There’s a quiet scandal at the heart of Sept. 11; one that for different reasons neither the government nor the privacy lobby really wants to talk about. It’s this: For two and a half weeks before the attacks, the U.S. government knew the names of two hijackers. It knew they were al-Qaida killers and that they were already in the United States. In fact, the two were living openly under their own names, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. They used those names for financial transactions, flight school, to earn frequent flier miles, and to procure a California identity card.
Despite this paper trail, and despite having two and a half weeks to follow the scent, the FBI couldn’t locate either man—at least not until Sept. 11, when they flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: A number of readers think that there’s more to the story than Stewart Baker’s Slate piece tells, and this email from William Aronstein is representative:
Don’t you think it is remarkable that the bankrupt, collapsing Soviet Union could buy both the CIA’s head of anti-Soviet counter-intelligence AND the FBI’s head of anti-Soviet counter-intelligence for less than a million dollars, and we never hear of ANYBODY that the Saudis have even approached — with all their billions? What chance is there that Prince Bandar’s boys have not at least tried to buy control of the FBI and CIA Middle East desks — just as they already own State? Wouldn’t they be derelict in their duties if they didn’t at least try? So we can assume it’s been tried. But with what success?
The record is highly suggestive that pro-Saudi agents in and around Washington are very active and very successful.
This is entirely speculative, of course — though the FBI field agents on the Moussaoui case did wonder of Osama had a mole in FBI headquarters — but it’s certainly a subject that would seem well-suited for investigative journalism. And maybe for more Congressional investigations, as well.