 Chapter 8.2 of the 9-11 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The 9-11 Commission Report. Chapter 8.2. Late Leeds, Mijar, Musawi and KSM. In Chapter 6 we discussed how intelligence agencies successfully detected some of the early travel in the planes operation, picking up the movements of Khalid el-Madar and identifying him and seeing his travel converge with someone they perhaps could have identified but did not, Nawaf al-Hazmi, as well as with less easily identifiable people such as Khalad and Abu Barah. These observations occurred in December 1999 and January 2000. The trail had been lost in January 2000 without a clear realization that it had been lost and without much effort to pick it up again. Nor had the CIA placed Mijar on the State Department's watch list for suspected terrorists so that either an embassy or a port of entry might take note if Mijar showed up again. On four occasions in 2001, the CIA, the FBI or both had apparent opportunities to refocus on the significance of Hazmi and Mijar and reinvigorate the search for them. After reviewing those episodes, we will turn to the handling of the Musawi case and some late leads regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. January 2001. Identification of Khalad. Almost one year after the original trail had been lost in Bangkok, the FBI and the CIA were working on the investigation of the coal bombing. They learned of the link between a captured conspirator and a person called Khalad. They also learned that Khalad was a senior security official for bin Laden who had helped direct the bombing. We introduced Khalad in Chapter 5 and returned to his role in the coal bombing in Chapter 6. One of the members of the FBI's investigative team in Yemen realized that he had heard of Khalad before from a joint FBI CIA source four months earlier. The FBI agent obtained from a foreign government a photo of the person believed to have directed the coal bombing. It was shown to the source and he confirmed that the man in that photograph was the same Khalad he had described. In December 2000, on the basis of some links associated with Khalid Al-Madar, the CIA's bin Laden unit speculated that Khalad and Khalid Al-Madar might be one and the same. The CIA asked that a Kuala Lumpur surveillance photo of Madar be shown to the joint source who had identified Khalad. In early January 2001, two photographs from the Kuala Lumpur meeting were shown to the source. One was a known photograph of Madar, the other a photograph of a then unknown subject. The source did not recognize Madar, but he indicated he was 90% certain that the other individual was Khalad. This meant that Khalad and Madar were two different people. It also meant that there was a link between Khalad and Madar, making Madar seem even more suspicious. Yet we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Madar or his travel companions. In addition, we found that the CIA did not notify the FBI of this identification. DCI Tenant and Cofer Black testified before Congress' joint inquiry into 9-11 that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning, but drawing on an extensive record, including documents that were not available to the CIA personnel who drafted that testimony, we conclude this was not the case. The FBI's primary coal investigators had no knowledge that Khalad had been in Kuala Lumpur with Madar and others until after the September 11 attacks. Because the FBI had not been informed in January 2000 about Madar's possession of a U.S. visa, it had not then started looking for him in the United States. Because it did not know of the links between Khalad and Madar, it did not start looking for him in January 2001. This incident is an example of how day-to-day gaps and information sharing can emerge even when there is mutual goodwill. The information was from a joint FBI CIA source who spoke essentially no English and whose languages were not understood by the FBI agent on the scene overseas. Issues of travel and security necessarily kept short the amount of time spent with the source. As a result, the CIA officer usually did not translate either questions or answers for his FBI colleague and friend. For interviews without simultaneous translation, the FBI agent on the scene received copies of the reports that the CIA disseminated to other agencies regarding the interviews. But he was not given access to the CIA's internal operational reports, which contained more detail. It was there, in reporting to which FBI investigators did not have access, that information regarding the January 2001 identification of Khalad appeared. The CIA officer does not recall this particular identification and thus cannot say why it was not shared with his FBI colleague. He might not have understood the possible significance of the new identification. In June 2000, Medar left California and returned to Yemen. It is possible that if, in January 2001, the CIA had resumed its search for him, placed him on the State Department's tip-off watch list, or provided the FBI with the information, he might have been found, either before or at the time he applied for a new visa in June 2001, or when he returned to the United States on July 4th. Spring 2001, looking again at Kuala Lumpur. By mid-May 2001, as the threat reports were surging, a CIA official detailed to the International Terrorism Operations section at the FBI wondered where the attacks might occur. We will call him John. Recalling the episode about the Kuala Lumpur travel of Medar and his associates, John searched the CIA's databases for information regarding the travel. On May 15th, he and an official at the CIA reexamined many of the old cables from early 2000, including the information that Medar had a U.S. visa and that Hasmi had come to Los Angeles on January 15th, 2000. The CIA official who reviewed the cables took no action regarding them. John, however, began a lengthy exchange with a CIA analyst, whom we will call Dave, to figure out what these cables meant. John was aware of how dangerous Khalad was, at one point calling him a major lead killer. He concluded that something bad was definitely up. Despite the U.S. link's evidence in this traffic, John made no effort to determine whether any of these individuals was in the United States. He did not raise that possibility with his FBI counterpart. He was focused on Malaysia. John described the CIA as an agency