A newly revealed court filing raises serious concerns regarding the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit established to track Al Qaeda commander Osama bin Laden and his allies, and two 9/11 hijackers in the run-up to the attacks, which was subject to a cover-up at the highest levels of the FBI.
Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal authority managing the prosecutions of 9/11 suspects, filed the 21-page declaration. It summarizes confidential government discovery leaks as well as private conversations with anonymous senior CIA and FBI personnel.
Canestraro said that he is a member of the defense team for Guantanamo prisoner Ammar al-Baluchi, a Pakistani national accused of preparing the 9/11 attacks together with four other individuals. His statement contains the findings of interviews with 11 former FBI agents, two former CIA agents, a CNN investigative journalist, former deputy National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, and former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), co-chair of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into 9/11.
Many of the agents who met with Canestraro were part of Operation Encore, the Bureau’s long-running investigation into Saudi government links to the 9/11 attacks.
Encore was abruptly discontinued in 2016 despite conducting many extensive interviews with a variety of witnesses, producing hundreds of pages of evidence, formally probing several Saudi officials, and launching a grand jury to investigate a Riyadh-run US-based support network for the hijackers.
This was allegedly due to a conflict within the FBI regarding investigation procedures.
Except for a “unclassified” label, the document was redacted when it was first placed on the Office’s public court docket in 2021.
Given its incendiary contents, it’s easy to see why: according to Canestraro’s analysis, at least two 9/11 hijackers were recruited, either intentionally or innocently, into a combined CIA-Saudi intelligence operation that resulted in the 9/11 tragedy.
Alec Station was established in 1996 under the supervision of the CIA. The program was supposed to be a collaborative investigation with the FBI.
However, FBI operatives assigned to the unit quickly discovered that they were forbidden from sending any intelligence to the Bureau’s headquarters without the CIA’s permission, and risked serious penalties for doing so.
Attempts to communicate information with the FBI’s comparable unit stationed in New York, the I-49 squad, were consistently thwarted.
The CIA and NSA were intensively monitoring a viable group within an Al Qaeda cell that comprised Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar in late 1999, with red flags tripped about an impending large-scale Al Qaeda terror strike inside the US.
Hazmi and Midhar had attended an Al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, between January 5th and 8th, 2000. Local authorities inconspicuously photographed and videotaped the meeting at Alec Station’s request, though no audio was allegedly obtained.
Mihdhar passed through Dubai on the way, where CIA agents stole into his hotel room and photocopied his passport. It revealed that he had a multiple-entry visa to the United States.
According to a simultaneous internal CIA cable, this information was promptly forwarded to the FBI for further investigation.
In truth, Alec Station not only failed to notify the Bureau about Mihdhar’s US visa, but also specifically instructed two FBI agents attached to the unit not to do so.
Just weeks after the abandoned Millennium plan, Hazmi and Mihdhar entered the United States through Los Angeles International Airport on January 15th.
Omar al-Bayoumi, who was considered a shadow operative of the Saudi government, promptly greeted them at an airport café. Following a brief discourse, Bayoumi assisted them in finding an apartment near his own in San Diego, co-signed their lease, opened bank accounts for them, and gifted $1,500 towards their rent. The three had several meetings.
Bayoumi claimed in interviews with Operation Encore investigators years later that his run-together with the two would-be hijackers was purely coincidental. He stated that his pragmatism and monetary support was empathy he had for the two, who could not speak English and were unfamiliar with Western society.
The Bureau disagreed, coming to the conclusion that Bayoumi was a Saudi spy who worked with several Al Qaeda members in the US. Additionally, they believed there was a “50/50 chance” that he, and hence Riyadh, had extensive prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
That astounding discovery was not made public until two decades later, when the Biden administration ordered the declassification of a batch of Operation Encore records, and it was completely overlooked by the mainstream media.
According to Don Canestraro’s suit, FBI investigators went even further in their conclusions.
According to the document, a Bureau special agent labeled “CS-3” indicated that Bayoumi’s contact with the hijackers and subsequent assistance was done at the request of the CIA through the Saudi intelligence agency.
