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September 14, 2005

Able Danger identified four intended 9/11 pilots

Notice how the only four hijackers in the US by early June 2000 were the exact same ones Shaffer claims Able Danger identified in the summer of 2000. In other words they didn't just identify "4 of the 19" they identified all four members of the advanced planning team who were in the country at the time. Ziad Jarrah, who arrived June 27th could be considered the one Able Danger missed. Hanjour, the fourth pilot besides Jarrah, Atta, and Shehhi was only sent in to replace Mihdhar and Hazmi after their training as pilots failed.

Shaffer also has said Able Danger identified some of Atta's fellow hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, as part of an al Qaeda cell inside the United States.

The 9/11 Commission's "monograph" entitled 9/11 and Terrorist Travel is not just pretty pictures. It contains details they left out of the 9/11 Report:

April 1999

On April 3, Nawaf al Hazmi applied for a B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, submitting a written visa application, his passport, and a photograph. Hazmi was a Saudi citizen born August 9, 1976. Hazmi’s passport was new--issued on March 21, 1999, and it contained an indicator of extremism that has been associated with
al Qaeda....

April 7. Khalid al Mihdhar applied for a B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, submitting a written application, his new passport, and a photograph. Mihdhar was a Saudi citizen born May 16, 1975. Mihdhar’s passport was issued on April 6, 1999. Mihdhar’s passport contained the same indicator of extremism as Nawaf al Hazmi’s. But because this indicator of extremism was unknown at the time to U.S. intelligence officials, the consular officer adjudicating their visas had not been warned to watch for it.

Both Hazmi and Mihdhar’s visa applications were destroyed before September 11, according to routine State Department document destruction practices in place in Jeddah, so we could not review them. The electronic records of their applications, their
photographs, and information about the visas issued to them still exist, however, and are maintained in the State Department’s Consular Consolidated Database (CCD), and we have reviewed this material.

It is not possible to state with certainty whether either Hazmi or Mihdhar were interviewed by a consular officer in connection with their visa applications. The consular officer who approved Hazmi’s visa stated, “I do not remember these specific applications.” State Department computer records did not provide any help in this regard, because they do not indicate whether the applicant has been interviewed.

If either of these two were interviewed, they must have convinced the officer they had good reasons to be going to the United States: both were issued visas after CLASS record checks showed no derogatory information about them. Hazmi’s visa was issued on April 3, 1999. Mihdhar’s visa was issued on April 7, 1999. Both were one-year, multiple-entry visas.

January 2000

January 15. Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar arrived together at Los Angeles International Airport from Bangkok, Thailand. The two Saudis were admitted as tourists for six-month stays by the same primary immigration inspector, who was unaware of the indicators of extremism likely present in their passports. Neither Hazmi nor Mihdhar was on the watchlists available to border inspectors.
However, Mihdhar was a known al Qaeda operative at the time, and a copy of his passport was available to the intelligence community.

January 18. Marwan al Shehhi, an Emirati, was issued a ten-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/ business) visa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Shehhi submitted a new passport with his visa application. Although his application was destroyed prior to September 11, 2001, pursuant to routine document handling policies, an electronic record was maintained by State. The consular officer who issued the visa said Shehhi probably was not interviewed, explaining that UAE nationals were not interviewed in connection with their visa applications unless—as did not happen in this case—there was a watchlist “hit.” UAE nationals were considered good visa risks both on economic and on security grounds.

April 2000

April 2. Nawaf al Hazmi’s visa expired, but that expiration had no bearing on his legal status in the United States. Any visitor who enters the country with a valid visa may remain through the length of stay granted by an immigration inspector upon arrival.

April 5. Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi acquired California driver’s licenses.

May 2000

May 17. Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian, applied for and on the next day received a five year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa from the U.S. embassy in Berlin, Germany. The consular officer who adjudicated this visa said Atta “definitely” was not interviewed.

According to the officer, because he was a third-country national who had long been resident in Germany (approximately five years), the visa interview requirement was waived, and Atta was “basically treated like” a German citizen. German citizens do not need visas, as they participate in a “visa waiver” program. Another factor in his favor was Atta’s strong record as a student in Germany. Atta’s visa application was destroyed prior to 9/11 pursuant to State Department policy then in effect, so we were able to review only the electronic record of his application.

