QUESTIONS RELATING TO US INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM
“What surprised me was how much the Bush administration knew right after the attacks, and how little they knew right before”
– former Secretary of State Madeline Albright on CNN’s Late Edition.
The following questions were raised to the national Commission on Terrorist Acts Upon the United States by 9/11 CitizensWatch for use in its recent public hearing concerning Intelligence and Terrorism on October 14, 2003. The witnesses called by the Commission did not include intelligence agency officials on duty the day of the attack, but former CIA directors James Schleisinger and John Deutch could have answered some of the historical questions posed. The Commission sought abstract and speculative testimony concerning restructuring and consolidating US intelligence agencies under a new National Director of Intelligence, or the creation of a domestic spy agency modeled after Britain’s MI-5. In our view, more probative questions relating to the forewarnings and events of 9/11 that were not addressed by the Congressional Joint Inquiry report, posed to intelligence officers and staff from several agencies who were actually on duty from 1999-2002, would have yielded better information upon which to formulate any recommendations for changes in policy.
Here are some of the categories of questions we asked:
A. The historical role of US intelligence in the creation of international tensions and the funding of terrorist groups for covert operations against previous enemies.
1) What is the historical relationship between US intelligence run or sponsored covert operations abroad since the end of World War II and the animosities and tensions that contributed to the attack of 9/11?
2) What is the specific historical relationship between the CIA, DIA and the Afghan resistance movement and the formation and arming of Al Qa’ida and Osama bin Laden?
3) What is the historical and current relationship between the CIA and Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, a conduit and source of funding for bin Laden, Mohammed Atta and the Taliban that continues to the present?
4) What is the relationship of the Saudi royal family and intelligence services, the CIA and the Bush family?
B. The current relationship of US intelligence to foreign intelligence funding conduits and previous covert operation assets linked to the attacks of 9/11
5) What is the relationship between George Tenet and former Pakistani ISI head General Ahmad, who visited the CIA in September 2001 just prior to 9/11, and who reportedly sent $100,000 to Mohammed Atta?
6) What is the relationship between key Contragate figures now in positions of power in the Bush administration and the events of 9/11, including the fact that Atta lived with an Iran-Contra pilot?
C. The US intelligence response to warnings and forewarnings related to the method and timing of the 9/11 attacks
7) Which intelligence agencies received the dozens of advance warnings of the attack, who processed them, and how were they distributed or responded to? What did the intelligence agencies tell President Bush in their briefings about these warnings?
Why did agencies that knew of the specific method of attack, using planes as weapons, and the plans of Al Qa’ida to use that method, fail to make preparations, or if they did prepare, fail to activate them?
9) What was the source of intelligence that led to forewarnings to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s security staff, who warned him not to fly on 9/11 as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle?
10) What intelligence reports led to the decisions of VP Dick Cheney and Atty. General John Ashcroft to stop taking commercial flights weeks in advance of 9/11? What intelligence source led to the forewarning of “Pentagon brass” not to fly on 9/11, as reported by Newsweek and MSNBC?
11) What intelligence led the Secret Service to cancel all fly-over air traffic above the Genoa, Italy economic summit, which Bush attended in the summer of 2001?
12) What led the Pentagon to activate Delta Alert, the highest level of security, in 1999, and to put cameras and radar on the roof “in case they try to fly a plane into the building”?
D. The apparent obstruction of counter-intelligence investigations that were directed against the alleged hijackers in advance of 9/11
13) What decisions led top FBI counter-intelligence expert John O’Neill to resign from the FBI following apparent frustrations of his efforts to identify foreign sources of terrorism relating to Al Qa’ida and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and were the terrorists aware he moved to head security at the site?
14) What was the role of David Frasca and others in FBI counter-intelligence in editing and weakening the request by agent Coleen Rowley to obtain FISA court permission to search the computer records of terrorism suspect Moussaui?
15) What led to the delay by FBI counter-intelligence agent to raise concerns about suspected terrorists receiving flight training in the US, a fact first reported by Jerry Allen, a FBI informant who infiltrated Muslim mosques in the mid-’90s? What led David Frasca to ignore that delayed request prior to 9/11?
16) Why were multiple FBI investigations and public queries about the hijacking suspects ignored or obstructed? Why were calls to the CIA concerning their activities in Vienna, Virginia ignored?
17) What was the role of Florida Governor Jeb Bush in reportedly flying to Venice, Florida immediately after the 9/11 suspects were identified to collect documents about them at several flight training schools, and is the Commission privy to that documentation?
E. Proposals for restructuring the US intelligence system, giving it extra-legal or increased powers for domestic spying or operations, or creation of a cabinet level director over both military and civilian agencies or a domestic spy agency modeled after Britain’s MI5
18) Was Senator Church’s intelligence committee responsible for “shackling” the CIA and FBI by exposing and curtailing many excesses that violated human, civil, legal and international rights and laws? Will restoring those practices really lead to increased security or ability to counter terrorism?