazmi and Mihdhar before the September 11 attacks.
After the September 11 attacks, the FBI interviewed the asset and asked about the conduct and activities of Hazmi and Mihdhar while they were living with the asset.
In those interviews, the asset described them as quiet tenants who paid their rent.
He said they were good Muslims who regularly prayed at the mosque.
The asset said that Hazmi and Mihdhar often would go outside when using their cellular telephones.
The asset insisted that he noted no indicators of nefarious activity by Hazmi or Mihdhar that should have resulted in his reporting their identities to the FBI.134 The asset was asked what information he provided to Stan about Hazmi and Mihdhar before September 11.
In these interviews, the asset provided conflicting accounts regarding the information on Hazmi and Mihdhar that he had disclosed to Stan.
The agent who interviewed the asset - this agent had taken over as the asset�s control agent after Stan�s retirement from the FBI - told us that the asset said he told Stan about his boarders in general terms, although he had not fully identified Hazmi and Mihdhar.
The control agent said that the asset later said that he had not told Stan about the boarders at all.
Although Stan declined to be interviewed by the OIG, after September 11, his FBI supervisors had interviewed him about the asset.
Stan also had discussed the asset with co-workers and was interviewed by, and subsequently testified in, a closed session before the Joint Intelligence Committee.135 Stan reported that the asset had told him contemporaneously that two Saudi national visitors were residing in a room at his residence.
Stan said that the asset merely provided the first names of the boarders, Nawaf and Khalid.
Stan contended that he had asked the asset for the boarders� last names but never received them and did not follow up.
He said that the asset told him that his boarders were in the U.S. on valid visitors� visas, and they planned to visit and to study while they were in the country.
In addition, Stan said that the asset told him that he believed that the two boarders were good Muslims because of the amount of time that they spent at the mosque.
Stan stated that he did not recall the asset ever telling him that either of the boarders had moved out.
According to Stan, the asset did not describe his boarders as suspicious or otherwise worthy of further scrutiny.
Stan reported that he never obtained Hazmi and Mihdhar�s full identities from the asset and that he did not conduct any investigation of them.
OIG conclusion In sum, the FBI did not obtain information about Mihdhar�s and Hazmi�s time in San Diego, either as a result of the Bayoumi preliminary inquiry or from the asset.
In the analysis section of this chapter, we evaluate Stan�s actions with regard to Hazmi and Mihdhar and whether he should have pursued additional information about who was living with one of his assets.
Mihdhar�s association with Khallad, the purported mastermind of the Cole attack The third potential opportunity for the FBI to acquire information about Hazmi and Mihdhar occurred in January 2001, [INFORMATION REDACTED].
However, the FBI has asserted that it did not learn of the source�s identification of the al Qaeda operative at the Malaysia meetings until much later in 2001, just before the September 11 attacks.
This section of the report describes the events surrounding this third opportunity for the FBI to focus on Hazmi and Mihdhar.
Background In 2000, the CIA and the FBI began debriefing a source who provided significant information on operatives and operations related to Usama Bin Laden.
The source gave the CIA and the FBI information about an al Qaeda operative known as �Khallad� and described him as being involved with the East African embassy bombings in August 1998.
Shortly after the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in October 2000, the CIA and the FBI received a photograph and information that a man named �Khallad� was the purported mastermind behind the attack on the Cole.
In December 2000, the CIA and the FBI showed the source the photograph of Khallad, and the source identified the person in the photograph as the same Khallad he had described as involved with the East African bombings.
As part of the Cole investigation, the FBI sought to find Khallad.
In January 2001, the source was shown photographs from the Malaysia meetings in an effort to determine whether Khallad was in the photographs.
[INFORMATION REDACTED]136 [INFORMATION REDACTED] As a result, they said, they may have uncovered earlier the CIA�s information about Mihdhar and Hazmi and found them in the United States well before the summer of 2001.
[INFORMATION REDACTED] For example, on September 26, 2002, Cofer Black, who served as Director of the CIA�s CTC from 1999 until May 2002, testified before the Joint Intelligence Committee: FBI agents and analysts had full access to information [the CIA] acquired about the Cole attack.
For example, we ran a joint operation with the FBI to determine if a Cole suspect was in a [INFORMATION REDACTED] surveillance photo.
I want to repeat � it was a joint operation.
The FBI had access to that information from the beginning.
More specifically, our records establish that the Special Agents from the FBI�s New York Field Office who were investigating the USS Cole attack reviewed the information about the [INFORMATION REDACTED] photo in late January 2001.
We therefore examine in detail the evidence relating to whether the FBI was aware of the identification of Khallad in the photographs of the Malaysia meetings.
