t5 b38 terrorist mobility notes fdr- entire contents- draft versions of staff statment 1- agency...

8/14/2019 T5 B38 Terrorist Mobility Notes Fdr- Entire Contents- Draft Versions of Staff Statment 1- Agency Comments- Withdr

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WITHDRAWAL NOTICE

RG: 148 Exposition, Anniversary, and Mem orial C omm issionsSERIES: 9/11 Com mission Team 5, Archives Box 37ND PROJECT NUM BER: 51095 FOIA CASE NUM BER: 30383

WITHDRAWAL DATE: 12/31/2008

BOX: 00013 FOLDER: 0005 TAB: 1 DOC ID: 31211647COPIES: 1 PAGES: 80

The item iden tified below has been withdrawn from this file:FOL DER TITLE: Terrorist M obility No tesDOCUMENT DATE: DOCU MEN T TYPE: ReportFROM:TO:SUBJECT: Docum ents re terrorist travel

This document has been withdrawn for the following reason(s):9/11 Classified Information

9/11 Law Enforcement Sensitive

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WITHDRAWAL NOTICERG: 148 Exposition, Anniversary, and Memorial CommissionsSERIES: 9/11 Comm ission Team 5, Archives Box 37ND PROJECT NUM BER: 51095 FOIA CASE NUM BER: 30383

WITHDRAWAL DATE: 12/31/2008


RESTRICTEDThe item identified below has been withdrawn from this file:

FOLDER TITLE: Terrorist Mobility NotesDOCUMENT DATE: DOCU MEN T TYPE: Handwritten NotesFROM:TO:SUBJECT: Notes on cables

This document has been withdrawn for the following reason(s):9/11 C lassified Information


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jEntry of the 9/11 Hijackers Into the United States

Members of the Commission, your staff has developed initial findings on how theindividuals who carried out the 9/11 attacks entered the United States. We have alsodeveloped initial findings on terrorists who failed in their efforts to enter the UnitedStates. These findings lead us to some tentative judgments on the way the United Statestargets the travel of international terrorists.This staff statement represents the collective effort of several members of our staff.Susan Ginsburg, Thomas Eldridge, and Janice Kephart-Roberts did most of theinvestigative work reflected in this statement.We were able to build upon a large and strong body of work carried out by many talentedpublic servants at the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the formerImmigration and Naturalization Service and the Departmentof Homeland Security, andthe Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American people should be proud of the manyextraordinary professionals now serving them. To the extent we have criticisms, they arecomments less on the talent available and more on how that talent is used.As we know from the sizable illegal traffic across our land borders, a terrorist couldattempt to bypass legal procedures and enter the U.S. surreptitiously. None of the 9/11attackers entered or tried to enter our country this way. So today we will focus on thehijackers' exploitation of legal entry systems. We have handed out a list of the names of9/11 attackers to help you follow our discussion.To break down some of al Qaeda's travel problem, view it from their perspective. Formost international travel, a terrorist has to have a passport. To visit some countries,terrorists of certain nationalities must obtain a document permitting them to visit - a visa.Finally the terrorist must actually enter the country and keep from getting detained ordeported by immigration or other law enforcement officials. Let us examine how thehijackers' navigated these stages.PassportsFour of the hijackers' passports have survived in whole or in part. Tw o were recoveredfrom the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. One belonged to ahijacker on American Airlines Flight 11. A passerby picked it up and gave it to anNYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. A fourthpassport was recovered from luggage that did not make it from a Portland flight toBoston onto the connecting flight, which was American Airlines 11. In addition to thesefour, some digital copies of the hijackers' passports were recovered in jfpost-9/

J ITwo of the passports that have survived, those tfSatam al Suqami and AbdulAziz alOman,were clearly doctored. To avoid getting into the classified details, we will juststate that these were "manipulated in a fraudulentmanner." They were manipulated in



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ways that trained U.S. officials would be able to spot today as revealing a direct link to alQaeda. Since the passports of 15 of the hijackers did not survive, we cannot make firmfactual statements about their documents. But from what we know about al Qaedapassport practices and other information, we believe it is possible that six more of thehijackers presented passports that had some of these same clues to their association withal Qaeda.Other kinds of passport markings can be highly suspicious. To avoid getting into theclassified details, we will just call these "suspicious indicators." Two of the hijackers,Khalid al Mihdhar an d Salem al Hazmi, presented passports that ha d such suspiciousindicators. Again, we believe that today trained U.S. officials would be able to spot theseindicators an d take appropriate action. Eaoh of these twoTirJackers ar c known to huve^possessed at least two passports. All of their known passports had these suspiciousindicators. W e have evidence that three other hijackers, Nawafal Hazmi, Ahmed alNami, and Ahmad al Haznawi m ay have presented passports containing these suspiciousindicators. But their passports did not survive the attacks, so we cannot be sure.There were significant security weaknesses in the Saudi government's issuance of Saudipassports in the period when the visas to the hijackers were issued. Two of the Saudi 9/11hijackers may have obtained their passports through patronage connectiono with Saudiofficials:

\r>We do not yet know the answer to the question whether the knowledge of these particularclues existed in the intelligence community before 9/11 . From the mid-1970s, whenterrorists began to launch attacks in the Middle East and Europe, intelligence an d borderauthorities knew that terrorists used forged or altered travel documents. By the 1980s theU.S. government had developed a "Red Book" to guide and train consular, immigrationand customs officers on spotting terrorists. It includes photographs of altered or stolenpassports, and false travel stamps (also known as cachets) used by terrorists.Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the "Red Book" was last published in 1992.Although the government also published a Passport Examination Manual, it focuses moreon generic forgery detection and document inspection techniques than the techniques ofparticular terrorist groups.Before 9/11, the FBI and CIA did know that al Qaeda engaged in such practices. Theyknew this from training manuals recovered in the mid-1990s, an d from tracking an dinterrogations of al Qaeda operatives. Some of this knowledge was revealed in individualcriminal cases prosecuted in the U.S. in the 1990s. And yet, between 1992 and September11, 2001, we have no t found an y sign that information about al Qaeda or other terroristgroup passport practices was circulated in systematic fashion to the border inspectionservice officials who inspected these passports before 9/11.VisasTh e State Department is principally responsible fo r administering U.S. immigration lawsoutside o f the United States. A branch of our diplomatic corps, consular officers, issue


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several kinds of visas for visitors and for perm anen t irroriigrants. In 2000, thesediplomats processed about 10 million applications for visitors' visas at over 200 posts' . . . 4s+Jv\. (s..HAJ < ? _/|Before 9-11, visa applicants provided their passport and a photograph. A State 'Department em ployee checked the passport for any apparent questionable features. Aconsular officer could call the applicant in for an interview. The applicant's essentialinformation went into a State Department database. The inform ation was then checked"against a large "consular lookout" dataT?ase^ which included a substantial watchlist ofknown and suspected terrorists, called TIPOFF.

Ou r immigration system before 9/11 focused primarily on keeping ind ividuals intendingto imm igrate from improperly entering the United States. In the visa process, the mostcommon form of fraud is to get a visa to visit the U.S. as a tourist an d then stay to workan d perhaps become a resident. Consular officers concentrated on interviewing visaapplicants whom they suspected might leave and not return.Saudi citizens rarely overstayed their v isas or tried to work illegally in the U.S. The samewas true fo r citizens of the United Arab Emirates. So, wkh aomc minor variations, whileconsular officials in both countries always screened ap plicants in IITPOFF, they wouldno t interview them unless there was som ething about the applications that seemedunuaual cy problematic.Visa applicants from these countries frequently had their applications subm itted by thirdparty facilitators, like travel agencies. In June 2001, the U.S. consular posts in SaudiArabia instituted a third party processing program, called Visa Express. It requiredapplicants to apply through designated travel agencies instead of by mail or in person.The program was established in part to try to keep crowds of people from congregatingoutside the posts, which w as a security risk to the posts and to the crowds themselves.W e have found no evidence that the Visa Express program had any effect on theinterview or approval rates for Saudi applicants, or that it reduced the scrutiny given totheir application s. It actua lly lengthened the processing tim e.With the exception of our consulates in Mexico, before 9/11 biometric information - likea fingerprint - was not routinely collected from visa applicants. Terrorists therefore easilycould exploit opportunities for fraud. Khalid Sheikh Moham med was the chief tacticalplanner an d coordinator of the 9/11 attacks. Federal authorities in the Southern D istrictof New Yo rk indicted him in 1996. Yet, KSM, as he is known , obtained a visa to visitthe United States on July 23, 2001, about six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Although heis not a Saudi citizen and w e do not believe he was in Saudi Arabia at the time, he appliedfor a visa using a Saudi passport, and an alias, Abdulrahman al Ghamdi. He hadsomeone else submit his application and a photo tnkn nf him in d iRru ip? - rthrfm2h th rVisa Express program. There is no evidence that he ever used this visa to enter theUnited States.


