← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 19521 | Posts: 26 | Started: 2005-08-09
2005-08-09 20:01 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/politics/09intel.html?ex=1124164800&en=0b0368251db2c4bb&ei=5070&emc=eta1]New York Times[/URL] August 9, 2005 Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00 By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.
The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.
A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.
The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.
Mr. Weldon first spoke publicly about the episode in June, in a little-noticed speech on the House floor and in an interview with The Times-Herald in Norristown, Pa. The matter resurfaced on Monday in a report by GSN: Government Security News, which is published every two weeks and covers domestic-security issues. The GSN report was based on accounts provided by Mr. Weldon and the same former intelligence official, who was interviewed on Monday by The New York Times in Mr. Weldon's office.
In a telephone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon said he was basing his assertions on similar ones by at least three other former intelligence officers with direct knowledge of the project, and said that some had first called the episode to his attention shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 19 hijackers, only Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the Central Intelligence Agency before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the F.B.I. until the spring of 2001.
Mr. Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work of the Able Danger team.
The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.
"Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al Qaeda targets," the former defense intelligence official said.
He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the former intelligence official said.
The unit, which relied heavily on data-mining techniques, was modeled after those first established by Army intelligence at the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center, now known as the Information Dominance Center, at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official said.
Mr. Weldon is an outspoken figure who is a vice chairman of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. He said he had recognized the significance of the episode only recently, when he contacted members of the military intelligence team as part of research for his book, "Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America and How the C.I.A. Has Ignored It."
Mr. Weldon's book prompted one veteran C.I.A. case officer to strongly dispute the reliability of one Iranian source cited in the book, saying the Iranian "was a waste of my time and resources."
Mr. Weldon said that he had discussed the Able Danger episode with Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and that at least two Congressional committees were looking into the episode.
In the interview on Monday, Mr. Weldon said he had been aware of the episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, when members of the team first brought it to his attention. He said he had told Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, about it in a conversation in September or October 2001, and had been surprised when the Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the operation.
Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Special Operations Command, said no one at the command now had any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings. If the program existed, Colonel Taylor said, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" on which only a few military personnel would have been briefed.
During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.
He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.
The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that "the software put them all together in Brooklyn."
According to the commission report, Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi were first identified in late 1999 or 2000 by the C.I.A. as Qaeda members who might be involved in a terrorist operation. They were tracked from Yemen to Malaysia before their trail was lost in Thailand. Neither man was put on a State Department watch list before they flew to Los Angeles in early 2000. The F.B.I. was not warned about them until the spring of 2001, and no efforts to track them were made until August 2001.
Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.
The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.
The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.
Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.
"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Mr. Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."
As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.
"The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were," Mr. Felzenberg said.
Philip Shenon and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting for this article.
2005-08-09 20:02 | User Profile
Does anyone still doubt that our (and no doubt Israel's) intelligence services knew of the 9-11 attack beforehand?
2005-08-09 20:09 | User Profile
The US and the Israelis knew about the 9/11 attack but not for the reasons in the article.
2005-08-09 20:26 | User Profile
Parts of the US Government along with Israel orchestrated 9/11, as their Manifesto, Project for a New American Century, had called for a "catastrophic, new Pearl Harbor" to start their war on the world.
I hope more people come to find the truth.
2005-08-09 20:27 | User Profile
Parts of the US Government along with Israel orchestrated 9/11, as their Manifesto, Project for a New American Century, had called for a "catastrophic, new Pearl Harbor" to start their war on the world. Remember Operation Northwoods?
I hope more people come to find the truth.
2005-08-09 20:50 | User Profile
Check out this link below.
Apparently some pesky questions on 9/11 are being openly discussed in the mainstream UK press.
[url]http://www.financialoutrage.org.uk/911_mainstream_media.htm[/url]
2005-08-09 20:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Parts of the US Government along with Israel orchestrated 9/11, as their Manifesto, Project for a New American Century, had called for a "catastrophic, new Pearl Harbor" to start their war on the world. Remember Operation Northwoods?
I hope more people come to find the truth.[/QUOTE]
Everybody knows this.
Those who deny it are engaging in doublethink.
They know full well that the CIA and FBI and MOSSAD et al knew that Atta and the other perps were an Al Queda cell, and indeed it's clear that the intelligence community were following the perps' movements closely for years, as one could only expect. But at the same time most folks deny that this could ever be so. They read this - in the bloody NYT - and then at the same time hold the contradictory belief that 9-11 was a total surprise.
