Informant warned FBI in 2000 about 9/11 plot

[Stapes]

"More than a year before 9/11, a Pakistani-British man told the FBI an incredible tale: that he had been trained by bin Laden's followers to hijack airplanes and was now in America to carry out an attack. The FBI questioned him for weeks, but then let him go home, and never followed up. Now, the former al-Qaida insider is talking... [Niaz Khan] said his trainers never told him exactly what his terrorist mission in the United States would be. He said he was told he would learn more details from a half dozen other trained terrorists who, he was told, already were in the U.S. For three weeks, FBI counter-terrorist agents in Newark, N.J. interrogated Khan... NBC News has learned that Khan passed not one but two FBI polygraphs. A former FBI official says Newark agents believed Khan and tried to aggressively follow every lead in the case, but word came from headquarters saying, 'return him to London and forget about it.'"

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