More than a year before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, CIA officials prevented an FBI agent from passing vital information to his agency on two suspected Al Qaeda members, who later became 9/11 hijackers, a media report said.ABC Television Network last night quoted US officials as saying the agent, who was working with CIA at that time, wanted to warn his FBI bosses about a gathering in Malaysia where Al Qaeda suspects Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Al-Hamzi met with suspects in the October 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen.After the meeting, CIA officials learned Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi had visas to enter the United States, the US officials said.‘‘The failure to communicate that information to the FBI, which would have been potentially able to act on it, is a very serious failure,’’ said Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department Inspector General who now works for a private consulting firm.The CIA, ABC said, claimed the information was already passed to the FBI, and that was why the agent did not need to warn his bosses. The CIA also cited a statement provided to Congress on October 17, 2002. In it, CIA Director George Tenet referred to E-mails that agency officials said proved the information was provided to the FBI.FBI officials, however, told ABC that they had no record of these E-mails.Information from the Malaysia meeting, the network said, could have been used to begin tracking Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi, who they said came to the United States in January 2000 and began flight training in San Diego. Both men later ended up aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the Boeing 757 that smashed into the Pentagon.Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi could have been placed on a terrorism watch list, and US Customs and Border officials might have spotted them, the network said.However, they were not put on the watch list until August 2001, just a month before the 9/11 attacks.