It's really quite amazing.
9-11 was either treason or it was a gigantic intelligence failure proving the incompetence of the intelligence establishment. It has to be one or the other. If treason, then Bush should be impeached and everybody should go to jail or be hanged. If it was an intelligence failure, then nobody would hang but there would certainly be mass resignations/firings/demotions. But that's not what happened, in fact the whole crew got PROMOTED via expanded budgets and powers under the Patriot Act.
But it's clear that only success is rewarded. Given rewarded success, then it follows that the real mission was to bomb the WTC - a resounding success and so richly rewarded.
Which brings us back to treason.
In short, it really had to be treason, unless one is willing to say that our intelligence services are staffed by Huxley's Epsilon Semimorons, which they're most certainly not. Those are all real smart guys and gals in there.
So it was treason.
Treason. Let's all get this through our heads. Our intelligence services bombed us, or at least allowed us to be bombed. We all need to get very clear on that point.
This is obvious - patently obvious. It's on the very face of the thing.
Ergo, anybody who denies that it was treason is lying to himself. In other words, they're engaged in doublethink.
And millions and millions of Americans are in some form of denial of this obvious fact. Freepers and Dittoheads are clearly in the deepest - they are perhaps the most accomplished practitioners of doublethink in the world today.
Only extreme pain can bring them out of their self-inflicted denial.
Which is why we need another 9-11, a war with Iran, and a new draft.
It's the only way to deal with sheep.
2005-08-09 23:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE]In short, it really had to be treason, unless one is willing to say that our intelligence services are staffed by Huxley's Epsilon Semimorons, which they're most certainly not. Those are all real smart guys and gals in there. [/QUOTE]
That I think is a bit of a streach. Incompetent? You bet. But do you have any idea how many "potential threats" are tracked in the country at any given time. I have a bit of experience in this field and I think your giving too much credit to the intellegence services.
[QUOTE]According to the commission report, Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi were first identified in late 1999 or 2000 by the C.I.A. as Qaeda members who might be involved in a terrorist operation. They were tracked from Yemen to Malaysia before their trail was lost in Thailand. Neither man was put on a State Department watch list before they flew to Los Angeles in early 2000. The F.B.I. was not warned about them until the spring of 2001, and no efforts to track them were made until August 2001.[/QUOTE]
Even had they been tracked they, at this point, are guilty of overstaying visa's and holding multiple (yet valid) drivers licenses, just like the others. With the number of illegals from countries which "harbor terrorism" and those who openly preach violence against the US at the local mosque it doesn't suprise me a bit they were able to slip under the radar. Treason? Don't think so. Just too many potential threats and too few GS types monitoring them.
Although....being paranoid doesn't mean they won't eventually get you.
2005-08-10 05:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=jeffersonian] Treason? Don't think so. Just too many potential threats and too few GS types monitoring them..[/QUOTE]
They knew it was an Al Queda group. This is the same group that had already [URL=http://www.infoplease.com/spot/terror-qaeda.html]bombed US Embassies in Africa, and tried to take out Seattle[/URL].
They had to be very priority targets. This wasn't just a run-of-the-mill threat.
And we know that the [URL=http://antiwar.com/israeli-files.php]MOSSAD was hot on their trail [/URL] right up to the moment of the bombing.
Your theory simply doesn't wash.
They were either completely incompetent (which they're not), or treason was involved.
Answer me this: if it was incompentence, why were the leaders of the intelligence services not fired, and were instead promoted?
In addition, your comment about their being in the States on expired visas simply proves the point. Remember that these were known members of a very dangerous terrorist cell (who were training in flying jets) and who were watched closely. Slip under the radar? Man, they were never off the screen, as this article makes clear. They were watched like bugs under a microscope. And the expired visas made it easy as pie to foil their plans (which obviously involved skyjacking) by deporting them. Yet our intelligence services didn't deport them.
Sorry, Jeffersonian, that dog won't hunt. It had to be treason.
And I repeat that we all know this in our hearts, but we find the fact so distasteful that we drive it from our conscious minds.
I recall confronting one of my uncles with [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743201299/qid=1123650886/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1/102-0183125-3802556?v=glance&s=books&n=507846]clear, documentary proof [/URL] that Pearl Harbor was part of FDR's campaign to get us in the war. It didn't matter. He was too emotionally invested in America's good intentions to even recognize the evidence. We're dealing with the same phenomenon with 9-11.
