Explosive New Information: The account of Ali Soufan lead investigator on Cole bombing.

Soufan asked the CIA Yemen station in November 2000, for any information the CIA had on Khallad Bin Attash, and on any information on the al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur on November 2000. The FBI asked again in April 2001; this time sending this request directly to the CIA Headquarters. The CIA told Soufan they had no such information, and thereafter refused to respond to Soufan’s requests, when, in reality, the CIA had all of this information. The CIA knew Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been at this meeting planning the Cole bombing with Khallad Bin Attash.

The CIA not only had all of this information, but even had photographs all of the terrorists at this meeting in January 2000, and had identified Khalid al Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Saleem al-Hazmi (who were hijackers on Flight AA 77 which hit the Pentagon.) The CIA had also photographed Tawfig Bin Attash (later identified by the FBI as the mastermind of the Cole bombing) at that same meeting in Kuala Lumpur, which directly connected both Mihdhar and Hazmi to the planning of the Cole bombing. By refusing to forward this information in response to an official FBI request on a murder investigation, the CIA withheld material information from an on-going FBI investigation into the deaths of 17 US sailors. This is a crime. This is more severe than what was alleged by the 9/11 Commission, which stated that it was simply a case of the CIA not talking to the FBI.

Soufan, in November 2000, asked FBI Director Louis Freeh, to request this same information of the CIA and of the CIA Director, George Tenet, Director of the CIA. Again, Soufan was told there was no information at the CIA on any of this. But Freeh himself knew about the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, and even knew that Khalid al-Mihdhar had been at the meeting with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Freeh had been given this information by the NSA in December 1999, and again by the CIA in January 2000, and this information appeared in Freeh's daily briefing papers on January 4, 2001 [see 9/11 Commission report 181 and DOJ-FBI IG report 238-239.] FBI Director Freeh had criminally obstructed his own FBI investigation of the Cole bombing!

Verifying documentation: Did the CIA prevent the FBI from preventing 9-11? by Lawrence Wright

See the book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11" for more in depth information on this.