It was late 1999 when satellites belonging to the supersecret National Security Agency picked up some alarming chatter in Pakistan and Yemen. The talk was among three men who used only their first names: Nawaf, Khalid, and Salem. Intelligence officials quickly concluded the men were plotting “something nefarious.” They launched a global search for the trio but never picked up their trail. It wasn’t until Sept. 11, 2001, that the feds figured out what the men had been plotting. Khalid Almihdar and the other men, brothers Nawaf and Salem Alhazmi, turned out to be three of the 19 hijackers on 9/11. Last week, an independent bipartisan commission investigating the attacks revealed a series of failures at virtually every level of the federal security bureaucracies. “There were many opportunities to stop the 9/11 plot,” said a commissioner, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. But a colleague, former Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, disagrees. The terrorists, he says, “flat out beat us.” Full Story
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