Officials Who Failed to Put Hijackers on Watch List Not Named
Seven months after telling Congress he would do so, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has yet to provide the names of agency officials responsible for one of the most glaring intelligence mistakes leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, according to Congressional and agency officials. Soon after the attacks, the mistake emerged, showing that the Central Intelligence Agency had waited 20 months before placing on a federal watch list two suspected terrorists who wound up as hijackers. Had the information about the two hijackers been promptly relayed to other agencies, the government might have been able to disrupt, limit or possibly even prevent the terrorist attacks, intelligence officials and Congressional investigators said. The agency knew that the two, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, had attended a meeting of Al Qaeda in Malaysia in early 2000. Full Story