9/11 report lists errors, not blame

Parts blanked out prompt criticism that the White House is hiding embarrassing facts, including some about Saudi Arabia.

WASHINGTON - Better coordination among intelligence agencies might have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a long-awaited congressional report has concluded. But it blamed no single mistake, missed clue or individual for the tragedy.

The lack of a "smoking gun" in the report was good news for President Bush, under whose watch the devastating intelligence failures occurred. But the administration's refusal to declassify large sections of the nearly 900-page report likely will remain a nagging political issue.

"All of these blank pages here are very disturbing," Lorie Van Auken, whose husband, Kenneth, was killed in the World Trade Center, said at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday. "We really need to work on finding out what's underneath these blanks."

A 28-page section on "foreign support" for the plot has been redacted. But there are some new revelations, including that a student who helped two of the hijackers settle in San Diego may have been a Saudi intelligence agent.

Also, six of the hijackers had contact with at least 14 people who were known to the FBI through counterterrorism surveillance or investigations, the report said.

Congress formed the joint House-Senate panel last year at the urging of families of Sept. 11 victims and lawmakers who believed a thorough review of the government's performance would help officials learn how to prevent attacks.

The report released Thursday is the product of a 10-month investigation headed by Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, chairman of the House intelligence panel. The inquiry staff sifted through 1-million documents provided by intelligence agencies, conducted 500 interviews and held 22 hearings, nine of them public.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who helped lead the inquiry last year as ranking Democrat of the House intelligence committee, accused the White House of using national security as an excuse to hide embarrassing facts.

"Time and time again, this administration keeps information classified rather than making it public," Pelosi said. "Classification certainly must protect sources and methods, but it should not be used to protect reputations."

The classification rules also prevented Graham from uttering the name "Saudi Arabia" in connection with the report, even though there was no doubt to what country the presidential hopeful was referring.

"It is my conclusion that officials of a foreign government aided and abetted the terrorist attacks on our country," said Graham, who has said gaps in national security that he saw as Senate intelligence committee chairman last year spurred him to run for president.

But Rep. Mark Foley, the West Palm Beach Republican who is seeking Graham's Senate seat, accused Graham of playing politics. "This is a cynical attempt to breathe life into a floundering presidential campaign," Foley said. "Sen. Graham should not campaign on the back of a national tragedy."

Although the report was completed in December, congressional staff negotiated for seven months with the administration over declassification issues. In the end, large portions were left blank, with lines appearing in places where classified text has been redacted.

The inquiry faulted the Central Intelligence Agency for knowing little about al-Qaida finances and failing to develop human sources who could have pinpointed Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and enabled the military to launch a strike against him.

And by being stingy with intelligence, the agency may have ruined what the report called "perhaps the best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot" that killed more than 3,000 people.

For example, Saudis Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, who were aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon, lived for a while in San Diego with a professor who also happened to be an FBI informer.

The CIA knew that Almihdhar and Alhamzi had attended an al-Qaida summit in Malaysia in January 2000 and that they had entered the United States. But the agency failed to inform the FBI.

The FBI agent who handled the San Diego informer told the panel in a closed hearing "it would have made a huge difference" if he had been privy to the CIA's intelligence. "We would have immediately opened investigations. We would have done everything. . . . We would have given them the full-court press."

Although the report concluded that "no one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn," it said the "intelligence community, for a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and preventing" the attacks.

Of special note is what the report says - or doesn't say - about Saudi Arabia. "It does deserve to be listed as a terrorist state," Graham said of America's oil-rich ally that he is not allowed under the classification rules to name.

Patricia Casazza, whose husband, John, died in the attacks, joined Graham at the news conference to press Bush for a harder line. "I want sanctions against Saudi Arabia and individuals who have been funding terrorism - and killed my husband," she said.

The Saudi ambassador to the United States called American anger at his country misplaced.

"In a 900-page report, 28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people," Prince Bandar bin Sultan said in a statement. "The idea that the Saudi government funded, organized or even knew about September 11th is malicious and blatantly false."

A Treasury Department official, however, testified last July about Saudi intransigence in tracking down terrorist financing networks. "There is an almost intuitive sense, however, that things are not being volunteered," he told the panel. As an example, the official said the Saudis claimed to have "nothing new" on al-Qaida member Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, a founder of the terrorist network.

"I think that taxes credulity, or there is another motive we are not being told," the Treasury official told the panel.

Many other U.S. officials complained about a lack of Saudi cooperation, both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, the report said. One "high-level" U.S. official said the attacks might even have been prevented had the Saudi government helped investigate "an individual" in Saudi Arabia who had contact with a senior al-Qaida operative likely involved in planning the attacks, the report said.

Whether that Saudi "individual" is a member of the royal family is unknown; 11 lines of text about the matter were redacted from the report.

Some of the most interesting new detail involves the hijackers Almihdhar and Alhamzi and an associate who may have been their Saudi handler.

On Jan. 15, 2000, the al-Qaida operatives arrived in Los Angeles after attending an al-Qaida summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Around this time, a Saudi student named Omar al-Bayoumi traveled to Los Angeles to conduct "business" at the Saudi consulate there, according to a person who accompanied al-Bayoumi and later gave an account of the trip to the FBI.

Later, this person and al-Bayoumi met Almihdhar and Alhamzi at a restaurant in Los Angeles, the report says. Almihdhar and Alhamzi soon moved to San Diego, where they initially bunked with al-Bayoumi. Al-Bayoumi later co-signed their lease on an apartment, paid their first month's rent and security deposit and threw a welcoming party.

Al-Bayoumi never lacked for cash, the report said.

"Despite the fact that he was a student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia," the report said, citing an FBI source who said al-Bayoumi delivered $400,000 from Saudi Arabia to a Kurdish mosque in San Diego.

Al-Bayoumi was an employee of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, and his salary was approved by a man whose son is tied to al-Qaida, the report said. Moreover, "one of the FBI's best sources in San Diego" said he suspected al-Bayoumi was an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or some other foreign country, the report said.

In addition, shortly after al-Bayoumi welcomed the future hijackers to San Diego, his family began receiving regular payments of about $3,500 a month from the Washington, D.C., bank account of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, news reports have revealed.

Information about Princess Haifa's payments, however, appears to have been redacted from the report. She has previously called the payments charity for a needy Saudi family and has denied knowing anything about al-Bayoumi's suspected al-Qaida connection.

In San Diego, Almihdhar and Alhamzi took flight lessons and later moved in with the professor who was also an FBI informer. They became friendly with a man identified in the report as a "business manager" who briefly employed Alhamzi.

An FBI investigation of the business manager was closed in December 2000 after the man declined to travel to Los Angeles, saying the trip would be "a strain" for him, the report said.

Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, Almihdhar and Alhamzi helped hijack the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people.

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