All the facts point to this being a neokhan plan to get us into the War for Israel's Survival, but we deny it because it hurts too much to admit that our own government is the enemy.
We all need to break through our denial here.
2005-08-10 05:49 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Answer me this: if it was incompentence, why were the leaders of the intelligence services not fired, and were instead promoted?[/QUOTE]
Questions I've been asking and asking since 9/11.
Where were the waves of resignations - forced or otherwise - immediately afterwards? We would once routinely see high-level resignations in the wakes of scandals generally affecting only adminstrations or political parties; scandals of political credibility. Here is [I]the most devastating lapse of security in American history[/I].....thousands of vaporized corpses! - and yet it's followed by [B]promotions[/B]!
How was it possible - as the towers were burning and buckling, but not yet fallen - that [I]every [/I] newscast had on retired military experts lickety-split, all calmly assigning explicit blame onto al-Quaida? In the midst of that sort of utter chaos, when confusion should've reigned paramount, [U]every [/U] newscast featured a calm and collected 'expert', in studio, pointing their inerrant fingers at bin-Laden. We didn't even fully know what was [I]happening[/I] yet at 9.45 that morning, but we 'knew' who did it, how they did it and why they did it
Where- [B]WHERE [/B] - were the F-15s? It defies credulity that four major airliners could be highjacked and flown hundreds of miles offcourse without SAC [U]immediately[/U] responding. If this was indeed "incompetence", how is it possible the top brass were not immediately relieved and replaced? And in conjunction with that....
How is it possible that the FAA supervisor who personally destroyed the only existing black box recordings... long before the President or any of his inner circle could even listen to them.... [I]not [/I] be fired, tried and sentenced - let alone shot for treason?
As soon as all of this dawned on me that day - to be followed by NOTHING!; not even PISS-POOR EXCUSES!; even a simpleton had to know the fix was in and we had all just witnessed the 21st century torching of the Reichstag.
2005-08-10 05:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Does anyone still doubt that our (and no doubt Israel's) intelligence services knew of the 9-11 attack beforehand?[/QUOTE]I still suspect (though I can't be certain) that some Israelis actually infiltrated Al Qaeda and planted the idea for the 9-11 attacks in their heads.
At the very least, some Israelis knew about the attacks beforehand. That's been proven by the five Israeli "movers" who were caught filming and celebrating the attacks.
2005-08-10 06:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler] At the very least, some Israelis knew about the attacks beforehand. That's been proven by the five Israeli "movers" who were caught filming and celebrating the attacks.[/QUOTE]I also think Mossad was involved, but how does the five Israeli filming and celebrating the attacks "prove" this? Their claim, of course, was that they only starting filming after they heard on either the television or the radio that the attack had occured. I believe they are lying, but where is the "proof" of this?
Also I have to ask what was recently asked of me(by a Jew,BTW. lol) If these 5 mossad agents were involved in helping to pull off this successful attack, why were they acting in such a foolish manner, considering they might be noticed, among other things?
they knew about the attacks beforehand, no one can deny that.
2005-08-10 06:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=starr] they knew about the attacks beforehand, no one can deny that.[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
So, if both American and Israeli intelligence services knew of the attack beforehand, a fact proved beyond all doubt, the bureaucratic incompetence theory clearly fails the laugh test.
It had to be treason.
Like Ragman, that much was clear to me on 12 September 2001. And indeed it is clear to the entire world, since as I've shown it cannot be otherwise.
The interesting phenomenon is this doublethink that Americans are engaged in. Despite the fact that our intelligence services knew that this was an Al Queda cell that was planning a skyjacking and was thus carefully tracked throughout, a fact that is widely reported (this story is in all the major media), still the great majority of Americans persist in holding the contradictory notion that 9-11 was a dastardly surprise attack on an unsuspecting America.
It's really quite astonishing. I really never understood how most people can do this mental trick of holding two contradictory thoughts in their heads while simultaneously believing them both to be true.
But this is what we're dealing with - a sort of mass psychosis exemplified by Freepers and Dittoheads.
And these self-deluded fools have the vote.
I really hate democracy.
2005-08-10 15:11 | User Profile
I also think Mossad was involved, but how does the five Israeli filming and celebrating the attacks "prove" this? Their claim, of course, was that they only starting filming after they heard on either the television or the radio that the attack had occured. I believe they are lying, but where is the "proof" of this?
