sional 9/11 Joint Inquiry Committee provides prima facie evidence that these lines were crossed. It now becomes clear that a grand jury could indict those US officials whose obstruction, negligence and recklessness are known to have contributed to the attack which left some 3,000 innocent people dead on September 11, 2001.

Testimony heard by the Congressional Joint Inquiry shows that certain ranking Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents committed a number of indictable offenses in the course of mishandling foreign intelligence surveillance against al-Qaeda. These operations were allowed to spillover into the US, and were conducted for many months without warrants and lawful authorization. The entry into the US of known al-Qaeda operatives was kept secret from most FBI offices and other national security, law enforcement, and civil aviation authorities. The subjects of this domestic covert operation -the four primary 9/11 hijackers- went on to carry out air attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while another hijacked airplane crashed in western Pennsylvania.

President Bush's national security advisors were aware of the threat, yet they recklessly allowed the military and civil aviation authorities to stand down from a heightened terrorism alert status that had been in place earlier in the summer. Failures to follow legal and agency procedures -including domestic intelligence pass-off and warrant requirements- led to a loss of control over this operation, and the resulting loss of life.

Particularly odious was the refusal of certain CIA and FBI officers to provide information requested by the New York and Minneapolis field offices in the weeks before the attacks. Separately, these constitute distinct offenses, including criminal negligence, reckless endangerment and obstruction of justice by the officials in charge. The elements of these offenses include violations of federal and state criminal law, as well as violations of federal agency procedures.

Taken together, these crimes and violations were the proximate cause of the "successful" attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. As a result, the CIA officers and FBI agents who directed this operation, along with White House national security officials, are liable for both criminal and civil charges, as follows:

Crimes

Obstruction of Justice (18 USC, Sec. 1510, Obstruction of Criminal Investigations; Sec. 1505, Obstruction of Agency Investigations and of Congressional Investigations)

BACKGROUND: January, 2000 -At least four of the primary 9/11 hijackers were under US intelligence surveillance abroad. Two of them, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (alleged to have led the terrorist boarding party on United Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon), were surveilled by the CIA at an important al-Qaeda planning summit in Malaysia that took place January 5-8, 2000. The pair then traveled to a third country in South Asia in the company of "Khallad", a major al-Qaeda operations commander who already had a $7 million price on his head for his role in financing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The pair entered the United States a week later. Senior CIA and FBI agents at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) shared information about al-Mindhar, al-Hazmi and other al-Qaeda operatives seen at the Malaysia summit. None of this information, however, was released to other FBI offices or law enforcement, immigration, and civil aviation authorities.

Fast forward to August, 2001 -FBI agents in the Bureau's National Security division in New York frantically seek evidence that would support applications for warrants to locate and arrest al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, whom agents in that office has learned only days earlier have both entered the US. Meanwhile, at the Minneapolis field office, FBI agents Coleen Rowley and her colleagues are frustrated in their efforts to obtain evidence sufficient for a warrant to open the laptop computer of Zakarias Moussaoui. On his way to the US in August 2000, Moussaoui had stayed in the same condominium in Malaysia where the al-Qaeda summit meeting had been observed by the CIA. Massaoui and 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, al-Midhar and al-Hazmi had received money wired from Germany by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Atta's former roommate, who had also attended the Malaysia meeting.

During the weeks before September 11, the CIA counter-terrorism officers at CTC and their FBI liaison, along with the Bureau's Radical Islamic unit, are contacted by the Bureau's New York and Minneapolis field investigators with requests for information that would support warrant applications. At a June 10 meeting with the NY investigators, the CIA refuses to respond to FBI agents requests to provide information about the purpose and context of the surveillance of al-Midhar and al-Hazmi in Malaysia. Lacking this specific information and context that the attendees at the Malaysia meeting had met with known directors of previous terrorist attacks on American targets, New York FBI field agents decide to abandon attempts to apply for warrants. The manhunt for known al-Qaeda operatives in the US is fatally delayed for weeks, allowing the hijackers time and opportunity to carry out their attacks.

Negligent Homicide (New York State Penal Law section 15.05, Criminally Negligent Homicide)(definition: the unintentional killing of another person resulting from an action involving "depraved indifference"; at the very least, the action involved a "substantial and unjustifiable risk" under circumstances amounting to "a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.")

[BACKGROUND: During the summer of 2001, the White House and the intelligence community received a series of steadily escalating warnings of al-Qaeda plans to use hijacked airliners to attack high profile structures in the New York and DC areas, including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Yet, no timely measures were taken to protect airspace around these long-anticipated and obvious targets. In fact, military and federal anti-terrorism agencies were ordered to stand down in the weeks before the attack. This stand down decision was entirely unreasonable in view of the continuing terrorist threats to US aviation known to USofficials. The fact that the FBI could not locate al-Qaeda operatives inside the US who were known to be trained pilots was compelling reason to maintain high alert levels. Actions taken to deescalate heightened security measures put in place earlier that summer show a depraved indifference to a recognized danger to public safety and a blatant disregard for human life. President Bush's national security advisors, who were aware of the risks of terrorist attack, are liable for their gross deviation form normal standards of care that should have been observed.

This foreknowledge of imminent attack from the air had been preceded for years by a number of events that should have lead responsible officials to keep in place enhanced civil aviation safeguards and heightened air defense alert measures. Despite briefings about increasing concerns among federal law enforcement that signs of terrorist activities pointed to an imminent attack, the White House and national counterterrorism leadership actually relaxed the alert status at federal agencies in the weeks before 9/11, including the FAA, that had been imposed earlier that summer.

