brief - Iran 911 Case

senior Hezbollah operative. Also in November, [yet another musclehijacker] apparently flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut.In mid-November, . . . three of the future muscle hijackers . . . allof whom had obtained their U.S. visas in late October, traveled in a groupfrom Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then onward to Iran. An associate of asenior Hezbollah operative was on the same flight that took the futurehijackers to Iran. Hezbollah officials in Beirut and Iran were expectingthe arrival of a group during the same time period. The travel of thisgroup was important enough to merit the attention of senior figures inHezbollah.Later in November, two future muscle hijackers . . . flew into Iranfrom Bahrain. In February 2001, [another hijacker] may have taken aflight from Syria to Iran, and then traveled further within Iran to a pointnear the Afghan border.9/11 REPORT, pp. 240-41. The expert affidavits of Janice Kephart, Dietrich Snell, andClare Lopez-Bruce Tefft add insights into the significance of the 9/11 Commission‘sfindings on the Iranian government‘s facilitation of the 9/11 hijackers‘ travel through Iraninto and out of Afghanistan. Further, the expert affidavits of Kenneth Timmerman,Ronen Bergman, and Clare Lopez-Bruce Tefft provide details about the role of ImadMughniyah – the ―senior Hezbollah operative‖ – in Iran‘s sponsorship of terrorism.Finally, taken together, the sealed testimony of Witnesses X, Y, and Z contain revelationsabout Mughniyah, his integral role in the Iran-Hizballah-al Qaeda terror alliance, and inthe 9/11 attacks.The Iran-Hizballah connection to the 9/11 hijackers was only briefly andcryptically stated at the end of section 7.3 in Chapter 7 of the 9/11 REPORT – and notfurther developed. The reason is that, other than the FBI‘s Penttbom investigationinformation, the evidence came from intelligence reports of which the Commission staffhad only discovered and reviewed, ―at virtually the last moment of the Commission‘sexistence and only a week before publication of the 9/11 Report.‖ Ex. 5, Snell Affid.19. According to two of the Havlish experts and a respected journalist, this evidence lay16