FBI Braces For 9/11 Report

Declassified Congressional Inquiry Expected To Be Harsh On Bureau

(CBS/AP)  The FBI expects to bear the brunt of criticism in a Congressional report about pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The 900-page report, a declassified version of last year's work by the House and Senate intelligence committees, is due out on Thursday.

The report on Sept. 11 will say that no one piece of information could have prevented the terrorist attacks.

"This inquiry has uncovered no intelligence information in the possession of the intelligence community prior to the attacks of 9/11 that, if fully considered, would have provided specific advance warnings of the details of those attacks," the report found, according to a person who has read it.

"The task of the inquiry was not, however, limited to a search for the legendary, and often absent, 'smoking gun,'" it continues.

According to the Times, the report slams U.S. intelligence agencies for underestimating al Qaeda's potential to hurt the United States, and details how al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed entered and left the United States freely in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Times reports the FBI is harshly criticized for failing to investigate Saudi men who associated with two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

According to sections of the report seen by the Times, a source told the FBI that one of the Saudis, Omar al Bayoumi, was an intelligence agent.

The report says al Bayoumi overheard Almihdhar and Alhazmi speaking Arabic in a Los Angeles restaurant, befriended them and asked them to come to San Diego. That same day, al Bayoumi met officials at the Saudi consulate, although the purpose of that meeting is unknown. Al Bayoumi paid for the men's rent on an apartment in San Diego.

The FBI says it investigated al Bayoumi and couldn't prove he was linked to terrorism. The Saudi embassy denies he is an agent of their government.

Overall, the report will reveal very little, at least in its public version, about what blame Saudi Arabia deserves. Blacked out is a 28-page section that the officials say criticizes Saudi Arabia's government and details its lack of interest in tackling Muslim extremism.

The U.S. government has frequently criticized the Saudi government for not doing more to curb terrorism and, especially, to cut off terrorist groups' financial sources.

The report also details the relationship between an FBI informant and Almihdhar and Alhazmi in San Diego during the summer of 2000.

Almihdhar and Alhazmi recently had been linked by U.S. intelligence officials to possible terrorist activity, but were not added to a list of suspected terrorists until three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, the report said. Nothing the two men said or did in the presence of the informant aroused suspicion.

It wasn't until after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole at port in Yemen that the FBI learned both men had attended a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia of major al Qaeda operatives. The CIA had known the two attended the meeting, but apparently the information never was shared with the FBI.

It took until Aug. 23, 2001, three weeks before the attacks, for their names to be placed on lists of suspected terrorists that would have prevented them from entering the United States or allowed their arrest and detention had they tried to leave.

Without their appearance on those lists, the FBI had no way of telling its San Diego informant of suspicions about them. So the informant never was asked to collect intelligence about them, the report said.

Almihdhar and Alhazmi were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. The informant also may have been introduced to Hani Hanjour, who U.S. officials believe piloted that hijacked plane.

The Sept. 11 attacks killed 3,021 people. Most — some 2,792 — died at the World Trade Center, or aboard the two planes that crashed into the towers. Sixty people were aboard United Airlines Flight 175, and 87 died aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

At the Pentagon, 125 people died on the ground and 59 perished as American Flight 77 slammed into the building. Forty died when United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.

Since the attacks, the government has overhauled the way suspected terrorists are tracked, clamped down on entry and exit rules and moved to encourage sharing of information by the CIA and FBI.