Two Headlines Over The Past Week
At least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation that was covered up at the highest level, according to an explosive new court filing.
A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI.
The story reprises, in more detail and with new information, a concern that had been raised in the wake of 9/11, that protocols between FBI and CIA operations prevented agents on the ground from reporting what they were learning about the upcoming attacks to their respective chains of command.
In late 1999, with “the system blinking red” about an imminent large-scale Al Qaeda terror attack inside the US, the CIA and NSA were closely monitoring an “operational cadre” within an Al Qaeda cell that included the Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The pair would purportedly go on to hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Al-Hazmi and al-Midhar had attended an Al Qaeda summit that took place between January 5th and 8th 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was secretly photographed and videotaped by local authorities at Alec Station’s request although, apparently, no audio was captured. En route, Mihdhar transited through Dubai, where CIA operatives broke into his hotel room and photocopied his passport. It showed that he possessed a multi-entry visa to the US.
A contemporaneous internal CIA cable stated this information was immediately passed to the FBI “for further investigation.” In reality, Alec Station not only failed to inform the Bureau of Mihdhar’s US visa, but also expressly forbade two FBI agents assigned to the unit from doing so.
It appears from this account that "Alec Station" was a rogue CIA operation that had its own priorities, and it had actually enlisted the hijackers Hazmi and Midhar for its own operation. In doing so, it concealed their 9/11 plans from the FBI as part of an effort to keep its whole operation secret.
Alec Station’s tireless efforts to protect its Al Qaeda assets raises the obvious question of whether Hazmi and Mihdhar, and possibly other hijackers, were in effect working for the CIA on the day of 9/11.
The real motives behind the CIA’s stonewalling may never be known. But it appears abundantly clear that Alec Station did not want the FBI to know about or interfere in its secret intelligence operation. If the unit’s recruitment of Hazmi and Mihdhar was purely dedicated to information gathering, rather than operational direction, it is incomprehensible that the FBI had not been apprised of it, and was instead actively misdirected.
An FBI agent involved in the thwarted investigation concluded, "To this day I’m unsure who was behind September 11, nor can I even guess… Someday the truth will reveal itself, and I have a feeling that people won’t like what they hear.”Second headline: Intel community may be stalling COVID origins assessments for political reasons, ex-director says:
The CIA's "unjustifiable" refusal to formally assess COVID-19 origins suggests the Biden administration is afraid to face the "enormous geopolitical consequences" of a confirmed lab leak "head-on," in line with its reluctance to confront China on its spy balloon, according to President Trump's final director of national intelligence.
. . . Personal and political motivations may be at play in the holdout IC agencies, according to [former Director of National Intelligence John] Ratcliffe. He cited a January 2021 unclassified report where IC analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf told the Senate Intelligence Committee that in-house China analysts "appeared reluctant" to share analyses that could aid Trump administration policies "they tended to disagree with."
"I do think there were headwinds to get new information" from analysts when he was DNI, Ratcliffe said, and "on occasion" he felt analyses were withheld from him or altered.
Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) pledged the panel would examine the motives of IC analysts reviewing the origins evidence. He said he's seen further evidence of this as a House Intelligence Committee member privy to more sensitive information.
Let's consider that the two events that have been most influential in driving public debate and public policy so far this century have been the 9/11 attacks and the COVID pandemic. The hints we're getting here, which strike me as being not just wild conspiracy theories, suggest that the intelligence community knows more than it will admit about how these events came to pass, and it appears to be actively working against efforts to learn more -- to the extent that, as the FBI agent put it, when the truth does eventually come out, people won't like what they hear.This is an indication of how big a task is facing anyone who wants to reform the system in Washington.
