The CIA deliberately withheld information about the hijackers from the FBI and did so repeatedly, even when one of the hijackers they were protecting blew up the Cole. If they had not done so, the FBI would have prevented the plot.

The comment about no warrant is ludicrous. There was a warrant for bin Laden's arrest from Libya issued in 1998:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a041598interpol#a041598in...

Bin Laden was first indicted in the US in June 1998:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060898indictment&scale=0...

He was indicted by the US again later that year:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a110498indictment&scale=0...

Clinton also authorised the CIA to kill him, but CIA management withheld this authorisation from the chief of its bin Laden unit:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=alate98moredirectives&sca...
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a122698ciadoesntgetit&sca...

I don't know if Black was involved in the withholding of information, but he's either involved in the cover-up or incredibly stupid.

The thing about 100 CIA assets in Afghanistan is not new. It was in Tenet's book in early 2007.

If you want to play that game...

9/11 Commissioner Tom Kean said 9/11 was preventable, and didn't have to happen. Richard Clarke said that 9/11 might have been prevented. Louis Freeh said 9/11 could have been prevented.

Cofer, do you happen to have a copy of the documentation used during your 7/10/2001 presentation to Condoleezza Rice? We'd really like to see it.

October 28th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

From this report: “CB: Our assessment that morning was that “the ceiling was falling in,” an attack was imminent against U.S. interests and could very well be within the United States. There was no mystery; we fully expected to be struck, and struck hard. Director Tenet immediately recognized that things had taken a profound turn and there was a need for the upper levels of the U.S. government to appreciate this.

We’re about protecting America, not hoodwinking it.”

Then explain the following Cofer Black: Why then did you and Tenet forbid Tom Wilshire, the former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit from transferring over to the FBI the information the CIA had on Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Nawaf al-Hazmi and the fact that these two long time al Qaeda terrorists had been at the al Qaeda planning meeting on January 5-8, 2000 with Tawfiq Bin Attash, Khallad, thought at that time by the FBI to be the mastermind of the Cole bombing.

Wilshire had sent his CTC managers, the group you headed, these requests on July 13, 2001 and again on July 23, 2001. This information would have alerted the FBI Cole investigators to these long time al Qaeda terrorists who took part in the attacks on 9/11, and would have focused their attention on finding them in time to prevent the attacks on 9/11. You knew when you forbid Wilshire from transferring this information to the FBI that Khallad had been at that meeting planning the Cole bombing with Mihdhar and Hazmi, a fact you never communicated to the FBI until after the attacks on 9/11, not even to the FBI team investigating the Cole bombing.

Cofer, with holding material information from an on going FBI criminal investigtaion into the murder of 17 US sailors is a crime. Since the attacks on 9/11 and the attack on the USS Cole were planned at the very same Kuala Lumpur meeting, by withholding the information on this meeting from the FBI you allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11. At first it might appear that you did not actually know that withholding this information would allow a huge al Qaeda attack to take place inside of the US.

But what is even more horrific is that Wilshire’s July 5, 2001 email to his CIA CTC mangers, says he is sure that the people at Kuala Lumpur were connected to the warnings of a huge al Qaeda attack and in his email on July 23, 2001 Wilshire says that he is sure that Khalid al-Mihdhar and by association Nawaf al-Hazmi will be found at the location of next big al Qaeda operation. At the time of this email you and Tenet had already told Rice and Clarke in the White House that a huge al Qaeda attack was about to take place inside of the US that would kill thousands of Americans

On August 22, 2001 FBI IOS Agent Margaret Gillespie working in the CIA Bin Laden unit, a under your CTC group, found that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US and took this information to FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi, an FBI agent Wilshire had already recruited into helping him withhold the information on the Kuala Lumpur meeting from the FBI Cole investigators and criminally obstruct their investigtaion into the Cole bombing. It is clear that Wilshire was sure at that point that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US in order to take part in the huge al Qaeda attack that the CIA already knew about. When Gillespie had the CIA Bin Laden unit issue a world wide alert on August 23, 2001 for Mihdhar and Hazmi, this alert clearly went through out the CIA management hierarchy and right to both you and to George Tenet.

At that point not only did you know that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US in order to carry a massive attack directed at some target inside of the US, but you had been warned that this attack would kill thousands of Americans. But not only did you, after learning this, not do anything to warn the FBI criminal investigators that could have prevented this attack, but you allowed Wilshire and Corsi to sabotage any chance that the FBI Cole investigators, including Steve Bongardt and his team, would have to investigate and find Mihdhar and Hazmi in time to stop the attacks on 9/11.

Of course you were aware that if Bongardt had continued with his investigtaion of Mihdhar, and the photos you and the CIA had been hiding from them of Khallad at the Kuala Lumpur meeting came over to the FBI, you and many people at the CIA would have been arrested for criminally obstructing the Cole bombing investigtaion. But with what you knew, there is no possible way that you were not aware that your action were going to result in the deaths of thousands of Americans, by allowing your own subordinate to sabotage the only investigtaion that could have found Mihdhar and Hazmi in time to prevent this huge al Qaeda attack. You put saving your own worthless hide from going to prison for years above saving the lives of thousands of Americans.

Cofer, in your own words, you claim that: “We’re about protecting America, not hoodwinking it.” Then Cofer Black explain why you allowed you own subordinate, Tom Wilshire on your orders, to criminally obstruct and then to shut down the only investigtaion that could have stopped this huge al Qaeda attack when you knew that this could have prevented the deaths of thousands of people in the US!