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By Root 1807 0

two future hijackers. Shaikh’s simultaneous relationship with both the two terrorists and the FBI just might have led to their being unmasked—an even more glaring might-have-been when one recalls that the CIA had early on identified both men as terrorist suspects, and known they had visas for travel to the United States—yet failed to inform the FBI (see pp. 379–80). Much remains to be explained. The former chair of Congress’s joint probe, former senator Bob Graham, accepts that the FBI may at first have tried to conceal its relationship with Shaikh simply because it was a “big embarrassment.” Graham also raised the possibility, though, that what the FBI tried to hide was that Shaikh knew something that “would be even more damaging were it revealed.” What, too, of the report in the press that Agent Butler’s interview with congressional investigators had been “explosive,” that he “had been monitoring a flow of Saudi Arabian money that wound up in the hands of the two hijackers”? Butler, an official was quoted as having said, “saw a pattern, a trail, and he told his supervisors, but it ended there.” As of 2009, Shaikh was still living in San Diego.

Because of agencies’ iron rules about the protection of informants—whatever the full story of Shaikh’s relationship with the hijackers or with the FBI—there is little likelihood of learning more about him anytime soon. He is virtually invisible in the Commission Report, not even named in the index.

Much the same applies to the Report’s handling of Ali Mohamed, a truly significant figure in the sorry story of U.S. agencies’ understanding—or lack of it—of al Qaeda. “No single agent of al Qaeda,” the author Peter Lance has written, “was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than a former Egyptian army captain turned CIA operative, Special Forces advisor, and FBI informant” than former Egyptian army major Mohamed. “Mohamed succeeded in penetrating the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, while simultaneously training the cell that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993. He went on to train Osama bin Laden’s personal bodyguard, and photographed the U.S. embassy in Kenya—taking the surveillance pictures bin Laden himself used to target the [1998] suicide truck bomb.”

Though beyond the scope of this book, there is much more to this labyrinthine tale. While the August 6, 2001, CIA brief delivered to President Bush did not mention Mohamed by name, it was shot through with references to him. He was that summer due to be sentenced for his crimes, having pled guilty to multiple terrorist offenses, including his role in the embassy bombings. FBI agent Jack Cloonan, who interviewed Mohamed in prison after 9/11, had the eerie sense that he “knew every detail” of the attacks, in spite of having been in custody for years. As of 2006, though reportedly still a prisoner at an unknown location, Mohamed had yet to be sentenced. There is just one reference to him in the 9/11 Commission Report—and no mention of his relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies (Hazmi view: MFR [unnumbered], 4/23/04, CF; Times interview: NYT, 10/24/01; investigators startled: Graham with Nussbaum, 159–, ints. Bob Graham, Eleanor Hill; informant/Butler talked: FBI IG, Report, JI, 162, “Conspiracy Theories: The Intelligence Breakdown,” www.cbc.ca; “ally”: Report, JI, 162; FBI refused: Joint Inquiry, Report, 3, Graham with Nussbaum, 162; Bush officials: “Bush Should Cry Uncle and Release Saudi Info,” 6/28/03, www.opednews.com, Report, JI, 3; Commission memorandum: MFR [unnumbered], 4/23/04, CF; inconsistencies: CR, 517n28; might-have-been: Report, JI, 19–; “big embarrassment”/“did know”: Graham with Nussbaum, 166; “explosive”/“monitoring”: U.S. News & World Report, 11/29/02; Shaikh 2009: Miriam Raftery, “Abdussattar Shaikh, Co-Founder of San Diego’s Islamic Center, Honored for 50 Years of Service Promoting Religious Tolerance,” 10/8/09, www.eastcountymagazine.org; “No single”: “A Conversation with Peter Lance,” 12/06, www.internetwritingjournal.com & see Wright, 179–, Bergen,