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I think everyone is still confusing this issue�someday someone will die � and wall or not � the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain �problems.� Let�s hope the National Security Law Unit will stand by their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL, is getting the most �protection�.
Later that morning, Donna replied in an e-mail: I don�t think you understand that we (FBIHQ) are all frustrated with this issue.
I don�t know what to tell you.
I don�t know how many other ways I can tell this to you.
These are the rules.
NSLU does not make them up and neither does UBLU.
They are in the MIOG186 and ordered by the [FISA] Court and every office of the FBI is required to follow them including FBINY� The New York Field Office�s investigation On August 29, 2001, the FBI�s New York Field Office opened a full field intelligence investigation to locate Mihdhar.
The investigation was assigned to a Special Agent who we call �Richard.� Richard was a relatively inexperienced agent, who had recently been transferred to the Bin Laden squad.187 This was Richard�s first intelligence investigation.
On August 29, Donna received Mihdhar�s visa application from the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah.
The application indicated that Mihdhar planned to travel as a tourist to the United States on July 1, 2001, for a purported month long stay.
On the application, Mihdhar falsely claimed that he had not previously applied for a U.S. non-immigrant visa or been in the United States.188 On August 30, 2001, Donna sent an e-mail to Richard.
After a paragraph introducing herself, Donna advised she was attaching Mihdhar�s visa application form, which included Mihdhar�s photograph, and that she would be faxing the remaining documents.
Donna stated she would send a couple of pages from the Attorney General Guidelines �which apply to your case� and then she would mail the documents.
Richard told the OIG that on August 30, he received a telephone call from Donna in reference to the investigation.
He said that Donna said the goal of the intelligence investigation was to locate and identify Mihdhar for a potential interview.
According to Richard, Donna did not indicate the investigation was an emergency or identify any other exigent circumstance.
On August 30, 2001, the CIA sent a CIR to the FBI outlining the identification of �Khallad� from one of the [INFORMATION REDACTED] in January 2001 by the source.
The first line of the text stated the information should be passed to Rob.
The CIA cable stated the FBI should advise the CIA if the FBI did not have the [INFORMATION REDACTED] so they may be provided.
This is the first record documenting that the source�s identification of Khallad in the [INFORMATION REDACTED] was provided by the CIA to the FBI.
Richard told the OIG that he began to work on locating Mihdhar on September 4.
He stated that he had received the assignment on Thursday, August 30, but he worked all weekend and Monday on another exigent investigative matter involving a Canadian hijacking.
As a result, he said he did not have the opportunity to begin work on the Mihdhar investigation until Tuesday, September 4.
On September 4, Richard completed a lookout request for the INS, identifying Mihdhar as a potential witness in a terrorist investigation.
Due to his unfamiliarity with completing the lookout form, Richard contacted an INS Special Agent who was assigned to the FBI�s JTTF in New York.
We call this Special Agent �Patrick.� The INS lookout form has a box indicating whether the individual was wanted for �security/terrorism� reasons.
Richard did not check this box.
He said that he thought Patrick told him to identify the subject on the form as a witness, not a potential terrorist, to prevent overzealous immigration officials from overreacting.
By contrast, Patrick, who was assigned to the JTTF since September 1996, told us that he did not provide this advice to Richard and he always checked the security/terrorism box whenever he completed the lookout form for a potential witness in a terrorism investigation.
However, Richard asked Patrick to review the lookout request form for completeness, and Patrick sent the form to INS Inspections for inclusion in the INS lookout system, without making any changes.189 During his initial interview with the OIG, Richard asserted that he also asked Patrick to review and explain Mihdhar�s travel documents, including the INS indices printouts and the visa application.
In a follow-up interview, Richard said he could not definitively recall whether he had actually provided the predicating materials to Patrick or whether he merely had Patrick review the INS lookout request form.
Patrick told the OIG that he recalled this request because it was the first one from Richard and because of Mihdhar�s subsequent involvement in the September 11 attacks.
Patrick stated that he had not reviewed the predicating materials, but had only checked the request form for completeness.
He added that if he had been shown any of the predicating materials on Mihdhar�s travel, the review would only have been cursory.
Patrick and Richard both acknowledged that they did not notice the false statements on Mihdhar�s visa application.
Richard also contacted a U.S. Customs Service representative assigned to the JTTF and verified that a TECS lookout was in place for Mihdhar.
