911Report- The unnamed "assistants" in San Diego

posted by ewing2001 on Sunday July 27, @02:23AM

A new connection between Alhazmi, al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour:
a new article of Signonsandiego names names of a number of the hijackers' assistants that were kept nameless in the 9/11 report that just came out.
Update: The "unknown Imam"

signonsandiego.com -July 25, 2003

By Kelly Thornton

The "best chance" to uncover the Sept. 11 plot was lost in San Diego – where FBI agents were tantalizingly close to discovering two terrorists living with a government informant in Lemon Grove, according to a congressional report released yesterday.

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The report, which lists mistakes and missed opportunities by intelligence agencies, found no single piece of intelligence that could have tipped off authorities and prevented the deaths of more than 3,000 people.

But, the report stated, the inability of the FBI and CIA to share information led to this scenario: Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar rented rooms in the home of an unwitting FBI informant, who passed along their first names to his FBI handler.

But the names meant nothing because the CIA – which had observed the men at an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in late 1999 – hadn't put them on a watch list and didn't do so until August 2001. The FBI office in San Diego wasn't told until after Sept. 11, according to the report.

The nearly 900-page report issued by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees focuses closely on events in San Diego, where four men were subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations either before or while the hijackers were living here during 2000. Those men later turned out to have relationships with the hijackers.

But it is the specter of hijackers living right under the noses of FBI agents that has attracted the most attention. "The informant's contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the intelligence community's best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot," the report stated.

The report said the longtime informant – who fell under suspicion after the attacks but is now considered an unwitting landlord with no knowledge of his tenants' plan to crash a jet into the Pentagon – had "repeated contact" with hijackers Alhazmi and al-Midhar and mentioned their first names to his FBI handler in summer 2000. He described them as "good Muslim Saudi youths" who had come to study English. Although the report did not name the informant, law enforcement sources have identified him as Abdussattar Shaikh, a retired professor and community leader. He has vehemently denied being an informant.

Shaikh initially declined to discuss the report yesterday. But after reading it, he said he became incensed that he is being portrayed as an informant.

He said he met FBI Agent Steve Butler – whom sources have identified as Shaikh's "handler" – about eight years ago, when Butler came to the Islamic Center of San Diego, a large Clairemont mosque, to investigate a bomb threat. The two struck up a friendship and had lunch many times.

"We discussed our personal lives," Shaikh said yesterday. "I know his life, he knows mine. I know so many things about him; he was very kind to me."

He said they never discussed other Muslims or Muslim extremism, and that he never reported suspicious activity or people in the context that an informant might.

When Shaikh heard the names of his former renters announced as Sept. 11 hijackers during a radio news report, he said he pulled off the road – reeling from shock and disbelief – and immediately called Butler, "the only contact I had."

It was then that Shaikh helped his friend. "He never asked me anything, until after 9/11. Then he asked me. I told him, 'I will tell you what I know.' " Shaikh said he agreed to be polygraphed, and he passed.

Shaikh said part of his motivation in striking up relationships with Butler and others like him in law enforcement and government was to advance understanding of the Muslim religion.

"This is the greatest country and I try to bring Muslims into the mainstream and this is what I get?" he said.

Butler, who was sent to Washington to testify before the committee, told members that things might have been different if he'd had access to the intelligence information on the two hijackers.

"It would have made a huge difference," said the report, quoting Butler. "We would have immediately opened up investigations" and "probably would have" located them because they were "very, very close." Butler has since retired.

The report, and some of members of the congressional committee, sharply criticized intelligence agencies for underestimating al-Qaeda's presence in the United States and failing to aggressively investigate and share information about the group's activities before Sept. 11.

"The attacks of September the 11th could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to task," said Sen. Robert Graham, the Florida Democrat and presidential candidate who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee during the investigation.

Dan Dzwilewski, who is in charge of the FBI office in San Diego, said the report underscored what he and his colleagues have thought all along: that nothing could have prevented the attacks. The hijackers were law-abiding, immersed in the community, listed their names in the phone book like anybody else and did nothing to call attention to themselves, he said.

