Terror Intercepts on Eve of Sept. 11 Too Vague - NSA

Reuters
October 17, 2002

WASHINGTON - National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden acknowledged on Thursday that the spy agency had picked up information from terrorist suspects that something would happen on Sept. 11, but said it was vague and did not specify an attack.

Hayden, testifying before the Senate and House intelligence committees which are conducting a joint inquiry into spy agency lapses related to Sept. 11, said the information had to viewed in the context of world events and he mentioned the murder on Sept. 9 of legendary Afghan rebel leader Ahmad Shah Masood.

"In the hours just prior to the attacks, NSA did obtain two pieces of information suggesting that individuals with terrorist connections believed something significant would happen on September 11,'' Hayden said.

But the information did not specify there would be an attack that day, nor did it contain any details on the time, place or nature of the event, he said.

"You may recall that Sheikh Masood, head of the Northern Alliance, was actually killed the day before,'' he noted.

The spy agency, which eavesdrops on global communications, picked up messages on Sept. 10, 2001, that said "tomorrow is zero hour'' and "the match begins tomorrow,'' government sources previously told Reuters.

"These could have been about Masood,'' a senior intelligence official recently said on condition of anonymity.

Masood, who was leading Afghan opposition to the then ruling Taliban, was killed in a suicide bomb attack on Sept. 9, 2001, by attackers posing as journalists.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on America, the two messages were seen as possible missed clues and NSA was criticized for not translating them from Arabic the same day. They were translated on Sept. 11 and distributed to policymakers and other officials on Sept. 12.

The leak of the contents of the intercepts to the media this summer prompted Vice President Dick Cheney to call the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees to express concern. The chairmen responded by asking the FBI to investigate their own committees for the leaks.

One of the biggest setbacks to fighting terrorism occurred in 1998 when media reports of NSA intercepts prompted Osama bin Laden and key lieutenants to stop using a phone, Hayden said.

Intelligence officials regard the reports as the single most costly setback in the war against terrorism. "They went dark for us,'' one official said.

The United States has blamed bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the Sept. 11 attacks.

NSA collected 33 warnings during the summer of 2001 of an imminent event. "Since all were 'we attack at dawn' kind of messages, all of them were wrong,'' the senior intelligence official said.

Hayden said his agency had to abide by laws written to safeguard privacy and America as a society had to decide what balance it wanted in protecting security and liberty.

He made the point that "if Osama bin Laden crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario, to Niagara Falls, New York, U.S. law would give him certain protections that I would have to accommodate in the conduct of my mission.''

Hayden said NSA was focused on al Qaeda before Sept. 11 but did not have enough linguists and analysts to deal with the large volume of communications.

He noted that the world's population this year will spend more than 180 billion minutes on international phone calls.

Copyright Reuters Ltd.

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