TerrorismHouse panel to launch look at Anwar al-Awlaki

Published 18 August 2011

The House Homeland Security Committee has initiated an investigation into the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and whether he was an overlooked player in the terrorist attacks of 9/11; the 3-page letter from committee chairman Representative Peter King (R-New York) to Attorney General Eric Holder argues that a decade after the worst terrorist attack on the United States, the full story of 9/11 has not been told

The House Homeland Security Committee “has initiated an investigation” into the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and whether he was an overlooked key player in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a letter from the committee chairman to Attorney General Eric Holder says.

The 3-page letter, obtained exclusively by Fox News, argues that a decade after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the full story of 9/11 has not been told. The letter says:

This congressional investigation will seek to determine:

  • 1. To what extent Anwar al-Awlaki wittingly or unwittingly facilitated the plot of the 9/11 hijackers; and
  • 2. to what extent al-Awlaki was an al Qaeda operative, offering support to acts of terrorism prior to 9/11.

Fox News reports that the letter to Holder, sent by Representative Peter King (R-New York) on 26 May, confirms that investigators believe the American-born cleric’s contacts with three of the five hijackers on Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon, were more than merer coincidences, but rather evidence of a purposeful relationship. King writes:

Given the greater collection of intelligence and integration of pertinent data since the attacks of 9/11, I believe that al-Awlaki may have played greater roles in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as well as other terrorist plots, than those of which we have been previously aware…. Accordingly, I request the full assistance of the Department of Justice in carrying out this inquiry.

The letter goes on to say that the House committee investigation is seeking “all documents … in the possession of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any other DOJ entity or component” that pertain to al-Awlaki and seven other individuals, including his associate in San Diego Mohdar Abdullah and his associate in Virginia Eyad al-Rababah who directly aided the hijackers.

 

The letter says the committee is also seeking “files, reports, analysis, assessments, memoranda, notes and presentation in all forms” that are related to long-closed FBI investigations of al-Awlaki in 1999. In that case, the San Diego terrorism task force was investigating an alleged link between al-Awlaki, Usama bin Laden and a “known procurement agent named Ziyad Khaleel…(who) had previously purchased a satellite phone for (bin Laden).”

Fox New notes that “The tone of the letter and the materials being sought suggest that the congressional investigation believes there is compelling evidence that al-Awlaki may have been Al Qaeda from the beginning, and that his rise to an operational commander in the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, considered the most active, was not a surprise but rather a logical progression.”