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7:16 PM PST, January 26, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot, obtained a visa to come to the United States just weeks before the attacks despite being under a federal terrorism indictment, a report by the federal commission investigating the attacks revealed Monday.
As many as eight of the hijackers entered the United States with doctored passports that contained "clues to their association" with al-Qaida that should have been caught by immigration authorities, commission investigators said.
The newly disclosed findings challenge previous claims by top CIA and FBI officials that the hijackers' records and paperwork were so clean that they could not have aroused suspicion.
The commission also heard testimony from a U.S. customs agent who blocked the entry of a Saudi citizen investigators now believe may have been the intended 20th hijacker. Authorities later learned that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the al-Qaida cells that executed the Sept. 11 attack, was at the Orlando, Fla., airport the same dayMohammed Al-Qahtani, who is in U.S. custody, was stopped.
The disclosures were included in the first staff reports to be issued by the commission since it opened its inquiry last year, and came during a daylong hearing devoted to immigration and intelligence-related failures by assorted government agencies.
A parade of government witnesses Monday described reforms that they said had shored up serious shortcomings in border-security systems, visa screenings and information-sharing among agencies responsible for generating watch lists of suspected terrorists.
But commissioners and investigators on the panel voiced concern that certain agencies had not come to grips with the magnitude of the problems that allowed al-Qaida operatives to slip past a host of security systems and checks.
"We are not sure that these problems have been addressed," said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission, referring in particular to failures to put al-Qaida operatives on federal watch lists. "We are not sure they are even adequately acknowledged as a problem."
Also Monday, President Bush identified an al-Qaida operative caught in Iraq 12 days ago as a senior official in the organization who had close ties to Mohammed.
Bush said Hassan Ghul was captured while in Iraq trying to facilitate attacks by insurgents against U.S. troops. He said Ghul had "reported directly" to Mohammed, the operational commander of al-Qaida who was captured in Pakistan in March.
"He was a killer," Bush said of Ghul. "He was moving money and messages around South Asia and the Middle East to other al-Qaida leaders. He was a part of this network of haters that we're dismantling."
Zelikow and other staffers said at the commission hearing that Mohammed had obtained a visa to visit the United States on July 23, 2001 -- about six weeks before the attacks.
The information suggests Mohammed may have been planning a last-minute trip to shepherd some aspect of the plot, a move that would have carried enormous risks because he had been under federal indictment in the United States since 1996 for his role in earlier terrorist plots.
Mohammed applied for the visa using a Saudi passport and alias -- Abdulrahman al Ghamdi -- even though he is Pakistani-born and was not believed to be in Saudi Arabia at the time the application was filed, according to a portion of the staff report read by Susan Ginsburg, senior counsel to the commission.
"He had someone else submit his application and a photo" through a third-party visa application system known as Visa Express, Ginsburg said, adding that "there is no evidence that he ever used the visa to enter the United States."
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan last year and is held by U.S. authorities at an undisclosed location.
Ginsburg challenged CIA Director George Tenet's description of 17 of the 19 hijackers as arriving in the United States "clean" of activities or paperwork that would arouse suspicion. She also disputed FBI Director Robert Mueller's claim that "each of the hijackers ... came easily and lawfully from abroad."
"We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to re-evaluate those statements," Ginsburg said.
Some of the most startling detail to surface Monday centered on the case of Qahtani, the Saudi who was turned away by customs officials upon his arrival at the Orlando airport Aug. 4, 2001. The man was screened by Jose Melendez-Perez, an inspector with Customs and Border Protection, now part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Testifying before the commission, Melendez-Perez said he was immediately suspicious of Qahtani, who arrived with no return ticket, no hotel reservations, spoke little English, behaved menacingly and offered conflicting information on the purpose of his travel.
"The bottom line: He gave me the chills," Melendez-Perez said, describing Qahtani as well-groomed, "combative" and in "impeccable shape."
At one point, the Saudi said there was someone waiting for him upstairs in the airport, Melendez-Perez recalled. But when asked that person's name, "he changed his story and said no one was meeting him." Although authorities didn't know it until after the Sept. 11 attacks, surveillance cameras caught Atta at the airport that day. And records showed him making a cell-phone call to a number linked to the 9/11 plot.
Citing that Atta connection and other information the panel could not disclose, Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste said: "It is extremely possible and perhaps probable that (Qahtani) was to be the 20th hijacker."
The Saudi withdrew his application for entry. As Qahtani boarded a return flight to Saudi Arabia, he stopped and said, "I'll be back," Melendez-Perez testified.
Qahtani, 26, apparently made his way from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, where he was caught by U.S. forces and sent to the U.S. military facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The committee staff also disclosed the names of two other suspected co-conspirators in the Sept. 11 plot who had tried and failed to get into the United States -- including a man identified as the nephew of Mohammed.
That man, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, was "heavily involved in financial and logistical aspects of the 9/11 plot," according to a second staff statement, written by Ginsburg.
The panel's senior counsel said that Aziz Ali had tried to get a U.S. visa in Dubai about two weeks before the attacks, saying he intended to enter the United States on Sept. 4, 2001, for one week. As a Pakistani visa applicant in a third country, Ginsburg said, he probably received greater scrutiny from U.S. officials and was denied a visa because it was deemed possible that he intended to disappear into the country.
Another man, a Saudi national, was identified Monday as a potential hijacker, the commission staff statement said.
Saeed al Gamdi, also known as Jihad al Gamdi, "apparently intended to participate in the 9/11 attacks," said Ginsburg's report, noting that Gamdi was a different person from the Saeed al Ghamdi who actually became a hijacker.
Gamdi applied for a tourist visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Nov. 12, 2000,
the same date as 9/11 hijacker Ahmad al Haznawi, the statement said. Haznawi
was approved, but Gamdi was denied after an interview with a consular officer
who believed he intended to stay in the United States illegally.
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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times |