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We also searched ACS for any FBI record of the travel documents having been provided to the FBI, since this cable indicated that a physical copy of the documents, not merely information about the documents, was passed.
We found no reference to the documents.
Aside from this cable, we found no other evidence that the information or documents about Mihdhar�s passport or visa information was in fact provided to the FBI during this time period.
As discussed above, five FBI employees were detailed to the CTC to work on Bin Laden matters during 2000 and 2001, and all had access at their desks to CIA internal cable traffic.
Four of those employees � the supervisor who we call Eric, the IOS who we call Mary, and the agents who we call Dwight and Malcolm � were at the Bin Laden Unit in January 2000 when the Malaysia meetings occurred.118 We considered how each handled the intelligence information concerning Mihdhar during this period.
After reading two of the cables indicating that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa, Dwight prepared a draft CIR to officially notify the FBI about that information, since the U.S. visa presented a nexus between Mihdhar and the United States.
But the CIR was not provided to the FBI.
However, we also examined whether any of the detailees took any other action to notify FBI Headquarters or, in Malcolm�s case, the New York Field Office, about the information concerning Mihdhar.
The evidence shows that each FBI detailee reviewed some of the cables about Mihdhar�s U.S. visa.
Dwight accessed several of the cables that indicated Mihdhar had a U.S. visa, such as the cables stating that Mihdhar had transited through Dubai and had a U.S. visa, the cable stating that Mihdhar�s visa application listed New York as his intended destination in May 1999, and the cable stating that based on a review of Mihdhar�s visa, it did not appear that he had actually traveled to the United States.
Malcolm also accessed the cable stating that Mihdhar�s visa application listed New York as his intended destination in May 1999, and the cable stating that it did not appear that Mihdhar had actually traveled to the United States.
Malcolm also accessed the two cables stating that Mihdhar had arrived in Kuala Lumpur and that surveillance photos showed him meeting with others in Malaysia.
Malcolm also accessed Dwight�s draft CIR indicating passage of the visa information to the FBI, including the New York Field Office.
Mary accessed the January cable stating that Mihdhar�s travel documents, including a multiple-entry U.S. visa, had been passed to the FBI, but she did not access the previous cables reflecting the visa information or Dwight�s CIR.
She also accessed the two cables stating that Mihdhar had arrived in Kuala Lumpur and that surveillance photos showed him meeting with others in Malaysia.
Eric did not access these cables, but he accessed Dwight�s draft CIR which detailed Mihdhar�s visa information and which summarized the NSA information.
However, Dwight, Malcolm, Mary, and Eric all told the OIG that they did not recall anyone from the CIA bringing to their attention the fact that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa.119 In addition, despite the records of their access to the cable traffic or the CIR, they all told the OIG that they did not recall discovering at the time � such as by reading a cable � that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa.
As discussed above, Dwight told the OIG that he did not even recall writing the CIR or even being aware of the Malaysia meetings or of the fact that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa.
Eric told the OIG that his CIA counterpart � John, the CIA Bin Laden Unit Deputy Chief � mentioned the Malaysia meetings and that surveillance photos had been taken, but Eric did not recall ever hearing anything about Mihdhar having a U.S. visa.
Mary told the OIG that she did not recall even being contemporaneously aware of the Malaysia meetings.120 Mary explained that she did not have reason to be made aware of the Malaysia meetings at the time because the matter had been assigned to another CIA desk officer � Michelle (the one who wrote the cable indicating that Mihdhar�s travel documents had been passed to the FBI).
Malcolm said he was not aware of the fact that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa until after September 11.
He stated that he recalled being shown the Kuala Lumpur photos, but he could not remember whether that was before or after September 11.
He said that it was not until he was shown the Kuala Lumpur photos that he became aware of the Malaysia meetings.
Yet, the evidence shows that all had accessed contemporaneously cables indicating that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa, which was important intelligence information that was never provided to FBI Headquarters.
They did not violate any specific policy or procedure in their handling of the information, and they did not have the authority to unilaterally pass CTC information to the FBI without permission.
This restriction included any informal passage of the information, such as by telephone call or in-person discussions.
However, none of them, particularly Dwight, ensured that the information was provided to the FBI.
Dwight drafted a CIR that would have provided the FBI with the important information about Mihdhar, but the CIR was not released by the CIA.
Although Dwight followed up a few days later to ask whether the cable was going to be sent or whether he should remake it in some other way, there is no record of a response to his request, and no one could explain why the cable was not sent.
We believe it was critical that the information be sent.
We found no indication that this ever happened.