that tended to play a zone defense. He was worrying solely about Southeast Asia, not the United States. In contrast, he told us, the FBI tends to play man to man. Desk officers at the CIA's bin Laden unit did not have cases in the same sense as an FBI agent who works in an investigation from beginning to end. Thus, when the trail went cold after the Kuala Lumpur meeting in January 2000, the desk officer moved on to different things. By the time the March 2000 cable arrived with information that one of the travelers had flown to Los Angeles, the case officer was no longer responsible for follow-up. While several individuals at the bin Laden unit opened the cable when it arrived in March 2000, no action was taken. The CIA's zone defense concentrated on where, not who, had its information been shared with the FBI, a combination of the CIA's zone defense and the FBI's man-to-man approach might have been productive. June 2001, the meeting in New York. John's review of the Kuala Lumpur meeting did set off some more sharing of information getting the attention of an FBI analyst, whom we will call Jane. Jane was assigned to the FBI's coal investigation. She knew that another terrorist involved in that operation, Faud Al-Cousseau, had traveled to Bangkok in January 2000 to give money to Khalad. Jane and the CIA analyst, Dave, had been working together on coal-related issues. Chasing Couseau's trail, Dave suggested showing some photographs to FBI agents in New York who were working on the coal case and had interviewed Couseau. John gave three Kuala Lumpur surveillance pictures to Jane to show to the New York agents. She was told that one of the individuals in the photographs was someone named Khalid Al-Madar. She did not know why the photographs had been taken or why the Kuala Lumpur travel might be significant, and she was not told that someone had identified Khalad in the photographs. When Jane did some research in a database for intelligence reports in Tel Link, she found the original NSA reports on the planning for the meeting. Because the CIA had not disseminated reports on its tracking of Madar, Jane did not pull up any information about Madar's US visa or about travel to the United States by Hasme or Madar. Jane, Dave, and an FBI analyst who was on detail to the CIA's Bin Laden unit went to New York on June 11th to meet with the agents about the Coal case. Jane brought the surveillance pictures. At some point in the meeting she showed the photographs to the agents and asked whether they recognized Couseau in any of them. The agents asked questions about the photographs. Why were they taken? Why were these people being followed? Where are the rest of the photographs? The only information Jane had about the meeting, other than the photographs, were the NSA reports that she had found on Intel Link. These reports, however, contained caveats that their contents could not be shared with criminal investigators without the permission of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, OIPR. Therefore, Jane concluded that she could not pass on information from those reports to the agents. This decision was potentially significant because the signals intelligence she did not share linked Madar to a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East. She had established a link to the suspected facility from their work on the Embassy Bombings case. This link would have made them very interested in learning more about Madar. The sad irony is that the agents who found the source were being kept from obtaining the fruits of their own work. Dave, the CIA analyst, knew more about the Coal and poor meeting. He knew that Madar possessed a U.S. visa, that his visa application indicated that he intended to travel to New York, to travel to Los Angeles, and that a source had put Madar in the company of Calade. No one at the meeting asked him what he knew. He did not volunteer anything. He told investigators that as a CIA analyst he was not authorized to answer FBI questions regarding CIA information. Jane said she assumed that if Dave knew the answers to questions, he would have volunteered them. The New York agents left the meeting without obtaining information and were looking for Madar. Madar had been a weak link in Al-Qaeda's operational planning. He had left the United States in June 2000. A mistake KSM realized could endanger the entire plan. For to continue with the operation, Madar would have to travel to the United States again. And unlike other operatives, Madar was not clean. He had jihadist connections. It was just such connections that had brought him to the attention of U.S. officials. Nevertheless, in this case, KSM's fears were not realized. Madar received a new U.S. visa two days after the CIA FBI meeting in New York. He flew to New York City on July 4th. No one was looking for him. August 2001, the search for Madar and Hasme begins and fails. During the summer of 2001, John, following a good instinct but not as part of any formal assignment, asked Mary, an FBI analyst, detailed to the CIA's bin Laden unit to review all the Kuala Lumpur materials one more time. She had been at the New York meeting with Jane and Dave, but had not looked into the issues yet herself. John asked her to do the research in her free time. Mary began her work on July 24th. That day she found the cable reporting that Madar had a visa to the United States. A week later she found the cable reporting that Madar's visa application, what was later discovered to be his first application, listed New York as his destination. On August 21st, she located the March 2000 cable that noted with interest that Hasme had flown to Los Angeles in January 2000. She immediately grasped the significance of this information. Mary and Jane promptly met with an INS representative at FBI headquarters. On August 22nd, the INS told them that Madar had entered the United States on January 15th, 2000, and again on July 4th, 2001. Jane and Mary also learned that there was no record that Hasme had left the country since January 2000, and they assumed he had left with Madar in June 2000. They decided that if Madar was in the United States, he should be found. They divided up the work. Mary asked the bin Laden unit to draft a cable requesting that Madar and Hasme be put on the tip-off watch list. Both Hasme and Madar were added to this watch list on August 24th. Jane took responsibility for