"The commonly held view at the FBI
prior to September 11 was that bin Laden needed pilots to operate aircraft
he had purchased in the United States to move men and material," Eleanor
Hill, staff director of the joint inquiry into Sept. 11 intelligence
failures, said at a hearing.
The reference to bin Laden buying aircraft in the United States, buried
in the middle of her testimony, was left unexplained and congressional
officials said they could not go beyond the unclassified report.
FBI officials essentially ignored a July 10, 2001, memo from an FBI
agent in Phoenix outlining concerns that an effort was underway by bin
Laden to send students to the United States for flight training,
congressional investigators found.
The so-called Phoenix memo was written by FBI agent Kenneth Williams,
who testified from behind a screen at the joint hearing of the U.S. House
of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees. The author was not
identified by name, but Williams's testimony made clear he had written the
memo.
The memo noted that an "inordinate number of individuals of
investigative interest" were attending flight training in Arizona, and
speculated they were part of an effort to establish a group in civil
aviation that would be in a position to conduct terrorist activity, Hill
said.
The memo "did not raise any alarms" at FBI headquarters where it was
determined no follow-up action was warranted. And New York FBI agents
found it to be "speculative," Hill said.
The memo did not name any of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but the FBI now
believes one of those named in it was connected to Hani Hanjour, who is
believed to have piloted the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon
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sites), Hill said.
FLIGHT TRAINING
In New York, where there is an FBI international terrorism squad, three
agents saw the Phoenix memo, but told the inquiry that Middle Eastern men
frequently took U.S. flight training because it was considered best for
quality and price.
"A communication noting that Middle Eastern men with ties to Osama bin
Laden were receiving flight training in the United States would not
necessarily be considered particularly alarming because New York personnel
knew that individuals connected to al Qaeda had previously received flight
training in the United States," Hill said.
FBI agents from Oklahoma City visited Airman Flight School in Norman,
Oklahoma on Aug. 23, 2001, less than a month before the attacks, to ask
about Zacarias Moussaoui.
One of them had been assigned two years earlier to investigate someone
identified as bin Laden's personal pilot who had trained at the Airman
school. The agent said he did not remember that when checking on
Moussaoui.
Lawmakers have cited the Phoenix memo as a missed clue in the Sept. 11
attacks, in which hijacked planes were crashed into sites in New York,
Washington and Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.
The FBI has been criticized for not connecting the Phoenix memo with
the arrest a month later of Moussaoui, who raised suspicions at a
Minnesota flight school. Moussaoui is now charged with conspiracy in the
Sept. 11 attacks.
"The Phoenix memo just became like a letter with no envelope. It really
didn't go anywhere," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat.
"That memo is a very compelling memo, it should have caused somebody to
stop whatever it was they were doing and take notice," she said.
Williams, the memo author, lashed out at Congress for revealing his
identity.
"I do not consider myself a whistle-blower," he said. "I am not afraid
of the FBI, but am very concerned about al Qaeda and what they may want to
do to me and my family. Sadly, I can thank the United States Congress for
my current situation."
Other instances in which the FBI had concerns about flight students
included the FBI's chief pilot in Oklahoma City drafting a memo in 1998
expressing concern about the number of Middle Eastern flight students
there "and his belief that they could be planning a terrorist attack,"
Hill said.
Also in 1998, the FBI received reports that a "terrorist organization"
planned to bring students to the United States to study aviation and one
of its members frequently expressed an intent to target U.S. civil
aviation, Hill said.
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