Fuckups and Bad Intelligence, Part II

[tangaroa]

The FBI identified Anwar Awlaki as a likely conspirator in the 2001 Sep11 attacks as early as September 27 of that year, as he had bought the airline tickets to bring three of the hijackers into the United States. After that finding, Awlaki was invited by the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association to lead their prayers, praised by New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein as "a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West", and invited by the Defense Department to a luncheon with the Secretary of the Office of General Counsel. He was also briefly arrested in 2002, but released on the order of David Gaouette of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver.

Steven Emerson provides a backgrounder on Awlaki.

The involvement of Judicial Watch on this subject stems from when Robert Wright hired them for PR and legal aid.

The FOIA'd docs are overwhelmingly censored, listing little more than Awlaki's name and the names of three of the hijackers whose airplane tickets he had bought. Other information includes:

Document ID: 265-NY-280350-DL

On page 1:

• Al-Attas -- listed alone, sandwiched between two large censored blocks. Possibly the same as Mohammed Alattas, listed later.

On page 2:

• "Check for credit cards used by Ziad Jarrah and [censored]" -- Jarrah was a hijacker, but who was the second person and why is this information censored?

On page 3:

• The results of a query for the credit card records of hijacker Ahmad Al-Haznawi are also censored.

On page four:

• Mohammed al-Attas -- header of "Bookings 1" above censored block. This is a common name.
• Saeed al-Ghamdi -- header of "Bookings 2" above censored block. He was another hijacker.
• Salemmr al-Hasan -- header of "Bookings 3" above a larger censored block. The name may be mistyped. "Salem al-Hasan" is another common name.

Censored sections are labeled b6, b7C, b7E; most are labeled all three.

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In possibly related news, an Egyptian magazine has identified six Obama Administration advisors as Muslim Brotherhood operatives.