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The 9/11 pilots acquired most of their/isas in the year 2000. The others, with tw oexceptions, obtained their visas bety/een the fall of 2000 and June 2001. Beginning in1997, the 19 hijackers submitted 2^ applications and received 23 visas. Two of thesewere issued in Berlin. Tw o were issued in the United Arab Em irates. The rest wereissued in Saudi Arabia. One of the pilot's applications, that of Hani Hgnjpur inSeptember 2000, was deniedaomporoHly untiljie^roduced more evidence in support ofhis student visa application. It was-fern approved. Except fo r Hanjour, all the hijackerssought tourist visas. Q h e $ ^ & -Of these 24 visa applications, four were destroyed routinely along with other documen tsbefore their significance was known.To ou r knowledge, State consular officers followed their standard operating procedures inevery case. Th ey perform ed a nam e check using their lookout database, includ ing theTIPOFF watchlist. At the time these people applied forvisas, none of them - or at leastnone of the identities given in their passports were in the database. W e will say moreabout this in another staff statement later today.All 20 of these applications were incomplete in some way, in that a data field was leftblank or not answered fully. Such omissions were common. The consular officialsfocused on getting the biographical data needed for name checks. They generally did notthink the omitted items were ma terial to a decision about whether to issue the visa.Three of the 19 hijackers subm itted applications that contained false statements that couldhave been proven to be false at the time th ey applied. The applications of Hani Hanjour,Saeed al Ghamdi, and Khalid al Mihdhar stated that they had not previously applied for aU.S. visa when, in fact, they had. In Hanjour's case the false statement w as made inconjunction with an earlier visit, in 1997, not his final visa application in 2000. Hanjourand Mihdhar also made a false statement about w hether they had previously traveled tothe United S tates. Inform ation about these prior applications was retrievable at the Jeddahpost where each applied.These false statements may have been intentional, to cover up the applicants' travel onold passports to suspect locations like Afg han istan for terrorist training. On the otherhand, these statements may have been inadvertent. During this period, Saudi citizensoften had their applications filled out and submitted by third parties. Most importantly,evidence of the prior visas or travel to the U.S. a ctually would have reduced concern thatthe applicants were intending to immigrate, so they had no good reason to deny the visasor travel.Al Mihdhar's case is uniquely problematical. He had not been entered into the TIPOFFwatchlist at the tim e of his second visa application in June 2001. In January 2000 theAm erican consulate in Jeddah had been asked about Mihdhar's visa status in conjunctionwith a then urgent terrorist intelligence investigation an d confirmed that this al Qaedaoperative had a U.S. visa. W hen Mihdhar applied again, although the check against theworldwide TIPOFF watch list took place, no system the n in place included a notation of


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th e prior visa status check. (Thus, in effect, the post could not ' remember' relevantsuspicions a year and a half earlier about th is same person, who was traveling again withthe same biographical information.At least two of the hijacke rs were actually interviewed in person in connection w ith theirvisa applications. Hanjour was interviewed twice. Satam al Suqami was apparentlyinterviewed in Riyadh. A nother hijacker, Ahmed al Nami, was apparently interviewedbriefly, but just to clarify an entry on his application. The three consular officersinvolved have some memory of these interviews. A ll stated that the reason for theinterview had nothing to do with terrorism. Th ey saw nothing suspicious.A t least four patticjpaats in the 9/11 plot trigd^toget visas^^nd failed: Ramzi Binalshibh,Saeed al Gamdi, Zakariya Essabar, andtfwdul Aziz Ali. This Saeed al Gamdi has a namesimilar to the Saeed al Ghamdi who became a hijacker. They are different people.Ram zi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, apparently intended to train as a pilot along with hisHamburg friends, Mohammed Atta,Marwan al Shehhi, an d ZiadJarrah. Binalshibhapplied for a visa three time s in Berlin an d once in Yemen. He first applied in Berlin onth e same day as Atta. He was interviewed twice and denied twice. Yemen is a muchpoorer country than Saudi Arabia. Both times, consular officers determined he did nothave strong ties to Germany and he might be intending to immigrate unlawfully to theU.S. Binalshibh tried again in Berlin, this time for a student visa to attend aviationlanguage school in Florida. He was denied again for lack of adequate documen tation andfailure to show sufficient ties to Germany.Essabar^t fmomccan who may also have intended to be a pilot, tried to get a visa inBerl inand failed because he failed to demonstrate sufficient ties to Germany, such as ajob or family there. In general, third country visa applicants in Berlin were held tosignificantly higher standards in terms of documentation and a required showing of tiesthan were Saudi and Emirati citizens applying from their own countries

All Abdul Aziz A l y e f f & y be related tc^CEalid Sheikh MohammedxaficTwas heavily involved in-tke financia^oi


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Entry into and exit from the United StatesWith a visa, a traveler can travel to a United States port of entry. Upon arrival, th eindividual must seek admission into the U.S. from an inspector of what used to be calledthe INS, an agency whose personnel now form part of the Department of Hom elandSecurity. Prop erty being brought into the U.S. is checked by inspectors of the U.S.Customs Service, whose personnel are now also part of DHS.The 19 hijackers entered the U.S. a total of 33 times. They arrived throug h ten differentairports, though more than half came in through M iami, JFK, or New ark. A visitor with atourist visa was usually admitted for a stay of six months. All but two of the hijackerswere admitted for such stays. Hanjour had a student visa and was admitted for a stay oftw o years, and Suqami who sought and was admitted for a stay of 20 days.The four pilots passed through INS and Custom s inspections a total of 17 times before9/11. Hanjour came to the U.S. to attend school in three stints d uring the 1990s. Hisfinal arrival was in December 2000, through th e Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport.The other three pilots, Atta, al Shehhi, and Zieid Jarrah, initially came in May thwwgh vv\0(-June 2000. They arrived for the last time between May and August 2001. All made anumber of trips abroad during their extended stays in the U .S.Of the other 15, only Mihdhar entered the U.S., left, and came in again. Nawafal Hazmiarrived in January 2000 w ith Mihdhar and stayed. Al Mihdhar left in June 2000 andreturned to the U.S. on July 4, 2001. Ten of the others came in pairs between April andJune 2001. Three more arrived through Miami on May 28.The IN S inspector usually had about one to ops and a half minu tes to assess the travelerand make a decision on admissibility andJ^ngth of stay. For all the entries a primary INSinspector would work a lane of incoming travelers and check the people and theirpassportsTTr^y would try to assess tfre individual's demeanor. No one noted anyanomalies in these passports, despite the fact, we now believe, th at at least two and asmany as eight showed evidence of fraudulent manipulation. The inspector would use thepassport data, especially if it was machine readable (and Saudi passports were) to checkvarious INS and Customs databases. The databases would show the person'simmigration history information, as w ell as terrorist w atchlist and criminal historyinformation.Three of the five hijackers who entered the U.S. m ore than once had violated im migrationlaw.Ziad Jarrah entered in June 2000 on a tourist visa and then promptly enrolled in flightschool for six months. He never filed an application to change his imm igration statusfrom tourist to student. Had the INS know n he w as out of status, they could have deniedhim entry on any of the three subsequent occasions h e departed and returned wh ile hewas a student.


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Marwan al Shehhi came in through Newark in late M^2000, followed a weekjaterbyMohammed Atta. Both cam e on tourist visas and s


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immigration law while the attackers w ere here, we have a few observations, mie 9-11hi jacke' '^i- -rs^ Included among them known al Qaeda operatives who could have beenwatchlisted; Presented passports "manipulated in a fraudulent manner;" Presented passports with "suspicious indicators" of extremism; Made detectable false statements on their visa applications; Were fepeafoHy pulled out of the travel stream and given greater scrutiny byborder officials; Made false statements to border officials to gain entry to the U.S.; an d Violated immigration laws wh ile inside theU.S.

These circumstances offered opportunities to intelligence and law enforcem ent officials.But our government did not fully exploit X\s travel vulnerabilities.

Why w eren't they exploited? We do not have all the answers. Certainly neither the StateDepartment's consular officers nor the INS' inspectors and agents were ever consideredfull partners in a national counterterrorism effort. This is exemplified by the fact that tho-Bureau of Consular^AffairsTBuifrau -otatoo-that before 9/11 they were no t informed byanyone in the State Department or elsewhere that Saudi citizens c ould be security risks.Nor were the Consular Affairs bureau or INS given the resources to perform an expanded. flO ' \ \ f > mission. Visa applications roseby nearly a third, increasing|2.5 million a yeai1, just ^w*L >betwe en 1998 and 2001. Trained staff did notTife with it. In Jeddah and Riyadh, for /

,v v example, each consular officer had responsibility for processing, on average, aboutbetween 1998 and 2001. Trained staff did notTife with it. In Jeddah and Riyadh, forexamPle'each consular officer hadresponsibility forprocessing, on average, ab30,000 applications pe r year an d routinely interviewed about 200 people a day.\ Th e INS before 9/11 had about 2,000 agents for interior enforcement. A s long as the topenforcement priorities were rem oval of criminal aliens and prosecution of employers whohired illegal aliens, a major counterterrorism effort would not have been possible. This isnot to pass judgm ent on imm igration policy generally. What w e can do is highlight theway those policy choices affected counterterrorism efforts before 9/11, and potentiallyaffect them today. For our front line border inspection services to have take n asubstantially more proactive role in counterterrorism, their missions would have had tohave been considered integral to our national security strategy and given comm ensurateresources.