"As late as July 31, the FAA urged US airlines to maintain a 'high degree of alertness'. All those alert levels dropped by the time hijackers armed with box cutters took control of four jetliners on the morning of September 11." [Washington Post, Barton Gellman "Before September 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy", A-1, 05/17/02].

CIA Director Richard Tenet had reportedly been "'nearly frantic' with concern since June 22", the day the US military placed its forces in Central and Eastern Europe on "Delta" alert status in anticipation of terrorist attack on American targets. The State Department then ordered its foreign posts to implement emergency plans. "[A] written intelligence summary for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on June 28: 'It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks'. On July 3, Tenet made an urgent special request to 20 friendly intelligence services, asking for the arrest of a list of known al Qaeda operatives. [Ibid.] The heightened alert followed a July 5 high-level official meeting convened in the White House Situation Room by Richard Clarke, head of counterterrorism at the NSC. In a May 2002 account, The Washington Post reported:

"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer non-vital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the US government was at its highest possible state of readiness- and anxiety- against imminent terrorist attack. That intensity -defensive in nature- did not last. By the time Bush received his briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had begun to stand down from the alert." [Id.] In response to a perceived threat, anti-aircraft missile launchers were installed near the site of the Genoa G-8 summit, which Bush attended July 8-10. Bush continued to receive high levels of protection from potential air attack after that trip, as the near shoot-down of a private aircraft that had innocently wandered into airspace above the Presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas showed.

Meanwhile, the Administration betrayed none of its concerns about terrorism with the public. During this period, on "September 9, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto when the Senate proposed to divert $600 million to counterterrorism from ballistic missile defense." [Id.].

During the last weeks, the efforts of FBI field offices to search for intelligence information vital to obtain warrants to hunt another al-Qaeda suspect was being thwarted. Minneapolis FBI Agents initiated a national security investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui on August 15, before taking him into custody on immigration violations two days later. The Joint Committee Staff Director reported that the FBI agents investigating Moussaoui sought information about his al-Qaeda ties from several CIA offices, including CTC and the Agency's Paris station:

Like the New York FBI office, the Minneapolis investigative team failed to receive information in the Agency's possession that tied him to the Malaysia al-Qaeda cell that had hosted the January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur. In August, Moussaoui had stayed in that same condominium where the summit took place. Furthermore, Moussaoui was linked to the primary 9/11 hijackers. After his entry in February 2001, he began receiving funds wired from Hamburg by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mohamed Atta's former roommate. Denied a US visa on four occasions, al-Shibh cabled money to several of the 9/11 conspirators, including Atta, Al-Midhar and al-Hazmi. Without this information, FBI field investigators gave up on their efforts to obtain a warrant to open Moussaoui's laptop computer, which contained files related to operating jumbo jets and crop dusters, subjects of mutual interest with Mohamed Atta, who had also attempted to register at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, which had trained Moussaoui. CNN/Newsweek reported:

"Moussaoui, they say, was carrying the phone number in Dusseldorf, Germany, assigned to Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Al-Shibh, now a fugitive, is allegedly a member of the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell that also included Mohammed Atta, who flew American Flight 11 into the World Trade Center on September 11. Al-Shibh served as a financial coordinator for the conspiracy, the Feds say, and in early August sent $14,000 in two wire transfers to Moussaoui, who was evidently using some of the cash to enroll at Pan Am. "Then there are the disturbing similarities between Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta, federal sources say. Atta visited the same flight school in Norman, Okla., that Moussaoui attended, although Atta wound up taking flight training in Florida. Atta and Moussaoui both researched using crop dusters for what might have been a biochemical attack, and Atta and Moussaoui both bought "flight deck" instructional videos for the Boeing 747 from the same retailer, Sporty's Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio. Based on an interview with a woman who lived downstairs from Moussaoui in Norman, Okla., NEWSWEEK reported in mid-October that Moussaoui ordered videos on the 747-200 and 747-400-a finding now included in the indictment." [CNN/Newsweek, Sarah Downey, "Who Is Zacarias Moussaoui?"].

[Several years earlier, another al Qaeda operative, Abdul Hakim Murad, trained at that same school for a planned suicide hijack air attack on CIA headquarters. See, Murad's testimony 1996 trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yusef, a primary organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center car-bombing. ed]

Eleanor Hill, the staff director of the Joint Congressional Investigation issued a pair of reports on September 20 and 24 on the problems with the FBI investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi during the weeks leading up to 9/11. The staff director's report confirms that the CIA liaison at the FBI counterterrorism office, along others within the Agency, had been notified that the Minneapolis FBI office was seeking evidence that would have justified issuance of a FISA warrant to open Moussaoui's laptop computer. News that an FBI field office was investigating the French-Moroccan suspect was soon widely disseminated within the CIA:

A CIA officer detailed to FBI headquarters learned of the Moussaoui investigation from CTC in the third week of August 2001. The officer was alarmed about Moussaoui for several reasons. CIA stations were advised of the known facts regarding Moussaoui and al-Attas and were asked to provide any relevant information they might have.[Hill, prepared testimony, 9/24/02]

Yet, the CIA failed to provide its dossier on Moussaoui's Malaysia connection until a year later. Similarly, the Agency had also refused to provide FBI investigators in New York what it knew about the Malaysia surveillance operation. This withholding of information appears to have been with the complicity of a small circle of top FBI officials who had earlier been given details of the Malaysia meeting and the subsequent entry of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.

Based on the evidence, a grand jury may conclude that these crimes of obstruction and negligence were the proximate cause of the "successful" attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. As a result, the CIA officers and FBI agents who directed this operation may be indicted on criminal charges and face related civil charges that follow:

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