The discovery: " This is the passport of Satam al Suqami. A passerby picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed."
> ... Two of the passports that have survived, those of Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari, were clearly doctored. To avoid getting into classified detail, we will just state that these [passports] were manipulated in a fraudulent manner in ways that have been associated with al Qaeda. ...
Surrounding statements seem to contradict that, such as "And yet between 1992 and September 11th, 2001 we have not found any signs that intelligence, law enforcement or border inspection services sought to acquire, develop or disseminate systematic information about al Qaeda's or other terrorist groups travel and passport practices." How did they know the manipulations were al Qaeda's if nobody had been tracking their techniques for years? I guess it can be squared by presuming they cataloged some information post-9/11 (possibly including "training manuals recovered in the mid 1990s") that had been available before but not closely examined. I wonder if the determination of what al Qaeda passport techniques look like was a bit circularly-defined or sloppy, since they had little information to start with and concluded the investigation quickly.
> ... Two of the passports that have survived, those of Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari, were clearly doctored. To avoid getting into classified detail, we will just state that these [passports] were manipulated in a fraudulent manner in ways that have been associated with al Qaeda. ...
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing7/9-11Comm...
Surrounding statements seem to contradict that, such as "And yet between 1992 and September 11th, 2001 we have not found any signs that intelligence, law enforcement or border inspection services sought to acquire, develop or disseminate systematic information about al Qaeda's or other terrorist groups travel and passport practices." How did they know the manipulations were al Qaeda's if nobody had been tracking their techniques for years? I guess it can be squared by presuming they cataloged some information post-9/11 (possibly including "training manuals recovered in the mid 1990s") that had been available before but not closely examined. I wonder if the determination of what al Qaeda passport techniques look like was a bit circularly-defined or sloppy, since they had little information to start with and concluded the investigation quickly.