Why Louis Freeh Should Be Investigated For 9/11

Three major FBI failures relating to “Islamic” terrorism occurred during the early months of 2001.

1. The first was on March 7, 2001 when, during trial proceedings for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, FBI agent Stephen Gaudin read aloud in court a phone number that had been used by the alleged al Qaeda plotters to plan and execute the embassy attacks.[43]  This was the phone number of the “Yemen Hub,” which doubled as the home phone of Ahmed Al-Hada, the father-in-law of alleged 9/11 hijacker Khalid Al-Mihdhar.  According to U.S. officials, the same phone was purportedly used for planning the USS Cole bombing and, later, the 9/11 attacks.  The phone number was also published in the British weekly the Observer, just five weeks before 9/11.  As author Kevin Fenton wrote: “Any of the Observer’s readers could have called the number and asked for a message to be forwarded to Osama bin Laden.”[44] This widely reported FBI gaffe should have alerted al Qaeda to U.S. knowledge of its secret Yemen operations center while also ensuring that anyone listening would know the exact al Qaeda phone number being monitored by U.S. intelligence. Despite this major tip-off, al Qaeda continued to use the phone to plan the 9/11 attacks, until “only weeks before 9/11.”[45] Why did the Bureau not work to intercept the calls made in the months and weeks before 9/11 and use them to help stop the attacks?
2. The FBI had Mohamed Atta and one of his colleagues under surveillance in early 2001, according to an FBI informant.  The informant later said he was a “million percent positive” that the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped if the FBI had gone after Atta at the time.  Instead, FBI handlers steered the informant away from Atta.[46]
3. Several FBI agents, including Dina Corsi, Margaret Gillespie, Doug Miller and Mark Rossini, were involved in a concerted attempt to hide information about Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi from other intelligence officers who almost certainly would have captured the suspects.  These acts of inexplicable secrecy included not sharing cables on the subject, not sharing photographs of the suspects, misrepresenting “the Wall” restrictions, and misrepresenting comments from the National Security Law Unit.[47]

The FBI agents noted in the last example were all assigned as liaisons to the CIA’s Alec Station unit, focused on Osama Bin Laden.  It is interesting that neither Richard Blee, the head of that unit at the time, nor Rodney Middelton, the head of the FBI’s UBLU, were ever interviewed by independent journalists about these critical issues.  Middleton left the FBI the day before 9/11, and Blee went on to be named CIA station chief in Kabul as the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began.

Between April and September 2001, several major changes occurred in the FBI’s counterterrorism program.  In May, the head of the RFU was replaced by Dave Frasca, who would go on to be a central character in the obstruction of opportunities to identify and capture the alleged hijackers.  At the same time, Louis Freeh announced his resignation despite not having another job.

Freeh left the FBI on June 25, 2001 with nowhere to go.  It was said that he approached acting New Jersey Governor Donald DiFrancesco and offered to serve, without salary, as the state’s anti-terrorism “czar”.  This would have brought Freeh close to the 9/11 attacks in NYC but it didn’t happen.  Instead, Freeh was apparently doing nothing for the three months before 9/11, or at least doing nothing that we know about. Freeh then took a job as director, counsel, and ethics officer at credit card issuer MBNA.

The final three 9/11-related failures that can be attributed to Freeh, through the subordinates he put in place, are as follows.  If any of these had been handled appropriately, the alleged 9/11 hijackers would have been caught and their plans foiled.

