Egyptian intelligence warned U.S. officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden’s network was in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, according to President Hosni Mubarak.
Using a secret agent they had recruited who was in close contact with the bin Laden organization, Mubarak said in a Sunday interview, his intelligence chiefs tried unsuccessfully to halt the operation.
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Mubarak said his intelligence officials had no indication what the target would be and had no idea of the magnitude of the coming attack.
“We didn’t know that such a thing could take place,” he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. “We thought it was an embassy, an airplane, something, the usual thing.”
But, he added, to discover after the event that the terrorists were going to take airplanes and destroy buildings, “that is unbelievable.”
Mubarak’s disclosure represents the first time a foreign leader has said that an intelligence service had penetrated bin Laden’s network, Al Qaeda, to the extent that discussions about specific operations–and whether they could be halted or postponed–were under way.
Mubarak did not say whether he knew how American counterterrorism officials had reacted to the Egyptian warning, which a senior U.S. intelligence official denied was received. But Mubarak said he believes that security at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was tightened in early September as a result of the warning.
“We informed them about everything,” he said, referring to American intelligence officials.
Mubarak cited the warning as evidence that Egypt has become an increasingly valuable intelligence partner to the United States in the war against terrorism, especially since Sept. 11. It seemed possible he was seeking to burnish Egypt’s credentials, which have been questioned in Congress, in advance of his visit to Washington this week.
“Maybe some congressmen were thinking, `What is Egypt doing?”‘ for the United States, he said. “There are so many things we cannot say, mainly intelligence information. We did a lot, but sometimes you have to do it quietly.”
A White House spokesman declined to comment on Mubarak’s remarks. The senior U.S. intelligence official, however, said the CIA had not received any warnings from Egypt about a possible attack in the days before Sept. 11.
“The Egyptians gave us some threat information, earlier in 2001, of possible attacks against U.S. or Egyptian interests,” the official said. “There was nothing about hijackings, nothing about an attack inside the U.S. It did not come in the days before 9/11.”
Mubarak’s statements come as indications grow that American officials were slow to interpret signs of an Al Qaeda plot well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
By Mubarak’s recollection, Egyptian intelligence officials informed American intelligence officers sometime between March and May of 2001 of Egypt’s penetration of the bin Laden organization through the agent. He referred in the interview broadly to “American intelligence.” U.S. officials said the intelligence relationship between Egypt and the United States is handled through the CIA station chief at the embassy in Cairo.
The agent established such close contact with bin Laden’s organization that Egyptian officials tried to use the agent’s influence to stop the attack.
“We knew that something was going to happen,” Mubarak said. “We had good contact” with shadowy figures who had information about the bin Laden group’s activities. “We started to use them, to tell them, `You can stop this,”‘ using any pretext, the president added, to try “to give ourselves time to realize what may take place.”
The Egyptian president said his intelligence chiefs believed, based on the agent’s information, that “something is going to happen in the U.S.” or “to the United States, maybe inside the U.S., maybe in an airplane, maybe in embassies” outside the United States. “We couldn’t know, we tried to know where, but this information” never reached them.
“I think this man, this agent, phoned the group of bin Laden, I don’t remember who it was,” Mubarak said. The agent was told, “No, no, no, it’s difficult to stop it.”
By this time, the president added, “It was one week before” Sept. 11, “because the wheels were going on, we couldn’t stop it–one week or four days, a very short time.”