US had name of terrorist in 1999

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U.S. investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers 2 1/2 years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to aggressively pursue the lead, according to U.S. and German officials.

 

The information--the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers--has become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, officials said Monday.

 

 

 

 

The tip is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for U.S. officials to penetrate the German terrorist cell that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.

 

In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the CIA the first name and telephone number of Marwan Al-Shehhi and asked the Americans to track him. The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates was obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohammed Haydar Zammar, an Islamic extremist in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important plotters behind the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.

 

After the Germans passed the information on to the CIA, they never heard back from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.

 

"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the CIA decided that "Marwan" probably was an associate of Osama bin Laden but never tracked him down, U.S. officials say.

 

The information concerning Al-Shehhi, the man who took the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two who were discovered to have attended a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000.

 

The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has received information concerning the 1999 Al-Shehhi tip and is actively investigating the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

 

Questions about number

 

U.S. intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are uncertain whether Al-Shehhi's phone was monitored.

 

A U.S. official said: "The Germans did give us the name `Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the UAE, which he was known to use."

 

The incident is of particular importance because Al-Shehhi was an important member of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg at the heart of the Sept. 11 plot. Close surveillance of Al-Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohamed Atta, who was Al-Shehhi's roommate.

 

A native of the United Arab Emirates, Al-Shehhi moved to Germany in 1996 and was almost inseparable from Atta during their time there.

 

Important gathering

 

Both men attended a wedding at a radical mosque in Hamburg in October 1999--an event considered an important gathering for the Sept. 11 hijacking teams just as the plotting began. U.S. and European authorities believe that Al-Shehhi played a critical role in the Sept. 11 plot and was actively involved in its planning and logistics.

 

"The Hamburg cell is very important" to the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, Zelikow said. The intelligence on Al-Shehhi "is an issue that's obviously of importance to us, and we're investigating it," he added.

 

Asked whether U.S. intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Al-Shehhi, Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."

 

The joint congressional inquiry that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was told about the matter by the CIA, but only a small part of the information was declassified and made public in the panel's final report in December 2002, several officials said. The public report mentioned only that the CIA had received Al-Shehhi's first name, but made no mention that the agency also obtained his telephone number.

 

Officials involved with the work of the joint congressional investigation said the publication of a more complete version of the story was the subject of a declassification dispute with the CIA. A former official involved with the joint congressional inquiry acknowledged that having a telephone number for one of the hijackers was far more significant than simply having a first name.

 

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA, FBI and other government agencies have been heavily criticized for failing to put together fragmentary pieces of information they received from a wide array of sources in order to predict or prevent the terrorist plot.

 

The joint congressional panel that investigated the attacks concluded that U.S. authorities "missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers."

 

Until now, the most highly scrutinized failure has related to the CIA's handling of information about a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000 that involved two of the men who would become hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

 

Not on watch lists

 

Although the CIA identified the two men as suspected extremists, the agency did not request until late August 2001 that they be placed on the government's watch lists to keep them out of the United States. By that time they were in the country. In addition, while the two men lived in San Diego, their landlord was an FBI informant, but the bureau did not learn of their terrorist links from the informant.

 

But unlike the leads to Almihdhar and Alhazmi in San Diego, the earlier information about Al-Shehhi could have taken investigators to the core of the Al Qaeda cell at a time when the plot probably was in its formative stages.

 

In addition to Atta, Al-Shehhi also shared an apartment in Hamburg with Ramzi Binalshibh, another plotter who was blocked from entering the United States and could not join the hijackers. According to testimony in Germany in December in a criminal case related to the Sept. 11 attacks, Al-Shehhi was one of only four members of the Hamburg cell who knew about the attacks beforehand.

 

Al-Shehhi and Atta traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to train at a camp with several other Sept. 11 plotters. And after returning to Germany, Al-Shehhi made an ominous reference to the World Trade Center in a conversation with a Hamburg librarian, saying: "There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me," according to German authorities.