In 2009, documentary film makers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy interviewed a former counterterrorist official Richard Clarke. Clarke told them that three former CIA officials, George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, all knew that the 9/11 hijacking al Qaeda terrorists were on U.S. soil, but failed to provide that key information to anyone at the White House, the State Department or the FBI. Clarke told the producers that Tenet read al Qaeda reports even before the analysts did – that is how much he understood the threat and the level of his interest in following members of the terrorist organization. In January of 2000, the CIA monitored a meeting of top al Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and then followed, after the meeting, the men who would become the lead hijackers of Flight 77 – Khalid Al Mihdhar and Nawaf Al Hazmi – before losing them in Bangkok. Then, on March 5th, 2000, CIA Bangkok Station reported back to headquarters that both Mihdhar and Hazmi had arrived in Los Angeles. Clarke told the filmmakers that the CIA did not relay that information to anyone. The reason they chose to withhold such information – information that could have saved countless lives – remains a mystery.





Someone Blocked The Information According to Clarke, someone at a high level intentionally went into the system and literally disabled the distribution of the cables that revealed evidence of Mihdhar and Hazmi’s arrival in the U.S. When asked whether those three top CIA officials had opportunities to alert Clarke to the VISAs and other evidence revealing their presence in the U.S., Clarke responded: They did, but they wouldn’t have had to, because unless somebody intervened to stop the normal, automatic distribution, I’d automatically get it. For me, to this day, it is inexplicable why when I had every other detail related to terrorism, that the Director didn’t tell me, that the Director of the Counterterrorism Center didn’t tell me, that the other 48 people in CIA who knew about it never said anything to me or anyone in my staff, in a period of over 12 months? We therefore concluded that there was a high level decision in the CIA, ordering people not to share that information. Keeping in mind that the CIA clearly knew about the presence of two al Qaeda operatives operating inside of the United States in 2000, the events that took place at an emergency meeting in July 10, 2001, demanded by the CIA Director, appear even more mysterious.

July 2001 Emergency Meeting On July 10th, 2001, the CIA Director George Tenet demanded an emergency meeting with the National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. Also present were Cofer Black and Rich Blee. At that meeting, the three CIA officials tried to make their strongest case to take action against al Qaeda. Among all of the evidence and information provided to Condoleeza Rice at that meeting, George Tenet failed to provide Ms. Rice with the fact that the two known al Qaeda operatives were already inside the United States. Clark explained: Why don’t you trot out what is the most persuasive piece of evidence you’ve got? These guys are already in the country! They’re not here to go look at the Grand Canyon. The people who were doing that briefing, knew that fact, and didn’t trot it out. So, you ask yourself, why not? I’ve thought about this a lot, and there’s only one conceivable reason that I can come up with. When speculating why the CIA leadership would withhold such crucial information from the White House or FBI, Clarke explained: “When Cofer Black became head of the Counterterrorism Center at CIA, he was aghast that they had no sources in al Qaeda. So, he told me, ‘I’m going to try to get sources inside of al Qaeda.’ I can understand them possibly saying, we need to develop sources inside al Qaeda, when we do that, we can’t tell anybody about it. And I can understand them perhaps seeing these two guys showing up in the United States, and thinking, ‘Ah-ha, this is our chance to flip them. This is our chance to get guys inside al Qaeda. To do that, we can’t tell anybody outside the CIA until we got them.’ It wasn’t until August 21, 2001, that the CIA finally decided to tell the FBI about the two al Qaeda operatives inside of the United States.

Failed FBI Hunt for Al Qaeda Operatives For 16 months, the CIA had failed to report the fact to anyone, but finally in August of 2001 the CIA informed the FBI of the presence of the al Qaeda operatives inside of the U.S. On September 4th, 2001, President Bush and his advisers gathered to discuss the terrorism threat. Once again, the CIA failed to inform the operatives to White House leadership, even after reporting the operatives to low-level FBI agents. When asked why they would not mention the fact at the Presidential Advisers meeting, Clarke explains: If they announce at the September 4th meeting that these guys are in the United States, and that they told the FBI a few weeks ago, I’m going to say, ‘Wait, time out. How long have you known about this? Why haven’t you reported it at the daily threat meetings? Why isn’t it in the daily threat matrix?’ We would have begun an investigation that day into CIA malfeasance and misfeasance. That’s why we were not informed. So how true was Clarke’s claim in this documentary? Top Secret Writer’s compared the video of the interview, and compared it to known facts published in the mainstream press. The following facts are known to be true. 1. The CIA informed the Bush administration on August 11, 2001 that al Qaeda members were in the U.S. and were planning attacks with explosives. (source: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” document). 2. 70 FBI field investigations related to bin Laden’s associates were ongoing in the U.S., but none of them were focused on any of the 19 actual men involved in the attack. 3. On August 21, 2001, an FBI agent by the name of Margaret Gillespie discovered that two al Qaeda operatives had been tracked from Malaysia to the U.S. by the CIA, but the CIA had withheld the identities of those men, and their presence in the U.S., from law enforcement. On August 22nd, the FBI confronted the CIA about the failure to notify the FBI about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi since January of 2000. On August 23, the FBI began a search for the two men. Thanks to Gillespie, the CIA finally sent a cable to State Department, INS, Customs and FBI to place 4 known individuals on the terrorism watch list. 4. On September 3, 2001, Richard Clarke meets with Condoleeza Rice and other White House officials to warn them that if they don’t take the al Qaeda threat seriously, they should imagine a scenario with hundreds dying simply because the government has failed to take action. The rest is history. The story told by Clarke in 2011 matches the known public record about events leading up to the 9-11 terrorist attack, and really adds nothing to the puzzle – since Margaret Gillespie had already uncovered that fact in August of 2001. The documentary interview was old news. What remains a mystery even to this day is why – even though the CIA knew the identity of two of the terrorists who were on U.S. soil 16 months earlier – the Agency decided to withhold that information from everyone, until Gillespie finally stumbled upon the information while working on loan to the CIA, forcing them to finally spill the beans and place the names on the Terrorism Watch List. Considering that the mainstream media still hasn’t covered the Margaret Gillespie story in much detail, or the fact that the CIA withheld the presence of those terrorists in the U.S. for so long – probably means that the CIA motives will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future. Clarke summed it up best when he said, about Tenet, Black and Blee: “Look at it this way. They’ve been able to get through a Joint House Investigation Committee, and get through the 9/11 Commission, and this has never come out. They got away with it. They’re not gonna tell you, even if you waterboard them.”

Originally published on TopSecretWriters.com