Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
WASHINGTON - An FBI informant knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers but never suspected they were terrorists, according to a congressional report that nonetheless concludes no single piece of information could have prevented the attacks.
The unidentified informant was with Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi in San Diego during the summer of 2000, although the nature of their relationship was unclear.
Almihdhar and Alhamzi recently had been linked by U.S. intelligence officials to possible terrorist activity, but that information apparently had not been shared with the FBI, the report said. Nothing the two men said or did in the presence of the informant aroused suspicion.
Almihdhar and Alhamzi were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. The informant also may have been introduced to Hani Hanjour, who U.S. officials believe piloted that hijacked plane.
Portions of the report, scheduled for release Thursday, were described Monday to the Associated Press by law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity.
Newsweek magazine first revealed the report's information about the informant. According to federal officials, the informant reported contact with Almihdhar and Alhamzi to his FBI handler in the summer of 2000. The report said that he gave only their first names and that there was no reason for the men to have caused misgivings since at that point neither was on government watch lists of suspected terrorists.
It wasn't until after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that the FBI learned both men had attended a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia of major al-Qaida operatives. The CIA had known the two attended the meeting, but apparently the information never was shared with the FBI.
It wasn't until Aug. 23, 2001, three weeks before the attacks, that their names were placed on lists of suspected terrorists.
Because Almihdhar and Alhamzi's names were not on the lists or provided by intelligence agencies before then, the FBI had no way of telling its San Diego informant of suspicions about them. So the informant never was asked to collect intelligence about them, the report said.