Richard Clarke, som var nasjonal sikkerhetsassistent under Clinton og Bush, hevder at det finnes en mørk hemmelighet i CIA om 9/11: to av selvmordsbomberne kom til USA i januar 2000 og CIA visste om dem, likevel ble de ikke stanset.

Clarke tror det var fordi CIA forsøkte å rekruttere dem, men mislykkes. CIA mistet dem, og de gjennomførte 9/11. Siden ble det lagt lokk på saken. Den var for pinlig.

Det var hva Clarke har kommet frem til. Han innrømmer det bare er en teori, men mener den er plausibel.

In the interview for the documentary, Clarke offers an incendiary theory that, if true, would rewrite the history of the 9/11 attacks, suggesting that the CIA intentionally withheld information from the White House and FBI in 2000 and 2001 that two Saudi-born terrorists were on U.S. soil—terrorists who went on to become suicide hijackers on 9/11.

Clarke speculates—and readily admits he cannot prove—that the CIA withheld the information because the agency had been trying to recruit the terrorists, while they were living in Southern California under their own names, to work as CIA agents inside Al Qaeda. After the recruitment effort went sour, senior CIA officers continued to withhold the information from the White House for fear they would be accused of “malfeasance and misfeasance,” Clarke suggests.
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Clarke’s theory addresses a central, enduring mystery about the 9/11 attacks— why the CIA failed for so long to tell the White House and senior officials at the FBI that the agency was aware that two Al Qaeda terrorists had arrived in the United States in January 2000, just days after attending a terrorist summit meeting in Malaysia that the CIA had secretly monitored.

In a written response prepared last week in advance of the broadcast, Tenet says that Clarke, who famously went public in 2004 to blow the whistle on the Bush White House over intelligence failures before 9/11, has “suddenly invented baseless allegations which are belied by the record and unworthy of serious consideration.”

The CIA insisted to the 9/11 Commission and other government investigations that the agency never knew the exact whereabouts of the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, inside the U.S.—let alone try to recruit them as spies.

Agency officials said the CIA’s delay in sharing information about the two terrorists was a grave failure, but maintained there was no suggestion of deception by CIA brass. Tenet has said he was not informed before 9/11 about Hazmi and Mihdhar’s travel to the U.S., although the intelligence was widely shared at lower levels of the CIA.
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“To this day, it is inexplicable why, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn’t tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn’t tell me,” Clarke said in the interview for the documentary, referring to Tenet and Cofer Black. “They told us everything—except this.”

He said that if he had known anything about Hazmi and Mihdhar even days before 9/11, he would have ordered an immediate manhunt to find them—and that it would have succeeded, possibly disrupting the 9/11 plot.

Det er ellers uforklarlig at CIA visste om de to saudi-araberne som kom til USA i januar 2000. De hadde vært på et terrormøte i Indonesia som CIA hadde skygget. De var kjent. Likevel kunne de slå seg ned i USA og leve under eget navn, helt frem til 9/11. Det rimer ikke. Clarke tror svaret er et mislykket rekrutteringsforsøk.

“We would have conducted a massive sweep,” he said. “We would have conducted it publicly. We would have found those assholes. There’s no doubt in my mind, even with only a week left. They were using credit cards in their own names. They were staying in the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, for heaven’s sake.” He said that “those guys would have been arrested within 24 hours.”

Clarkes antagelser har ingenting med konspirasjoner og at CIA sto bak 9/11 å gjøre. Hans teori er helt innenfor virkelighetens verden. Trolig vil George Tenet ta hemmeligheten med seg i graven.

An Explosive New 9/11 Charge