This failure to send the information to the FBI, in our view, was also attributable to problems in how the detailees were instructed and supervised, and that these problems significantly impeded the flow of information between the CIA and the FBI.
We discuss these systemic problems in detail in our analysis section later in this chapter.
In sum, the evidence shows that in January and March 2000, the CIA uncovered important intelligence information about Mihdhar and Hazmi: Yet, we found that the CIA did not share significant pieces of this information with the FBI � that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa and that Hazmi had traveled to Los Angeles.
An FBI detailee at the CIA drafted a CIR to share this information with the FBI, but that information was not released by the CIA to the FBI.
We were unable to determine why this did not occur.
No one we interviewed said they remembered the CIR or why it was not sent to the FBI.
We consider it a significant failure for this CIR not to be sent to the FBI.
In addition, the evidence shows that the limited information that was provided to FBI Headquarters � that Mihdhar traveled [INFORMATION REDACTED] was never documented by the FBI in any system that was retrievable or searchable, thus limiting the usefulness of the information that was shared.
The FBI�s only official record of having received this information was in the hard copies of the January 5 threat update, which was attached to the January 6 executive briefing, and Ted�s e-mail summarizing information from his discussion with the CIA employee.
We discuss this and other systemic problems in our analysis section below.
The second set of events that may have led the FBI to discover Mihdhar and Hazmi�s presence in the United States related to their stay in San Diego.
As noted above, on January 15, 2000, Mihdhar and Hazmi boarded a flight in Bangkok, Thailand, for Los Angeles.
They were admitted to the United States on non-immigrant visitor visas and authorized to remain in the U.S. until July 14, 2000.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, they traveled to San Diego, California, where they were aided in finding a place to stay by Omar al Bayoumi.
Bayoumi had been the subject of an FBI preliminary intelligence investigation that had been closed.
In late May 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar rented a room in the residence of an FBI asset.121 Mihdhar remained in San Diego until June 10, 2000, when he left the United States.122 Hazmi remained in the San Diego area until approximately December 2000, when he moved to the Phoenix, Arizona area.
In Phoenix, Hazmi lived for approximately three months with another September 11 hijacker, Hani Hanjour.
In April 2001, Hazmi and Hanjour moved to New Jersey and remained on the East Coast until September 11.
While residing in San Diego in 2000, Mihdhar and Hazmi did not act in an unusual manner that would draw attention, but they did not attempt to hide their identities.
Using the same names contained in their travel documents and known to at least some in the Intelligence Community, they rented an apartment, obtained driver�s licenses from the state of California Department of Motor Vehicles, opened bank accounts and received bank credit cards, purchased a used vehicle and automotive insurance, took flying lessons at a local flying school, and obtained local phone service that included Hazmi�s listing in the local telephone directory.
Although Hazmi and Mihdhar were in San Diego for a significant period of time, the FBI did not learn of their presence there until after September 11, 2001.
After September 11, much would be learned about Hazmi and Mihdhar�s time in San Diego and the Intelligence Community�s missed opportunities to find and investigate them before the terrorist attacks in which they participated.
In this section, we describe the facts surrounding Hazmi and Mihdhar�s residence in San Diego, including their associations with two persons known to the FBI.
Omar al-Bayoumi is a Saudi Arabian national who came to the United States in 1993.
In early 2000 he had been living with his wife and four children in San Diego for at least four years.
Although he described himself to others in San Diego as a graduate student in business administration, he took classes intermittently and was not enrolled in a program of study.
He did not work in the United States and received a monthly stipend of $4,000 plus �other allowances,� ranging from $465 to $3,800 each month, from Dallah/Avco, a Saudi contractor to the Presidency of Civil Aviation.123 Bayoumi was active in the San Diego Muslim community and was involved in the establishment of several mosques in the United States.
In September 1998, the FBI�s San Diego Field Office opened a preliminary inquiry on Bayoumi based on allegations raised by the manager in the apartment complex where he was living at the time.
The manager alleged that Bayoumi had received a suspicious package from the Middle East, and the maintenance worker for the apartment complex had noted strange wires in Bayoumi�s bathroom.
In addition, the manager reported frequent gatherings of young Middle Eastern males at Bayoumi�s apartment on weekend nights.
The FBI case agent conducted a limited investigation of Bayoumi, but the preliminary inquiry was closed in June 1999 and was not converted to a full field investigation.124 As a result, the FBI was no longer investigating Bayoumi at the time that Hazmi and Mihdhar met Bayoumi in February 2000.
However, the following paragraphs describe what was later learned about Bayoumi�s interactions with Hazmi and Mihdhar.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.