Anti-terror report card: Malaysia vs
Thailand By Todd W John
HUA
HIN, Thailand - The National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks on the United States, more commonly referred to
as the 9/11 Investigation Committee, recently issued
statements as part of its investigative effort that
detail Malaysia's success in working with the
intelligence community, while highlighting failures of
the Thai authorities. The mixed bag of intelligence
success and failures in the Southeast Asia region
successfully tracked, but then lost, three terrorists -
two of whom would later participate in the attacks on
the United States of September 11, 2001.
The
commission was careful in making the remarks, saying
that in the context of "hindsight" the issues were
damning, but at the time no one could have predicted
that the failures would contribute to the devastating
attacks of September 11. They also pointed out that even
had they stopped the two terrorists who did successfully
enter the US, it might not have stopped the attacks
anyway.
In late December 1999, US officials in
Pakistan intercepted signals intelligence on a man they
could only identify as Nawaf who was in Karachi but was
planning a trip on January 4, 2000, to Malaysia. At the
same time, they were monitoring his communications with
another man, identified early on only as Khalid, who was
in Yemen and planning to travel to Malaysia to meet
Nawaf. The US National Security Agency (NSA) had also
been monitoring communications between Nawaf and a man
identified as Salem.
The investigation
commission notes that at this point the intelligence
community had little more to go on. However, officials
were monitoring the situation, as the communications
seemed to indicate that "something nefarious might be
afoot", according to the commission.
Nawaf did
go through with his plan to travel to Malaysia, but
Pakistani and US officials misunderstood his plan to
arrive on January 4, 2000, thinking that he would leave
Pakistan that same day. This was incorrect - he had
actually left on January 2 and had a stopover - probably
in Singapore - and continued on to his Malaysia
destination on the 4th. Thus, the intelligence officials
lost the opportunity to track him directly from
Pakistan.
Intelligence operatives in Yemen and
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were luckier in tracking
Khalid from Yemen, through the UAE and on to Malaysia on
January 5, 2000. During these operations the agents also
learned that Salem was not far behind, making
arrangements to come first to Yemen then to meet the
others in Malaysia. By following his itinerary, the
agents were able to learn that Khalid was Khalid
al-Mihdhar. Garnering a copy of his passport, US
officials quickly learned that Khalid had been issued a
US visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in April 1999.
The Malaysian intelligence community had been
alerted to the developments and sprang into action and
quickly intercepted Nawaf and another Arab, monitoring
their movements in Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile back at
Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, the directorate was following the situation
closely. However, the CIA and NSA failed to work
together on the issue. The NSA often waits for one of
its intelligence "customers" to request an intelligence
work-up, which in this case the CIA did not do. Had the
CIA queried the NSA about Nawaf and Salem, it would have
learned that the NSA believed that Nawaf was Nawaf
al-Hazmi, the older brother of Salem. By getting Nawaf's
last name they would have learned that Nawaf al-Hazmi
was also carrying a US visa that was issued in Jeddah.
Malaysian authorities monitoring the situation
in their capital reported to US officials that on
January 6, 2000, two Arab men being tracked departed
Malaysia, one going to Thailand and the other to
Singapore. Only after their departure did US officials
attempt to track them, unsuccessfully. However, within
24 hours, both had returned to Kuala Lumpur. These two
men were identified as Nawaf and a new player, one
Khallad bin Attash.
Only two days later, things
began to fall apart. Malaysian authorities reported that
their Arab targets had left Malaysia on a flight to
Bangkok, all three men traveling together. One was the
known Khalid al-Mihdhar, the second was identified only
as al-Hazmi, but of course the intelligence community
failed to recognize this as Nawaf's last name. The third
man was Khallad bin Attash, but Khallad is an Arabic
nickname, so it was surmised that he was traveling on an
alias.
Malaysian authorities alerted their
counterparts in Thailand, but because it was a weekend
and the men had not been part of a regionwide alert, the
warning was picked up too late by Thai authorities.
Indeed, by the time Thai officials understood the
magnitude of the situation, the men had disappeared
quietly into the teeming streets of Bangkok. US
officials begrudgingly informed headquarters that the
tracking had fallen apart. The names of the men were put
on a Thai travel watch list so that the Thais would
identify them upon departure, gain information about
their destination and alert proper authorities.
The intelligence community would later learn in
the post-September 11 investigation that the three men
met with two other al-Qaeda operatives in Bangkok, where
they were passed money for future operations. Khallad
would later go on to mastermind the USS Cole attack in
Yemen that killed 17 US servicemen and crippled the
warship. Nawaf and Khalid would undertake another
operation entirely.
Weeks passed and no
attention to the matter seemed to be on the intelligence
radar. Finally, in February 2000, Kuala Lumpur asked
Bangkok, "What ever happened with those missing Arabs?"
Bangkok was slow to respond, possibly because it had
failed to notice their departure even though US
officials had placed the men on Thailand's watch list.
Several weeks later, Bangkok authorities finally
responded to Kuala Lumpur, conceding that the three men
had left. For the first time using his full name, the
Thais reported that on January 15, "Nawaf al-Hazmi left
Bangkok via a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles."
Nawaf had traveled with Khalid, but Bangkok failed to
identify this. As for Khallad, he departed Bangkok on
January 20 on a flight to Karachi.
The
investigation commission noted that even in March the
information from Thai authorities was not communicated
to the Americans, only to the Malaysians to answer their
query. Had the information been passed by Thailand to
the United States, domestic enforcement through the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) might have been
able to reinvigorate the probe. By this time Khalid and
Nawaf were living in an apartment in San Diego,
California. Again the commission was careful not to
blame the failures of Thai authorities as the defining
factor, of the many errors that occurred, in losing the
trail of the would-be terrorists.
However, the
commission goes on in its staff statement to note that
in 2001 Khalid and Nawaf traveled across the United
States and actually met up with members of another
al-Qaeda cell, identified as the "Hamburg cell". Had the
FBI been tracking Nawaf and Khalid at that time, they
might have been able to break up at least two of the
four cells that would later participate in the September
11 attacks.
As the 9/11 Commission continues its
task of developing a comprehensive report and
recommendations about terrorist threats to the US,
intelligence failures and success, and makes key
recommendations for the future, some may look at the
international issues offered by the Malaysia-Thailand
example to guide the future intelligence cooperation to
root out multinational terrorism. In the aftermath of
the September 11 attacks on the United States, both
Thailand and Malaysia have pledged their support for the
"war on terrorism".
Malaysia and Thailand have
both opened regional anti-terrorism centers aimed at
increasing their abilities and efficiency in countering
terrorist threats. Malaysia is eager to work with the US
and other nations to develop its counter-terrorism
capabilities. Since September 11, Malaysia has cracked
down on militants and closed Islamic schools it says
were spreading hate. But the struggles for Malaysia will
continue: Asia Times Online recently reported in Southeast Asia's counter-terror
industry on March 10 that anti-Western rhetoric of
previous prime minister Mahathir Mohamad strained
relations with the US.
Thailand also has its
work cut out for it on the anti-terrorism front.
Thailand struggles with its own civil unrest in the
Muslim-majority south that it has characterized as
terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists. Moreover, a recent
human-rights report by the US State Department blasted
Thailand for its handling of the "war on drugs" and the
violence it caused. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
blasted back, characterizing the US as a "useless
friend" (see UN hit as soft on Thai drug war
deaths, March 5).
Unless Malaysia, Thailand,
the US and all allies in the "war on terrorism" work
together to develop their anti-terrorism capabilities,
then failures like those of the past may become the
catalysts for global terror in the future.
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