American investigators were given the first name and phone number of one of the September 11 hijackers two-and-a-half years before the attacks but the US seems to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, German and US officials said.In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the CIA the first name and phone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked them to track him. The name and phone number in the UAE had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic militant in Hamburg who was closely linked to the key Qaeda plotters who mastermined the WTC attacks. ‘‘The Germans did give us the name ‘Marwan’ and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted number in the UAE,’’ a US official said.Shehhi was the man who controlled the plane that flew into the south tower of the WTC. The tip on Shehhi came months earlier than well-documented tips about two other hijackers who were found to have attended a meeting of militants in Malaysia in 2000. — (NYT)