the search effort inside the United States. As the information indicated that Madar had last arrived in New York, she began drafting what is known as a lead for the FBI's New York field office. A lead relays information from one part of the FBI to another and requests that a particular action be taken. She called an agent in New York to give him a heads-up on the matter, but her draft lead was not sent until August 28th. Her email told the New York agent that she wanted him to get started as soon as possible, but she labeled the lead as routine, a designation that informs the receiving office that it has 30 days to respond. The agent who received the lead forwarded it to his squad supervisor. That same day, the supervisor forwarded the lead to an intelligence agent to open an intelligence case, an agent who thus was behind the wall, keeping FBI intelligence information from being shared with criminal prosecutors. He also sent it to the cold case agents and an agent who had spent significant time in Malaysia searching for another Khalid, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The suggested goal of the investigation was to locate Madar, determine his contacts and reasons for being in the United States, and possibly conduct an interview. Before sending the lead, Jane had discussed it with John, the CIA official on detail to the FBI. She had also checked with the acting head of the FBI's bin Laden unit. The discussion seems to have been limited to whether the search should be classified as an intelligence investigation or as a criminal one. It appears that no one informed higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case. There is no evidence that the lead or the search for these terrorist suspects was substantively discussed at any level above deputy chief of a section within the counter-terrorism division at FBI headquarters. One of the cold case agents read the lead with interest and contacted Jane to obtain more information. Jane argued, however, that because the agent was designated a criminal FBI agent, not an intelligence FBI agent, the wall kept him from participating in any search for Madar. In fact, she felt he had to destroy his copy of the lead because it contained NSA information from reports that included caveats ordering that the information not be shared without OIPR's permission. The agent asked Jane to get an opinion from the FBI's National Security Law Unit, NSLU, on whether he could open a criminal case on Madar. Jane sent an email to the cold case agent explaining that according to the NSLU, the case could be opened only as an intelligence matter and that if Madar was found, only designated intelligence agents could conduct or even be present at any interview. She appears to have misunderstood the complex rules that could apply to this situation. The FBI agent angrily responded, Whatever has happened to this, 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 behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL, is getting the most protection. Jane replied that she was not making up the rules. She claimed that they were in the relevant manual and ordered by the FISA court and every office of the FBI is required to follow them including FBI New York. It is now clear that everyone involved was confused about the rules governing the sharing and use of information gathered in intelligence channels. Because Madar was being sought for his possible connection to or knowledge of the coal bombing, he could be investigated or tracked under the existing coal criminal case. No new criminal case was needed for the criminal agent to begin searching for Madar. And as NSA had approved the passage of its information to the criminal agent, he could have conducted a search using all available information. As a result of this confusion, the criminal agents who were knowledgeable about al-Qaeda and experienced with criminal investigative techniques including finding suspects and possible criminal charges were thus excluded from the search. The search was assigned to one FBI agent and it was his very first counterterrorism lead. Because the lead was routine, he was given 30 days to open an intelligence case and make some unspecified efforts to locate Madar. He started the process a few days later. He checked local New York databases for criminal record and driver's license information and checked the hotel listed on Madar's U.S. entry form. Finally, on September 11th, the agent sent a lead to Los Angeles because Madar had initially arrived in Los Angeles in January 2000. We believe that if more resources had been applied and a significantly different approach taken, Madar and Hasmi might have been found. They had used their true names in the United States. Still, the investigators would have needed luck as well as skill to find them prior to September 11th, even if such searches had begun as early as August 23rd when the lead was first drafted. Many FBI witnesses have suggested that even if Madar had been found, there was nothing the agents could have done except follow him onto the planes. We believe this is incorrect. Both Hasmi and Madar could have been held for immigration violations whereas material witnesses in the coal bombing case. Investigation or interrogation of them and investigation of their travel and financial activities could have yielded evidence of connections to other participants in the 9-11 plot. The simple fact of their detention could have derailed the plan. In any case, the opportunity did not arise. Phoenix Memo The Phoenix Memo was investigated thoroughly by the Joint Inquiry and the Department of Justice Inspector General. We will recap it briefly here. In July 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix Field Office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on international terrorism squads in the New York Field Office advising of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools the agent based his theory on the inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest attending such schools in Arizona. The agent made four recommendations to FBI headquarters. To compile a list of civil aviation schools, establish liaison with those schools, discuss his theories about bin Laden with the intelligence community and seek authority to obtain visa information on persons applying to flight schools. His recommendations were not acted on. His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the Osama bin Laden unit and the radical fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees but they did not even see the memo until after September 11th. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11th and the New York Field Office took no action. As its author told investigators, the Phoenix Memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. His worry was more about a Pan Am flight 103 scenario in which explosives were placed on an aircraft. The memo's references to aviation training were broad including aeronautical engineering. If the memo had been distributed in a timely fashion and its recommendations acted on promptly, we do not believe it would have uncovered the plot. It might well however have sensitized the FBI so that it might have taken the Masawi matter more seriously the next month. Zacarias Musawi On August 15th, 2001, the Minneapolis FBI Field Office initiated an intelligence investigation on Zacarias Musawi. As mentioned in Chapter 7, he had entered the United States in February 2001 and had begun flight lessons at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. He resumed his training at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Egan, Minnesota starting on August 13th. He had none of the usual qualifications for flight training on Pan Am's Boeing 747 flight simulators. He said he did not intend to become a commercial pilot but wanted the training as an ego-boosting thing. Musawi stood out because with little knowledge of flying, he wanted to learn how to take off and land a Boeing 747. The agent in Minneapolis quickly learned that Musawi possessed jihadist beliefs. Moreover, Musawi had $32,000 in a bank account but did not provide a plausible explanation for the sum of money. He had traveled to Pakistan but became agitated when asked if he had traveled to nearby countries while in Pakistan. Pakistan was the customary route to the training camps in Afghanistan. He planned to receive martial arts training and intended to purchase a global positioning receiver. The agent also noted that Musawi became extremely agitated whenever he was questioned regarding his religious beliefs. The agent concluded that Musawi was an Islamic extremist preparing for some future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist goals. He also believed Musawi's plan was related to his flight training. Musawi can be seen as an al-Qaeda mistake and a missed opportunity. An apparently unreliable operative, he had fallen into the hands of the FBI. As discussed in Chapter 7, Musawi had been in contact with and received money from Ramzi bin al-Sheeb. If Musawi had been connected to al-Qaeda, questions should instantly have arisen about a possible al-Qaeda plot that involved piloting airliners, a possibility that had never been seriously analyzed by the intelligence community. The FBI agent who handled the case in conjunction with the INS representative on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force suspected that Musawi might be planning to hijack a plane. Minneapolis and FBI headquarters debated whether Musawi should be arrested immediately or surveilled to obtain additional information. Because it was not clear whether Musawi could be imprisoned, the FBI case agent decided the most important thing was to prevent Musawi from obtaining any further training that he could use to carry out a potential attack. As a French national who had overstayed his visa, Musawi could be detained immediately. The INS arrested Musawi on the immigration violation. A deportation order was signed on August 17, 2001. The agents in Minnesota were concerned that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis would find insufficient probable cause of a crime to obtain a criminal warrant to search Musawi's laptop computer. Agents at FBI headquarters believed there was insufficient probable cause. Minneapolis, therefore, sought a special warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct the search. We introduced FISA in Chapter 3. To do so, however, the FBI needed to demonstrate probable cause that Musawi was an agent of a foreign power, a demonstration that was not required to obtain a criminal warrant, but was a statutory requirement for a FISA warrant. The case agent did not have sufficient information to connect Musawi to a foreign power, so he reached out for help in the United States and overseas. The FBI agents' August 18 message requested assistance from the FBI legal attaché in Paris. Musawi had lived in London, so the Minneapolis agent sought assistance from the legal attaché there as well. By August 24, the Minneapolis agent had also contacted an FBI detailee and a CIA desk officer at the Counterterrorist Center about the case. The FBI legal attaché's office in Paris first contacted the French government on August 16 or 17, shortly after speaking to the Minneapolis case agent on the telephone. On August 22 and 27, the French provided information that made a connection between Musawi and a rebel leader in Chechnya, even Al-Khattab. This set off a spirited debate between the Minneapolis Field Office, FBI headquarters and the CIA as to whether the Chechen rebels and Khattab were sufficiently associated with the terrorist organization to constitute a foreign power for purposes of the FISA statute. FBI headquarters did not believe this was good enough and its national security law unit declined to submit a FISA application. After receiving the written request for assistance, the legal attaché in London had promptly forwarded it to his counterparts in the British government, hand delivering the request on August 21. On August 24, the CIA also sent a cable to London and Paris regarding subjects involved in suspicious 747 flight training that described Musawi as a possible suicide hijacker. On August 28, the CIA sent a request for information to a different service of the British government. This communication warned that Musawi might be expelled to Britain by the end of August. The FBI office in London raised the matter briefly with British officials as an aside after a meeting about a more urgent matter on September 3 and sent the British service a written update on September 5. The case was not handled by the British as a priority amid a large number of other terrorist-related inquiries. On September 4, the FBI sent a teletype to the CIA, the FAA, the Custom