Richard conducted other administrative tasks such as uploading the initial information about Mihdhar into ACS.
On September 4, Richard requested a local criminal history check on Mihdhar through the New York City Police Department.
Richard told the OIG that he initially focused on Mihdhar, since he was captioned as the subject of the investigation in the predicating EC.
After reviewing the EC several times, Richard noted the connection to Hazmi, so he conducted the same record checks on Hazmi as he had on Mihdhar.
On September 5, Richard requested an NCIC criminal history check, credit checks, and motor vehicle records be searched in reference to Mihdhar and Hazmi.
On September 5, Richard and another JTTF agent contacted the loss prevention personnel for the New York area Marriott hotels, since Mihdhar had indicated when he entered the United States in July 2001 that his destination was the Marriott hotel in New York.
Richard learned that Mihdhar had not registered as a guest at six New York City Marriotts.
Richard stated he also conducted Choicepoint� searches on Hazmi and Mihdhar.190 Richard said he recalled he had another JTTF officer assist him with the searches because he was not familiar with the system.
Richard did not locate any records on either Hazmi or Mihdhar in Choicepoint�.191 Richard told the OIG that it was not uncommon not to find a record because of variations in spelling of names or other identifying information.
Hazmi and Mihdhar had traveled to Los Angeles, California on January 1, 2000, via United Airlines, and INS records indicated that they claimed to be destined for a �Sheraton hotel� in Los Angeles.
Therefore, on September 10, 2001, Richard drafted an investigative lead for the FBI Los Angeles Field Office.
He asked that office to request a search of the Sheraton hotel records concerning any stays by Mihdhar and Hazmi in early 2000.
He also requested that the Los Angeles office check United Airlines and Lufthansa Airlines records for any payment or other information concerning Mihdhar and Hazmi.
However, the lead was not transmitted to Los Angeles until the next day, September 11, 2001.
By the morning of September 11, when the American Airlines flight 77 that Mihdhar and Hazmi hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon, Richard had not uncovered any information regarding Mihdhar�s or Hazmi�s location in the United States.
OIG conclusions on the intelligence investigation Although FBI and CIA personnel had many discussions throughout July and August 2001 about the Cole attacks [INFORMATION REDACTED], the CIA did not provide and the FBI did not become aware of the significant intelligence information about Mihdhar�s U.S. visa, the Malaysian matter, and the [INFORMATION REDACTED] until August 22, 2001.
In May 2001, one detailee to the CTC was assigned to �get up to speed� on the Malaysian matter in her spare time but said she had been unable to focus on the matter until August 2001.
On July 13, even after John had suggested in an e-mail to the CTC that the [INFORMATION REDACTED] be passed to the FBI via CIR, this was not done for several weeks.
The CIR was not sent to the FBI until August 30, after the FBI learned of Mihdhar�s presence in the United States.
The CIA also did not provide to the FBI the information about Hazmi�s travel to the United States in January 2000 until August 22.
Donna stated that she did not receive this information until August 22, and her actions upon receipt of the information clearly indicate that she understood the significance of this information when she received it.
She took immediate steps to open an intelligence investigation when she learned of this information.
On August 22, once the FBI was aware of the intelligence information about Mihdhar and that he was in the United States, the FBI took steps to open an intelligence investigation to locate him.
Yet, the FBI did not pursue this as an urgent matter or assign many resources to it.
It was given to a single, inexperienced agent without any particular priority.
Moreover, the dispute within the FBI about whether to allow a criminal investigation to be opened again demonstrated the problems with the wall between criminal and intelligence investigations.
The FBI was not close to locating Mihdhar or Hazmi when they participated in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
In the analysis section of this chapter, we address in more detail the FBI�s decision to open the matter as an intelligence investigation instead of a criminal investigation, and the inadequacy of the FBI�s efforts to investigate Mihdhar in late August and early September 2001.
Summary of the five opportunities for the FBI to learn about Mihdhar and Hazmi In summary, there were at least five opportunities for the FBI to have learned about Mihdhar and Hazmi, [INFORMATION REDACTED] and their presence in the United States, well before the September 11 attacks.
First, in early 2000, the FBI received the NSA information about Mihdhar�s planned travel to Malaysia.
Although the CIA informed the FBI of the Malaysia meetings in January 2000, the existence of Mihdhar�s U.S. visa and the surveillance photographs was not disclosed to the FBI.