President Biden issued an executive order in September 2021 directing the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to conduct declassification reviews of documents related to Operation Encore, which was referred to in the order as a “subfile” of the FBI’s primary PENTTBOMB investigation, and to publicly release as many documents as possible. So far, the FBI has disclosed hundreds of pages, including documents previously deemed “state secrets” that show Saudi government officials intentionally created a support network for Hazmi and Mihdhar.
Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, is Canestraro’s client and a co-defendant alongside Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the claimed “mastermind” of 9/11. According to government papers, he moved tens of thousands of dollars from Dubai banks to a Suntrust Bank account in Florida jointly controlled by 9/11 hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi and Mohammed Atta. Atta piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. When United Airlines Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower, Shehhi was at the controls.
Baluchi, like Mohammed, was apprehended in Pakistan in 2003 and imprisoned by the CIA for three years at offshore “black sites” before being transported to Guantanamo in 2006. He, Mohammed, and three others face capital charges, including Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and the government has already said that the death sentence would be sought. There is no definite date for the trial.
The affidavit goes into great depth on the CIA’s lack of cooperation with the FBI. One ex-FBI agent who worked under CIA control at Usama Bin Laden (UBL) Station, also known as ALEC Station, described how a colleague had prepared a Central Intelligence Report “outlining the possible presence of Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar in the U.S.,” but was not allowed to forward it to the FBI for action.
According to two former FBI agents, the CIA even spied on the FBI while it investigated 9/11.
According to Canestraro’s declaration, in the spring of 2021, a former agent with “extensive experience in terrorism and counterintelligence matters,” explained that following the attacks, “it became impossible for the FBI to unilaterally conduct a terrorism or counterintelligence investigation without the tacit approval of the CIA.” CS-22 further said that officers from the local CIA domestic station situated in his/her office of assignment would regularly sit in the command centers of local FBI Field Offices to watch FBI activities as FBI agents performed counter-terrorism operations. According to CS-22, the aforementioned made it simple for CIA personnel to observe FBI actions.”
According to CS-8, another former FBI agent, “immediately following the 9/11 attacks, an intelligence officer was detailed to the FBI’s San Diego Field Office.” The officer was meant to be posted to the San Diego office to facilitate intelligence exchange between the FBI and the CIA, according to CS-8. However, CS-8 subsequently discovered that the officer was really looking through FBI files in order to blame the FBI for the intelligence failures that led to 9/11.”
The ex-New York FBI counterterrorism agent, referred to in the statement as CS-12, was assigned to work the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in the summer of 2001. CS-12 was present at a meeting with CIA and FBI officials in June of that year.
Then the CIA lost track of Hazmi and Midhar.
Officers from the CIA showed three spy shots to the FBI agents. They didn’t say where or when they were taken, but they did ask if one was of Fahd Al-Quso, who was wanted in connection with the Cole bombing. CS-12 was not aware. When FBI officials asked the CIA if “stops” had been put in place to keep these suspects from entering the U.S., anger grew.
The statement says that CS-5, another former FBI agent, said that the New York agent “was so insistent” that the CIA give him information for his investigation that he or she almost “came over the table” to CIA officials at a meeting with the FBI’s counter-terrorism squad before 9/11.
The statement says that CS-12 found out later that two of the shots were of Hazmi and Mihdhar. Quso was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2012.
On August 23, less than three weeks before the strikes, an FBI agent in New York opened an EC from FBI headquarters about the photos. It had information “showing that Hazmi and Mihdhar were in the United States.” The statement doesn’t say it, but it has been known for a long time that the photos were taken at the al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia.
The agent got in touch with an FBI expert at the main office. It became heated when the analyst told CS-12 that he or she was not allowed to see the EC and was told to delete it right away. It seems that the information had come from intelligence sources, and the agent couldn’t see it because of the divide between intelligence and criminal probes.
The next day, the agent, the expert, and the acting head of the FBI’s Usama Bin Laden Unit talked on the phone for 45 minutes. During the call, officials at FBI headquarters told CS-12 to “stand down” and stop looking for Mihdhar. They also said that HQ wanted to start an investigation into Mihdhar to gather information. The next day, the spy sent an email to the analyst saying, “If the case against Mihdhar isn’t taken further, someone is going to die.”
