Editing Khalid al-Mihdhar (section)

===Intelligence leads===
Despite knowledge of his entry into the United States for over a year, al-Mihdhar was not placed on a CIA watchlist until August 21, 2001, and a note was sent on August 23 to the [[United States Department of State|Department of State]] and the [[Immigration and Naturalization Service]] (INS) suggesting that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi be added to their watchlists. The [[Federal Aviation Administration]] (FAA) was not notified about the two men.<ref name="smith">{{cite news |title=A History of Missed Connections |author=Smith, R. Jeffrey |date=2003-07-25 |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/07/25/a-history-of-missed-connections/03465f5e-f2f5-49b7-8964-3b847e0a7c5a/ |access-date=2008-09-30 |archive-date=23 December 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151223225336/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/07/25/a-history-of-missed-connections/03465f5e-f2f5-49b7-8964-3b847e0a7c5a/ |url-status=live }}</ref> On August 23, the CIA informed the FBI that al-Mihdhar had obtained a U.S. visa in Jeddah. The FBI headquarters received a copy of the Visa Express application from the Jeddah embassy on August 24, showing the New York Marriott as al-Mihdhar's destination.<ref name="rolince"/>  On 23 August, the [[Mossad]] gave al-Mihdhar's name to the CIA as one of 19 belonging to US residents they suspected would imminently attack the country; only four of these names are known publicly, the others belonging to fellow 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and Marwan al-Shehhi. It is not known if the list contained the names of all the 9/11 hijackers or if it were only coincidence that the list had as many names as there were hijackers in the 9/11 attacks.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a082301mossad |others=August 23, 2001: Mossad Reportedly Gives CIA List of Terrorist Living in US; at Least Four 9/11 Hijackers Named |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930031428/http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a082301mossad |archive-date=September 30, 2007 |title=Context of 'August 23, 2001: Mossad Reportedly Gives CIA List of Terrorist Living in US; at Least Four 9/11 Hijackers Named' |work=History Commons}}</ref>

On 28 August, the FBI New York field office requested that a criminal case be opened to determine whether al-Mihdhar was still in the United States, but the request was refused.<ref name="hill">{{cite web |url=https://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092002hill.html |title=The Intelligence Community's Knowledge of the September 11 Hijackers Prior to September 11, 2001 |author=Hill, Eleanor |work=Joint Inquiry into the Events of September 11, 2001 |publisher=Federation of American Scientists (FAS) |date=2002-09-20 |access-date=2008-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010233211/http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092002hill.html |archive-date=2008-10-10 |url-status=live }}</ref> The FBI ended up treating al-Mihdhar as an intelligence case, which meant that the FBI's criminal investigators could not work on the case, due to the barrier separating intelligence and criminal case operations.  An agent in the New York office sent an e-mail to FBI headquarters saying, "Whatever has happened to this, someday someone will die, and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.'"  The reply from headquarters was, "we [at headquarters] are all frustrated with this issue ... [t]hese are the rules. [[National Security Law Unit|NSLU]] does not make them up."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092002fbi.html |title=Prepared Statement of a New York Special Agent |work=Joint Inquiry into the Events of September 11, 2001 |publisher=Federation of American Scientists (FAS) |date=2002-09-20 |access-date=2008-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081014003935/http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/092002fbi.html |archive-date=2008-10-14 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The FBI contacted Marriott on 30 August, requesting that they check guest records, and on September 5, they reported that no Marriott hotels had any record of al-Mihdhar checking in.<ref name="rolince">{{cite web |url=https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/joint-inquiry-into-events-of-september-11-2001 |title=Testimony of Michael E. Rolince |work=Joint Inquiry into the Events of September 11, 2001 |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=2002-09-20 |access-date=2008-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110112151633/http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/joint-inquiry-into-events-of-september-11-2001 |archive-date=2011-01-12 |url-status=live }}</ref>  The day before the attacks, [[Robert Fuller (FBI)|Robert Fuller]] of the New York office requested that the Los Angeles FBI office check all local [[Sheraton Hotels and Resorts|Sheraton Hotel]]s,<ref name="rolince"/> as well as [[Lufthansa]] and [[United Airlines]] bookings, because those were the two airlines al-Mihdhar had used to enter the country.<ref name="hill"/>  Neither the [[United States Department of the Treasury|Treasury Department]]'s [[Financial Crimes Enforcement Network]] nor the FBI's Financial Review Group, which have access to credit card and other private financial records, were notified about al-Mihdhar prior to 11 September.<ref name="smith"/>

Regarding the CIA's refusal to inform the FBI about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, author [[Lawrence Wright]] suggests the CIA wanted to protect its turf and was concerned about giving sensitive intelligence to FBI Agent [[John P. O'Neill]], whom Alec Station chief [[Michael Scheuer]] described as duplicitous. Wright also speculates that the CIA may have been protecting intelligence operations overseas, and might have been eying al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi as recruitment targets to obtain intelligence on al-Qaeda, although the CIA was not authorized to operate in the United States and might have been leaving them for Saudi intelligence to recruit.<ref name="soufan"/><ref name="wright2">Wright (2006), pp. 310–315</ref>