CIA boss defends response to 1999 tip

[UpInArms]

http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news04/022504_news_cia.shtml

WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet has rejected suggestions his agency failed to aggressively track one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers after receiving his first name and phone number two years before the attacks, saying the information wasn't sufficient.

"You got a name, named Joe, and here's the phone number," Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an annual public meeting on national security threats. "We didn't have enough, but we didn't sit around."

A federal commission reviewing the 9-11 attacks said it was examining the adequacy of the U.S. response to the March 1999 tip from German intelligence officials. The information appears to be one of the earliest indicators of the 2001 hijacking and may have been a missed chance for U.S. intelligence to uncover a terrorist cell in Germany that was key to the hijacking plot.

The New York Times, in its Tuesday editions, quoted German intelligence officials who said they gave the CIA the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi and asked U.S. officials to track him. The Germans said they never heard back from U.S. officials until after Sept. 11.

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[gandalf]

1. Spinning boldly

"You got a name, named Joe, and here's the phone number". What Tenet perhaps forgot to mention is that the Germans added some minor details like that this Joe and his friends were Islamist extremists who visited Afghan camps.