January 6-9, 2000: Top CIA and Clinton Cabinet Officials Repeatedly Briefed about Al-Qaeda Summit in Malaysia

On January 6, 2000, the CIA office in Malaysia begins passing details from the Malaysian government’s surveillance of the al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC) (see January 5-8, 2000 and January 5-8, 2000 and Shortly After). Cofer Black, head of the CTC, orders that he be continually informed about the meeting. CIA Director Tenet is frequently informed as well. They are given continual updates until the meeting ends on January 8. [Stern, 8/13/2003] National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, FBI Director Louis Freeh, and other top officials are briefed, but apparently President Clinton is not. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 225-26] However, it appears that the CIA deliberately and repeatedly fails to tell the FBI that one attendee, hijacker Khalid Almihdhar, has an active visa to visit the US (see January 5, 2000, January 6, 2000, and January 5-6, 2000). No evidence has been presented suggesting anyone else outside the CIA was told this crucial fact either. The Malaysian summit ended on January 8. According to the 9/11 Commission, “On January 14, the head of the CIA’s al-Qaeda unit again updated his bosses, telling them that officials were continuing to track the suspicious individuals who had now dispersed to various countries.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 237] Officially, the CIA will later claim to have lost hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar as they left the meeting (see January 8, 2000), however, Almihdhar will later report back to al-Qaeda that he thought he was followed to the US (see Mid-July 2000). It has never been reported if any of the other attendees were monitored after leaving the meeting or not.