Tucker Carlson has a new series coming out called “The 9/11 Files”, the first episode of which I stumbled across today on Rumble. It covers how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was tracking two of the alleged hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane flown into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The CIA tracked Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar to a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, in early 2000 and knew they had visas to enter the US but “failed” to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI also “failed” to learn about the two operatives being in the country despite the pair renting a room in the home of an FBI informant.

The first episode of “The 9/11 Files”, published today, is titled “The CIA’s Secret Mission Gone Wrong“. Here’s the video description:

A former FBI agent who was embedded in the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, Mark Rossini, claims the CIA was fully aware that the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States planning an attack. Rather than inform the FBI, the CIA tried to recruit two of the hijackers for a “false-flag” operation, which quickly spiraled out of control. The failed mission raises urgent questions about government secrecy, intelligence failures, and what really happened before 9/11.

While Carlson brings some more recently disclosed information to light, much of the episode covers long-known information about how the CIA was tracking al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar and allowed them into the US without notifying the FBI or State Department. I mentioned this in the following articles of mine, for instance:

• A Review of Jason Bermas’s ‘Fabled Enemies’ (Oct 10, 2008)
• Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Being Downplayed (Dec 10, 2008)
• Newly Released CIA Documents on 9/11 (Jun 5, 2012)
• The US Government’s Long History of False Pretexts for War (Jun 19, 2023)

The Congressional “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001“, published in December 2002, detailed how the pair of Al Qaeda operatives were allowed to enter the US by the CIA and subsequently had close contact with an FBI informant.

The written statement for the join inquiry from the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet admitted how the CIA had obtained a photocopy of al-Mihdhar’s passport, which contained a US multiple-entry visa, but did not notify the FBI or State Department.

Carlson rightly lambastes as a complete whitewash the 9/11 Commission Report, published in July 2004, which also admitted how the CIA had let the Al Qaeda operatives into the country, attributing this outcome benignly to “A Lost Trail”.

Questions about that event prepared by the Commission were revealed in a short document titled “Issues Relating to The FBI Informant with Whom 9/11 Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar Resided“, declassified in July 2015.

It was discussed in a staff monograph for the 9/11 Commission dated August 20 2004, titled “Legal Barriers to Information Sharing: The Erection of a Wall Between Intelligence and Law Enforcement Investigations“.

The “failure” was also discussed in a November 2004 report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) titled “A Review of the FBI’s Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks“, which was provided to the 9/11 Commission, first released in a redacted version in June 2005, and fully unclassified in November 2006.

While the the identity of the FBI informant from whom al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar lived in San Diego was not revealed in any of those documents, news reports named the person as “Abdussattar Shaikh”.

The New York Times named him in an October 24, 2001, article titled “Sense of Trust Is Shaken in Man Who Took Suspects Into Home“, which did not report that Shaikh was an FBI asset. Those dots were connected by the Washington Post in an October 11, 2002, article titled “9/11 Panel Discusses Informant“.

Carlson’s episode on the pair of Al Qaeda operatives tracked by the CIA draws heavily on a more recent document helping to fill in some of the gaps. It’s a court filing of a sworn declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator at the Military Commissions Defense Organization, the arm of the Department of Defense (DOD) tasked with defending 9/11 conspirators before the Military Tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The document was obtained by SpyTalk, which published a Substack article about it on March 22, 2023, titled “Exclusive: FBI Agents Accuse CIA of 9/11 Coverup“.

FloridaBulldog.org interviewed Canestraro and reported about the document on April 9, 2023, in an article titled “Ex-FBI agents accuse top CIA, FBI officials of 9/11 coverup; CIA said to use Saudis, others for illegal domestic spy operations“.

Crediting SpyTalk with obtaining the filing, The Grayzone also reported about it on April 18, 2023, in an article titled “Bombshell filing: 9/11 hijackers were CIA recruits“.

The information contained in Canestraro’s declaration indicates that the CIA was working with Saudi intelligence to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar as informants.

According to Canestraro, he was told in September 2016 by former National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, who served under the Bush administration at the time of the 9/11 attacks, “that the CIA was running a ‘false flag’ operation to recruit the hijackers.”

Carlson shows excerpts of the document referring to it only as a “recently released court filing”, without explaining it was a sworn declaration from Canestraro or attributing SpyTalk or other publications that had reported it about it over two years ago.

The episode also heavily features Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent working with the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, “Alec Station”, who expresses his regret about keeping his own mouth shut on instructions that the reason the CIA was not passing on the information it had about the Al Qaeda operatives to FBI headquarters was that it had an operation under way that he was not to speak about.

I’ll be watching for part two of “The 9/11 Files”. It is great to see this information, which is probably completely unknown to most Americans, coming out at such a high profile independent media outlet.