Today , the level of systematic effort by the intelligence com mu nity focused on terroristtravel is much greater. But terrorist travel inte lligence is still seen as a niche effort,interesting for specialists, but not central to counterterrorism. Nor have policym akersfully absorbed the information developed by terrorist mobility specialists. It has not beentranslated into proposals for new international standards on passport controls, raisedlevels of penalties for document forgers, or reinvigorated docum ent screening efforts atthe borders. If we have on e conclusion from our work so far, it is that disrupting terroristmobility globally is at least as important as disrupting terrorist finance as an integral partof counterterrorism.


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And yet, between 1992 and September 11, 2001, we have not found any sign that cintelligence, law enforcement, or border inspection services sought tortlevelop,disseminate, or acquire systematic information about A l Qaeda's or other terroristgroups' travel an d passport practices. Thu s, such inform ation was not available toconsular, imm igration, or customs officials who ex amined the hijackers' passports before9/11.


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State Department Comments

"The Aviation Security System and the 9/11 Attacks"On p. 12, in the penu ltimate paragrap h, the draft report states "The 'no fly"lists did not include the hijackers, even though two of them were alreadywatch listed in TIPOFF." This seems to be con tradicted by the statement inthe draft report "Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers into the United States" at p. 8,the third paragraph, which states: "One story, which is that some of theterrorists or would-be hijackers were on a terrorist watchlist, is untrue."This may be a question of semantics about what d oes or does not constitute a"watchlist" but, if so, this should be clarified."The Four Flights"On p. 4, the final paragrap h w hich carries over to p. 5, it states: "FAArecords show that five of the 19 hijackers possessed FAA certificates asqualified pilots." The num ber appears to include W aleed al-Shehri. Ourunderstanding is that al-Shehri was one of the Saudis that came to the UnitedStates in the late Spring of 2003. We are surprised to hear that he wascertified both as a comm ercial and private pilot by FAA . W hile this m ighthave taken place in the summer of 2003, we think it would be prudent toconfirm that the individual by this name certified by FAA is the sameindividual as the hijacker.


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Law Enforcement Sensitive

Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers Into the United StatesMembers of the Commission, your staff has developed initial findings on how theindividuals who carried out the 9/11 attacks entered the United States. Wehave alsodeveloped initial findings on terrorists who failed in their efforts to enter the UnitedStates. These findings lead us to some tentative judgments on the way the United Statestargets the travel of international terrorists.This staff statement represents the collective effort of several members of our staff.Susan Ginsburg, Thomas Eldridge, and Janice Kephart-Roberts did most of theinvestigative wbrk reflected in this statement.W e were able to build upon a large and strong body of work carried out by many talentedpublic servants at the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the formerImmigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Homeland Security, andthe Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American people should be proud of the manyextraordinary professionals now serving them. To the extent we have criticisms, they arecomments less on the talent available and more on how that talent is used.As we know from the sizable illegal traffic across our land borders, a terrorist couldattempt to bypass legal procedures and enter the U.S. surreptitiously. None of the 9/11attackers entered or tried to enter our country this way. So today we will focus on thehijackers' exploitation of legal entry systems. We have handed out a list of the names of9/11 attackers to help you follow our discussion.To break down some of al Qaeda's travel problem, view it from their perspective. Formost international travel, a terrorist has to have a passport. To visit some countries,terrorists of certain nationalities must obtain a document permitting them to visit - a visa.Finally the terrorist must actually enter the country and keep from getting detained ordeported by immigration or other law enforcement officials. JLet us examine how thehijackers' navigated these stages.PassportsFour of the hijackers' passports have survived in whole or in part. Two were recoveredfrom the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. One belonged to ahijacker on American Airlines Flight 11. A passerby picked it up and gave it to anNYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. A fourth

; passport was recovered from luggage that did not make it from a Portland flight to\n onto the connecting flight, which was American Airlines 11. In addition to these; four, some digital copies of the hijackers' passports were recovered hi a post-9/11 raid] [

Two of the passports that have survived, those of Satcm al Suqami andAbdul Aziz alOmari, were clearly doctored. To avoid getting into the classified details, we will juststate that these were "manipulated in a fraudulent manner." They were manipulated in

9/11 Closed by Statute


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ways that trained U.S. officials would be able to spot today as revealing a direct link to alQaeda. Since the passpo rts of 15 of the hijackers did not survive, we cannot m ake firmfactual statements about their documents. But from what we know abo ut al Qaedapassport practices and o ther inform ation, we believe it is possible that six more o f thehijackers presented passports that had some of these same clues to their association withal Qaeda.Other kinds of passport markings can be highly suspicious. To avoid getting into theclassified details, we will just c all these "suspicious indicators." Two o f the hijackers,Khalid al Mihdhar an d Salem al Hazmi, presented passports that had such suspiciousindicators. Again, we believe that today/gained U.S. officials wou ld be able to spot thesiindicators an d take appropriate action. JEach of these tw o hijackers arc known to havepossessed at least two passp orts. All of their kno wn passports had these suspiciousindicators. W e have evidence that three other hijackers, Nawafal Hazmi, Ahmed alNami, an d Ahmad al Haznawi m ay have presented passports containing these suspiciousindicators. But their passpo rts did not survive the attacks, so we canno t be sure.There were significant security weaknesses in the Saudi gov ernment's issuance o f Saudipassports in the period w hen the visas to the hijackers were issued. Tw o of the Saudi 9/1 1hijackers may have obtained their passports thruiwli yuiruirage Connections with Saudiofficials.-W e do not yet know the answer to the question w hether the knowledge of these particular /clues existed in the intelligence community before 9/11. From the mid-1970s, when /terrorists began to launch attacks in the M iddle East and E urope, intelligence and bo rderauthorities knew that terrorists used forged or altered travel documents. By the 1980s theU.S. government had develop ed a "Red Book" to guide and train co nsular, imm igrationan d customs officers on spotting terrorists. It includes photographs of altered or stolenpassports, and false travel stamps (also known as cachets) used by terrorists.Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the "Red Book" was last published in 1992.Although the government also published a Passport Examination Manual, it focuses moreon generic forgery detection and do cument inspection techniques than the techniques o fparticular terrorist groups. Before 9/11, the FBI and CIA did know that al Qaeda engaged in such practices. Theyknew this from training manuals recovered in the mid-1990s, an d from tracking an dinterrogations of al Qaeda operatives. Som e of this knowledg e was revealed in individualcriminal cases prosec uted in the U.S . in the 1990s. And yet, between 1992 and September11, 2001, we have no t found an y sign that info rmation about al Qaeda or other terroristgroup passport practices was circulated in systematic fashion to the border inspectionservice officials who inspected these passports before 9/11.Visas

a

The State D epartment is principally responsible for administering U.S. imm igration lawsoutside of the United States. A branch of o ur diplom atic corps, consular officers, issue


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several kinds of visas fo r visitors and for permanent imm igrants. In 2000, thesediplomats processed abou t 10 m illion applications for visitors' visas at over 200 postsoverseas.Before 9-11, visa applicants provided their passport and a photograph . A S tateDepartment employee checked the passport for any apparent questionable features. Aconsular officer could call the applicant in for an interview. The applicant's essentialinformation went into a State Departm ent database. The inform ation was then checkedagainst a large "consular lookout" database, which included a substantial w atchlist ofknown and suspected terrorists, called TIPOFF.Our imm igration system before 9/11 focused primarily on keeping individuals intendingto immigrate from improperly entering the United States. In the visa process, the mostcommon form of fraud is to get a visa to visit the U .S. as a tourist and then stay to w orkand perhaps become a resident. C onsular officers concentrated on interviewing visaapplicants whom they suspected might leave and not return.Saudi citizens rarely overstayed their visas or tried to work illega lly in the U.S. The samewas true for citizens of the United Arab Emirates. So, with some min or variations, wh ileconsular officials in both countries always screened applicants in TIPOFF, they wouldnot interview them unless there was something about the applications that seemedunusual or problematic.Visa applicants from these countries frequently had their applications submitted by thirdparty facilitators, like travel agencies. In June 2001, the U.S. consular posts in SaudiArabia instituted a third party processing program , called V isa Express. It requiredapplicants to apply through designated travel agencies instead of by mail or in person.The program was established in part to try to keep crowds of people from congregatingoutside the posts, which w as a security risk to the posts and to the crowds them selves.W e have found no evidence that the Visa Express program had any effect on theinterview or approva l rates fo r Saudi applicants, or that it reduced the scrutiny given totheir applications. It actually lengthened the processing time.With the exception of our consulates in Mexico, before 9/11 biometric information - likea fingerprint - was not routinely collected from visa applicants. T errorists th erefore easilycould exploit oppo rtunities fo r fraud. Khalid Sheikh Mohamm ed was the chief tacticalplanner an d coordinator of the 9/11 attacks. Federal authorities in the Southern D istrictof New York indicted him in 1996. Yet, KSM , as he is know n, obtained a visa to visitthe United States on July 23, 2001 , about six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Althoug h heis not a Saudi citizen and we do not believe he w as in Saudi A rabia at the time, he appliedfor a visa using a Saudi passport, and an alias, Abdulrahman al Ghamdi. He hadsomeone else submit his application and a photo ~ taken of him in disguise through theVisa Express prog ram . There is no evidence that he ever used this visa to enter theUnited States.