Read the list of stuf they were caught with when arrested. Thousands in cash, boxcutters(!) in addition to the video gear. That's another thing, do "movers" routinely carry around video cameras? If indeed they only started filming after they heard of the attacks, would they have had time to run home, in the massive traffic and confusion surrounding the attacks, get their camera and find a nice vantage point before the towers came down? Maybe IR can answer this one.
Also I have to ask what was recently asked of me(by a Jew,BTW. lol) If these 5 mossad agents were involved in helping to pull off this successful attack, why were they acting in such a foolish manner, considering they might be noticed, among other things?
Chutzpah? Arrogance, believing the goys far too stupid to see what was going on right in front of their un-hooked noses? It wouldn't be the first time their sheer gall had gotten them in trouble. Fortunately, their "allies" in the Bush administration whisked them out of the country and away from questions ASAP. Would've loved to have been a fly on the wall for that little debriefing.
Here is the most devastating lapse of security in American history.....thousands of vaporized corpses! - and yet it's followed by promotions!
There's precedent for this. The Ruby Ridge and Waco cluster-fks were followed by promotions, in spite of some public finger-wagging and tsk-tsking. The fact that not one player in the whole deal was even ceremoniously thrown to the wolves for show tells me that yes, they were being rewarded for a job well done.
2005-08-10 15:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=MadScienceType]The Ruby Ridge and Waco cluster-f**ks were followed by promotions, in spite of some public finger-wagging and tsk-tsking. .[/QUOTE]
But see, that's just the point.
Waco wasn't a cluster-f****, it was a successful military operation that achieved its goal: to wipe out the Branch Davidians, men, women and children included. And thereby put a healthy fear of the Feds in every American heart.
Success is rewarded, failure is punished.
It follows that when one sees promotions and other rewards that don't make apparent sense, the first thing to clarify is what the real mission was.
Like the 9-11 intelligence operatives, the Waco ATF stormtroopers succeeded alright, else they wouldn't have been rewarded.
We just need to get real clear on what their real goal was.
2005-08-10 18:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Questions I've been asking and asking since 9/11. .[/QUOTE]
Great questions.
Here are some of my own:
Michael Moore made famous the home video of Shrub at that first grade reading lesson when he was first told of the attack. Note the reaction of the Secret Service. If indeed they thought that there was a coordinated attack by known Al Queda cells on the WTC, the Pentagon and the White House, then why did the Secret Service wait so long to get Shrub out of there and on to Air Force 1? After all, it was no secret where Shrub was located: at a PR opportunity in a public school that could easily have been taken by storm by a dozen or so suicidal commandos. If there really was a surprise attack aimed at the President, then neither Bush nor the Secret Service acted like it. In fact, they acted much like it was just business as usual, and that in fact they'd been expecting this to happen. Clearly, they saw no threat, or at least one that they didn't have well in hand.
If there really was a threat from Al Queda, then the first thing that any sane country would do is to close the border, deport all illegals, and tighten up on visa controls. But there was no effort to close the border to Al Queda operatives. In fact, the Shrub administration is doing everything it can to subvert even the security half measures that were already on the books, and this despite reports in the media that some of the illegals crossing the Mexican border are Muslims. Again, this evinces a confidence on the part of the Shrub administration that there is no real Al Queda threat, or at least one they don't control.
If bin Laden was for real, then the fact that he was not yet apprehended after what should have been the largest and most sophisticated manhunt in history indicates either total incompetence or a covert desire to keep him free. We can exclude incompetence, because our military is capable of amazing feats when it focuses its mind on a mission. Therefore, one can only conclude that bin Laden is serving some purpose, and indeed may well be on their payroll. Note also that Shrub admitted that apprehending bin Laden was near the bottom of his priority list. So what purpose does bin Laden serve? My guess is that he's our Emanuel Goldstein - the face of all "Evil" in the world, a symbol that Freepers and Dittoheads can react to on a purely emotional level, obviating the need for critical thought. He needs to remain at large, at least for the time being, to crank up war hysteria. Keep in mind also that bin Laden is a CIA creation. His whole organization was created and funded by the US intelligence services in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s. One theory is that this is "blowback" from that operation, but Occam's razor cuts in the direction of bin Laden having cut a deal with CIA/MOSSAD. The CIA created bin Laden, it only would make sense that they're still running him as an agent. What they offerred him for all this is beyond me - some sort of power position in the Arab world, I would imagine.