Source�s identification of Khallad The source In mid-2000, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) personnel arranged for FBI Legal Attach� (Legat) Office personnel overseas to meet a source who had substantial information on Bin Laden and his operatives and operations.
This particular FBI Legat office was staffed by the Legal Attach� (the �Legat�) and the Assistant Legal Attach� (the ALAT), who were FBI Special Agents.137 Because of the FBI Legat personnel�s inability to converse in any of the source�s languages, limits on the FBI�s authority to conduct unilateral intelligence activities overseas, and the source�s potential value as a source of intelligence information relevant to the CIA, the FBI contacted the CIA for assistance with the source.
The source was subsequently handled as a joint FBI/CIA source.
Even though the FBI ALAT � who we call �Max� � was unable to directly communicate with the source due to the lack of a common language, he was designated as the FBI control agent for the source.
Because the source had significant information about Bin Laden and his operatives and operations, the FBI New York Field Office � the office that was leading the investigations on the East African embassy bombings, the Cole attack, and other Bin Laden-related investigations � also became involved with the source.
This joint handling of the source created concerns within the CIA.
The CIA�s most significant concern was the FBI�s desire to use the source for the criminal investigations involving Bin Laden conducted by the FBI�s New York Field Office.
The CIA believed that the source should not face possible exposure in criminal proceedings.
CIA Headquarters was asked to work with FBI Headquarters to convert the source to purely an intelligence role, solely under CIA control.
According to CIA documents, the CIA and the Legat had discussed the FBI�s �wall� whereby separate but concurrent intelligence and criminal investigations were conducted within the FBI, but the CIA expressed concerns about the CIA�s ability to continue clandestine handling of the source if the FBI was involved.
Although the CIA acknowledged that the source had value to the FBI�s criminal case, the CIA argued that the source�s potential as an intelligence asset was more important then his potential assistance in the criminal case.
Despite the CIA�s concerns, the source remained a joint FBI/CIA asset.
Debriefings of the source Beginning in 2000, the CIA and FBI began to debrief the source on a regular basis.
Over the course of several months, the source frequently was shown photographs and asked to identify people in them.
Although Max was the source�s designated control agent, a CIA officer who spoke one of the source�s languages conducted the debriefings.
Max was present for some of these debriefings, but not all.
Some of the debriefings were unilateral CIA interviews.
The time spent with the source was kept short because of issues of travel and security.
According to Max, during the debriefings the CIA officer usually did not immediately translate the source�s statements for the benefit of Max.
He said that the CIA case officer would only immediately translate something when Max had specific questions for the CIA officer to ask the source.
The CIA case officer told the OIG he recalled translating for Max things that the source said, but he did this only when he recognized the significance of the information to Max or an FBI operation.
In an effort not to duplicate the reporting of information received from the source, the CIA and the FBI agreed that the CIA would be responsible for reporting the information from the debriefings.
However, in instances where the source was solely being shown FBI photographs or questioned based on an FBI lead, Max would document the source�s information, either in an EC or an FBI FD-302 form, and the CIA would not document the same information.
After the debriefings, the CIA officer would write internal cables covering the debriefings and forward them to the CTC and other appropriate offices.
These cables were internal CIA communications and were not provided to or shared with Max or other FBI personnel.138 Instead, Max and FBI Headquarters would be informed of the debriefings when the information was reported by the CIA in a TD.
As previously discussed, TDs were prepared by CIA reports officers who reviewed the internal cables and determined what information needed to be disseminated and to which agencies.
Based on our review of internal cables reporting the source�s debriefings and the TD reporting of the same interviews, it is clear the TDs often contained only a part of the information obtained during the source debriefings.
As a result, either through direct knowledge or through the TDs, Max had access to only some of the information obtained from the source during the debriefings.
In addition to the debriefings of the source by the CIA case officer, FBI agents from the New York Field Office working Bin Laden-related criminal investigations also interviewed the source with the CIA case officer present.
Max occasionally was present for these interviews.
After each of these interviews, the New York agents documented the source�s information in detail in an FD-302 that was entered into ACS and retrievable by all FBI personnel working on the Bin Laden cases.139 These FD-302s were routinely shared with CIA personnel in the field and at the CTC.
Source identifies Khallad from Yemeni-provided photograph Over a 3-month period in 2000, FBI New York Field Office personnel interviewed the source overseas four times.
During one of these interviews, the source described an individual known as �Khallad� as a trusted senior Bin Laden operative with potential connections to the East African embassy bombings.
As noted above, on October 12, 2000, two terrorists in a boat laden with explosives committed a suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole, a U.S. naval destroyer, during its brief refueling stop in the port in Aden, Yemen.
The FBI�s investigation into the attack was led by the FBI�s New York Field Office.