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The 9/11 pi lots acquired most of their visas in the year 2000. The others, with tw oexceptions, obtained their visas between the fall of 2000 and June 2001. Beginning in1997, the 19 hijackers submitted 24 applications and received 23 visas. Two of thesewere issued in Berl in. Two were issued in the United A rab Emirates. The rest wereissued in Saudi Arabia. One of the pi lot 's applications, that of Hani Hanjour inSeptember 2000, was denied temporarily until he produced more evidence in support ofhis student visa application. It was then approved. Except for Hanjour , all the hijackerssought tourist visas.Of these 24 visa ap plications, four were destroyed routinely along with other documentsbefore their significance was known.To our knowledge, State consular officers followed their standard operating procedures inevery case. They performed a name check using their lookout database, including th eTIPOFF watchlist. At the time these people applied for visas, none of them - or at leastnone of the identities given in their passports ~ were in the database. W e will say moreabout this in another staff statement later today.All 20 of these applications were incomplete in some way, in that a data field was leftblank or not answered fully. Such omissions were commo n. The consular officialsfocused on getting th e biographical data needed fo r name checks. They generally did notthink th e om itted items were material to a decision about whether to issue th e visa.Three of the 19 hijackers subm itted app lications that contained false statements that couldhave been proven to be false at the time they applied. The applications of Hani Hanjour ,Saeed al Ghamdi, an d Khalid al Mihdhar stated that they had not previously applied for aU.S. visa when, in fact, they had. In Hanjour'?, case th e false statement was made inconjunction with an earlier visit, in 1997, not his final visa application in 2000. Hanjouran d Mihdhar also m ade a false statement about whether they had previously traveled toth e United S tates. Inform ation about these prior applications was retrievable at the Jeddahpost where each applied.These false statements m ay have been intentional, to cover up the applicants' travel onold passports to suspect locations like Afghanistan for terrorist training. On the otherhand, these statements m ay have been inadvertent. During this period, Saudi citizensoften had their applications filled out and submitted by third parties. Mo st importantly,evidence of the prior visas or travel to the U.S. actually wou ld have reduced concern thatth e applicants were intending to immigrate, so they had no good reason to deny th e visasor travel.Al Mihdhar's case is uniquely problem atical. He had not been entered into th e TIPOFFwatchlist at the time of his second visa ap plication in June 2001. In January 2000 theAmerican consulate in Jeddah had been asked about Mihdhar's visa status in conjunctionwith a then urgent terrorist intelligence investigation an d confirmed that this al Qaedaoperative had a U.S. visa. When Mihdhar applied again, although th e check against th eworldwide TIPOFF watchlist took place, no system then in place included a notation of


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th e prior visa status check. Thus, in effect, the post could not 'reme mb er' relevantsuspicions a year and a half earlier about this same person, w ho w as traveling again withth e same biographical inform ation.At least two of the hijackers w ere actually interviewed in person in connection with theirvisa applications. Hanjour was interviewed twice. Satam al Suqami was apparentlyinterviewed in Riyadh. Another hijacker, Ahmed al Nami, was apparently interviewedbriefly, but just to clarify an entry on his application. The three consular officersinvolved have some memory of these interviews. All stated that the reason for theinterview had nothing to do with terrorism. They saw nothing suspicious.At least four participants in the 9/11 plot tried to get visas, an d failed: Ramzi Binalshibh,Saeed al Gamdi, Zakariya Essabar, an d Abdul Aziz AH . This Saeed al Gamdi has a namesimilar to the Saeed al Ghamdi who became a hijacker. They are different people.Ram zi Binalshibh, a Yem eni, apparently intended to train as a pilot along w ith hisHamburg friends, Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, an d ZiadJarrah. Binalshibhapplied for a visa three times in Berlin an d once in Yemen. He first applied in Berlin onthe same day as Atta. He was interviewed twice and denied twice. Ye me n is a mu chpoorer country than Saudi Arabia. Both times, consular officers determined he did nothave strong ties to Germany and he might be intending to immigrate unlawf ully to theU.S. Binalshibh tried again in Berlin, this time for a student visa to attend aviationlanguage school in Florida. He was denied again fo r lack of adequate documentation an dfailure to show sufficient ties to Germany.Essabar, a Moroccan who may also have intended to be a pilot, tried to get a visa inBerlin and failed because he failed to demonstrate sufficient ties to Germany, such as ajob or family there. In gene ral, third coun try visa applicants in Berlin were held tosignificantly higher standards in terms of documentation and a required showing of tiesthan were Saudi an d Emirati citizens applying from their ow n countries.Abdul Aziz Ali may be related to Khalid Sheikh Mohamm ed and was heavily involved inth e financial side of the 9/11 plot. He tried to get a U.S. visa in Dubai about two week sbefore th e attacks. His visa ap plication states that he intended to enter th e U.S. onSeptember 4, 2001, for one week. As a Pakistani in a third country, U.S. officials wouldhave been dubious from the start, and he was denied as a possible intending immigrant.Saeed al Gamdi, also known as "Jihad" al Gamdi, appare ntly intended to participate inthe 9/11 attacks. He is a Saudi an d applied for a tourist visa in Jeddah on November 12,2000, the same date as 9/11 hijacker Ahmad al Haznawi. Haznawi was approved, bu t alGamdi was denied, after an interview with a consular officer, because th e consular officerbelieved he was an intending immigrant.


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Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers Into the United StatesMembers of the Commission, your staff has developed initial findings onhow theindividuals who carried out the 9/11attacks entered the United States. Wehav? alsodeveloped initial findings on terrorists who failed in their efforts to enter the UnitedStates. These findings lead us to some tentative judgments on the way the United Statestargets the travel of international terrorists. These findings and judgments may help your C t ftconduct of today's public hearing and will inform the development of your /recommendations. /The findings and judgments I report today are the results of our work so far. Weremainready to revise our understanding of these topics as our work continues. This staffstatement represents the collective effort of several members of our staff/ SusanGinsburg, Thomas Eldridge, and Janice Kephart-Roberts did most of the investigativework reflected in this statement.Our staff was fortunate. We could build upon a large and strong body of work carried outby many talented public servants at the Department of State, the Central IntelligenceAgency, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department ofHomeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American peopleshould be proud of the many extraordinary professionals now serving them. To theextent we have criticisms, they are comments less on the talent available and more onho w that talent is used. /I. Travel Intelligence and Terrorism /

W e do not begin with American law or policy. We begin by analyzing the terroristenemy. To an international terrorist, few topics are more important than where and howthey travel. Anyone immersed hi the debriefings of al Qaeda terrorists will be struck byhow central this is, how vital to their tradecraft. The ability/to travel and the character oftravel documents is one of the most important factors in operational recruitment,including the recruitment of the 9/1 1hijackers. It was a critical, perhaps the mostimportant, reason fo r reliance on so many Saudi citizens.Think about the problem from their perspective. They live in places where they feelrelatively safe or anonymous. When they travel internationally, they must come to thesurface. They must pass, again and again, through porials of one kind or another wherethey are examined by government agents. Only when they reach their destination canthey once again disappear into the "ocean." /Yet, for an international terrorist, travel is essential/ Among the 9/11 hijackers it was thepilots who traveled the most. Among the distant coordinators, Ramzi Binalshibh andKhalid Sheikh Mohammed moved frequently froiji place to place. So al Qaeda devotesenormous effort to travel issues. Before 9/1 1 a principal unit of the organization worked



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J5-1 Closed by Statute 9/11 Law EnforcementSensitive9/11 Closed by Statute

on little else. Al Qaeda terrorists sought to hide their true identities and keep their travelhistories off the record.' Theydid not want others to know, for 'example, that theyhadvisited suspect places like Afghanistan.2 They carefully planned how to acquire,manipulate, and use travel documents likevisas andpassports.Ease of entryto a country was, and is, a significant factor in terrorist operationalplanning. They research entry rules andborder processes to selectvthe best documentsand entrypoints.