Service, the State Department, the INS, and the Secret Service summarizing the known facts regarding Musawi. It did not report the case agent's personal assessment that Musawi planned to hijack an airplane. It did contain the FAA's comments that it was not unusual for Middle Easterners to attend flight training schools in the United States. Although the Minneapolis agents wanted to tell the FAA from the beginning about Musawi, FBI headquarters instructed Minneapolis that it could not share the more complete report the case agent had prepared for the FAA. The Minneapolis supervisor sent the case agent in person to the local FAA office to fill in what he thought were gaps in the FAA headquarters teletype. No FAA actions seemed to have been taken in response. There was substantial disagreement between Minneapolis agents and FBI headquarters as to what Musawi was planning to do. In one conversation between a Minneapolis supervisor and a headquarters agent, the latter complained that Minneapolis's FISA request was couched in a manner intended to get people spun up. The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center. The headquarters agent replied that this was not going to happen and that they did not know if Musawi was a terrorist. There is no evidence that either FBI acting director Picard or assistant director for counterterrorism Dale Watson was briefed on the Musawi case prior to 9-11. Michael Rollins, the FBI assistant director heading the Bureau's International Terrorism Operations section, ITOS, recalled being told about Musawi in two passing hallway conversations but only in the context that he might be receiving telephone calls from Minneapolis complaining about how headquarters was handling the matter. He never received such a call. Although the acting special agent in charge of Minneapolis called the ITOS supervisors to discuss the Musawi case on August 27, he declined to go up the chain of command at FBI headquarters and call Rollins. On August 23, DCI tenant was briefed about the Musawi case and a briefing titled, Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly. Tenant was also told that Musawi wanted to learn to fly a 747, paid for his training in cash, was interested to learn the doors to not open in flight and wanted to fly a simulated flight from London to New York. He was told that the FBI had arrested Musawi because of a visa overstay and that the CIA was working the case with the FBI. Tenant told us that no connection to Al Qaeda was apparent to him at the time. Seeing it as an FBI case, he did not discuss the matter with anyone at the White House or the FBI. No connection was made between Musawi's presence in the United States and the threat reporting during the summer of 2001. On September 11, after the attacks, the FBI office in London renewed their appeal for information about Musawi. In response to U.S. requests, the British government supplied some basic biographical information about Musawi. The British government informed us that it also immediately tasked intelligence collection facilities for information about Musawi. On September 13, the British government received new, sensitive intelligence that Musawi had attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. It passed this intelligence to the United States on the same day. Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Musawi case would almost certainly have received intense high-level attention. The FBI also learned after 9-11 that the Millennium Terrorist Rasam, who by 2001 was cooperating with investigators, recognized Musawi as someone who had been in the Afghan camps. As mentioned above, before 9-11, the FBI agents in Minneapolis had failed to persuade supervisors at headquarters that there was enough evidence to seek a FISA warrant to search Musawi's computer hard drive and belongings. Either the British information or the Rasam identification would have broken the log jam. A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Musawi conceivably could have unearthed his connections to Ben Al-Shib. Those connections might have brought investigators to the core of the 9-11 plot. The Ben Al-Shib connection was recognized shortly after 9-11, though it was not an easy trail to find. Discovering it would have required quick and very substantial cooperation from the German government, which might well have been difficult to obtain. However, publicity about Musawi's arrest and a possible hijacking threat might have derailed the plot. With time, the search for Madar and Hasmi and the investigation of Musawi might also have led to a breakthrough that would have disrupted the plot. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Another late opportunity was presented by a confluence of information regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed received by the intelligence community in the summer of 2001. The possible links between KSM, Musawi and an individual only later identified as Ramzi Ben Al-Shib would remain undiscovered, however. Although we readily equate KSM with Al-Qaeda today, this was not the case before 9-11. KSM, who had been indicted in January 1996 for his role in the Manila Airplot, was seen primarily as another freelance terrorist associated with Ramzi Yousaf. Because the links between KSM and Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda were not recognized at the time, responsibility for KSM remained in the small Islamic extremist branch of the counter-terrorist center, not in the Bin Laden unit. Moreover, because KSM had already been indicted, he became targeted for arrest. In 1997, the counter-terrorist center added a renditions branch to help find wanted fugitives. Responsibility for KSM was transferred to this branch, which gave the CIA a man-to-man focus, but was not an analytical unit. When subsequent information came, more critical for analysis than for tracking, no unit had the job of following up on what the information might mean. For example, in September 2000, a source had reported that an individual named Khalid al-Sheikh al-Balushi was a key lieutenant in Al-Qaeda. Al-Balushi means, from Baluchistan, and KSM is from Baluchistan. Recognizing the possible significance of this information, the Bin Laden unit sought more information. When no information was forthcoming, the Bin Laden unit dropped the matter. When additional pieces of the puzzle arrived in the spring and summer of 