Case of Zacarias Moussaoui, 2001

On August 15, 2001, the Minneapolis FBI Field Office initiated an intelligence investigation on Zacarias Moussaoui.

The case agent did not have sufficient information to connect Moussaoui to a “foreign power,”

FBI headquarters did not believe this was good enough, and its National Security Law Unit declined to submit a FISA application.

Moussaoui stood out because, with little knowledge of flying, he wanted to learn how to “take off and land” a Boeing 747.

As a French national who had overstayed his visa, Moussaoui could be detained immediately. The INS arrested Moussaoui on the immigration violation.

On September 13, the British government received new, sensitive intelligence that Moussaoui had attended an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention.

On August 24, the CIA also sent a cable to London and Paris regarding “subjects involved in suspicious 747 flight training” that described Moussaoui as a possible “suicide hijacker.”

On August 23, DCI Tenet was briefed about the Moussaoui case in a briefing titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.”

Tenet told us that no connection to al Qaeda was apparent to him at the time.

The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was “trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center.”