Congress to Probe Suspected Connection Between Anwar al-Awlaki and 9/11

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Fox News:

The House Homeland Security Committee “has initiated an investigation” into the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and whether he was an overlooked key player in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a letter from the committee chairman to Attorney General Eric Holder says.

The three-page letter, obtained exclusively by Fox News, makes the case that a decade after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the full story of 9/11 has not been told.

“This congressional investigation will seek to determine:


"1. To what extent Anwar al-Awlaki wittingly or unwittingly facilitated the plot of the 9/11 hijackers; and

"2. to what extent al-Awlaki was an al Qaeda operative, offering support to acts of terrorism prior to 9/11.”

The letter to Holder, sent by Republican Rep. Peter King of New York on May 26, confirms that investigators believe the American cleric's contacts with three of the five hijackers on Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon, were more than a series of coincidences, but rather evidence of a purposeful relationship.

“Given the greater collection of intelligence and integration of pertinent data since the attacks of 9/11, I believe that al-Awlaki may have played greater roles in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as well as other terrorist plots, than those of which we have been previously aware," King writes. "Accordingly, I request the full assistance of the Department of Justice in carrying out this inquiry.”

The hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were the first two hijackers into the U.S. – arriving in January 2000 at Los Angeles International Airport. One question always puzzled investigators: Why would the self-described architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, send two of his most experienced operatives, who spoke virtually no English, to the ghetto of San Diego unless there was someone there to meet them.

As part of the Fox News Specials Unit's ongoing investigation of the cleric, the executive director of the 9/11 commission Philip Zelikow confirmed that his investigators were highly suspicious of al-Awlaki and his relationship with the hijackers in San Diego.