FBI detailees at the CTC read the pertinent CIA cable traffic with this information and drafted a CIR to pass this information to the FBI.
But the CIR was not released to the FBI, purportedly at the direction of a CIA supervisor, and the FBI did not learn of this critical information until August 2001.
In addition, in March 2000 a CIA office discovered that Hazmi had traveled to the United States in January 2000, but no one from the CIA shared this information with the FBI.
Second, in February 2000, Mihdhar and Hazmi moved to San Diego, where they were aided in finding a place to live by the former subject of an FBI preliminary inquiry.
In May 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar moved in with an FBI asset in San Diego, California.
However, the FBI did not learn of this information until after the September 11 attacks.
Third, in early January 2001, the CIA showed [INFORMATION REDACTED] to a joint CIA/FBI source, and the source stated that [INFORMATION REDACTED].
This identification could have led the FBI to focus on who else was [INFORMATION REDACTED], which could have led the FBI to identify and locate Mihdhar.
However, we concluded that, despite the CIA�s assertions, [INFORMATION REDACTED] was not known by the FBI.
Fourth, in May and June 2001, due to concerns about possible terrorist activities, CIA employees were again examining the [INFORMATION REDACTED], Hazmi�s and Mihdhar�s travel (including Hazmi�s travel to Los Angeles), and [INFORMATION REDACTED].
At the same time, these CIA employees were discussing with FBI employees the Cole investigation and the [INFORMATION REDACTED].
Yet, despite these interactions between the two agencies on the telephone, in e-mails, and in a June 11 meeting in New York, the FBI never was informed of the critical intelligence information that [INFORMATION REDACTED] with Mihdhar, and that Hazmi had traveled to the United States.
Again, this information could have led the FBI to initiate a search for Hazmi and Mihdhar earlier than it eventually did.
Fifth, in July 2001 a former Bin Laden Unit Deputy Chief who was working in ITOS in FBI Headquarters confirmed that [INFORMATION REDACTED] and wrote in an e-mail to CTC managers that this information needed to be sent in a CIR to the FBI.
However, this information was not sent in a CIR to the FBI until several weeks later.
On August 22, an FBI employee detailed to the CTC notified the FBI that Mihdhar had entered the United States on July 4, 2001.
The FBI began an intelligence investigation to locate Mihdhar and Hazmi.
However, the FBI assigned few resources to the investigation and little urgency was given to the investigation.
The FBI was not close to locating Mihdhar and Hazmi before they participated in the September 11 attacks.
IV.
OIG�s analysis of the FBI�s handling of the intelligence information concerning Hazmi and Mihdhar We found systemic and individual failings in the FBI�s handling of the Hazmi and Mihdhar matter.
As a result of these failings, there were at least five opportunities for the FBI to connect information that could have led to an earlier investigation of Hazmi and Mihdhar and their activities in the United States.
In this analysis section, we first discuss the systemic problems involving the breakdowns in the gathering or passing of information about Hazmi and Mihdhar between the FBI and CIA.
We then turn to the problems in handling intelligence information within the FBI.
Finally, we discuss the actions of individual FBI employees in handling information about Hazmi and Mihdhar information.
In this section, we do not make recommendations regarding the actions of the CIA and its employees.
We believe the CIA shares a significant responsibility for the breakdowns in the Hazmi and Mihdhar case, and that several of its employees did not provide the intelligence information to the FBI as they should have.
We leave it to the CIA OIG, the entity with oversight jurisdiction over the CIA and its employees, to reach conclusions and make recommendations on the actions of the CIA and its employees.
Systemic impediments that hindered the sharing of information between the CIA and the FBI The most critical breakdown in the Hazmi and Mihdhar case was the failure of the FBI to learn from the CIA critical information about them; their travel to the United States; [INFORMATION REDACTED].
These breakdowns reflected serious problems in the process before the September 11 attacks for sharing information between the FBI and the CIA.
The FBI failed to receive from the CIA three critical pieces of intelligence about Mihdhar and Hazmi in a timely manner: Mihdhar�s possession of a valid, multiple-entry U.S. visa; Hazmi�s travel to the United States; and [INFORMATION REDACTED] The CIA became aware of these three pieces of intelligence in January 2000, March 2000, and January 2001.
Despite claims to the contrary, we found that none of this information was passed from the CIA to the FBI until August 2001.
Although the CIA failed to timely pass this information to the FBI, there were several opportunities for the FBI to have obtained this information in other ways.