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The hijackers may have imagined they were being followed. Given their mission, it would have been a natural enough fear. There is another relevant lead, though, that has more substance.

In the early afternoon of September 11, the senior aide to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld penned a very curious handwritten note. Written by Deputy Under Secretary Stephen Cambone at 2:40 P.M., following a phone call between Rumsfeld and Tenet, it appears in a record of the day’s events that was obtained in 2006 under the Freedom of Information Act.

The note reads:

AA 77–3 indiv have been followed since Millennium & Cole

1 guy is assoc of Cole bomber

3 entered US in early July

(2 of 3 pulled aside and interrogated?)

Though somewhat garbled, probably due to the rush of events in those hectic hours, the details more or less fit. Mihdhar, Hazmi, and Hazmi’s brother were hijackers aboard American Flight 77, the airliner that was flown into the Pentagon. Mihdhar had been an associate of USS Cole planner Attash, the most significant of the fellow terrorists with whom he met in Kuala Lumpur. Mihdhar, certainly, had entered the United States—for the second time, after months back in the Middle East—in “early July,” on July 4.

Cambone’s note on three individuals having “been followed” could be interpreted in two ways. Had Tenet meant during his conversation with Secretary Rumsfeld merely to convey the fact that three of the terrorists had at an earlier point come to the notice of the intelligence community? Or had he—conceivably—meant what the note says he said, that the terrorists’ movements had indeed been monitored?

Was it Tenet’s knowledge of some intelligence operation that had targeted Mihdhar and Hazmi—whether in the shape of monitoring them or attempting to recruit them—that led to the director’s flash of recognition and his “Oh, Jesus” exclamation on seeing their names on the Flight 77 manifest?

If an operation had been attempted, contrary to the rules that govern CIA activities, to whom was it entrusted? To try to answer that question is to fumble in the dark. There are pointers, though, in the evidence as to whether any foreign nation-state—other than Afghanistan, where the Taliban played host to bin Laden—had responsibility at any level for the 9/11 attacks.

THIRTY-TWO

AQUESTION THE 9/11 COMMISSION SOUGHT TO ANSWER, ITS CHAIRmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton recalled, was “Had the hijackers received any support from foreign governments?”

“The terrorists do not function in a vacuum,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had told reporters the week after 9/11. They “live and work and function and are fostered and financed and encouraged, if not just tolerated, by a series of countries.… I know a lot, and what I have said, as clearly as I know how, is that states are supporting these people.” Pressed to elaborate, Rumsfeld was silent for a long moment. Then, saying it was “a sensitive matter,” he changed the subject.

Three years later, the 9/11 Commission would consider whether any of three foreign countries in particular might have had a role in 9/11. Two were self-avowed foes of the United States—Iran and Iraq. The third was the country long since billed—by both sides—as a close friend of the United States, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, the Commission found, had long had contacts with al Qaeda and had allowed its operatives—including a number of the future hijackers —to travel freely through its airports. The Commission Report, however, said there was no evidence that Iran “was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.” The commissioners urged the government to investigate further.

There is nothing to indicate that federal agencies have probed further. In late May 2011, however, it was reported that a suit filed by lawyers for bereaved U.S. family members would include revealing testimony from three Iranian defectors. Former senior Commission counsel Dietrich Snell was quoted as saying in an affidavit that