The FBI’s main headquarters and its New York office reconvened after the attack. During this interaction, CS-12 discovered that Mihdhar and Hazmi were passengers on one of the planes participating in the strikes. CS-12 relates the anger between New York agents and HQS executives during the conference session.
On September 14, CS-12 met with an FBI specialist who shared a fourth image taken during the same espionage operation. Walid Bin Attash was readily recognizable in the photograph since he only had one leg.
If New York police had seen the picture sooner, they would have quickly connected Hazmi and Mihdhar to Bin Attash, the key suspect in the USS Cole attack. As a consequence, the investigation may have employed all of the FBI’s resources in New York to track down the two terrorists later that summer.
What happened confirmed that the CIA did not notify the FBI that two al Qaeda terrorists were in the nation in order to protect their secret mission to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar as spies.
Canestraro was notified on August 26, 2001, by CS-16, a former senior FBI employee whose name I know, that the FBI’s New York City office was ignorant that Hazmi and Mihdhar were in the nation. According to CS-16, two CIA personnel, Richard Blee and Tom Wilshire, directed the CIA to keep the FBI from learning that the two terrorists visited the United States in 2000. The information was kept secret, according to CS-16, because the CIA was seeking to utilize Hazmi and/or Mihdhar as intelligence sources while they were in the United States.
Blee arrived to UBL Station in 1999 and took leadership on September 11, 2001. Blee had employed Wilshire.
The CIA’s unwillingness to alert the FBI about the two al Qaeda executives, according to FBI agent CS-5, didn’t make sense to many New York agents. This led CS-5 to believe that the CIA was carrying out an intelligence operation against al Qaeda that involved Hazmi and Mihdhar in some capacity. Because CS-5 suspected the CIA operation may have gotten out of hand, they went to the FBI in June 2001 with restricted information to try to find the terrorists without divulging the entire scope of their operation against Al Qaeda.
Another former FBI agent with considerable expertise of security and espionage said in June 2021 that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the push to hire Hazmi and Mihdhar. The CIA, according to CS-23, carried out an operation in the United States with the help of Saudi intelligence services. The Saudis were used as a middleman, according to CS-23, since it is unlawful for the CIA to undertake espionage activities in the United States. Previously, the CIA functioned inside the United States with the support of foreign intelligence agencies.
Former Deputy National Security Advisor Richard Clarke provided a similar statement, adding that previous to the attacks, Deputy CIA Director Cofer Black warned him that the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Al Qaeda and that he was determined to alter that. Clarke also said that neither he nor the FBI were informed about Hazmi and Mihdhar’s involvement because “the CIA was running a ‘false flag’ operation to recruit the hijackers.”
While the majority of the declaration’s criticism is focused at the CIA, higher-ups at the FBI were also named as targets of the FBI agents’ grievances.
An ex-agent from the bureau’s Washington Field Office known as CS-9 was part of a team entrusted with following up on leads generated by the assaults. Canestraro was advised by CS-9 that agents were not authorised to interview Saudi nationals in support of their inquiry. According to CS-9, several of the clues uncovered during his/her research led to Saudi officials stationed in Washington, D.C.
Another former FBI agent, CS-4, who oversaw two other FBI agents posted to the CIA’s UBL Station in the spring of 2002, reported that CS-3 contacted him/her and said, ‘Boss, something is bothering me big time…we [United States government] could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.”
CS-3 then detailed CIA intelligence indicating that Hazmi and Mihdhar attended the Malaysian al Qaeda meeting, that the CIA was aware in January 2001 that both men had multiple entry visas to the United States, and that his FBI colleague had written a report on the future hijackers that was not distributed on orders from one of the analysts at UBL Station.
According to ex-FBI agent CS-23, when the FBI became aware of Omar Bayoumi’s relationship with Saudi intelligence and the CIA’s recruiting campaign via Bayoumi after 9/11, top FBI officials obstructed inquiries into the above. CS-23 also informed me that FBI agents testifying before the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks were not to mention the full scope of Saudi connection with Al-Qaeda.
The statement does not specify who or why FBI field agents investigating 9/11 were told not to interview Saudi nationals or other agents who lied to Congress.