The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [168]
ACCORDING TO a British government source, communications intercepts at this time picked up messages between bin Laden and senior comrades. One of them, probably a contact with KSM in Pakistan, “referred to an incident that would take place in America on or around September 11”—and the repercussions that might follow.
Egyptian intelligence, with its penetration agent inside al Qaeda, received and passed on “information about some people planning an operation in the United States.” “It was one week before,” recalled President Mubarak. “The wheels were going.”
On September 6, oblivious to such specifics, former senator Gary Hart attended a meeting at the White House. Having tried in vain in January to get the Bush administration to pay real attention to the warnings of the Commission on National Security he had cochaired, he had begun to think there was movement at last.
President Bush had said in the spring that he was establishing a new office, supervised by Vice President Cheney and devoted to “preparedness” for all forms of terrorist strikes on American soil. He himself, the President said, would periodically chair meetings to review the office’s work. That had not happened, but now here was Hart at the White House in early September, offering his commission’s expertise to help with the project. Rice, he was to recall, merely “said she would pass on the message.”
Their vacations over, President Bush and CIA director Tenet met six times in the first eight days of September. It is not known what they discussed.
AT AN FBI OFFICE in New York, meanwhile, the lone FBI agent charged with looking for Hazmi and Mihdhar was just getting started. Agent Robert Fuller had not been instructed that the matter was especially urgent, nor that the two men posed a serious threat. On a request form he sent to another agency about Mihdhar, he did not even tick the box to indicate that the subject was wanted in connection with “security/terrorism.”
He did put out some tentative feelers. Mihdhar had written on his most recent immigration form that he planned to stay at a Marriott hotel in New York City. Unsurprisingly, checks showed that no one with his name had registered at any of the six local Marriotts.
Mihdhar and Hazmi had both used their own names while in the States, and several commonly used databases might well have thrown up information on them. By his own account, Fuller did check the National Crime Information Center, the NCIC, credit and motor vehicle records, and—with a colleague’s help—the ChoicePoint service. Whether he in fact trawled all those sources, though, has been questioned.
While Mihdhar had been out of the country for much of the past year, Hazmi had for months been on the East Coast. Had the hunt for him been treated seriously—had his case been given the priority of, say, the search for a wanted bank robber—tracking him would not have been a hopeless quest. Three days before Agent Fuller received his assignment, Hazmi had come to the notice of a traffic policeman while driving a rental car in Totowa, New Jersey. The patrolman had reportedly taken down the license plate and entered it as a matter of routine in the NCIC.
As reported earlier in these pages, moreover, Hazmi had also featured in three other traffic episodes: another recent “query” by police in Hackensack, New Jersey, a collision outside New York City, and a speeding ticket in Oklahoma. He had even filed a police report in Washington, D.C, using his own name, complaining of having been mugged. One or more of this total of five incidents ought to have made it to the NCIC.
All that aside, Hazmi and Mihdhar had for more than eighteen months lived in the United States—in plain sight—leaving a trail of credit card, bank account, telephone, and accommodations records behind them. Yet Agent Fuller turned up nothing on them. Having made a start on September 5, it appears that he then let