Also on May 17, Ramzi Binalshibh, another Yemeni, applied for a B-1/B-2 (tourist/visa) visa in Berlin. He listed Agus Budiman in Washington, D.C., as the person he would be visiting in the United States. Although his application was denied, Binalshibh did not give up on trying to get a visa to the United States, as we will soon see.

May 25. Ziad Jarrah, a native of Lebanon, applied for and received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin. The consular officer who issued the visa could not recall whether he interviewed Jarrah. However, our review of Berlin visa policy for thirdcountry
nationals suggests that Jarrah was a strong visa candidate, given his long residence in Germany (approximately four years), academic involvement in Germany (at two universities), and Lebanese nationality. Third-country nationals with more than two years of residency in Germany met a threshold for visa approval. The officer who adjudicated his visa has stated that wealthy Lebanese families often sent their children to school in Germany as a way to keep them out of the Middle East’s turmoil, and that Jarrah looked like one of those wealthy expatriates.

May 29. Shehhi arrived in the United States for the first time from Brussels, Belgium, anding at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. He was admitted by immigration uthorities as a tourist for six months. However, he was pulled aside by a “roving” customs inspector who conducted a secondary inspection. He was admitted after this two-minute examination, during which his bags were x-rayed but he was not personally searched and was admitted. The Customs inspector was trained to look for drug couriers, not terrorists.

June 2000

June 3. Atta arrived from Prague, Czech Republic, at Newark Airport as a tourist. He was given a customary six-month stay, valid until December 2, 2000.

June 5. Binalshibh’s May application was denied under INA section 221(g). This section was routinely invoked by the U.S. embassy in Berlin, without conducting an interview, to deny a visa application that was incomplete or weak. In such cases, the embassy would send a letter explaining the denial and inviting the submission of further
documentation in support of the application. Under the law, such additional information can become part of the original application.32 The applicant then had six months to have the original denial reversed.

June 10. Mihdhar left the United States against the wishes of the operational organizer of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He traveled to Yemen.

June 15. Binalshibh attempted a second time to obtain a B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin.

June 27. Jarrah entered the United States for the first time on a tourist visa. He immediately violated his immigration status by going from the airport straight to full-time flight school. He studied at the Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, Florida, until
January 31, 2001. Jarrah never filed an application to change his status from tourist to student. This failure to maintain a legal immigration status provided a solid legal basis to deny him entry on each of the six subsequent occasions in which he reentered the United
States. But because there was no student tracking system in place and because neither Jarrah nor the school complied with the law’s notification requirements, immigration inspectors could not know he was out of status.

June 27. Binalshibh’s second visa application was again denied under 221(g), apparently without his being interviewed by a consular officer....

December 2000

December 8. Hanjour entered the United States for the final time at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, six months after the entry of the other pilots. He never attended the ELS Language Center in Oakland, California, the stated destination on his second visa application of September 25, 2000. His records do
not indicate the length of stay the primary immigration inspector gave him.

Hanjour was sent in to replace Hazmi and Mihdhar when their training as pilots failed:

Hazmi and Mihdhar came to the United States to learn English, take flying lessons, and become pilots as quickly as possible. They turned out, however, to have no aptitude for English. Even with help and tutoring from Mohdar Abdullah and other bilingual friends, Hazmi and Mihdhar's efforts to learn proved futile. This lack of language skills in turn became an insurmountable barrier to learning how to fly.

A pilot they consulted at one school, the Sorbi Flying Club in San Diego, spoke Arabic. He explained to them that their flight instruction would begin with small planes. Hazmi and Mihdhar emphasized their interest in learning to fly jets, Boeing aircraft in particular, and asked where they might enroll to train on jets right away. Convinced that the two were either joking or dreaming, the pilot responded that no such school existed. Other instructors who worked with Hazmi and Mihdhar remember them as poor students who focused on learning to control the aircraft in flight but took no interest in takeoffs or landings. By the end of May 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar had given up on learning how to fly.

Posted by Mike at September 14, 2005 12:10 AM

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