Claim that Iranian warned the CIA about 9/11

A new book alleges that the CIA was warned of a plot to attack New York and Washington by a walk-in Iranian defector a month and a half before September 11, 2001, but the potentially valuable informant was turned away.

Information culled from a former security specialist for Iran's supreme leader named Hamid Reza Zakeri provide the grist for the most explosive allegation in Kenneth Timmerman's newly published "Countdown to Crisis" on Crown Books. In the first chapter, the author writes that Mr. Zakeri warned a CIA interrogation team in Baku, Azerbaijan, on July 26, 2001, that an attack was being planned for September 10. As soon as he said this, the lead questioner, according to Mr. Timmerman, burst out laughing.

A senior analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Patrick Clawson, said yesterday that the strongest part of Mr. Timmerman's argument, that Iran and Al Qaeda coordinated the attacks of September 11, 2001, comes from the defectors discarded by the CIA.

Another scholar and Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, yesterday said that he has yet to see evidence linking Iran to September 11, 2001. "I have not seen evidence that Iran played a role in 9-11," he said, "but lack of evidence does not mean there is not a linkage. The CIA has consistently refused to consider possibilities because of false conventional wisdom that Sunnis and Shiites do not work together. Oftentimes the CIA has refused to look into issues because they are afraid where it might lead. Anything that hurts the Iranian economy might hurt Brent Scowcroft's pocketbook."

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Remember, the Neocons have been trying to build up Iran as an enemy and have also been trying to discredit the CIA.