CIA links Iran to 9-11 hijackers

WASHINGTON – Iran allowed eight Sept. 11 hijackers to enter its borders during the year before the 2001 terrorist attacks, but there is no proof that it took part in the plot, the acting director of the CIA said Sunday.

“We have ample evidence of people being able to move back and forth” across Iran, John McLaughlin said on “Fox News Sunday,” but “we have no evidence that there is some sort of official connection between Iran and 9-11.”

McLaughlin spoke amid reports that an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – expected to recommend a massive overhaul of the nation’s intelligence system this week – would reveal contacts between al Qaeda and Iran.

Commission chairman Thomas Kean said last month that al Qaeda had more contacts with Iran and Pakistan than Iraq despite the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein’s regime had links to the Sept. 11 attacks. And an interim report found “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

The panel’s final report is likely to renew questions about why the administration focused on Iraq after the Sept. 11 attacks and did not more seriously consider Iran as a possible ally of Osama bin Laden.

Time magazine reported that as early as October 2000, Iranian officials instructed border guards not to stamp the passports of al Qaeda members and not to harass them as they crossed the frontier.

Iran admits some of the 19 hijackers may have passed through illegally but says efforts to link it to al Qaeda are election-year “news fabrications.”

In other developments:

“ McLaughlin responded to reports that the panel would call for a Cabinet-level office to oversee the CIA, FBI and other civilian and military intelligence agencies. He said that while “a good argument can be made” for a national intelligence chief, “it would be hard to do it without adding an additional layer of bureaucracy.”

“ A Justice Department official said the commission opposes setting up a domestic intelligence agency modeled on Britain’s MI5.