"Even with all the information that was out there, even if it had been shared, it would not have given us an advance warning of the attack," he said.

The report detailed investigations of San Diego men by counterterrorism agents before or while the hijackers lived in San Diego. Those men, mentioned in the 832-page report, eventually became friends, helpers or employers of the two hijackers.

Two of the men listed in the report are the owner and manager of a business that employed Alhazmi.

The report indicated that one of the men, a Palestinian-born U.S. citizen who owns several businesses in the San Diego area, "cheered upon learning of the Sept. 11 attacks" and had been investigated by the FBI in 1991, 1994 and 1997 for associations with terrorist groups and threats against Israelis.

The men were not named in the report but Alhazmi worked briefly at Sam's Star Mart gas station on Spring Street in La Mesa, which at the time was a Texaco franchise owned by Osama "Sam" Mustafa and managed by Ed Salamah.

Also mentioned in the report was an unnamed Muslim cleric who became a spiritual adviser to Alhazmi and al-Midhar. Anwar Al-Awlaki is the former leader of the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque on Saranac Street on the border of San Diego and La Mesa, which was attended regularly by the hijackers and their acquaintances.

The FBI opened a counterterrorism inquiry into imam Anwar Al-Awlaki's activities in June 1999. When the imam moved to one of the largest Muslim communities in the country at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., Alhazmi and hijacker Hani Hanjour followed and began attending that mosque, the report said.

Omar al-Bayoumi, who was suspected of being an advance man for the hijackers, was investigated by the FBI in 1998, but the report said only that it was related to counterterrorism.

Al-Bayoumi, a student, was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence official. In January 2000, he had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and then went to a restaurant where he met Alhazmi and al-Midhar, the report said. The pair arrived in San Diego soon after.

The hijackers stayed in al-Bayoumi's home for several days until he found them an apartment. He paid their first month's rent and security deposit and threw a welcoming party for them, the report said. FBI officials said yesterday that bank records indicate al-Bayoumi was reimbursed, presumably by the hijackers.

According to the report, al-Bayoumi also had ties to al-Qaeda, but an extensive investigation after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in no terrorism charges. He was charged with immigration violations, which are not extraditable offenses.

A fifth man, Osama Basnan, was mentioned as someone the FBI was aware of before Sept. 11, though he was not under investigation until afterward. Basnan, a Saudi who pleaded guilty to using false immigration documents in San Diego federal court in October 2002, was also on the FBI radar before Sept. 11.

William Gore, who led the FBI office in San Diego before and after Sept. 11, 2001, said some of the San Diego men mentioned in the report have been mischaracterized for political purposes.

"...As reported by some US papers, two hijackers Almihdhar and Nawaq Alhamzi rented a room for a few weeks from Abdussattar Shaikh, a retired English professor at San Diego State University and co-founder of San Diego's Islamic Center.

Disturbingly Shaikh was later confirmed as a FBI informant (->), while the CIA had Almihdhar and Nawaq Alhamzi still on their watch list:

"The CIA was first alerted to them in January 2000, when the two Saudi nationals showed up at a Qaeda “summit” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...

...In September 2000, the two moved into the home of a Muslim man who had befriended them at the local Islamic Center. The landlord regularly prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account. He was also, sources tell NEWSWEEK, a “tested” undercover “asset” who had been working closely with the FBI office in San Diego (San Diego FBI chief is Bill Gore) on terrorism cases related to Hamas.

Source: www.msnbc.com/news/805186.asp?cp1=1

What odd is, that some stories on the patterns of both informant and hijackers looked the same:

"...He converts to Islam, goes overseas to fight for the fundamentalists, returns to the USA, becomes an FBI informant, and coincidentily, has two of the hijackers involved in 9/11 room with him in his building."

“They kept me in their arms a long time,” Shaikh said. “They made me feel like I was wanted.” Al-Midhar stayed about six weeks, telling Shaikh he was going home to see his baby daughter. Alhazmi left in December 2000, saying he was moving to San Jose. He later called Shaikh and told him he was in Arizona taking lessons to be a pilot.