1. On July 10, 2001, Phoenix FBI counterterrorism agent Ken Williams sent FBI headquarters what is called the “Phoenix Memo,” warning that Osama bin Laden was sending students to U.S. flight schools.  Williams listed cases of suspected Arab extremists training in Arizona flight schools and urged the FBI to search for such cases in other cities.  The FBI failed to respond to the memo at all and it was dismissed as speculative.  As 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey would later point out about the memo, “had it gotten into the works at the—up to the highest possible level, at the very least, 19 guys wouldn‘t have gotten onto these airplanes with room to spare.”[48]
2. In mid-August 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota.  The FBI agents who made the arrest called Moussaoui a “suspected airline suicide attacker.”  The agents requested permission to search Moussaoui’s belongings, including his laptop computer, but they were denied that permission.  A week later the FBI supervisor in Minneapolis, trying to get the attention of those at FBI headquarters, said he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui “did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.”[49] Still, FBI headquarters denied the field agents’ requests.  In May 2002, one of the agents, Coleen Rowley, described this obstruction.  She wrote that FBI headquarters personnel  “continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis’ by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause.  In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!  Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval!”[50]
3. Finally, on August 23, 2001, less than three weeks before 9/11, the CIA formally told the FBI that Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi might be in the United States.  But even though the two alleged hijackers had their names listed in the San Diego phone book and had been living with an FBI informant, the Bureau supposedly could not find them.

FBI agent Robert Fuller, only recently transferred to UBLU, claimed to take the August information and use it to search databases looking for Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi but he claims to have found nothing.  Fuller had another JTTF officer help him to search a database run by Choicepoint, the company known for purging Florida voters in the 2000 presidential election.[51]  The Justice Department IG report says Fuller did an NCIC criminal history check, credit checks, and a motor vehicle records search.  But the 9/11 Commission Report clearly contradicted this, saying “Searches of readily available databases could have unearthed the drivers licenses, the car registration, and the telephone listing” all of which were in Al Mihdhar and Al Hazmi’s names.[52]

Later it was noted that “the hijackers had contact with 14 people known to the FBI because of counterterror investigations prior to 9/11.”[53] This was known to the 9/11 Commission as its staff director made a clear statement about how close the FBI was to catching the alleged hijackers.  “Rather than the hijackers being invisible to the FBI, they were, in fact, right in the middle of the FBI‘s counterterrorism coverage,” said Eleanor Hill.  “And yet, the FBI didn‘t detect them.”[54]

All of this certainly seems to suggest that FBI headquarters and Director Freeh had sufficient information to track and capture the alleged 9/11 hijackers.  Freeh’s close association with the Saudis is also troubling considering the role of suspected Saudi spy Al-Bayoumi.  The company Al-Bayoumi worked for, Dalla Al-Baraka, was owned by Saleh Abdullah Kamel, reportedly a member of the “Golden Chain” financiers of Osama bin Laden. And the wife of Freeh’s friend Prince Bandar was reported to have sent funding to the alleged hijackers through Al-Bayoumi’s wife.[55]

In his resignation speech, Freeh praised the integrity of George W. Bush and dedication of Dick Cheney.  “President Bush has brought great honor and integrity to the Oval Office.  It was equally an honor to be appointed by his father to serve as a federal judge.  I also wish to thank Vice President Dick Cheney for conducting an effective transition process and for his dedication to duty in serving the Nation,” said Freeh.[56]

Going on, Freeh thanked his colleagues at the CIA and emphasized how well the two agencies had worked together.  “Through the leadership of Director George Tenet, we have forged an unprecedented relationship with the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency in the counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism arenas,” he claimed.  “This, in turn, has enabled us to place greater emphasis on counter-intelligence [and] counter-terrorism.”[57]

These remarks are in direct contradiction to the 9/11 Commission Report, which placed blame for the failure to track down and capture the alleged hijackers on two root causes.  The first was that, although the “system was blinking red,” the FBI and CIA were not working well together, partly because of “the Wall” of procedures that supposedly prevented adequate information sharing between the agencies.  The second presumed root cause was that the information needed to stop the attacks did not rise high enough within the FBI and CIA to ensure action would be taken.  Neither of these excuses is believable, given the examples already reviewed.

At the end of Freeh’s tenure as director, the FBI was under severe criticism from all directions.  Patrick J. Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee whose office would a few months later be one of the targets of the anthrax attacks, said, “There are some very, very serious management problems at the FBI.”[58] Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said, “It’s hard to believe the situation has deteriorated and disintegrated the way it has. How did this great agency fall so far so fast? The FBI has been starved for leadership.”[59]