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American Morning

Egypt: U.S. Warned Pre-9/11 About Terror Plan

Aired June 04, 2002 - 08:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It seems like there's a new wrinkle every day on the whole intelligence matter. And again, we have another one today, this one from the Middle East. Egypt's president says his intelligence officials warned the United States before 9/11 about a planned terror attack in the United States, but a U.S. Embassy official in Cairo saying that is unlikely.

Our Cairo bureau chief, Ben Wedeman, is here now to sort it out for us, live from the Egyptian capital.

Ben, hello. Good afternoon there.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Bill.

It does appear that U.S. diplomats here are throwing a bit of cold water on this report that appeared in "The New York Times." Now, according to "The New York Times," in an interview with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian leader said that Egypt did have information about a significant operation impending against U.S. targets or a target. And according to President Mubarak, this was learned from an intelligence agent working for Egypt within the al Qaeda network.

Now, that certainly is the first indication that any sort of intelligence organization had been able to infiltrate al Qaeda. And apparently, according to President Mubarak, that agent actually tried to halt that operation from taking place.

Now, President Mubarak said that they had this information as little as a week or four days before the attack took place.

Now, the U.S. Embassy is saying that they have been reviewing this morning all communications between the embassy and the Egyptian presidency, and they have found no indication that such a warning was made to the United States. So there does seem to still be some confusion about whether this information was actually passed or existed at all -- Bill.

HEMMER: Ben Wedeman, in Cairo.

Ben, thank you.

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