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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview with Michael Isikoff, 'Newsweek'

Aired June 02, 2002 - 09:03   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now to an exclusive report we have this morning. The CIA watched two of the September 11 hijackers enter the U.S. after attending an al Qaeda meeting, and according to an exclusive "Newsweek" magazine report, the agency did nothing with this information. Joining us now from "Newsweek," Michael Isikoff.

He was involved in writing this article and we appreciate, Michael, you coming on with us at the last minute. I've been skimming the article trying to get as much information as possible to be able to do this interview, so bear with me here. I'm hoping you're going to offer up a lot more information for me.

I was noticing as I was briefing through this quickly that your article follows the trail of two suspected terrorists to an al Qaeda summit. Why don't you give us a little bit of the details about these two men and also this summit.

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Sure. Well, I think what we say in the piece, and it's a cover story this week, is this is probably the biggest intelligence failure surrounding the events of September 11 of all. And in many ways, it dwarfs the disclosures that have come out about the FBI and its failure to act on warnings from its field offices in Phoenix and Minneapolis, because this does involve two of the hijackers.

And essentially what we reported is that the CIA became aware in late 1999 of an upcoming al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia in which a number of bin Laden operatives were gathering, and the CIA tracked two of these individuals, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi to the summit. It alerted the Malaysian Special Branch, which is the Malaysian security services, and they conducted a surveillance of the meeting. They took photographs of the meeting.

Following the meeting on January 5, 2000, the CIA continued to track Alhazmi and Almihdhar, as Alhazmi flies from Kuala Lampur to Bangkok into Los Angeles.

The CIA is aware that one of the al Qaeda operatives, or suspected al Qaeda operatives, Alhazmi is in the United States. It also learns that the other, his companion, Almihdhar, had already obtained a multiple entry visa that would allow him to come and go from the United States as he pleased at any time. What they didn't know is that he was actually on the same plane, sitting next to Alhazmi. These two guys were at that point inside the country. The CIA knew who they were. They knew that they were suspected al Qaeda operatives and they failed to alert the INS, the State Department, the Customs Service, agencies that could have kept them out of the country, and perhaps more importantly, they failed to alert the FBI, which could have tracked them while they were in the country.

What's stunning is that from moment on, they lived entirely out in the open. They opened up bank accounts. They got a California driver's license. They opened up credit cards, and they intersected with at least five other of the hijackers on September 11, enough that the INS officials believe that they could have eventually located and identified all 19.

PHILLIPS: As I continue to listen to you and read this, it says here that they prayed, played soccer in the park, ate fast food, went about their pilot training. It's absolutely amazing to think...

ISIKOFF: Right, some of which has been reported before. But the important thing is that the CIA knew who they were and that...

PHILLIPS: Why didn't they tell the FBI? Why didn't they share the information?

ISIKOFF: Well, this is going to be, I think, one of the critical questions that's going to be examined in the upcoming Senate-House Intelligence Committee hearings, because it's a question that sort of cries out for explanation. The best explanation that can be offered at this point is that the CIA is in the intelligence collection business. It was hoping to gather more information. They wanted to learn more. They're an intelligence agency.

It's the FBI that is actually the law enforcement agency. It's the only one that can operate in the United States. The CIA can't. So for the CIA to sort of keep control of the operation, it wanted to hoard the information to itself.

PHILLIPS: Well, did the CIA think that these two men were not a threat?

ISIKOFF: Well, the CIA says they didn't know for sure they were bad guy al Qaeda operatives, as one U.S. intelligence official told us. They knew that they had been at the meeting in Malaysia. They didn't know what had been discussed at the meeting.

But that explanation becomes a lot more dicey come December, 2000, because it was at that moment as part of the joint investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole, the U.S. naval destroyer, that was bombed on the Port of Aden in Yemen, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.

The CIA identifies as a key suspect in that case, another individual, Tafik (ph), code name Kalad (ph), who was actually at the Malaysia summit. The CIA goes back and discovers that Kalad (ph), the chief suspect in the Cole bombing was standing next to Almihdhar, the al Qaeda operative inside the United States, who the CIA has knowledge of, and yet they still fail to alert the FBI. At that point, there was no reason, there was every reason to believe that Almihdhar was a serious and potentially quite dangerous al Qaeda operative.

PHILLIPS: Michael, if the CIA had shared this information with the FBI, could September 11 have been prevented?

ISIKOFF: Well, you know that's ultimately an unanswerable question, but it certainly appears that a lot more information could have been collected by the FBI. They could have been tracking the movements of Almihdhar and Alhazmi. They could have had a national security search warrant that allowed them to eavesdrop on their conversations, and as I said before, they ultimately intersected with at least five other of the 19 hijackers. The FBI could have learned about the existence of them and those five in turn could have led them to all 19.

Now it's hypothetical. It would have had to have been a very efficient operation, but it comes far closer to the actual events of 9/11 than any of the previous disclosures relating to what the FBI had in its files in Phoenix and Minneapolis.

