Bill McLaughlin

The story of 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi is absolutely fucking insane. Oklahoma State Trooper C. L. Parkins pulled Nawaf al-Hazmi over for speeding without a seat belt in April 2001. At the time, both the NSA and CIA suspected him of being a senior Al Qaeda terrorist but had no idea he was in the country. Suddenly, there he was, just randomly speeding without a seat belt in Oklahoma of all places. It was the perfect opportunity to discover and collapse the entire plot on the spot. Thousands of lives could have been saved. State Trooper Parkins did everything right. He ran a National Crime Information Center check on the driver and the vehicle and came up with a valid California driver’s license and an address in San Diego. But nothing flagged him as a terrorist. The CIA and NSA had made no effort to share information about Nawaf al-Hazmi with other sections of the American state. So Parkins had absolutely no way of knowing who he had really just stopped. Nawaf al-Hazmi copped a $138 fine and went on his way. Nawaf al-Hazmi ultimately spent almost two years just bumbling around America completely freely. Nobody knew anything about it - the government simply had no idea who the hell was in the country at any given time. Here was a guy who had fought as a jihadist in Bosnia and fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had been photographed attending a senior Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia with Al Qaeda terrorists who later blew up the USS Cole. Yet he was easily able to obtain a B-1/B-2 tourist visa and simply fly to the US unmolested. On August 23, 2001, the CIA finally formally added Nawaf al-Hazmi to U.S. watch lists and alerted the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the FBI. They belatedly added him to a list to prevent entry to the United States, at which point the INS determined that Nawaf al-Hazmi was already inside the country. This obviously should have set alarm bells ringing. But the search for him was only cursory. The FBI did not search credit card databases, bank account databases, or car registration, all of which would have produced positive results. They also appear to have failed to check the 2000–2001 San Diego phone book which listed Al-Hamzi's name, number and address. Al-Hazmi was not a master of counter-intelligence spycraft, to put it lightly. While living undercover as a senior wanted terrorist in an enemy land, he got into traffic accidents, partied with strippers in Las Vegas, and drew the attention of neighbours by hiring a fucking limousine to pick him up from his rental place. WHILE BEING A WANTED FUCKING TERRORIST!!! And just to top it all off, four months prior to the 9/11 attacks, he actually CALLED police himself to report somebody trying to steal his wallet. Al-Hazmi ultimately purchased his 9/11 plane tickets online using a credit card with his real name. This raised no red flags, since the FAA had not been informed that he was on a terrorist watch list. As a final added insult to injury, he set off a metal detector at the airport but passed through secondary screening. So many endless opportunities to catch this guy, but the American government had absolutely no idea who the hell was living in their country. The American state was a blind giant.