U.S. spotted Qaeda cell before 9/11

The CIA identified 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mindhar as threats back in 2000.

The article U.S. spotted Qaeda cell before 9/11 from the International Herald Tribune quotes Rep. Curt Weldon (R-NY) that a military intelligence unit identified four future hijackers as likely members of a cell that Al Qaeda was operating in the United States a year prior to 9/11. The four hijackers included Mohammed Atta and Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The article states that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the CIA before the summer of 2000, but information about them was not provided to the FBI until the spring of 2001.

Al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi were beneficiaries of the largesse of Princess Haifa, wife of outgoing Ambassador of Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar - refer to our March 2005 post on this topic.