2001, they were not put together. The first piece of the puzzle concerned some intriguing information associated with a person known as Maktar that the CIA had begun analyzing in April 2001. The CIA did not know who Maktar was at the time, only that he associated with Al-Qaeda lieutenant Abou Zabaita, and that, based on the nature of the information, he was evidently involved in planning possible terrorist activities. The second piece of the puzzle was some alarming information regarding KSM. On June 12, 2001, a CIA report said that Khalid was actively recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the United States, where colleagues were reportedly already in the country to meet them, to carry out terrorist-related activities for Bin Laden. CIA headquarters presumed from the details of the reporting that this person was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In July, the same source was shown a series of photographs and identified a photograph of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the Kaled he had previously discussed. The final piece of the puzzle arrived at the CIA's Bin Laden unit on August 28, in a cable reporting that KSM's nickname was Maktar. No one made the connection to the reports about Maktar that had been circulated in the spring. This connection might also have underscored concern about the June reporting that KSM was recruiting terrorists to travel, including to the United States. Only after 9-11 would it be discovered that Maktar-slash-KSM had communicated with a phone that was used by Ben-Al-Sheeb, and that Ben-Al-Sheeb had used the same phone to communicate with Musawi as discussed in Chapter 7. As in the Musawi situation already described, the links to Ben-Al-Sheeb might not have been an easy trail to find and would have required substantial cooperation from the German government, but time was short and running out. Time runs out. As Tenet told us, the system was blinking red during the summer of 2001. Officials were alerted across the world. Many were doing everything they possibly could to respond to the threats. Yet no one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected the case in his or her inbox to the threat reports agitating senior officials and being briefed to the president. Thus, these individual cases did not become national priorities. As the CIA supervisor John told us, no one looked at the bigger picture. No analytic work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground. We see little evidence that the progress of the plot was disturbed by any government action. The U.S. government was unable to capitalize on mistakes made by Al Qaeda. Time ran out. End of Chapter 8.2. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Chapter 9.1 of the 911 Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Siebold. The 911 Commission Report. Chapter 9. Heroism and Horror. 9.1 Preparedness as of September 11. Emergency response is a product of preparedness. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the last best hope for the community of people working in or visiting the World Trade Center rested not with national policy makers, but with private firms and local public servants, especially the first responders, fire, police, emergency medical service, and building safety professionals. Building Preparedness. The World Trade Center. The World Trade Center complex was built for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Construction began in 1966, and tenants began to occupy its space in 1970. The Twin Towers came to occupy a unique and symbolic place in the culture of New York City and America. The World Trade Center actually consisted of seven buildings, including one hotel, spread across 16 acres of land. The buildings were connected by an underground mall, the Concourse. The Twin Towers, one World Trade Center or the North Tower, and two World Trade Center or the South Tower were the signature structures, containing 10.4 million square feet of office space. Both towers had 110 stories, were about 1,350 feet high and were square. Each wall measured 208 feet in length. On any given workday, up to 50,000 office workers occupied the towers, and 40,000 people passed through the complex. Each tower contained three central stairwells, which ran essentially from top to bottom, and 99 elevators. Generally, elevators originating in the lobby ran to sky lobbies on higher floors, where additional elevators carried passengers to the tops of the buildings. Stairwells A and C ran from the 110th floor to the raised mezzanine level of the lobby. Stairwell B ran from the 107th floor to level B6, six floors below ground, and was accessible from the West Street lobby level, which was one floor below the mezzanine. All three stairwells ran essentially straight up and down, except for two deviations in stairwells A and C, where the staircase jutted out toward the perimeter of the building. On the upper and lower boundaries of these deviations were transfer hallways contained within the stairwell proper. Each hallway contained smoke doors to prevent smoke from rising from lower to upper portions of the building. They were kept closed but not locked. Doors leading from tenant space into the stairwells were never kept locked. Re-entry from the stairwells was generally possible on at least every fourth floor. Doors leading to the roof were locked. There was no rooftop evacuation plan. The roofs of both the North Tower and the South Tower were sloped and cluttered surfaces with radiation hazards, making them impractical for helicopter landings and as staging areas for civilians. Although the South Tower roof had a helipad, it did not meet 1994 Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. The 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the Port Authority's response. Unlike most of America, New York City and specifically the World Trade Center had been the target of terrorist attacks before 9-11. At 12.18 p.m. on February 26, 1993, a 1500-pound bomb stashed in a rental van was detonated on a parking garage ramp beneath the Twin Towers. The explosion killed six people, injured about a thousand more and exposed vulnerabilities in the World Trade Center and the city's emergency preparedness. The towers lost power and communications capability. Generators had to be shut down to ensure safety and elevators stopped. The public address system and emergency