First Sept. 11 Hijacker May Have Been Briefly Detected by U.S. Intelligence in Early 1999

First Sept. 11 Hijacker May Have Been Briefly Detected by U.S. Intelligence in Early 1999

by John J. Lumpkin
The Associated Press
September 25, 2002

WASHINGTON - A Sept. 11 hijacker briefly came on a U.S. intelligence agency's radar screen in early 1999 in what appears to be the first known detection by counterterrorism officials of one of the 19 plotters who took part in the attacks.
The National Security Agency, which gathers intelligence by eavesdropping on communications, "received information in which a 'Nawaf al-Hazmi' was referenced. The parties involved were unknown to NSA," said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The intelligence official declined to provide more detail on the early 1999 reference. The NSA did not immediately provide the information to other intelligence agencies, the official said.

Al-Hazmi was one of the five hijackers on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. In early 2000, he separately came to the attention of the CIA and FBI. It is unclear when the NSA information was matched with what the other counterterrorism agencies had learned.

But at some point, the NSA's information, kept in an agency database, also associated al-Hazmi with al-Qaida, according to a report by Eleanor Hill, the director of the congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks.

That report, released last week, detailed the U.S. government's limited pre-Sept. 11 knowledge of the hijackers. NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden told the congressional inquiry of his agency's information on Nawaf al-Hazmi, the intelligence official said.

Last week's report concluded that U.S. intelligence knew of only three of the 19 eventual hijackers before the attacks: Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salim al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

Nawaf al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were present at a January 2000 meeting of al-Qaida operatives in Kuala Lumpur that was monitored by Malaysian authorities, and the CIA learned al-Hazmi's name the following March. The meeting gained significance the following year when another operative was believed to be a key planner of the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

Salim al-Hazmi was known as an associate of the two, Hill's report says.

The CIA has been criticized for not having them put on lists that would have denied them entry into the United States until a few weeks before the attacks. By that time, they were already in the country, and an FBI search did not locate them. U.S. officials had no knowledge of their intentions, the report says.

Hearings by the inquiry, composed of the members of House and Senate intelligence committees, were to continue Thursday with the testimony of the top CIA and FBI counterterrorism officials, Cofer Black and Dale Watson, during the Sept. 11 attacks.

Black ran the CIA's Counterterrorism Center from 1999 until May. He remains at the agency. Black formerly was an undercover CIA officer who played a role in France's capture of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, commonly known as Carlos the Jackal, once the world's most famous terrorist.

Watson just retired from his post as assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division.

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