2005-08-10 21:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE]9-11 was either treason or it was a gigantic intelligence failure proving the incompetence of the intelligence establishment. It has to be one or the other. If treason, then Bush should be impeached and everybody should go to jail or be hanged. If it was an intelligence failure, then nobody would hang but there would certainly be mass resignations/firings/demotions. But that's not what happened, in fact the whole crew got PROMOTED via expanded budgets and powers under the Patriot Act.
But it's clear that only success is rewarded. Given rewarded success, then it follows that the real mission was to bomb the WTC - a resounding success and so richly rewarded.
Which brings us back to treason.
In short, it really had to be treason, unless one is willing to say that our intelligence services are staffed by Huxley's Epsilon Semimorons, which they're most certainly not. Those are all real smart guys and gals in there.
So it was treason.
Treason. Let's all get this through our heads. Our intelligence services bombed us, or at least allowed us to be bombed. We all need to get very clear on that point.
This is obvious - patently obvious. It's on the very face of the thing. [/QUOTE] Indeed. [I]Res ipsa loquitur.[/I]
2005-08-10 21:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Also I have to ask what was recently asked of me(by a Jew,BTW. lol) If these 5 mossad agents were involved in helping to pull off this successful attack, why were they acting in such a foolish manner, considering they might be noticed, among other things? [/QUOTE] Why? Because they could! They did it; they got caught; and nothing happened!
2005-08-10 21:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE]All the facts point to this being a neokhan plan to get us into the War for Israel's Survival, but we deny it because it hurts too much to admit that our own government is the enemy.[/QUOTE]Think about what we're dealing with Walter. We can understand why that notion is unthinkable. We have a centralized government that acts as our societal brain. It coordinates activity, distributes resources, stores and disseminates "information", etc. For an American to accept that his government is his enemy is for a part of an organism to accept that its brain is its enemy. Think of the cost of reaching such a conclusion in error. And think of the implications of reaching such a conclusion correctly! The solution involves dismantling the brain, i.e., the suicide of the organism!
2005-08-10 21:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE]In addition, your comment about their being in the States on expired visas simply proves the point. Remember that these were known members of a very dangerous terrorist cell (who were training in flying jets) and who were watched closely. Slip under the radar? Man, they were never off the screen, as this article makes clear. They were watched like bugs under a microscope. And the expired visas made it easy as pie to foil their plans (which obviously involved skyjacking) by deporting them. Yet our intelligence services didn't deport them.[/QUOTE]
No it is the point. High priority targets? Have you read the 9-11 commission report. What is being presented as fact is a bunch of after the fact uncorroborated conspiracy theory hokum.
Do you have any idea how many run of the mill, regular joe, supervisors, field agents, analyst's, paper pushers, etc. would have to be involved without their being a leak for your hypothsis to be true?
Sorry I'll still have to dissent.
2005-08-11 02:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=jeffersonian]No it is the point. High priority targets? Have you read the 9-11 commission report. What is being presented as fact is a bunch of after the fact uncorroborated conspiracy theory hokum.
Do you have any idea how many run of the mill, regular joe, supervisors, field agents, analyst's, paper pushers, etc. would have to be involved without their being a leak for your hypothsis to be true?
Sorry I'll still have to dissent.[/QUOTE]
You mean people like Sibel Edmonds?
What about Coleen Rowley? [url]http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1002553,00.html?internalid=related[/url]
Say, "[I]Who[/I]?", then read her memo, then ponder on how all of her efforts added up to nothing more than a forced retirement...
[QUOTE][url]http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,249997,00.html[/url] Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller An edited version of the agent's 13-page letter SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR Posted Vignette StoryServer 5.0 Thu Jun 23 09:07:22 2005 May 21, 2002
FBI Director Robert Mueller FBI Headquarters Washington, D.C.
Dear Director Mueller:
I feel at this point that I have to put my concerns in writing concerning the important topic of the FBI's response to evidence of terrorist activity in the United States prior to September 11th. The issues are fundamentally ones of INTEGRITY and go to the heart of the FBI's law enforcement mission and mandate. Moreover, at this critical juncture in fashioning future policy to promote the most effective handling of ongoing and future threats to United States citizens' security, it is of absolute importance that an unbiased, completely accurate picture emerge of the FBI's current investigative and management strengths and failures.
