Which Saeed Alghamdi did Ahmed Alhaznawi know in Saudi Arabia?

[KJF]

The 9/11 Commission is very clear on this point and claims he knew the hijacker Saeed Alghamdi. For example, when discussing the actual muscle hijackers, it says, “Four of them – Ahmed al Ghamdi, Saeed al Ghamdi, Hamza al Ghamdi and Ahmad al Haznawi – came from a cluster of three towns in the al Bahah region... Their travel patterns and information from family members suggest that the four may have been in contact with each other as early as the fall of 1999.” (9/11 CR, p. 231).

Before going any further, I should point out that there are several Saeed Alghamdis involved, at least tangentially, in the “planes operation”. For example, there is the alleged hijacker Saeed Alghamdi, the candidate hijacker Saeed Alghamdi (the only Saudi candidate hijacker whose visa application was rejected), the Saudi Airlines pilot later confused with the hijacker and a whole squadron of military pilots called Saeed Alghamdi who trained in the US and were later confused with the real hijacker. Which one did Ahmed Al Haznawi really know?

Whilst the 9/11 Commission claims Saeed Alghamdi is from Baha Province, the media are of a different opinion. For example, the Boston Globe, which claims to have interviewed “several friends (of the hijackers) and a local cleric” in southwestern Saudi Arabia says he is from Abha, capital of neighbouring Asir Province. The Daily Telegraph, whose reporter travelled to southwestern Saudi Arabia to report on the hijackers' families, claims he was from Abha. The Saudi Information Agency is also of the opinion he was from Abha.
Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/driving_a_wedge/part1_side.shtml
Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/15/wdoss215.xml
Saudi Information Agency: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:BJ1oeXafW40J:www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm%3Fqid%3D12%26sid%3D6+Alomari+Hawran&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a

OK, so it might not have been the hijacker Saeed Alghamdi, is one of the others a good match?
Actually, it appears that candidate hijacker Saeed Alghamdi is from the very same town, Hira (also known as Hera and Hezna), as Ahmad Al Haznawi and that they were the same age (7 months' difference). In addition, they both obtained new passports at the same time (on 22 and 23 January 2000, before going to Afghanistan) and applied for US visas at the same time (on 12 and 13 November 2000) in the same place (Jeddah) (Terrorist Travel, p. 180, p. 182).

So Ahmed Al Haznawi really knew candidate hijacker Saeed Alghamdi, not alleged hijacker Saeed Alghamdi, but this is probably a cock-up, not a cover-up, and it could be argued that it is of fairly minor import – does it really matter which one he knew? If it were only an isolated error, it would not be that important, but I would argue that it does matter, because this sort of mistake is typical of the report. For example, the 9/11 Commission also gets Abdulaziz Alomari's residence wrong, claiming he was from Asir Province, when he was actually from Baha Province. In addition, the error also exposes systemic failings in the method of drafting the report – the hijackers' families should have been interviewed in detail, or, in the case of Fayez Ahmed, interviewed at all, and we should have got all the details, not just the crumbs they offered us. Also, if they can't get the basics right, how can we trust them to do the hard bits?

[AlienSpaceBat]

1. Exactly

if they can't get the basics right, how can we trust them to do the hard bits?

Given the commission was the official body constituted to establish the timeline and facts of 9/11, it would be expected they would be exhaustive and show massive attention to detail.

This error, symptomatic of many others, shows the document they produced to be second-rate. Which brings the question again - in relation to the commission this time - was it incompetence or on purpose ?

[KJF]

2. 2 categories

It seems to me that there are two categories of error in the 9/11 CR. One comes from the lack off attention to detail and it wouldn't be particularly damaging to the official account if the real truth were known. The other is when they're obviously spinning insistently to make a point, like with Cheney's presence in the PEOC and the shootdown order.