Source:

www.signonsandiego.com/sept_11/terror_home/disbelief.html

The FBI agent, who was in charge with the observation was Bill Gore (Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory=RCFL) who played a special role in the investigation of the San Diego 911-suspects.

It was on November 14th 2000, when former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh (->) offered him this position at the "first multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional entity responsible for acquiring, archiving, and analyzing digital evidence in support of criminal investigations".

FBI Pressrelease

Before William D. Gore, his full name, was in charge of a "massive two and one-half year investigation code-named "Sure Buck", which was about health care fraud of 23 individuals from Mexico and Southern California.

http://sandiego.fbi.gov/surebuck/surebuck.htm

More interesting, in April 2001 Bill Gore was involved in the investigation of a recovery of three U. S. citizens held hostage in Nairobi, Kenya Embassy. This was the same embassy, which was bombed, what was blamed on Bin Laden that time.

Source:

http://sandiego.fbi.gov/2001/kenya.htm

The unknown "Imam"?

Mentioned in the "final" 911 Report, everything points on Anwar Al-Awlaki

Please read also "The Strange Falls Church Pattern"

Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki

Dar Al-Hijra Mosque, Falls Church, Virginia

Imam Anwar Al Awlaki is currently an Imam at the Dar Al-Hijra Mousque in Falls Church, Virginia. Born and raised in the US, Sh. Awlaki obtained BS in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University, MA in Education Leadership from San Diego State University and is currently doing a PhD in Human Resource Development at George Washington University.

He is the author of a series of Audio lectures on the "Lives of the Prophets", covering the stories of the Prophets from Adam to Jesus (pbut) of which over 20,000 copies have been published. The series is drawn from Imam Ibn Kathir's "Al-Bidayah wa An-Nihayah".

He is currently involved in the ongoing study of Shariah in Yemen. His shuyukh include prominent scholars in Yemen.

Chance to foil 9/11 plot lost here, report finds

By Kelly Thornton

Also mentioned in the report was an unnamed Muslim cleric who became a spiritual adviser to Alhazmi and al-Midhar. Anwar Al-Awlaki is the former leader of the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque on Saranac Street on the border of San Diego and La Mesa, which was attended regularly by the hijackers and their acquaintances.

The FBI opened a counterterrorism inquiry into imam Anwar Al-Awlaki's activities in June 1999. When the imam moved to one of the largest Muslim communities in the country at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., Alhazmi and hijacker Hani Hanjour followed and began attending that mosque, the report said.

Omar al-Bayoumi, who was suspected of being an advance man for the hijackers, was investigated by the FBI in 1998, but the report said only that it was related to counterterrorism.

Al-Bayoumi, a student, was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence official. In January 2000, he had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and then went to a restaurant where he met Alhazmi and al-Midhar, the report said.

kelly.thornton@uniontrib.com

Newsweek on the "secret Imam"

Newsweek -Aug. 4 issue

Failure to Communicate
The congressional probe of 9/11 suggests the attacks could have been prevented. Who’s to blame? And what did the Saudis know? More than the Bushies will admit

"...FBI officials had once depicted the hijackers as “loners” who stayed out of sight. In fact, the report found, before September 11 agents had investigated at least 14 people who had met with and had dealings with the hijackers. One intriguing figure identified by title, but not by name, in the classified version of the report is a San Diego imam who acted as a “spiritual advisor” to Alhazmi and Almihdhar.

The FBI had investigated the cleric, Anwar Aulaqi, once before, suspecting he had ties with terrorists who had tried to blow up New York landmarks in the ’90s. But the Feds dropped the probe. The bureau later discovered that Aulaqi moved to Falls Church, Va., at about the same time as Alhazmi and another of the hijackers, Hani Hanjour. Aulaqi later left for England; the bureau has yet to charge him with any crime.

Aulaqi is still well remembered back in San Diego. Lincoln Higgie, an antiques dealer who lived across the street from the mosque where Aulaqi used to lead prayer, told NEWSWEEK that he distinctly recalls the imam knocking on his door in the first week of August 2001 to tell him he was leaving for Kuwait. “He came over before he left and told me that something very big was going to happen, and that he had to be out of the country when it happened,” recalls Higgie. If only the FBI had sources like that..."

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