Latest update: 11/09/2012 

- 9/11 Attacks - CIA - FBI - USA


Ali Soufan, author of 'The Black Banners' and former FBI Special Agent

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Did the CIA withhold critical information that could have prevented the 9/11 terror attacks? Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, a lead interrogator in the post-9/11 interrogations of al Qaeda suspects, says the answer is an emphatic "Yes". He speaks to Douglas Herbert about what he calls the CIA’s continuing efforts, 11 years later, to discredit his version of events.

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What is wrong with journalists?

by Anonyme - 13/09/2012 - 07:41

The key question about the Soufan account is the reason the information was withheld. For reasons known only to the journalist community they seem unable to summon any curiosity on this obvious aspect.

Journalist Kurt Eichenwald recently noted that he found evidence that the Bush White House had been briefed more thoroughly about a possible attack than the public had been led to believe. His point was that the intelligence community did their job only to be ignored by a distracted White House.

What Eichenwald failed to note was the bizarre conduct of the CIA in regard to their al Qaeda warnings. Perhaps Eichenwald has never heard of Ali Soufan. The point being it makes no sense to give the White House urgent briefings while concurrently withholding crucial information about al Qaeda operatives inside the US!

So we come back to the question that no journalists, politicians or intelligence agents have ever credibly answered--why were CIA officials withholding al Qaeda intelligence?

Soufan doesn't mention that his own agency withheld the very same information from the Cole investigators. The UBLU was an intelligence side Bin Laden unit run by Rodney Middleton. Have any journalists ever interviewed him? Of course not. Middleton decided that the search for al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar should be opened as an intelligence case and furthermore be given no priority. Remember at the time the USS Cole investigation was ongoing and al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar had been linked to Khallad bin-Attash who was a key plotter of that attack.

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