The Phoenix Memo is a letter sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001 by FBI Special Agent Kenneth Williams, recommending the assembling of a worldwide listing of civil aviation schools. Williams, then stationed in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the o ...

, was investigating students at some of these schools for possible

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

links.

Content

According to Williams, the purpose of the memo was to:

advise the Bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. Phoenix has observed an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest who are attending or who have attended civil aviation universities and colleges in the State of Arizona.

The recommendations outlined by Williams were ignored or put aside because of other concerns. The memo was seen by at least one dozen officials of the FBI, including

John P. O'Neill John Patrick O'Neill (February 6, 1952September 11, 2001) was an American counter-terrorism expert who worked as a special agent and eventually a Special Agent in Charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1995, O'Neill began to intense ...

, but it was never passed to acting director Thomas J. Pickard, his successor

Robert Mueller Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013. A graduate of Princeton University and New York ...

or the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. In addition, the existence of the memo was not made known to President George W. Bush and his senior national security staff until May 2002. Mueller told the U.S. Congress in an emotional hearing in May 2002 that failure to act on the memo was the result of deficits in the FBI’s analytical capabilities.

Coleen Rowley (2002)

The memo became the subject of another communiqué in June 2002, when FBI Agent Coleen Rowley took advantage of the federal

Whistleblower Protection Act The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity consti ...

provisions to inform FBI Director

that his public statements about lack of “advance knowledge” by the bureau had no basis in fact. In her memo, Rowley wrote about the alleged suppression of the investigation concerning

Zacarias Moussaoui Zacarias Moussaoui (Arabic language, Arabic: زكريا موسوي, '; born May 30, 1968) is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the September 11 att ...

Analysis

Bill Gertz of ''

The Washington Times ''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...

'' suggested that the lack of attention to the memo was one of several intelligence failures leading to the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

Content

Coleen Rowley (2002)

Analysis

See also

References

Further reading