The FBI knew before the September 11th attacks last year that several associates of Osama bin Laden had trained at US flight schools, but believed the al Qaeda leader needed pilots to transport goods in Afghanistan, a congressional investigator has said.
"The commonly held view at the FBI prior to September 11th was that bin Laden needed pilots to operate aircraft he had purchased in the United States to move men and material," Ms Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint inquiry into September 11th intelligence failures, said at a hearing last night.
The reference to bin Laden buying aircraft in the United States, buried in the middle of her testimony, was left unexplained and congressional officials said they could not go beyond the unclassified report.
FBI officials essentially ignored a July 10th, 2001, memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix outlining concerns that an effort was underway by bin Laden to send students to the United States for flight training, congressional investigators found.
The so-called Phoenix memo was written by FBI agent Kenneth Williams, who testified from behind a screen at the joint hearing of the US House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees. The author was not identified by name, but Williams's testimony made clear he had written the memo.
The memo noted that an "inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest" were attending flight training in Arizona, and speculated they were part of an effort to establish a group in civil aviation that would be in a position to conduct terrorist activity, Hill said.
The memo "did not raise any alarms" at FBI headquarters where it was determined no follow-up action was warranted. And New York FBI agents found it to be "speculative," Hill said.
The memo did not name any of the September 11th hijackers, but the FBI now believes one of those named in it was connected to Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, Hill said.