|
REVEALED: AL QAEDA HELD 'DRY RUN' AT NEW YORK AIRPORT
By
VINCENT MORRIS and BRIAN BLOMQUIST
|
 Osama bin Laden
|
July
25, 2003 -- WASHINGTON
— Two members of Osama bin Laden's terror team sneaked past checkpoints in
a "dry run" at a New York airport as part of a plan years before
Sept. 11 to hijack planes and attack U.S. targets, a congressional report
revealed yesterday.
The CIA said in December 1998 that an al
Qaeda member was "planning operations against U.S. targets,"
according to a once-"top secret" timeline contained in the
congressional 9/11 report. "Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding
well," it continued.
"Two individuals . . . had
successfully evaded checkpoints in a dry run at a N.Y. airport," the
report added.
The following sentence was completely
blacked out in order to protect intelligence sources.
The 9/11 report by the House and Senate
intelligence committees didn't mention which New York airport the
terrorists practiced on, and a top congressional source told The Post
yesterday during a briefing that she could not offer any more details on
the terror training exercise.
Another U.S. official said yesterday that
the intelligence received by the CIA at the time wasn't specific and couldn't
be confirmed, but the CIA told other federal agencies that there had been a
"dry run" at a New York airport by the terrorists.
In the same time period, CIA Director
George Tenet put out a memo saying "we are at war" with bin
Laden, and reports said al Qaeda was "considering a new attack, using
biological toxins in food, water or ventilation systems of U.S.
embassies."
When the 9/11 attacks
occurred more than two years later, the hijackers smuggled boxcutters and
other items through checkpoints at airports in Boston, Newark and outside
Washington, D.C. — but none of the flights originated in New York. Just a
few months before word of the "dry run," intelligence agencies
got a report saying that bin Laden "is planning attacks in the U.S . .
. says plans are to attack in New York and Washington."
Such intelligence could have come from
communications intercepts, spies, an al Qaeda informant, or from a foreign
government.
The new Sept. 11 report, released after
months of negotiations between the Bush administration and the
congressional intelligence committee, said the hijackers who committed the
horrific attacks "were not as isolated during their time in the United
States as has been previously suggested."
The report, almost 900 pages long and
portions of it left blank at the insistence of the CIA and FBI, found that
law enforcement came tantalizingly close to cracking the 9/11 plot before
it happened, but never could quite nail it down.
For instance, five of the 19 hijackers
were known to FBI, thanks to contact with other terror suspects.
Those 14 suspects include Omar
al-Bayoumi, a San Diego man who got hundreds of thousands of dollars from
Saudi Arabia and gave cash to several hijackers, served as their translator
and even called a flight school in Florida to help arrange lessons.
"Despite the fact that he was a
student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi
Arabia," the report says.
Another San Diego businessman, who hired
one of the hijackers, caught attention after the FBI spotted him getting
into a car with a brother of a known bin Laden operative.
But the FBI closed the case when they
called the businessman and he declined to come meet with them in Los
Angeles or to answer any questions about his home or business.
Despite all the bungling by U.S. national
security agencies, the joint inquiry didn't find any proof that the CIA and
FBI missed a single, obvious "smoking gun" that would have
prevented the attacks.
Instead, "There were one or two
instances that should have sent the bells ringing," said Sen. Richard
Shelby (R-Ala.), who was formerly the top Republican on the Senate
Intelligence Committee.
Rather than focus on a single, glaring
screw-up by U.S. intelligence agencies, the long-awaited report strikes at
a repeated series of missed opportunities — which taken together might have
prevented 9/11.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday
criticized the White House for refusing to declassify more than 26 pages of
the report that deal with Saudi terror links.
"The Saudis have been duplicitous
for too long," said Schumer. "Why is there a constant coddling
and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis?"
New York Reps. Eliot Engel, Joe Crowley
and Anthony Weiner yesterday sent Bush a letter yesterday urging him to
allow a fuller declassification of the terror report.
A senior congressional official who is
familiar with the report said staff battled for months with the White
House, FBI, CIA and others over how much of their study could be made
public.
The official said the Bush administration
insisted on censoring the report in two ways.
In some cases, they refused to let
investigators even mention a subject. Other times, they forced changes in a
description.
An official who helped prepare the report
said that staff opted not to speak with President Clinton or with President
Bush on the grounds that neither leader was likely to be familiar enough
with the issue. A separate, independent 9/11 commission has indicated that
it might question both Clinton and Bush.
|
Post Home Delivery
Search Our Archives
Email Newsletters
Email
Archives
Print
Reprint