lighting systems failed. The unlit stairwells filled with smoke and were so dark as to be impassable. Rescue efforts by the Fire Department of New York were hampered by the inability of its radios to function in buildings as large as the Twin Towers. The 9-11 emergency call system was overwhelmed. The general evacuation of the tower's occupants via the stairwells took more than four hours. Several small groups of people who were physically unable to descend the stairs were evacuated from the roof of the South Tower by New York Police Department helicopters. At least one person was lifted from the North Tower roof by the NYPD in a dangerous helicopter repel operation 15 hours after the bombing. General knowledge that these air rescues had occurred appears to have left a number of civilians who worked in the Twin Towers with the false impression that helicopter rescues were part of the World Trade Center evacuation plan and that rescue from the roof was a viable, if not favored option for those who worked on the upper floors. Although they were considered after 1993, helicopter evacuations in fact were not incorporated into the World Trade Center fire safety plan. To address the problems encountered during the response to the 1993 bombing, the Port Authority spent an initial $100 million to make physical, structural, and technological improvements to the World Trade Center as well as to enhance its fire safety plan to bolster its fire safety and security staffs. Substantial enhancements were made to power sources and exits. Fluorescent lights and markings were added in and near stairwells. The Port Authority also installed a sophisticated computerized fire alarm system with redundant electronics and control panels and state-of-the-art fire command stations were placed in the lobby of each tower. To manage fire emergency preparedness and operations, the Port Authority created the dedicated position to fire safety director. The director supervised a team of deputy fire safety directors, one of whom was on duty at the fire command station in the lobby of each tower at all times. He or she would be responsible for communicating with building occupants during an emergency. The Port Authority also sought to prepare civilians better for future emergencies. Deputy fire safety directors conducted fire drills at least twice a year with advanced notice to tenants. Fire safety teams were selected from among civilian employees on each floor and consisted of a fire warden, deputy fire warden, and searchers. The standard procedure for fire drills was for fire wardens to lead coworkers in their respective areas to the center of the floor where they would use the emergency intercom phone to obtain specific information on how to proceed. Some civilians have told us that their evacuation on September 11 was greatly aided by changes and training implemented by the Port Authority in response to the 1993 bombing. But during these drills, civilians were not directed into the stairwells or provided with information about their configuration and about the existence of transfer hallways and smoke doors. Neither full nor partial evacuation drills were held. Moreover, participation in drills that were held varied greatly from tenant to tenant. In general, civilians were never told not to evacuate up. The standard fire drill announcement advised participants that in the event of an actual emergency, they would be directed to descend to at least three floors below the fire. Most civilians recall simply being taught to await the instructions that would be provided at the time of an emergency. Civilians were not informed that rooftop evacuations were not part of the evacuation plan or that doors to the roof were kept locked. The Port Authority acknowledges that it had no protocol for rescuing people trapped above a fire in the towers. Six weeks before the September 11 attacks, control of the World Trade Center was transferred by net lease to a private developer, Silverstein Properties. Select Port Authority employees were designated to assist with the transition. Others remained on site, but were no longer part of the official chain of command. However, on September 11, most Port Authority World Trade Department employees, including those not on the designated transition team, reported to their regular stations to provide assistance throughout the morning. Although Silverstein Properties was in charge of the World Trade Center on September 11, the World Trade Center Fire Safety Plan remained essentially the same. Preparedness of First Responders On 9-11, the principal first responders were from the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, and the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. Port Authority Police Department On September 11, 2001, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department consisted of 1,331 officers, many of whom were trained in fire suppression methods, as well as in law enforcement. The PAPD was led by a superintendent. There was a separate PAPD command for each of the Port Authority's nine facilities, including the World Trade Center. Most Port Authority Police commands used ultra-high-frequency radios. Although all the radios were capable of using more than one channel, most PAPD officers used one local channel. The local channels were low wattage and worked only in the immediate vicinity of that command. The PAPD also had an agency-wide channel, but not all commands could access it. As of September 11, the Port Authority lacked any standard operating procedures to govern how officers from multiple commands would respond to and then be staged and utilized at a major incident at the World Trade Center. In particular, there were no standard operating procedures covering how different commands should communicate via radio during such an incident. The New York Police Department The 40,000-officer NYPD was headed by a police commissioner, whose duties were not primarily operational but who retained operational authority. Much of the NYPD's operational activities were run by the Chief of Department. In the event of a major emergency, a leading role would be played by the Special Operations Division. This division included the Aviation Unit, which provided helicopters for surveys and rescues, and the Emergency Service Unit, or ESU, which carried out specialized rescue missions. The NYPD had specific and detailed