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US intercepted al-Qa'ida warning on 10 September

Andrew Buncombe
Friday 21 June 2002 00:00 BST
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The day before 11 September, American intelligence intercepted conversations between al-Qa'ida operatives warning in Arabic that "the match is about to begin" and that "tomorrow is zero hour". Neither of the messages was translated until two days later.

It was revealed yesterday that the National Security Agency (NSA) – the intelligence community's electronic eavesdropping agency which works with Britain's GCHQ – intercepted the messages, made between undisclosed al-Qa'ida associates in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. They were considered "high priority" but not "top priority". Top priority would have referred to conversations involving Osama bin Laden or one of his most senior aides.

The messages were translated on 12 September – an indication of their relative importance given the demands on the intelligence community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington. But officials insisted that had they been translated immediately, there would not have been enough information to have acted upon.

"There had been a lot of chatter up there indicating something was up," a senior administration official told the Washington Post. "But it does not say where, what and how reliable. If you had it on September 10th, what does it tell you that is actionable?"

Details of the intercepts emerged earlier this week during closed-door hearings held by the House-Senate intelligence committee that is investigating possible intelligence failures in the run-up to 11 September.

Michael Hayden, the NSA's director, told legislators that the warnings were not specific enough to act upon. The NSA, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, intercepts more than two million electronic communications an hour. These come from phone conversations, e-mails, the internet and from satellites and listening posts around the world. Reports say that that while the NSA has an annual budget of $6bn (£4.2bn), it lacks the resources to filter and analyse the information it receives. Much of what it picks up is never analysed.

Yesterday the White House complained that secret information had leaked from the hearings. At President Bush's direction, Vice-President Dick Cheney called the committee's chairmen "to express the president's concerns about this inappropriate disclosure".

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