PHILLIPS: So the CIA and the FBI and the relationship between these two agencies, would you say that now with all this information coming out, this relationship is going to have to change? They are going to have to work...

ISIKOFF: Well certainly, that's going to be a major issue that's going to be explored in these hearings. But I think there is still a lot more information to come out relating to what was known in government files about the events of September 11.

This is, as I say, I think in many ways it appears to be the most serious breakdown in the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community, the fact that there was not better communication that would have alerted U.S. agencies to the knowledge that the CIA had of two of the 9/11 hijackers.

PHILLIPS: As you sat down to write this story, as you were gathering the information, as you were looking at these documents, at what point did you just sit back and just say to yourself, I can't believe this?

ISIKOFF: Well I have to say some of it is pretty stunning. Here's one piece of information that we uncovered towards the end of the writing of this that just blew me away.

I mentioned before that in December, 2000, the CIA had already connected Almihdhar, the hijacker, to Kalad (ph), the suspected architect of the Cole bombing. That's in December of 2000.

They still failed to alert any agency. At this point, Almihdhar has left the country and his visa has expired. He goes to a State Department consular officer in Saudi Arabia in June of 2001, seven months later, and gets his visa reissued, allowing him to reenter the country on a flight from Jeddah to New York on July 4, 2001, his final reentry to the country in which he hooks up and participates and along with Alhazmi on the hijacking of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11.

So if ever there was an example of one hand of the government not acting in concert with another hand of the government, it's that. A State Department consular officer reissues the hijacker a new visa, allowing him to come back in and completely unaware that the government has already identified him as a dangerous al Qaeda operative.

PHILLIPS: And it's not that these terrorists, that they were so advanced that they slipped right by us. I think that's what's so interesting.

ISIKOFF: In many ways, they were complete bumblers.

PHILLIPS: Right, I'm seeing...

ISIKOFF: In fact, they took flying school lessons and their flight school instructor at the Sorby's Flying School in San Diego dubbed them dumb and dumber because they were so inept at their flight school lessons. These guys were crying out to be caught in many ways. They were out in the open using their names, and as we point out, Alhazmi actually had a publicly listed phone number. He was in the phone book.

PHILLIPS: Pretty cynical, Michael.

ISIKOFF: So it would not have taken a lot of snooping to uncover who they were and where they were.

PHILLIPS: Wow. It just makes your heart sink, doesn't it? Michael Isikoff, "Newsweek" magazine, thank you so much, and folks can log on right now and read this right, newsweek.com, Michael?

ISIKOFF: Right. It's on our website, newsweek.com and it's our cover story in this week's issue.

PHILLIPS: Well, we sure appreciate you joining us at the last minute and sharing the information that you did receive and talking about the story, Michael. Thank you.

ISIKOFF: Sure enough.

PHILLIPS: A finger is also being pointed at the FBI, as aids prepare to answer questions about his performance before 9/11. That is at a time when President Bush says the only path to safety is the path of action against terrorists.

CNN's Kathleen Koch joins us with more now from the White House. Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra. Well President Bush is actually spending the day at Camp David today, that after something reported from a very cautionary address yesterday to some of the nation's future military leaders. President Bush speaking at West Point to some 958 graduating cadets, warning that the war on terror would not be won on the defensive and that preemptive strikes may be needed against suspected terrorists.

The White House now has, Kyra, no reaction to that "Newsweek" report that you were just discussing that the CIA apparently was tracking some of the September 11 hijackers for quite some time before the attacks. This week, the president though did say that he had faith in FBI Director Robert Mueller and the changes that he was proposing.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We intend to honor our Constitution and respect the freedoms that we hold so dear. And secondly, we want to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent a further attack to protect America. The FBI needed to change. It was an organization full of fine people that loved America, but the organization didn't meet the times.

KOCH: Now several congressional committees, of course, are very interested in talking soon to FBI Director Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet. Hearings start later this month, June 25 on just what those two intelligence agencies knew prior to 9/11, what they did with that information.

And also, there will be a lot of inquiry into the new changes at the FBI and whether or not they give that agency too much power to intrude in the lives of average Americans.

Now FBI Director Mueller will be appearing on several Sunday morning talk shows, also Attorney General John Ashcroft will be one of Wolf Blitzer's guests on "Late Edition" later this afternoon. John Ashcroft is already appearing on Fox News this morning, saying that he believes it is not productive to speculate about what the different agencies had and what prior to 9/11 what information they had, what they might have done with it at that point.

He's right now stressing prevention, saying that he has confidence in Director Mueller going forward, and also saying that he believes more information will be coming out as the tens of thousands of documents are being examined, about what happened prior to 9/11, and that would give us a better picture of the complex mosaic that was apparently not very well put together in the days before the attacks -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Kathleen Koch, live from the White House, thanks Kathleen.

KOCH: You bet.

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