September 11 Attacks Advance-knowledge Conspiracy Theories - Al-Qaeda Investigations

Al-Qaeda Investigations

See also: Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks#Culpability

Numerous whistleblowers and officials have surfaced, claiming that there was a deliberate effort, from high-ranking officials, to prevent investigations into Al Qaeda.

In 2002, FBI agent Coleen Rowley wrote to FBI director Robert Mueller describing her experience working with Minneapolis FBI agents tracking suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui prior to the attacks. She describes how FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C. had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis Field Office, and had failed to issue a warrant to search Moussaui's computer despite having probable cause. Senator Chuck Grassley later wrote that “If the application for the FISA warrant had gone forward, agents would have found information in Moussaoui's belongings that linked him ... to a major financier of the hijacking plot". Rowley was credited as a whistleblower and jointly awarded the TIME Magazine "Person of the Year" for 2002. Her testimony to the 9/11 Commission was omitted from their final report.

FBI agent and Al-Qaeda expert John P. O'Neill warned of an Al-Qaeda threat to the United States in 2000. He retired from his position in mid-2001, citing repeated blocking of his investigations of Al Qaeda by FBI officials. After his retirement from the FBI, the World Trade Center hired him as its chief of security. He started work on August 23, 2001; 9/11 rescue workers found his body in a staircase inside the south tower rubble.

Shortly after the attacks, David Schippers, the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, stated that the government had been warned in 1995 about a future attack on a government building and that later he was contacted by three FBI agents who mentioned uncovering a possible terrorist attack planned for lower Manhattan. According to Schippers, as the agents informed their superiors, they were briefed not to pursue the issue and were threatened with prosecution. Schippers declared, "Five weeks before the September 11 tragedy, I did my best to get a hold of Attorney General John Ashcroft with my concerns." According to Schippers, Ashcroft responded that the Justice Department does not start investigations at the top. Author William Norman Grigg agrees with Schippers in his article "Did We Know What Was Coming?" According to the article, three unnamed veteran federal law enforcement agents confirmed "the information provided to Schippers was widely known within the Bureau before September 11."

According to Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, "Two of the September 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship," as reported by the Miami Herald. And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees." In March 2012 as part of a lawsuit by 9/11 victims families Graham and another former U.S. Senator Bob Kerry said in affidavit's that they were certain there were direct links between the Saudi government and the attacks.

There have also been allegations that the hijackers' preparations may have been given assistance by U.S. intelligence. According to CBS news, "two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived in San Diego in 2000 rented a room from a man who reportedly worked as an undercover FBI informant... the FBI informant prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account." Doubts have been raised about the speed with which the hijackers were identified, leading to suggestions that the FBI already had the names of the hijackers in advance. In his book Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke said that at 9:59 am on September 11, which is the time when WTC2 collapsed and 8 minutes before NORAD even knew Flight 93 had been hijacked, the FBI already had a list of the 19 alleged hijackers. A former high-level intelligence official said that "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase."