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American Morning

Comments Intercepted by U.S. Intelligence September 10th

Aired June 20, 2002 - 08:53   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 ANCHOR: CNN's David Ensor broke the story on the NSA yesterday about the messages intercepted the day before 9/11.

Back to D.C. and David now for more information this morning. David, what do you have?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Some intriguing additional insights into this story. As you mention, we reported first these two intercepts. One, the statement was "The match begins tomorrow." The second, "Tomorrow is zero hour." These were comments that were intercepted by U.S. intelligence on September 10th. We now can report that those intercepts were made on -- of telephone conversations between the country of Afghanistan and the country of Saudi Arabia. And these conversations were in the language of Arabic.

We can also tell you that, to this day, officials are not sure who the speakers were in those conversations. They have some theories, but even now they are not quite sure who they were. But these were conversations of a sufficient level of interest that they would have been translated, we are told, on September 12, whether or not the tragic events on September 11 had occurred, something that would have been followed within 48 hours, but not something that would have been simultaneously translated. In other words, it was not clear these were key Al Qaeda personnel that were known specifically to be leaders and were being tracked hour by hour -- Bill.

HEMMER: Another interesting development, David Ensor, working that story down in DC.

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