brief - Iran 911 Case

within file cabinets full of thousands of hard-copy documents at the Fort Meadeheadquarters of the National Security Agency (―NSA‖), some of which had been movedto the 9/11 Commission‘s reading room in Washington. Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid. 102;Ex. 2, Timmerman 2nd Affid. 120-29; see Shenon, Phillip, The Commission, pp. 155-57; 371-73, Twelve / Grand Central Publishing, Hatchette Book Group USA (2008). TheNSA documents, which included electronic intercepts, were described by one of theCommission staff members who reviewed them as ―‗a gold mine, full of criticalinformation about al Qaeda and other terrorist groups dating back to the early 1990s.‘‖Ex. 6, Lopez-Tefft Affid. 103. Among the NSA materials were seventy-five (75)critical documents comprising a record of operational ties between Iran and al Qaedaduring the critical months just prior to September 11, 2001. Ex. 2, Timmerman 2ndAffid. 120-23. As described by the 9/11 Commission‘s conspiracy Team Leader, theintelligence reports found ―at virtually the last moment‖provid[ed] clear evidence that as many as ten of the 14 Saudi musclehijackers involved in the 9/11 attack traveled into or out of Iran betweenOctober 2000 and February 2001, a critical period in the life of theconspiracy when those operatives had to interrupt their training inAfghanistan to obtain U.S. visas in Saudi Arabia before returning for thefinal training in Afghanistan and Pakistan that would precede theireventual journey to the United States. Moreover, . . . [the intelligencereports] established a series of links between travel apparently conductedby various muscle hijackers during this stage of the plot and facilitationactivities of senior members of Hezbollah, the Iranian-supportedinternational terrorist organization.Ex. 5, Snell Affid. 19. Based on other sources, it is known that these intelligencereports were NSA materials that showed Iran had facilitated the travel of the al Qaedaoperatives and that Iranian border inspectors had been ordered not to place telltale stampsin the operatives‘ passports, thus keeping their travel documents clean. Ex. 2,17