To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring. The term "cover up" would be too strong a characterization which is why I am attempting to carefully (and perhaps over laboriously) choose my words here. I base my concerns on my relatively small, peripheral but unique role in the Moussaoui investigation in the Minneapolis Division prior to, during and after September 11th and my analysis of the comments I have heard both inside the FBI (originating, I believe, from you and other high levels of management) as well as your Congressional testimony and public comments.
I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons:
1) The Minneapolis agents who responded to the call about Moussaoui's flight training identified him as a terrorist threat from a very early point. The decision to take him into custody on August 15, 2001, on the INS "overstay" charge was a deliberate one to counter that threat and was based on the agents' reasonable suspicions. While it can be said that Moussaoui's overstay status was fortuitous, because it allowed for him to be taken into immediate custody and prevented him receiving any more flight training, it was certainly not something the INS coincidentally undertook of their own volition. I base this on the conversation I had when the agents called me at home late on the evening Moussaoui was taken into custody to confer and ask for legal advice about their next course of action. The INS agent was assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and was therefore working in tandem with FBI agents.
2) As the Minneapolis agents' reasonable suspicions quickly ripened into probable cause, which, at the latest, occurred within days of Moussaoui's arrest when the French Intelligence Service confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups and activities connected to Osama Bin Laden, they became desperate to search the computer lap top that had been taken from Moussaoui as well as conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects. The agents in particular believed that Moussaoui signaled he had something to hide in the way he refused to allow them to search his computer.
3) The Minneapolis agents' initial thought was to obtain a criminal search warrant, but in order to do so, they needed to get FBI Headquarters' (FBIHQ's) approval in order to ask for DOJ OIPR's approval to contact the United States Attorney's Office in Minnesota. Prior to and even after receipt of information provided by the French, FBIHQ personnel disputed with the Minneapolis agents the existence of probable cause to believe that a criminal violation had occurred/was occurring. As such, FBIHQ personnel refused to contact OIPR to attempt to get the authority. While reasonable minds may differ as to whether probable cause existed prior to receipt of the French intelligence information, it was certainly established after that point and became even greater with successive, more detailed information from the French and other intelligence sources. The two possible criminal violations initially identified by Minneapolis Agents were violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b (Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, which, notably, includes "creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury to any other person by destroying or damaging any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States or by attempting or conspiring to destroy or damage any structure, conveyance, or other real or personal property within the United States") and Section 32 (Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities). It is important to note that the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th was based on probable cause of a violation of Section 32.1 Notably also, the actual search warrant obtained on September 11th did not include the French intelligence information. Therefore, the only main difference between the information being submitted to FBIHQ from an early date which HQ personnel continued to deem insufficient and the actual criminal search warrant which a federal district judge signed and approved on September 11th, was the fact that, by the time the actual warrant was obtained, suspected terrorists were known to have highjacked planes which they then deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To say then, as has been iterated numerous times, that probable cause did not exist until after the disasterous event occurred, is really to acknowledge that the missing piece of probable cause was only the FBI's (FBIHQ's) failure to appreciate that such an event could occur. The probable cause did not otherwise improve or change. When we went to the United States Attorney's Office that morning of September 11th, in the first hour after the attack, we used a disk containing the same information that had already been provided to FBIHQ; then we quickly added Paragraph 19 which was the little we knew from news reports of the actual attacks that morning. The problem with chalking this all up to the "20-20 hindsight is perfect" problem, (which I, as all attorneys who have been involved in deadly force training or the defense of various lawsuits are fully appreciative of), is that this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences. It is obvious, from my firsthand knowledge of the events and the detailed documentation that exists, that the agents in Minneapolis who were closest to the action and in the best position to gauge the situation locally, did fully appreciate the terrorist risk/danger posed by Moussaoui and his possible co-conspirators even prior to September 11th. Even without knowledge of the Phoenix communication (and any number of other additional intelligence communications that FBIHQ personnel were privy to in their central coordination roles), the Minneapolis agents appreciated the risk. So I think it's very hard for the FBI to offer the "20-20 hindsight" justification for its failure to act! Also intertwined with my reluctance in this case to accept the "20-20 hindsight" rationale is first-hand knowledge that I have of statements made on September 11th, after the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already occurred, made telephonically by the FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) who was the one most involved in the Moussaoui matter and who, up to that point, seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts (see number 5). Even after the attacks had begun, the SSA in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis' prior suspicions about Moussaoui.2
