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Amir, of course, was the last name most used—prior to his departure for the United States—by the man who was to become known to the world as Mohamed Atta.

Those tapped calls are of greatest interest today in the context of the CIA’s performance. The Germans reportedly thought the “Marwan” lead “particularly valuable,” and passed the information about it to the CIA. The caller named “Marwan,” they noted, had been speaking on a mobile phone registered in the United Arab Emirates. According to George Tenet, testifying in 2004 to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA “didn’t sit around” on receipt of this information, but “did some things to go find out some things.”

According to security officials in the UAE, the number could have been identified in a matter of minutes. The “Marwan” on the call is believed to have been UAE citizen Marwan al-Shehhi, who in 2001 was to fly United 175 into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Was Shehhi’s mobile phone ever monitored by the CIA? Queried on the subject in 2004, U.S. intelligence officials said they were “uncertain.”

The CIA on the ground in Germany did evince major interest in the Hamburg coterie of Islamic extremists. In late 1999, an American official who went by the name of Thomas Volz turned up at the office of the Hamburg state intelligence service—the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz—with a pressing request.

Though he used the cover of a diplomatic post, Volz was a CIA agent. The Agency believed that Mamoun Darkazanli “had knowledge of an unspecified terrorist plot.” Volz’s hope, he explained, was that the suspect could be “turned,” persuaded to become an informant and pass on information about al Qaeda activities.

The Germans doubted that Darkazanli could be induced to do any such thing. They tried all the same, and failed. Volz, however, repeatedly insisted they try again. So persistent was he, reportedly, that the CIA’s man eventually tried approaching Darkazanli on his own initiative. To German intelligence officials, this was an outrageous intrusion, a violation of Germany’s sovereignty.

All this at the very time, and soon after, that Atta and his comrades—whom Darkazanli knew well—had traveled to Afghanistan, sworn allegiance to bin Laden, and committed to the 9/11 operation. What really came of Volz’s efforts remains unknown.

The 9/11 Commission Report did not mention the Volz episode. The public remains uninformed, moreover, as to what U.S. intelligence may have learned of the hijackers before they left Germany and became operational in the United States.

THE LEAD on Shehhi arising from the Hamburg phone tap aside, there is information suggesting there was early U.S. interest in his accomplice Ziad Jarrah. In late January 2000, on his way back from the future hijackers’ pivotal visit to Afghanistan, Jarrah was stopped for questioning while in transit at Dubai airport.

“It was at the request of the Americans,” a UAE security official was to say after 9/11, “and it was specifically because of Jarrah’s links with Islamic extremists, his contacts with terrorist organizations.” The reason the terrorist was pulled over, reportedly, was “because his name was on a watchlist” provided by the United States.

During his interrogation, astonishingly, Jarrah coolly told his questioners that he had been in Afghanistan and now planned to go to the United States to learn to fly—and to spread the word about Islam.

While the airport interview was still under way, according to the UAE record, the Dubai officials made contact with U.S. representatives. “What happened,” a UAE official elaborated in 2003, “was we called the Americans. We said, ‘We have this guy. What should we do with him?’ … their answer was, ‘Let him go, we’ll track him.’ … They told us to let him go.”

At the relevant date in FBI task force documents on Jarrah, and next to another entry about the terrorist’s UAE stopover, an item has been redacted. The symbol beside the redaction stands for: “Foreign Government Information.”

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