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criminal record and driver's license information and checked the hotel listed
on Mihdhar's U.S. entry form. Finally, on September 11, the agent sent a lead
to Los Angeles, because Mihdhar had initially arrived in Los Angeles in Janu-
ary 2000.
84
We believe that if more resources had been applied and a significantly dif-
ferent approach taken, Mihdhar and Hazmi might have been found.They had
used their true names in the United States. Still, the investigators would have
needed luck as well as skill to find them prior to September 11 even if such
searches had begun as early as August 23, when the lead was first drafted.
85
Many FBI witnesses have suggested that even if Mihdhar had been found,
there was nothing the agents could have done except follow him onto the
planes.We believe this is incorrect. Both Hazmi and Mihdhar could have been
held for immigration violations or as material witnesses in the Cole bombing
case. Investigation or interrogation of them, and investigation of their travel and
financial activities, could have yielded evidence of connections to other par-
ticipants in the 9/11 plot.The simple fact of their detention could have derailed
the plan. In any case, the opportunity did not arise.
Phoenix Memo
The Phoenix memo was investigated thoroughly by the Joint Inquiry and the
Department of Justice Inspector General.
86
We will recap it briefly here. In July
2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquar-
ters and to two agents on international terrorism squads in the New York Field
Office, advising of the "possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Ladin"
to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.The agent
based his theory on the "inordinate number of individuals of investigative inter-
est" attending such schools in Arizona.
87
The agent made four recommendations to FBI headquarters: to compile a
list of civil aviation schools, establish liaison with those schools, discuss his the-
ories about Bin Ladin with the intelligence community, and seek authority to
obtain visa information on persons applying to flight schools. His recommen-
dations were not acted on. His memo was forwarded to one field office. Man-
agers of the Usama Bin Ladin unit and the Radical Fundamentalist unit at FBI
headquarters were addressees, but they did not even see the memo until after
September 11. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September
11, and the New York Field Office took no action.
88
As its author told investigators, the Phoenix memo was not an alert about
suicide pilots. His worry was more about a Pan Am Flight 103 scenario in
which explosives were placed on an aircraft.The memo's references to aviation
training were broad,including aeronautical engineering.
89
If the memo had been
distributed in a timely fashion and its recommendations acted on promptly, we
do not believe it would have uncovered the plot. It might well, however, have
sensitized the FBI so that it might have taken the Moussaoui matter more seri-
ously the next month.
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