4) In one of my peripheral roles on the Moussaoui matter, I answered an e-mail message on August 22, 2001, from an attorney at the National Security Law Unit (NSLU). Of course, with (ever important!) 20-20 hindsight, I now wish I had taken more time and care to compose my response. When asked by NSLU for my "assessment of (our) chances of getting a criminal warrant to search Moussaoui's computer", I answered, "Although I think there's a decent chance of being able to get a judge to sign a criminal search warrant, our USAO seems to have an even higher standard much of the time, so rather than risk it, I advised that they should try the other route." Leaked news accounts which said the Minneapolis Legal Counsel (referring to me) concurred with the FBIHQ that probable cause was lacking to search Moussaoui's computer are in error. (or possibly the leak was deliberately skewed in this fashion?) What I meant by this pithy e-mail response, was that although I thought probable cause existed ("probable cause" meaning that the proposition has to be more likely than not, or if quantified, a 51% likelihood), I thought our United States Attorney's Office, (for a lot of reasons including just to play it safe) in regularly requiring much more than probable cause before approving affidavits, (maybe, if quantified, 75%-80% probability and sometimes even higher), and depending on the actual AUSA who would be assigned, might turn us down. As a tactical choice, I therefore thought it would be better to pursue the "other route" (the FISA search warrant) first, the reason being that there is a common perception, which for lack of a better term, I'll call the "smell test" which has arisen that if the FBI can't do something through straight-up criminal methods, it will then resort to using less-demanding intelligence methods. Of course this isn't true, but I think the perception still exists. So, by this line of reasoning, I was afraid that if we first attempted to go criminal and failed to convince an AUSA, we wouldn't pass the "smell test" in subsequently seeking a FISA. I thought our best chances therefore lay in first seeking the FISA. Both of the factors that influenced my thinking are areas arguably in need of improvement: requiring an excessively high standard of probable cause in terrorism cases and getting rid of the "smell test" perception. It could even be argued that FBI agents, especially in terrorism cases where time is of the essence, should be allowed to go directly to federal judges to have their probable cause reviewed for arrests or searches without having to gain the USAO's approval.4
5) The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism investigations and the obtaining and use of FISA searches (and who theoretically were privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field division agents), continued to, almost inexplicably,5 throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause.6 In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!
Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval!
6 ) Eventually on August 28, 2001, after a series of e-mails between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, which suggest that the FBIHQ SSA deliberately further undercut the FISA effort by not adding the further intelligence information which he had promised to add that supported Moussaoui's foreign power connection and making several changes in the wording of the information that had been provided by the Minneapolis Agent, the Minneapolis agents were notified that the NSLU Unit Chief did not think there was sufficient evidence of Moussaoui's connection to a foreign power. Minneapolis personnel are, to this date, unaware of the specifics of the verbal presentations by the FBIHQ SSA to NSLU or whether anyone in NSLU ever was afforded the opportunity to actually read for him/herself all of the information on Moussaoui that had been gathered by the Minneapolis Division and the French intelligence service. Obviously verbal presentations are far more susceptible to mis-characterization and error. The e-mail communications between Minneapolis and FBIHQ, however, speak for themselves and there are far better witnesses than me who can provide their first hand knowledge of these events characterized in one Minneapolis agent's e-mail as FBIHQ is "setting this up for failure." My only comment is that the process of allowing the FBI supervisors to make changes in affidavits is itself fundamentally wrong, just as, in the follow-up to FBI Laboratory Whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst's allegations, this process was revealed to be wrong in the context of writing up laboratory results. With the Whitehurst allegations, this process of allowing supervisors to re-write portions of laboratory reports, was found to provide opportunities for over-zealous supervisors to skew the results in favor of the prosecution. In the Moussaoui case, it was the opposite -- the process allowed the Headquarters Supervisor to downplay the significance of the information thus far collected in order to get out of the work of having to see the FISA application through or possibly to avoid taking what he may have perceived as an unnecessary career risk.7 I understand that the failures of the FBIHQ personnel involved in the