Book: Iranian Warned CIA Before 9/11

Eli Lake, NY Sun:

A new book alleges that the CIA was warned of a plot to attack New York and Washington by a walk-in Iranian defector a month and a half before September 11, 2001, but the potentially valuable informant was turned away. READ MORE

Information culled from a former security specialist for Iran's supreme leader named Hamid Reza Zakeri provide the grist for the most explosive allegation in Kenneth Timmerman's newly published "Countdown to Crisis" on Crown Books. In the first chapter, the author writes that Mr. Zakeri warned a CIA interrogation team in Baku, Azerbaijan, on July 26, 2001, that an attack was being planned for September 10. As soon as he said this, the lead questioner, according to Mr. Timmerman, burst out laughing.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Timmerman said he came to meet Mr. Zakeri in America through an associate of the son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi. The CIA yesterday offered no comment on the allegations in the new book.

Mr. Zakeri told Mr. Timmerman that inside Iran's intelligence headquarters in northern Tehran, a wall that normally displayed targets of the organization's assassination squads in the early summer of 2001 contained an oversize photograph of the World Trade Center. Beside it was a three-dimensional model of the White House and a 7-foot-high model of the Pentagon and model missiles scrawled in Arabic with "death to America."

"As Zakeri looked at the display, he understood that his government was preparing to help the Arabs who had come to Iran seeking assistance earlier that year and that their goal was to murder as many Americans as possible," Mr. Timmerman, a former Democratic Congressional staff member, wrote.

While it is now widely believed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has had some logistical contact with Al Qaeda over the last 10 years, Mr. Timmerman in his "Countdown to Crisis" claims that that cooperation runs far deeper. He alleges that Iran helped coordinate the emigration of Egyptian Islamic Jihad commanders to fight alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the months before the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also says the CIA went out of its way to hide information from the September 11 commission, handing over files on Iranian links to Al Qaeda at the last minute.

The commission concluded that Iranian-funded Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon trained some Al Qaeda members and that Iranian border guards facilitated the travel of some Al Qaeda fighters to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the commission stated, "We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation." However the report recommended that the Bush administration continue investigating Iran's ties to Al Qaeda.

A senior analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson, said yesterday that the strongest part of Mr. Timmerman's argument, that Iran and Al Qaeda coordinated the attacks of September 11, 2001, comes from the defectors discarded by the CIA.

"Ken quotes these documents that prove there was a lot of logistical cooperation. Ken thinks there was some kind of tactical cooperation on operations, but I don't think he provides any convincing evidence of that," Mr. Clawson said. "I don't think he proves that Iranian intelligence knew before hand about the details of Al Qaeda operations."

A former CIA operations officer with expertise on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said yesterday that the intelligence community does not know whether Iranian efforts to reach out to anti-American Sunni organizations has resulted in the joint planning of operations. "From the Iranian side, they have always been willing and eager to reach out to Sunni militants who despise the United States. Whether that has any operational aspect is entirely different," the American Enterprise Institute scholar said. "It's one thing to have a conference to reach out and give support. It's another thing to reach out to Sunni holy warriors who are operationally engaged in bombing the United States."

Mr. Gerecht said yesterday that his old employers turn away "the vast majority of walk-ins." Mr. Gerecht, who has not read the book, said yesterday that he finds it highly unlikely the CIA would have found an operational link between Al Qaeda and Iran regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001, without word being leaked to major newspapers.

"There are only two ways you would know for sure, the most reliable way would be a series of intercepts to give you incontrovertible proof. The secondary and lesser way would be if you had at least two walk-ins that gave you that type of information. I am deeply suspicious that that has occurred because it would have spread like wildfire," he said.

Another scholar and Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, yesterday said that he has yet to see evidence linking Iran to September 11, 2001. "I have not seen evidence that Iran played a role in 9-11," he said, "but lack of evidence does not mean there is not a linkage. The CIA has consistently refused to consider possibilities because of false conventional wisdom that Sunnis and Shiites do not work together. Oftentimes the CIA has refused to look into issues because they are afraid where it might lead. Anything that hurts the Iranian economy might hurt Brent Scowcroft's pocketbook."