For these reasons we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about how much we knowabout thepassports or aliases the9/11 attackers used. That said, four of the hijackers'passports have survived in whole or in part. Tw o were recovered from the crash siteofUnited Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. One belongedto a hijacker on AmericanAirlines Flight 11. It fluttered to the street after the plane hit the World Trade Center. Apasserby picked it up and gave it to an NYP D detective shortly before the WorldTradeCenter towers collapsed. A fourth passport was recovered from luggage that did notmake it from a Portland flight to Boston onto the connecting flight, which was American


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Airlines 11. In addition to these four, some copies of passport information wererecovered in a post-9/11 raid) f 3 We have reviewed findings about all of thesedocuments available from records and experts at the CIA, Department of HomelandSecurity's Forensic Document Lab, andFBI.Let's pause for a moment and consider what this means for counterterrorism. We believethat the development and analysis of terrorist travel intelligence of all kinds is of the firstimportance. It is now s.een as a niche effort, an interesting but not central focus that isworked on by specialises here and there. Nevertheless, and very fortunately, the level ofsystematic intelligence effort on such problems since 9/11 is vastly greater.We think the conceptual breakthrough has not happened yet at the policy level. Theinformation developed by terrorist mobility specialists has not been fully absorbed by theintelligence community as a whole, border inspection authorities, nor incorporated intoproblem-solving with foreign governments through bilateral, regional and internationaldiscussions. We hope this statement and the one later today will demonstrate that notonly intelligence, but policy about international travel rules, supporting documentation,and border management is central to denying access by terrorists to countries that theyhave targeted. Ifideed, disrupting terrorist mobility is at least as important as disruptingterrorist finances, and the opportunities and potential payoffs are probably greater. Itsplace in the way we think about counterterrorism should be elevated accordingly.II. Identity and PassportsTo break d6wn some of the travel problem, think about three stages. For mostinternational travel, a terrorist has to have a passport. For some countries, like the UnitedStates, a terrorist also must obtain a document permitting him to visit. This is called avisa. Finally the terrorist must actually enter the country and keep from getting detainedor deported by immigration or internal security officials.Some 6f these problems can be evaded if a terrorist bypasses legal procedures and entersthe cpuntry surreptitiously, as do many illegal aliens who enter the United States fromMexico and Canada. None of the 9/11 attackers entered or tried to enter the country thisway/ though we know terrorists are considering coming through Mexico and some haveentered without inspection from Canada.!^ I

I jWe will start with passports and identity. We have handed out a list/ of/the names of 9/lT attackers to help you follow our discussion.ji. word about passports. While some nations, including our own, dedicate significantresources to passport security improvements, many nations continue to have weakpassport controls, and msecure travel documents. Cost is a factor. There is nointernational forum dedicated solely to improving the security of passports, nor is there acomprehensive international registry of lost or stolen passports. It is easier to track theuse of a stolen credit card than a stolen passport.



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11 Law Enforcement Sensitive 9/11 Closed by Statute

We have seen convincing evidence that two of the hijackers, SatamXal Suqami and AbdulAziz al Omari, presented doctored passports.14 To avoid getting into the classifieddetails, we will just state that these were "manipulated in a fraudulent manner." Theywere manipulated in ways we believe trained U.S. officials would be able to spot today asrevealing a direct link to al Qaeda. Since the passports of 15 of the hijackers did notsurvive, we cannot make firm factual statements about their documents, But from whatwe know about al Qaeda passport practices and information we believe it is possible thatsik more of the hijackers presented passports that had some of these same clue* to theirassociation with al Qaeda.Other kinds of passport markings can be highly suspicious. To avoid getting into theclassified details, we will just call these "suspicious indicators." Two of the hijackers,Khalid al Mihdhar and Salem al Hazmi, presented passports that had such suspiciousindicators.15 Again, we believe that today trained U.S. officials would be able to spotthese indicators and take appropriate action. Each of these two hijackers are known to '""have possessed at least two passports.16 All of their known passports had thesesuspicious indicators. We have evidence that three other hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi,Ahmed al Nami;and Ahmad al Haznawi may have presented passports containing thesesuspicious indicatorsr^But their passports did not survive the attacks, so we cannot besure.

J_ T We now know that there were significant security

\ s in the Saudi government's issuance of Saudi passports in the period when thevisas to the hijackers were issued. I9n \~\y contained no issuing serialnumbers, a weakness that terrorists can manipulate." Saudi passports were thereforeoften the passport of choice for al Qaeda terrorists, even those - like Khalid SheikhMohammed - whowere notSaudi citizens.The obvious question is whether all of these characteristic manipulations and indicatorswere known to the U.S. government before 9/11. We are sure that word of any suchclues had not been circulated to the border inspection service officials who saw these

\. As to whether the knowledge of these particular clues existed in the\e community before 9/11, we do not yet know the answer to that question.;From the mid-1970s, when terrorists began to launch attacks in the Middle East andEurope, intelligence and border authorities knew that terrorists used forged or alteredtravel documents. Before 9/11 the FBI and CIA knew al Qaeda engaged in such

/ no /

1718192021


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practices. They knew this from training m anuals recovered in the mid-1990s. Theyknew this from tracking an d interrogating al Qaeda operatives. So m e of this knowledgewas revealed in individual criminal cases prosecuted in the U.S. in the 1990s.By the 1980s the CIA had developed a "Red Book" to guide and train consular, ^3 -'immigration and customs officers on sporting terrorists. It includes pho tographs ofaltered or sto len passports, and false travel stam ps (also kno wn as cachets) used byterrorists. Unf ortunately, to the best of our kno wledge, the "Red Book" was lastpublished in 1992. Between 1992 and September 11, 2001, we cannot find evidence ofan y centrally coo rdinated an d systematic effort to create an d distribute a set of telltaleclues that consular officers or im m igration inspectors could use in order to spot al Qaedaoperatives o r otherwise exploit al Qaeda's travel vulnerability. If this inform ation hadbeen developed, the State Department, and the fo rmer Immigra t ion an d NaturalizationService (INS) and the Customs Service, whose personnel are now part of DHS, couldhave established the capacity fo r training an d alerting their officers in the field. Before9/11 these agencies' efforts focused m ainly on traditional immigration enforcement an dorganized visa fraud rings.Since 9/11 this picture has improv ed. We have not com pleted our factual evaluations ofthese im provem ents. The CIA is wo rking aggressively to collect and use intelligencerelated to terrorist m obility. The Department of State is incorporating new inform ationinto their processes, as is the Departm ent of Ho m eland Security. As we finish ourevaluation o f these efforts the Co m m ission should consider possible po licyrecom m endations in this area.

Visas

Before 9/11, and today, the State Department is principally responsible fo r administeringU.S. im m igration laws outside o f the United States. A branch of o ur diplom atic corps,consular officers, issue several kinds of visas fo r visitors and for permanent immigrants.In 2000 these diplom ats processed abo ut 10 m illion applications fo r visitors' visas atabout 230 posts o verseas. The U.S. has agreem ents with a num ber of countries in whichtheir citizens an d ours do not need to obtain visas for a visit. None of the 9/11 hijackersha d passports from such countries, although other al Qaeda m em bers have had suchpassports.A visa applicant provides their passport and a photograph. A State Departm ent em ployeechecks the passport for any apparent questionable features. A Consular Officer could callthe applicant in for an interview. The applicant's essential information goes into a Statedatabase. The info rm ation is then checked against a large "consular lo oko ut" database,which includes a substantial watchlist of known an d suspected terrorists called TIPOFF.Before 9/11, the main focus of the whole im m igration system , including the visa process,was to keep intending imm igrants from im properly entering the United States. In the visaprocess, the m os t com m on form o f fraud is to get a visa to visit the U .S. as a tourist and


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then stay to work an d perhaps become a resident. So consular officers concentrate oninterviewing visa applicants whom they suspect might leave and not come back hom e.In Saudi Arabia, before 9-11, Saudi citizens were not seen as "bad risks" for becomingunlawful imm igrants. They rarely overstayed their visas or tried to work illegally in theU.S. The same was true for citizens of the United Arab Emirates. So, with some minorvariations, diplomats in both countries tended to screen applicants against TIPOFF, butthey would not interview them unless there was something about the applications thatseemed problematic. Visa applicants from these countries f requen tly had theirapplications subm itted by third parties, like travel agencies, and often would not fill ou ttheir applications com pletely, beyond the biographical information needed for nam echecks.The U.S. posts in Saudi Arabia instituted the Visa Express program in June 2001. It hadlittle effect on visa outcomes. It requ ired applicants to apply throug h travel agenciesinstead of by mail or in person. One reason the program was established was to keepcrowds of people from congreg ating outside the posts, w hich was a sec urity risk to theposts and to the crowds them selves. We h ave found no evidence that the V isa Expressprogram had any effect on the interview or approval rates for Saudi applicants, or that itreduced the scrutiny given to their applications. It actually lengthe ned the processin gt ime.With the exception of Mexico, though, before 9/11, biometric information - like afingerprint - was not routinely collected from a visa applicant. Terrorists theref ore easilycould exploit opportunities for fraud. W e offer one example.Khalid Sh eikh Mohamm ed was the chief tactical planner and coordinator of the 9/11attacks. He has a long history of terrorist activity. Before his capture in Pakistan inMarch of 2003, he had long been sought by U.S. authorities and was indicted for terroristactivity b y federal authorities in the Southern District of New York in 1996.Khalid Sheikh Mo hamm ed obtained a visa to visit the Un ited States on July 23, 2001,about six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. He did so using an alias, Ab dulrah ma n alGhamdi. He did so with a Sau di passport, althoug h he is not a Saudi citizen and we dono t believe he was even in Saudi Arabia at the time . He had someone else submit hisapplication and a photo (taken of him in disguise) through the V isa Express program .22However, there is no evidence that he ever used this visa to enter the United States.The hijac kers obtained their visas over a ten year period . The terrorist pilots acquiredtheir visas in the year 2000. The othe rs, with two exceptions, obtained their visasbetween the fall of 2000 and June 2001. All told, beginning in 1997, and includingmultiple visas, the 19 hijacke rs subm itted 24 applications and received 23 visas. Two ofthese were issued in B erlin. Two w ere issued in the United Arab Emirates. The restwere issued in Saudi Arabia. One of the pilot's ap plications, that of Hani Hanjour in22 FB I summary of Penttbom Investigation, January 31 , 2003, p. 65.


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September 2000, was denied tem porarily until he produced m ore evidence in support ofhis student visa application. It was then approved.To the best of our knowledge, State consular officers followed their standard o peratingprocedures in every case. They checked their lookout database, including the TIPOFFwatchlist. At the time they applied for visas, none of these people - or at least none ofthe identities given in their passports ~ were in the database. W e will say m ore about thisin another staff statem ent later today.Of these 24 visa applications, 4 were destroyed routinely along with other old documentsbefore their significance was known. We have reviewed the rem aining 20. All thehijackers sought tourist visas except for Hanjour, who obtained a student visa.All 20 of these ap plications were incom plete in some way , in that a data field was leftblank or not answered fully. This did not affect the visa adjudication process because thedata left out was the kind of data often left out by applicants. The State officialsgenerally did not think these items were material to making a decision about whether toissue the visa. Officials were most concerned about getting the key biographical datathey needed fo r their name checks.Three of the 19 hijackers submitted applications that contained false statements that couldhave been proven to be false at the time they applied. The applications of Hani Hanjour,Saeed al Ghamdi , an d Khalid al Mihdhar stated that they had not previously applied for aU.S. visa when, in fact, they had. In Han jour 's case the false statement was made inconjunction with an earlier visit, in 1997, not his final visa application in 2000. H anjou rand al Mihdhar also made a false statement about whether they had previously traveled tothe United States.W e do not know whether these false statements were made in furtherance of the terroristplot. They migh t have been trying to hide the fact they had previously traveled usingdifferent passports. But the false statements m ight have b een the result of languageproblems or incorrect filling out of the form by a third party facilitator, a comm onpractice fo r Saudi citizens.H ad these false statements been discovered and questioned, the three individuals mighthave reassured U .S. officials if they had adm itted their prior visas and travel, and claimedthe statements were inadvertent or made by a travel agent. W hy would this bereassuring? Because it would have shown they had gone to the U.S. and returned,reducing any concern that they might be intending imm igrants. But the discovery of thefalse statements could well have led at least to an interview on this topic. And such aninterview carries with it some small chance that one of the men m ight have slipped orrevealed some other w orrying clue.Al M ihdhar's case is still m ore problematical. W hile it is true he had not been enteredinto the TIPOFF watchlist at the time of his second visa application in June 2001, thepost had other sources of derogatory inform ation about him. In January 2000 the


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Am erican consulate in Jeddah ha d been asked about al Mihdhar's visa status inconjunction with a then urgent terrorist intelligence investigation. U.S. officials at thatconsulate and at the Embassy, in Riyadh, responded helpfully. So when al Mihdharapplied again, the routine check against the worldwide TIPOFF watch list took place.But no system them in place included a notation of the prior check. Thus, in effect, thepost - as an institution ~ could not ' remember ' relevant suspicions a year and a halfearlier about this same person, who was traveling again with the same biographicalinformation.At most, two of the hijackers were actually interviewed in person in connection with theirvisa applications. Hanjour was interviewed twice. Satam al Suqami was apparentlyinterviewed in Riyadh. Another hijacker, Ah med al Nam i, was apparently interviewedbriefly, but jus t to clarify an entry on his application. The three consular officersinvolved have some m emo ry of these interviews. All stated that the reason for theinterview had nothing to do with terrorism. None thou ght that, if they had spent moretime on the interview, they w ould have com e to any different conclusion about theapplication. They sa w nothing suspicious.It is worth noting that several participants in the 9/11 plot tried to get visas, an d failed.This has not been pub licized before. One story, which is that some of the terrorists orwould-be hijackers were on a terrorist watchlist, is untrue. None of these people weredenied visas on grounds related to terrorism or because their names were on a watchlist.The participants in the plot who failed to get visas were Ramzi Binalshibh, Saeed alGam di, Zakariya Essabar, an d Ab dul Aziz Ali. This Saeed al Gamdi has a name similarto the Saeed al Ghamdi who bec ame a hijacker. They are different people.W e start with Ramzi Binalshibh. Binalshibh was an impo rtant participant. He apparentlyintended to train as a pilot along w ith his Ham burg friends, Mohammed Atta and Marwanal Shehhi. Binalshibh is from Yem en. He applied for a visa three times in Berlin andonce in Yem en. He first applied in Berlin on the same day as Atta. He w as interviewedtwice an d denied twice, both times because it was believed he did not have strong ties toGermany and he might be intending to imm igrate unlawfully to the U.S. Yem en is amu ch poorer country than Saudi Arabia. Binalshibh tried again in Berlin, this time for astudent visa. He was denied again for lack of adequate documen tation. Essabar, aM oroccan, also tried in B erlin and failed because he lacked adequate docum entation. Ingeneral, third country visa applicants in Berlin were held to significantly higher standardsin terms of documentation and a required showing of t ies than were Saudi an d Emiraticitizens applying from their own countries.

obe relbdul Aziz Ali is believed to be related to Khalid Sheikh Moham med and was heavilyinvolved in the financial side of the 9/1 1 plot. Using his Pakistani passport, he tried toge t a U.S. visa in Dubai about tw o weeks before the attacks. A s a Pakistani in a thirdcountry, U.S. officials would have been dubious from the start, and he was denied as apossible intending immigrant.23 FBI Pent tbom Summary, p. 14.


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ed al Gamdi, also9/11 attac


ow n as "Jihad" al Gamdi, apparently intended to participate inis a Saudi and applied for a tourist visa in Jeddah on November 12,2000, the same date as 9/11 hijacker Ahmad al Haznawi. Haznawi was approved, but alGamdi was denied, after an interview with a consular officer, the only would-be Saudihijacker who failed to get a visa.25The State Department was and is deeply committed to keeping terrorists from gettingvisas. TheDepartment, and in particular Consular Affairs working with a little knownofficial named John Arriza in its Bureau of Intelligence and Research accomplishedgroundbreaking work in building and sustaining the TEPOFF watchlist, the only trueterrorist watchlist in the U.S. government before 9/11.W e are troubled, however, that the Department and its Consular Affairs bureau states thatbefore 9/11 they did not believe that Saudi citizens were security risks. In this matterthey were essentially passive. O ur research does no t show that anyone formally told thebureau that Saudi citizens were potential terrorists. So officials did not treat them thatway.If the Consular Affairs bureau had tried to take more precautions, it would haveencountered some insurmountable budget realities. Visa applications rose by nearly athird, another 2.5 million a year, just between 1998 and 2001. Trained staff did not risewith it. The Congress had cut funding for Foreign Service officers during the 1990s,especially the early 1990s. In Jeddah an d Riyadh, for example, each consular officer hadresponsibility for processing, on average, about 30,000 applications per year androutinely interviewed about 200 people a day. When asking the Department of State andConsular Affairs, indeed all of our border inspection services, to take a more proactiverole as part of our national security team, the budget context must be considered.Entry into and Exit from the United StatesWith a visa, a traveler can travel to a port of entry into the United States. There,however, the traveler must seek admission into the U.S. from an inspector of what used tobe called the INS, an agency whose personnel now form part of DHS. W e will refer toINS in describing events before 9/11. Theproperty being brought into the U.S. ischecked by inspectors of the U.S. Customs Service. This agency's personnel are nowalso part of DHS.The 19 hijackers entered the U.S. a total of 33 times. They arrived through ten differentairports, though more than half came in through Miami, JFK, or Newark. A visitor withthe usual tourist visa was usually admitted for a stay of six months. All the hijackerswere admitted for such stays, except one had a student visa and was admitted for a stay oftwo years. Another only sought and was admitted for a stay of twenty days.

