Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
RG: 148
Box: 00014 Folder: 0039 Document: 2
Series: Team 1A Files
Copies: 1 Pages: 44
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Withdrawn: 07-14-2008 by:
In January 2000, FBI agents tailing a suspected Qaeda operative in San Diego
thought they'd gotten a break. Their target was spotted chatting with the manager
of Sam's Star Mart, a local Texaco station.
The agents later called the manager, hoping he would tell them about the
conversation, and maybe point them toward other suspicious characters. But the
man wanted nothing to do with them. "It would be a strain" to come in for an
interview, he told them, and refused to give the agents his home address. Faced
with a reluctant witness, the agents called it a day and dropped the matter.
Looking back, maybe that wasn't the best call. Had the G-men hung in just a little
longer, they might have run across one of the manager's recent hires at the Star
Mart: Nawaf Alhazmi, a young Saudi national who was already planning for the
day 20 months later when he would hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it
into the Pentagon.
The investigation turned up no damning single piece of evidence that would have
led agents directly to the impending attacks. Still, the report makes it chillingly
clear that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies might very well have
uncovered the plot had it not been for blown signals, sheer bungling - and a
general failure to understand the nature of the threat. Richard Clarke, who served
as White House coordinator for counterterrorism under President Clinton, told
congressional investigators that in 2000, he visited a half-dozen FBI field offices
and asked agents what they were doing about Al Qaeda. "I got sort of blank looks
of, 'What is Al Qaeda?1" he said.
Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller responded to the report, declaring the
bureau "a changed organization" that now makes fighting terrorism its top priority.
http://bulletin.mnemsn.com.au/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/0/6d85bl20c914214fca256d7100173a62?Op... 11/19/2003