From the 9/11 Commission Report, chapter 5:
The four trainees traveled to Kuala Lumpur: Khallad, Abu Bara, and Nawaf al-Hazmi came from Karachi; Khalid al-Mihdhar traveled from Yemen. As discussed in chapter 6, U.S. intelligence would analyze communications associated with Mihdhar, whom they identified during this travel, and Hazmi, whom they could have identified but did not.
According to KSM, the four operatives were aware that they had volunteered for a suicide operation, either in the United States or in Asia. With different roles, they had different tasks. Hazmi and Mihdhar were sent to Kuala Lumpur before proceeding to their final destination—the United States. According to KSM, they were to use Yemeni documents to fly to Malaysia, then proceed to the United States using their Saudi passports to conceal their prior travels to and from Pakistan. KSM had doctored Hazmi’s Saudi passport so it would appear as if Hazmi had traveled to Kuala Lumpur from Saudi Arabia via Dubai. Khallad and Abu Bara went to Kuala Lumpur to study airport security and conduct casing flights.According to Khallad, he and Abu Bara departed for Malaysia in mid-December 1999. Hazmi joined them about ten days later after briefly returning to Afghanistan to attend to some passport issues.
Khallad had originally scheduled his trip in order to receive a new prosthesis at a Kuala Lumpur clinic called Endolite, and Bin Ladin suggested that he use the opportunity to case flights as well. According to Khallad, Malaysia was an ideal destination because its government did not require citizens of Saudi Arabia or other Gulf states to have a visa. Malaysian security was reputed to be lax when it came to Islamist jihadists. Also, other mujahideen wounded in combat had reportedly received treatment at the Endolite clinic and successfully concealed the origins of their injuries. Khallad said he got the money for the prosthesis from his father, Bin Ladin, and another al Qaeda colleague.
According to Khallad, when he and Abu Bara arrived in Kuala Lumpur they contacted Hambali to let him know where they were staying, since he was to be kept informed of al Qaeda activities in Southeast Asia. Hambali picked up Khallad and Abu Bara and brought them to his home,enlisting the help of a colleague who spoke better Arabic. Hambali then took them to the clinic.
On December 31, Khallad flew from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok; the next day,he flew to Hong Kong aboard a U.S.airliner.He flew in first class, which he realized was a mistake because this seating assignment on that flight did not afford him a view of the cockpit. He claims to have done what he could to case the flight, testing security by carrying a box cutter in his toiletries kit onto the flight to Hong Kong. Khallad returned to Bangkok the following day.At the airport,the security officials searched his carry-on bag and even opened the toiletries kit, but just glanced at the contents and let him pass. On this flight, Khallad waited until most of the first-class passengers were dozing, then got up and removed the kit from his carry-on. None of the flight attendants took notice.
After completing his casing mission, Khallad returned to Kuala Lumpur. Hazmi arrived in Kuala Lumpur soon thereafter and may even have stayed briefly with Khallad and Abu Bara at Endolite. Mihdhar arrived on January 5, probably one day after Hazmi. All four operatives stayed at the apartment of Yazid Sufaat, the Malaysian JI member who made his home available at Hambali’s request. According to Khallad, he and Hazmi spoke about the possibility of hijacking planes and crashing them or holding passengers as hostages, but only speculatively. Khallad admits being aware at the time that Hazmi and Mihdhar were involved in an operation involving planes in the United States but denies knowing details of the plan.
While in Kuala Lumpur, Khallad wanted to go to Singapore to meet Nibras and Fahd al Quso, two of the operatives in Nashiri’s ship-bombing operation. An attempt to execute that plan by attacking the USS The Sullivans had failed just a few days earlier. Nibras and Quso were bringing Khallad money from Yemen,but were stopped in Bangkok because they lacked visas to continue on to Singapore. Also unable to enter Singapore, Khallad moved the meeting to Bangkok. Hazmi and Mihdhar decided to go there as well, reportedly because they thought it would enhance their cover as tourists to have passport stamps from a popular tourist destination such as Thailand. With Hambali’s help, the three obtained tickets for a flight to Bangkok and left Kuala Lumpur together. Abu Bara did not have a visa permitting him to return to Pakistan, so he traveled to Yemen instead.
In Bangkok, Khallad took Hazmi and Mihdhar to one hotel, then went to another hotel for his meeting on the maritime attack plan. Hazmi and Mihdhar soon moved to that same hotel,but Khallad insists that the two sets of oper= atives never met with each other or anyone else. After conferring with the ship-bombing operatives, Khallad returned to Karachi and then to Kandahar, where he reported on his casing mission to Bin Ladin.
Bin Ladin canceled the East Asia part of the planes operation in the spring of 2000. He evidently decided it would be too difficult to coordinate this attack with the operation in the United States. As for Hazmi and Mihdhar,they had left Bangkok a few days before Khallad and arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000.
- June 18, 2002
A major question surrounding the 9/11 investigation is how the United States government was able to identify two of the hijackers as al-Qa'ida but not uncover the plot they were part of. To explain how the intelligence case against Nawaf al-Hazmi (#14) and Khalid al-Mihdhar (#12) developed, I'll walk you through the case.
The Malaysia meeting took on greater significance in December 2000 when the investigation of the October 2000 USS Cole bombing linked some of Kahlid al-Mihdhar's Malaysia connections with Cole bombing suspects. We further confirmed the suspected link between al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi and an individual thought to be one of the chief planners of the Cole attack, via a joint FBI-CIA HUMINT asset. This was the first time that CIA could definitively place al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar with a known al-Qa'ida operative.
In August 2001, because CIA had become increasingly concerned about a major attack in the United States, we reviewed all of our relevant holdings. During that review, it was determined that al-Mihdhar (#12) and al-Hazmi (#14) had entered the US on 15 January 2000, that al-Mihdhar had left the US on 10 June 2000 and returned on 4 July 2001, and that there was no record of al-Hazmi leaving the country. On 23 August 2001, CIA sent a Central Intelligence Report to the Department of State, FBI, INS, and other US Government agencies requesting that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar be entered into VISA/VIPER, TIPOFF, and TECS [Treasury Enforcement Communication System]. The message said that CIA recommends that the two men be watchlisted immediately and denied entry into the US.
The fact that earlier we did not recommend al-Hazmi (#14) and al-Mihdhar (#12) for watchlisting is not attributable to a single point of failure. There were opportunities, both in the field and at Headquarters, to act on developing information. The fact that this did not happen—aside from questions of CTC workload, particularly around the period of the disrupted Millennium plots—pointed out that a whole new system, rather than a fix at a single point in the system, was needed.