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When flights from abroad arrive at a port o f entry in the U.S., the INS guidelines calledfo r a total processing time of about 20 minutes f rom point of debarkation. In this t im e,the inspector usually had abo ut one to o ne and a half m inutes to size up the person andma k e a decision on adm issibility and length of stay.The four pilots passed through INS and Custom s inspections a total of 1 7 tim es before9/11. Han jour attended schoo l in the U.S. in three stints during the 1990s. His finalarrival was in December 2000, through the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, fromwhich he m ad e his way to San Diego. The other three pilots, Atta, al Shehhi, an d ZiadJarrah, initially cam e in May- June 2000 and arrived for the last tim e between M ay andAugust 2001 . All m ade a num ber of tr ips abroad during their extended stays in the U.S.Al Shehhi and Atta usually traveled to gether.The other hijackers were less active travelers. Of the other 15, only Mihdar cam e, left,and cam e again. Nawaf al Hazm i came in January 2000 with al Mihdhar and stayed. AlMihdhar left in June 2000. Ten o f the others came in pairs between Apri l an d June 2001 . f V^-^ t ) SThree m ore ar r ived through M iam i on May 28. Al Mihdhar returned to the U.S. on July4 , 2 0 0 1 .Fo r all these entries a pr imary IN S inspector would work a lane o f incom ing t ravelers andcheck the people and their passports. They would try to assess the person 's demeanor .No o ne noted any anom alies in these passports. The inspector wo uld use the passportdata, especially if it was m achine readable (and Saudi passports were)_tocheck variousIN S and Cu s t o m s databasesr~TKose databases would shTwlflfiee^sonwa* linked toany prior violationsôi im m igrat ion law. ,. .^ < v % Jv rAs mentioned above, 5 of the 19 hijackers entered the U.S. more than once. Sortie o fthem had violate^ im m igrat ion law, but the INS did not know i t .Ziad Jarrah, w ho Iater^j3ikted United Air l ines Fl ight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania,entered in June 2000 on a tourTt-visa_andthen pro m ptly enrolled in flight schoo l. Inschool for six m o nt hs , he never filed an applfcatieft-to-cri ange-h4s4mmigration status fromtourist to student. Had the INS known he was out o f status, they could have denied him _ vêntry on any o f the three subsequent o ccasions he departed and returned w hile he was a r > ^student. / ^

ârwan al Shehhi came in through New ark in late May 2000, follo wed a week later byMoham m ed Atta. Both cam e o n tourist visas an d soon entered flight school in Florida.Septem ber they did file applications to change their status. Before 9/1 1 regulations

.ii >

allowed tourists to change their status at any tim e, so they were legal. But they botl y overstayed their authorized periods of admission by at least a month. At ta a n d alhehi}} then left and returned in January 2001, still on their tourist visas, because theirapplications to change their status were stil l backlogg ed for action. But the INS did notknow w hen they had left the U.S. and therefo re did not know about the overstays, so thatsubject did not com e up when they sought readm iss ion.

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Atta and al Shehhi did get some attention, though, because they said they were com ingback to finish flight school. This was untrue, since they had finished their prior flighttraining and received their com me rcial pilot licenses the previous month. But their storyclashed with their attempt to reenter on tourist visas. The rules required them to getproper student visas while they had been overseas. Their earlier pending application for achange of status was considered abandon ed once they left the U.S. Atta and al Shehhiwere referred by the primary inspectors to secondary inspection.At secondary, more experienced inspectors could conduct longer interviews, check moredatabases, take fingerp rints, examine personal property, and call on other agencies forhelp. The inspectors involved state they do not remem ber these encounters. The reportsindicate that both men told their story about going to flight school and their pendingapplications for a change of status. In this case the secondary inspectors admittedand al Shehhi as tourists. L.A hijacker entering the U.S. for the first time, Saeed al Gham di, also was referred tosecondary immigration inspection when he arrived in late June 2001 . He had no addresson his 1-94 form. He spoke little English. He had a one-way ticket an d about $500. Theinspector wondered whether he was a possible intending immigrant. Al Ghamdi finallyconvinced the inspector that he was a tourist and had enough m oney.

May 2001, two of the hijackers were referred to customs secondary inspection.W aleed al Shehri an d Satam Suqami departed Florida for the Bahamas bu t were refusedadmission. On his way back to the U.S., a customs officer conducting a pre-clearance inthe Bahamas referred al Shehri to a secondary inspection. C ustom s then released him toreturn to the U.S. with Suqami. On Marwan al Shehhi's first entry into the U.S. a custom sofficer referred him to secondary inspection, completed the inspection, an d released him.>^

We do know of one success by imm igration second ary inspection that affected the 9/11plot. An al Qaeda operative, Mgrnammyd al Kahtani, arrived at Orlando airport onAugust 4, 2001. Moham med Atta was waiting there to meet him. Kahtani was referredto secondary inspection for reasons sim ilar to the al Gham di case mentioned above. Hethen encountered an experienced and dedicated inspector, Jose Metendez-Perez. We will -hear his story later this m orning. V__[ fox^f ( J L A , < ^ f a t **\4 (& 'At least six 9/11 hijackers violated immigration laws ounng their stays in the UnitedStates. Earlier we mentioned Ziad Jarrah's failure to adjust his status while he was inflight school and the violations by Atta and al Shehhi. Hani Hanjour came on a studentvisa in Decem ber 2000 but then did not attend a school. Naw af al Hazm i overstayed histerm of admission by nine mo nths. Satam al Suqami overstayed his term of admission byfour months. None of these violations were detected or acted upon by INS inspectors oragents.Two programs m ight have helped detect such violations. One dealt w ith violations ofstudent status. The other dealt with overstays. Both program s had stalled during the1990s.

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We m ust also add that any discussion of the enforcement of imm igration laws m ust beseen in the context of a mu ch larger policy debate about imm igration policy. Before 9/11the INS had about 2,000 agents. The top enforcem ent priority was to remove aliens withcriminal records from the United States. Absent some other factor, someone's overstayin the U.S. might no t have attracted much enforcement attention, even if a system hadbeen in place to detect it. Our purpose is not to pass judgm ents about U.S. immigrationpolicy. What we can do is highlight, again, the way those policy choices affected the waron terrorism before 9/11, and can affect the war on terrorism today.ConclusionThe Director of the FBI testified that "[e]ach of the hijackers . . . came easily an d lawfullyfrom abroad." The Director of Cen tral Intelligen ce described 17 of the 19 hijackers as"clean." W e believe th e information we have provided today gives the Commission theopportunity to reevaluate those statements. W e looked at the travel docum ents that werebeing used, the visa process, th e entries into the U.S., and the compliance withimmigration law w hile the attackers w ere here.W e believe that terrorists are most vulnerab le when they m ove or comm unicate. The twovulnerabilities are linked, since a comm on response to concern about communications isto travel an d meet individuals in person. Problems in traveling, in turn, can lead to riskycomm unications. This happened in the 9/11 plot, but these vulnerabilities were not fullyexploited by ou r governm ent.In this statement an d another later today, we hope we have shown that attention tointernational rules fo r legitimate travel is essential fo r preventing easy mo bility byterrorists. A comprehensive approach to terrorist mobility, from intelligence collection,to border mana gem ent and international agreements, will offer excellent opportunitiesagainst the criminal document forgers, clandestine travel facilitators an d corrupt passport,border, and transportation officials who provide the travel infrastructure that enablesterrorists to achieve their global reach.

