Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins
Early on Sept. 11, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter J. Goss were having a quiet breakfast meeting in the Capitol with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss, the chairmen of the two Congressional intelligence committees, were quizzing their guest about Osama bin Laden and other issues when an aide to Mr. Goss rushed in with a note.

A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Goss furiously scribbled a reply, asking his aide to find out more. A few moments later, the aide came back with another note — a second plane had crashed into the trade center. "We're out of here," Mr. Goss announced.

Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, have been immersed in the attacks ever since. On Tuesday, they begin joint oversight hearings to examine the painful subject of a colossal intelligence failure and who in the government knew what before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A C.I.A. official said today that the agency had found proof — e-mail messages from January 2000 — that at least some F.B.I. officials had been told what the agency knew at the time about the two men.

But other officials said the agency failed to share with the bureau more significant information it learned later, including that the two men had visited the United States, one of them showing multiple entry stamps on his Saudi passport. Moreover, the C.I.A. did not tell the F.B.I. in December 2000 or January 2001 that the two men were linked to suspects in the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole.

Congressional critics of the two agencies — most notably Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who is the party's ranking member on the Senate intelligence panel — chafe at the Graham-Goss alliance and yearn for a more freewheeling and aggressive investigation than the two Florida lawmakers seem likely to conduct.

"There are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who know that the American people want us to do a responsible, adult job in looking into this," Mr. Goss said in a recent interview. "I think that is the mood that has prevailed now. We have members from both sides thanking us for avoiding the partisan mines."

But their reticence has left a political vacuum, one others are stepping into. The staff of the joint committee has, for example, already conducted private interviews with Ms. Rowley.

Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, and other Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are still pushing for an independent commission to conduct a separate investigation of Sept. 11, apparently out of a fear that the joint committee will not be aggressive enough.

Of course, Mr. Goss's belief in the gravity of the Sept. 11 review has not halted the typical Washington cycle of leak and counterleak. Today, the C.I.A. responded to the charges that it had waited too long to notify the F.B.I. about the two hijackers by disclosing that it had found e-mail traffic between C.I.A. and F.B.I. employees showing that the bureau was notified that a man named Khalid al-Midhar was about to attend a meeting in Malaysia.

The C.I.A. passed along Mr. Midhar's name and Saudi passport number to an F.B.I. official, according to agency records. In a Jan. 6, 2000, e-mail message between a C.I.A. employee and an F.B.I. official working for the counterterrorism center at C.I.A. headquarters, the C.I.A. employee noted that the bureau already had the information about Mr. Midhar.

"It wouldn't surprise me, however, if different people continue to ask you for updates, not having gotten the word that the F.B.I. already has the facts," the e-mail message said, according to the C.I.A.

A C.I.A. official said such correspondence about Mr. Midhar showed that "to say we held out information on him is wrong."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/politics/04INQU.html