Event
Phoenix memo
July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix on men of interest at Arizona flight schools.
- Dates
- 10 Jul 2001
- Place
- Phoenix
Connections 3
involved
- Ken Williams wrote the memo Primary record 1
- Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters did not see the memo before 11 September Primary record 1
located in
Timeline 1 date
- 10 Jul 2001 Phoenix memo
Proof 1 source
-
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 9-11-commission, 22 Jul 2004.
Primary record
In July 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on international terrorism squads in the New York Field Office
FBI electronic communication, Phoenix memo, July 10, 2001.
As its author told investigators, the Phoenix memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. His worry was more about a Pan Am Flight 103 scenario in which explosives were placed on an aircraft.
Managers of the Usama Bin Ladin unit and the Radical Fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees, but they did not even see the memo until after September 11.
His recommendations were not acted on.
If the memo had been distributed in a timely fashion and its recommendations acted on promptly, we do not believe it would have uncovered the plot. It might well, however, have sensitized the FBI so that it might have taken the Moussaoui matter more seriously the next month.
The agent based his theory on the “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending such schools in Arizona.
Page history 1 change
- Add 55 stories, each checked against its sources96e92fe6
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