Zacarias Moussaoui

It names no date and no target.

On August 15th, a Pan Am flight school manager in Minnesota calls the FBI about a student named Zacarias Moussaoui.

He wants to train on a 747 simulator, but he has no interest in learning to take off or land.

The next day, immigration agents arrest him.

The Minneapolis FBI wants to search his belongings, including his laptop.

Headquarters says there is not enough evidence tying him to a foreign terrorist power.

On August 22nd, French intelligence reports a link between Moussaoui and Chechen rebel fighters.

The argument shifts to whether Chechens count as a recognized foreign power under the surveillance law.

You gotta remember, Jeff, out of the 20 hijackers from 9/11, there's one still alive, and people forget his name, but let's do a memory walk.

Zacarias Moussaoui, who was also Saudi born.

So a lot of pe- you know, but of course the media, and Jeff, how about the media's coverage of this, Jeff? I don't mean to change the subject, but it's along the lines of it.

Of course the media was saying an alleged hijacking.

I think she was one of three persons of the year that year as a whistleblower.

Colleen Rowley stated a famous 2002 memo to the FBI director, Robert Mueller, that senior bureau management mishandled, downplayed, and glossed over critical pre-9-11 intelligence regarding Zacharias Moussaoui.

and potential terror attacks.

She says she criticized the FBI headquarters for failing to act on properly grasped urgent warnings and requests from the Minneapolis field agents who wanted to search Moussaoui's computer before September 11th, which never got done.

She accused leadership of a stifling initiative and creating a culture of mediocrity and inertia that hindered counterterrorism as efforts post nine 11.

She alleged that top officials, uh, circled the wagons after the attacks and skewed facts and minimize the Minneapolis, uh, offices prior efforts to, so she knew this guy was up to something.

box in Shanksville.

It was played at the Moussaoui trial.

And actually, that's very important because it shows that Zayi al-Jarrah was not on the plane.

He had first cousins who worked for the Israeli government.

Um, Richard Clarke, which was the counterterrorism guy who served both Clinton and Bush, sat down, uh, with the commission in 2004 and said that the CIA and FBI never warned his group about a hijacking or a threat to a commercial airplane at all.

The Zacarias Moussaoui case never even made it to them.

Condoleezza Rice in her interview said the August 6th brief mentioned hijackings, but she described the information as not current in any way.

George Tenet under oath walked through some of the same 1998 briefs.

box in Shanksville.

It was played at the Moussaoui trial.

And actually, that's very important because it shows that Zayi al-Jarrah was not on the plane.

He had first cousins who worked for the Israeli government.

There, there was, yeah, there was intel out there that, that, uh, there were, there was some flight training going on.

In, in fact, Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, uh, you know, he was grabbed just a month earlier in August-

Right

... of 2001, uh, be- [clears throat] with suspicious activity, uh, with flight training and so forth.

And so the very similar, very similar modus here between Israel and the United States.

25 years and six months ago, you sought permission from the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain a search warrant to search the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who turned out to be the 20th hijacker.

Why was that permission denied you?

Well, just a minor correction.