Ex-FBI Official Assails 9/11 Report
The congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks is rife with inaccuracies and greatly exaggerates the possibility the terrorist acts could have been prevented, according to the former head of the FBI's San Diego office.
In an interview, former Special Agent in Charge Bill Gore asserted there was no evidence the FBI missed opportunities to catch two of the hijackers who for months lived in San Diego.
He also said there was no evidence that anyone, including Saudi officials, knowingly assisted the terrorists.
"I believe the joint intelligence committee jumped to conclusions not supported by the facts of the FBI investigation," Gore said. "I was convinced by the time I left the FBI [in] January that there was no Al Qaeda support network in San Diego prior to or after 9/11, and that no group of people wittingly helped the hijackers in furtherance of the 9/11 attacks."
In its 900-page report, the joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees criticized the pre-Sept. 11 counterterrorism analysis done by the FBI and CIA. The report suggests there were several missed opportunities to foil the attacks, and that alleged intelligence failures were especially obvious in San Diego, where two hijackers were known to a longtime FBI informant.
The report pointed out that the CIA was aware for months that the two men, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were spotted at an Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia that preceded the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000. But, the report added, the spy agency did not share its concerns about the two men with the FBI, or its belief that Almihdhar might be in the United States, until Aug. 23, 2001. Three weeks later, the two men were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Committee members also have raised the possibility that the hijackers received financial assistance from a number of individuals across the United States, including two San Diego men with connections to the Saudi government.
But Gore dismissed that possibility of financial assistance as pure conjecture, insisting he has never seen evidence the hijackers needed financial or logistical help beyond what already was provided by Al Qaeda.
"There was no support network here for the hijackers, they didn't need it," Gore said. "And I think that is why they succeeded."