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WITHDRAWAL NOTICE

RG: 148 Exposition, Anniversary, and M emorial Com missionsSERIES: 9/11 Commission Team 5, Archives Box 37

N N D PROJECT NUM BER : 51095 FOIA CASE NU MB ER: 30383WITHDRAWAL DATE: 12/31/2008


ACCESS RESTRICTEDi iThe item identified below has been w ithdrawn from this file:

FOLDER TITL E: Terrorist M obility N otesDOCUMENT DATE: DO CUM ENT TYPE: ChartFROM:TO :SUBJECT: "Working Group on Human Smuggling: top smuggling threats to US"

This document has been w ithdrawn for the following reason(s):9/11 C lassified Inform ation

WITHDRAWAL NOTICE


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U.S. Immigrationand CustomsEnforcement

Top Smuggling Threats to the United States:Targets of the NSC W orking GroupMohammad Hussein AssadiColombia-based Iranian national. Leader of a multi-nationalsmuggling organization responsible for providing fraudulentdocuments to thousands of Middle Eastern nationals and aidingtheir illegal entry into the United States.Arrested in Miami on January 17, 2002.Mehrzad H. ArbaneEcuador-based Middle Eastern smuggler, narcotrafficker, andlicensed pilot. Owner of convenience store in Albany, New York,where patrons were seen celebrating shortly after the WorldTrade Center and Pentagon attacks.Arrested in Ecuador on January 6, 2002.Salim Mucharrafille BoughaderTijuana-based Lebanese national. Facilitated the illegal entry ofMiddle Eastern nationals into southern California. Many of hisclients were from towns in southern Lebanon known as Hizballahstrongholds. Associated with Ashraf Abdallah Bashar andMohammad Hussein Assadi.Arrested in San Diego on December 21, 2002.Ashraf Abdallah BasharGuatemala-based alien smuggler responsible for moving hundredsof Middle Easterners per year since the mid-1990s. Head of aneloborate smuggling network that spread from Tijuana to Cairoprior to fleeing Guatemala for Egypt fearing US prosecution.Fled Guatemala in January 2002Ting Hay "Francisco" TsoiAlien smuggler and fraudulent document provider based inVenezuela. Senior Chinese Triad member. Facilitated travelof US-bound aliens from Far/Middle East through South/CentralAmerica.Arrested in Houston on May 2, 2002.Maher Wazen Ahmed JARADEcuador-based Palestinian national. Moved hundreds of MiddleEastern nationals, mostly through Ecuador to Guatemala.Received aliens from Sao Paulo, Brazil and Lima, Peru andprovided them with fraudulent documents.Arrested in Ecuador on January 6, 2002.

L A W E N F O R C E M E N T SBBJIW


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U.S. Immigrationand CustomsEnforcement

Top Smuggling Threatsto the U nited States:Targets of the N SC Working Group

- Continued -

Emna LagunaHead of a Nicaragua-based alien smuggling organization responsibletransporting thousands of US-bound undocumented aliens to the US.The investigation was initiated by INS/Tegucigalpa andworked jointlywith the governments of Nicaragua and Honduras.Arrested in Nicaraguaon December 12, 2002.

Ruben Patrick ValdesConsidered to be one of the most prolific "tractor trailer" smugglersoperating along the Southwest Border. Believed responsible forexceptionally large numbers of "tractor trailer" alien smuggling loads,including a load on July 27, 2002 interdicted near Dallas, TX wheretwo smuggled aliens died in the back of an 18-wheeler truck.Arrested in Mexico and turned over to US on November 1, 2002.

Mohammed Bashir MalikLahore, Pakistan-based alien smuggler and document provider.Head of world-wide network that includes operatives in Europe,Great Britain, Canada, Central/South America, Mexico, andSoutheast Asia.Federal complaint filed in New York.

Dario EspejoMexico-based smuggler who moved US-bound Pakistani nationals,Syrians, and other nationalities. Used contacts within MexicanImmigration in Cancun to receive aliens from Havana and Moscow.Arrested in Houston on April 21, 2002.


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C,v Sourced VersionAGENCY COMMENTS: ADDITIONS and [DELETIONS]Entry of the 9/11 Hijackers Into the United StatesMembers of the Commission, your staff has developed initial findings on how theindividuals who carried out the 9/11 attacks entered the United States. We have alsodeveloped initial findings on terrorists who failed in their efforts to enter the UnitedStates. These findings lead us to some tentative judgmentson the way the United Statestargets the travel of international terrorists. These findings and judgments may help yourconduct of today's public hearing and will inform the development of yourrecommendations.The findings and judgments I report today are the results of our work so far. We remainready to revise our understanding of these topics as our work continues. This staffstatement represents the collective effort of several members of our staff. SusanGinsburg, Thomas Eldridge, and Janice Kephart-Roberts did most of the investigativework reflected in this statement.Our staff was fortunate. We could build upon a large and strong body of work carried outby many talented public servants at the Department of State, the Central IntelligenceAgency, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department ofHomeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American peopleshould be proud of the many extraordinary professionals now serving them. To theextent we have criticisms, they are comments less on the talent available and more onhow that talent is used.I. Travel Intelligence and TerrorismWe do not begin with American law or policy. We begin by analyzing the terroristenemy. To an international terrorist, few topics are more important than where and howthey travel. Anyone immersed in the debriefings of al Qaeda terrorists will be struck byhow central this is, how vital to their tradecraft. The ability to travel and the character oftravel documents is one of the most important factors in operational recruitment,including the recruitment of the 9/11 hijackers. It was a critical, perhaps the mostimportant, reason for reliance on so many Saudi citizens.Think about the problem from their perspective. They live in places where they feelrelatively safe or anonymous. When they travel internationally, they must come to thesurface. They mustpass, again and again, through portals of one kind or another wherethey are examined by government agents. Only when they reach their destination canthey once again disappear into the "ocean."Yet, for an international terrorist, travel is essential. Among the 9/11 hijackers it was thepilots who traveled the most. Among the distant coordinators, Ramzi Binalshibh andKhalid Sheikh Mohammed moved frequently from place to place. So al Qaeda devotesenormous effort to travel issues. Before 9/11 a principal unit of the organization worked

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Vll Law Enforcement Sensitive9/11 Closed by Statute

on little else. Al Qaeda terrorists sought to hide their true identities and keep their travelhistories off the record.1 They did not want others to know, for example, that they hadvisited suspect places like Afghanistan.2 They carefully planned how to acquire,manipulate, and use travel documents like visas and passports.Ease of entry to a country was, and is, a significant factor in terrorist operationalplanning. They research entry rules and border processes to select the best documentsand entry points.

For these reasons we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about how much we knowabout the passports or aliases the 9/11 attackers used. That said, four of the hijackers'passports have survived in whole or in part. Two were recovered from the crash site ofUnited Airlines Flight 93 hi Pennsylvania. One belonged to a hijacker on AmericanAirlines Flight 11. It fluttered to the street after the plane hit the World Trade Center. Apasserby picked it up and gave it to an NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade


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Center towers collapsed. A fourth passport was recovered from luggage that did notmake it from a Portland flight to Boston onto the connecting flight, which was AmericanAirlines 11 . In addition to these four, some copies of passport information wererecovered in a post-9/11raid I I13, We have reviewed findings about all ofthese documents available from records and (experts at the CIA, Department of Homeland

lNy^ecurity's Forensic Document Lab, andFBly^ p T


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/ll Law Enforcement Sensitive Q ,, ., , , , , . < . , _9/11 Closed by Statute

Comprehensive international registry of lost or stolen passports. It is easier to track theuse~'pf a stolen credit card than a stolen passport. \e have $een convincing evidence that two of the h

Aziz al Omari, presented doctored passports.14 To avoid getting into the classifieddetails, we will just state that these were "manipulated in a fraudulent manner." Theywere manipulated in ways webelieve trained U.S. officials wpuld be able to spot today asrevealing a direct link to al Qaeda. Since the passports of 15 of the hijackers did notsurvive, we cannot make firm factual statements about their documents. But from whatW e know about al Qaeda passport practices and information we believe it is possible thatsix more of the hijackerspresented passports that had some of these same clues to theirassociation with al Qaeda. \r kinds of passport markings can be highly su

classified details, we will just call these "suspicious indicators." ;Two of the hijackers,Khalid al Mihdhar and Salem al Hazmi, presented passports that had such suspiciousindicators.15 Again, we believe that today trained U.S. officials would be able to spotthese indicators and take appropriate action. I bach of these twohi jackersF II possessed at least two passports.10 (1 I Allof their known passports had these suspicious indicators. We have evidence that threeother hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi may havepresented passports containing these suspicious indicators.17 But their passports did notsurvive the attacks, so we cannot be sure.Two of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers may have obtained their passports)

e now know that there weresignificant security weaknesses in the Saudi government's issuance of Saudi passports inthe period when the visas to the hijackers were issued.191 J20Manycontained no issuing serial numbers, a weakness that terrorists can manipulate.21 Saudipassports were therefore often thepassport of choice for al Qaeda terrorists, even those -like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - whowere not Saudi citizens.The obvious question is whether all of these characteristic manipulations and indicators

; were known to the U.S. government before 9/11. W e are sure that word of any such\s had not been circulated to the border inspection service officials who saw thesepassports. As to whether the knowledge of these particular clues existed in theintelligence communitybefore 9/11, we do not yet know the answer to that question.

8/14/2019 T5 B38 Terrorist Mobility Notes F

t5 b38 terrorist mobility notes fdr- entire contents- draft versions of staff statment 1- agency...

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