Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen — Chapter 15

This was originally published at 911truth.org – Kevin.

Respected longtime 9/11 researcher and author Kevin Fenton has graciously allowed 911truth.org to publish Chapter 15 of his book recently released by Trine Day Publishing, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen: .

Also read “Questions and Answers with Kevin Fenton,” Jon Gold’s interview of the author published July 12, 2011 at 911truthnews.com. – Ed.

July 22, 2011
by Kevin Fenton

Introduction to Chapter 15 of Disconnecting the Dots, for publication at 911Truth.org:

In January 2000, several high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives, including alleged Flight 77 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, held a summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was monitored by the CIA and a local Malaysian service, although the agency reportedly failed to exploit this opportunity to learn what bin Laden’s organization was planning. In addition, the CIA deliberately withheld information about the two men, in particular that Almihdhar had a US visa, from the FBI. The agency then allegedly suffered the misfortune of losing Almihdhar, Alhazmi and another al-Qaeda operative in Bangkok, Thailand. The surveillance of the Malaysia summit was run by Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, its chief Richard Blee and his deputy Tom Wilshire. On January 12 and 14 Blee gave his superior, Cofer Black, incorrect briefings about what was happening with the surveillance. Chapter 15 picks up the story on January 15.

Chapter 15

I know nobody read that cable

After the CIA allegedly lost Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Khallad bin Attash in Bangkok, it asked the Thais to watchlist the three men, meaning that Almihdhar and Alhazmi’s departure from Thailand on January 15, 2000 should have been noted and passed to the local CIA station. From there it would have gone to headquarters. Since the two men were flying to the US, they could have been picked up on arrival, or any time later. As they ended up lodging with an FBI counterterrorism informant in San Diego, it could have been a straightforward matter for the Bureau to get close to them.¹

For some reason that has not yet been determined, their departure from Thailand was not reported promptly by the CIA station in Bangkok. After a few weeks went by, a CIA officer in Malaysia noticed this lack of reporting and queried Bangkok about what had happened.² According to the 9/11 Commission:

Presumably the departure information was obtained back in January, on the days that these individuals made their departures. Because the names were watchlisted by the Thai authorities we cannot yet explain the delay in reporting the news.³

The CIA station in Bangkok sat on this request for two weeks. Then it told the CIA station in Kuala Lumpur that there was a delay in responding due to difficulties in obtaining the requested information.⁴ However, it appears the station already had this information and, even if it did not, it could have simply asked the Thais, who had watchlisted the men at the CIA’s request.

There was a further problem when Bangkok station finally did send a cable reporting the departure information for the two men, on March 5. The cable omitted Almihdhar’s name, only saying that Alhazmi had traveled to the US with a companion, even though the cable was drafted in response to a query from Kuala Lumpur about Almihdhar’s whereabouts.

Most media accounts are wrong about this, claiming that the cable only reported Alhazmi’s departure, not that of a companion as well. However, the executive summary of the re-written CIA inspector general’s report is very clear on this point:

[Please read the full chapter here at 911truth.org in PDF format.]

Interview with Jon Gold

The first media thing I did for the book was an e-mail interview with Jon Gold, who I have known electronically for a few years now. It was published at 9/11 Truth News and starts:

Questions and Answers with Kevin Fenton

I was introduced to Kevin Fenton sometime in 2006. We met on 911blogger.com where he was a contributor for many years. I respected his keen insight and appreciated the fact that he used mainstream media accounts and Government documents for his postings there. Kevin is a contributor to the Complete 9/11 Timeline available at http://www.historycommons.org, along with people like Paul Thompson.

Eventually, Kevin signed up on my site, and started posting his information there. In September 2007, I started work on something I called the Who Is? Archives that was based on the material of the timeline. Kevin was kind enough to write several of the introductions for people mentioned.

The following is a written interview with Kevin Fenton, answering questions that I asked him. Thank you Kevin for taking the time, and I hope everyone buys your book, Disconnecting The Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed To Happen. The information in it is essential to understanding the 9/11 attacks, and gives several examples of people that should have been held accountable, but weren’t.

What prompted you to get involved with the cause of 9/11 Justice?

Several years ago, I read The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin after learning of it on the web and thinking it might be interesting. After reading, I felt some of it held up fairly well, and some of his arguments did not hold up so well. I started to read things about 9/11 on the net and to delve more deeply into some of the issues.

Who are some of your influences as far as your work goes?

My biggest influence is undoubtedly Paul Thompson, who was responsible for a lot of the material at the 9/11 Timeline, which is now hosted by historycommons.org (previously cooperativeresearch.org). Paul seemed to think that there was something wrong with what you might call the “official” account of 9/11, but never seemed to be sure exactly what had really happened and he encouraged research based primarily on MSM articles and government documents.

…

You can read the rest here.

Book Published

I guess the first thing to say about the book is that it was published in mid-June by TrineDay. It’s called Disconnecting The Dots: How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations and is available from Amazon here, or here if you are in the UK.

The Amazon blurb says:

Questioning actions taken by American intelligence agencies prior to 9/11, this investigation charges that the CIA and NSA repeatedly and deliberately withheld information from the FBI, thereby allowing hijackers to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Pinpointing a CIA deputy unit chief, Tom Wilshire, and his manager, Richard Blee, as being primarily responsible for many of the intelligence failures, this account analyses the circumstances in which critical intelligence information was kept from FBI investigators in the wider context of the CIA’s operations against al-Qaeda, concluding that the information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States. The book also looks at the findings of the four main 9/11 investigations, claiming they omitted key facts and were blind to the purposefulness of the wrongdoing they investigated. Additionally, it asserts that Blee was involved in key post-9/11 events and further intelligence failures, including the failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora and the CIA’s rendition and torture program.

Back on the blog

For a while now I have been absent from this blog, although I continued doing HC and other related stuff. However, I had a book, Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations, published a couple of months ago by TrineDay and there is some media and things that are related to it. I guess I should collect that here.

In addition, the makers of 9/11: Press for Truth, Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, are about to release a documentary called “Who Is Rich Blee?” which goes over a lot of the same ground. I will also be posting that here.