standard operating procedures for the dispatch of officers to an incident, depending on the incident's magnitude. The NYPD precincts were divided into 35 different radio zones, with a central radio dispatcher assigned to each. In addition, there were several radio channels for citywide operations. Officers had portable radios with 20 or more available channels so that the user could respond outside his or her precinct. ESU teams also had these channels, but at an operation would use a separate point-to-point channel which was not monitored by a dispatcher. The NYPD also supervised the city's 9-1-1 emergency call system. Its approximately 1,200 operators, radio dispatchers, and supervisors were civilian employees of the NYPD. They were trained in the rudiments of emergency response. When a 9-1-1 call concerned a fire, it was transferred to FDNY Dispatch. The Fire Department of New York. The 11,000-member FDNY was headed by a fire commissioner who, unlike the police commissioner, lacked operational authority. Operations were headed by the Chief of Department, the sole five-star chief. The FDNY was organized in nine separate geographic divisions. Each division was further divided into between four to seven battalions. Each battalion contained typically between three and four engine companies and two to four ladder companies. In total, the FDNY had 205 engine companies and 133 ladder companies. On-duty ladder companies consisted of a captain or lieutenant and five firefighters. On-duty engine companies consisted of a captain or lieutenant and normally four firefighters. Ladder companies, primary function, was to conduct rescues. Engine companies focused on extinguishing fires. The FDNY's Specialized Operations Command, or SOC, contained a limited number of units that were of particular importance in responding to a terrorist attack or other major incident. The department's five rescue companies and seven squad companies performed specialized and highly risky rescue operations. The logistics of fire operations were directed by Fire Dispatch Operations Division, which had a center in each of the five boroughs. All 911 calls concerning fire emergencies were transferred to FDNY Dispatch. As of September 11th, FDNY companies and chiefs responding to a fire used analog point-to-point radios that had six normal operating channels. Typically, the companies would operate on the same tactical channel, which chiefs on the scene would monitor and use to communicate with the firefighters. Chiefs at a fire operation also would use a separate command channel. Because these point-to-point radios had weak signal strength, communications on them could be heard only by other FDNY personnel in the immediate vicinity. In addition, the FDNY had a dispatch frequency for each of the five boroughs. These were not point-to-point channels and could be monitored from around the city. The FDNY's radios performed poorly during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for two reasons. The radio signals often did not succeed in penetrating the numerous steel and concrete floors that separated companies attempting to communicate. And second, so many different companies were attempting to use the same point-to-point channel that communications became unintelligible. The Port Authority installed, at its own expense, a repeater system in 1994 to greatly enhance FDNY radio communications in the difficult high-rise environment of the Twin Towers. The Port Authority recommended leaving the repeater system on at all times. The FDNY requested, however, that the repeater be turned on only when it was actually needed because the channel could cause interference with other FDNY operations in Lower Manhattan. The repeater system was installed at the Port Authority police desk in five World Trade Center to be activated by members of the Port Authority police when the FDNY units responding to the World Trade Center complex so requested. However, in the spring of 2000, the FDNY asked that an activation console for the repeater system be placed instead in the lobby fire safety desk of each of the towers, making FDNY personnel entirely responsible for its activation. The Port Authority complied. Between 1998 and 2000, fewer people died from fires in New York City than in any three-year period since accurate measurements began in 1946. Firefighter deaths, a total of 22 during the 1990s, compared favorably with the most tranquil periods in the department's history. Office of Emergency Management and Interagency Preparedness. In 1996, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, which had three basic functions. First, OEM's watch command was to monitor the city's key communications channels, including radio frequencies of FDNY dispatch and the NYPD, and other data. A second purpose of the OEM was to improve New York City's response to major incidents, including terrorist attacks by planning and conducting exercises and drills that would involve multiple city agencies, particularly the NYPD and FDNY. Third, the OEM would play a crucial role in managing the city's overall response to an incident. After OEM's Emergency Operations Center was activated, designated liaisons from relevant agencies, as well as the mayor and his or her senior staff would respond there. In addition, an OEM field responder would be sent to the scene to ensure that the response was coordinated. The OEM's headquarters was located at Seven World Trade Center. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building, difficult to access should elevators become inoperable. There was no backup site. In July 2001, Mayor Giuliani updated a directive titled, Direction and Control of Emergencies in the City of New York. Its purpose was to eliminate potential conflict among responding agencies, which may have areas of overlapping expertise and responsibility. The directive sought to accomplish this objective by designating, for different types of emergencies, an appropriate agency as Incident Commander. This Incident Commander would be responsible for the management of the city's response to the emergency, while the OEM was designated the Unseen Interagency Coordinator. Nevertheless, the FDNY and NYPD each considered itself operationally autonomous. As of September 11th, they were not prepared to comprehensively coordinate their efforts in responding to a major incident. The OEM had not overcome this problem.