Moussaoui matter are also being officially excused because they were too busy with other investigations, the Cole bombing and other important terrorism matters, but the Supervisor's taking of the time to read each word of the information submitted by Minneapolis and then substitute his own choice of wording belies to some extent the notion that he was too busy. As an FBI division legal advisor for 12 years (and an FBI agent for over 21 years), I can state that an affidavit is better and will tend to be more accurate when the affiant has first hand information of all the information he/she must attest to. Of necessity, agents must continually rely upon information from confidential sources, third parties and other law enforcement officers in drafting affidavits, but the repeating of information from others greatly adds to the opportunities for factual discrepancies and errors to arise. To the extent that we can minimize the opportunity for this type of error to arise by simply not allowing unnecessary re-writes by supervisory staff, it ought to be done. (I'm not talking, of course, about mere grammatical corrections, but changes of some substance as apparently occurred with the Moussaoui information which had to be, for lack of a better term, "filtered" through FBIHQ before any action, whether to seek a criminal or a FISA warrant, could be taken.) Even after September 11th, the fear was great on the part of Minneapolis Division personnel that the same FBIHQ personnel would continue their "filtering" with respect to the Moussaoui investigation, and now with the added incentive of preventing their prior mistakes from coming to light. For this reason, for weeks, Minneapolis prefaced all outgoing communications (ECs) in the PENTTBOM investigation with a summary of the information about Moussaoui. We just wanted to make sure the information got to the proper prosecutive authorities and was not further suppressed! This fear was probably irrational but was nonetheless understandable in light of the Minneapolis agents' prior experiences and frustrations involving FBIHQ. (The redundant preface information regarding Moussaoui on otherwise unrelative PENTTBOM communications has ended up adding to criminal discovery issues, but this is the reason it was done.)
7) Although the last thing the FBI or the country needs now is a witch hunt, I do find it odd that (to my knowledge) no inquiry whatsoever was launched of the relevant FBIHQ personnel's actions a long time ago. Despite FBI leaders' full knowledge of all the items mentioned herein (and probably more that I'm unaware of), the SSA, his unit chief, and other involved HQ personnel were allowed to stay in their positions and, what's worse, occupy critical positions in the FBI's SIOC Command Center post September 11th. (The SSA in question actually received a promotion some months afterward!) It's true we all make mistakes and I'm not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes. I'm relatively certain that if it appeared that a lowly field office agent had committed such errors of judgment, the FBI's OPR would have been notified to investigate and the agent would have, at the least, been quickly reassigned. I'm afraid the FBI's failure to submit this matter to OPR (and to the IOB) gives further impetus to the notion (raised previously by many in the FBI) of a double standard which results in those of lower rank being investigated more aggressively and dealt with more harshly for misconduct while the misconduct of those at the top is often overlooked or results in minor disciplinary action. From all appearances, this double standard may also apply between those at FBIHQ and those in the field.
8) The last official "fact" that I take issue with is not really a fact, but an opinion, and a completely unsupported opinion at that. In the day or two following September 11th, you, Director Mueller, made the statement to the effect that if the FBI had only had any advance warning of the attacks, we (meaning the FBI), may have been able to take some action to prevent the tragedy. Fearing that this statement could easily come back to haunt the FBI upon revelation of the information that had been developed pre-September 11th about Moussaoui, I and others in the Minneapolis Office, immediately sought to reach your office through an assortment of higher level FBIHQ contacts, in order to quickly make you aware of the background of the Moussaoui investigation and forewarn you so that your public statements could be accordingly modified. When such statements from you and other FBI officials continued, we thought that somehow you had not received the message and we made further efforts. Finally when similar comments were made weeks later, in Assistant Director Caruso's congressional testimony in response to the first public leaks about Moussaoui we faced the sad realization that the remarks indicated someone, possibly with your approval, had decided to circle the wagons at FBIHQ in an apparent effort to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny. Everything I have seen and heard about the FBI's official stance and the FBI's internal preparations in anticipation of further congressional inquiry, had, unfortunately, confirmed my worst suspicions in this regard. After the details began to emerge concerning the pre-September 11th investigation of Moussaoui, and subsequently with the recent release of the information about the Phoenix EC, your statement has changed. The official statement is now to the effect that even if the FBI had followed up on the Phoenix lead to conduct checks of flight schools and the Minneapolis request to search Moussaoui's personal effects and laptop, nothing would have changed and such actions certainly could not have prevented the terrorist attacks and resulting loss of life. With all due respect, this statement is as bad as the first! It is also quite at odds with the earlier statement (which I'm surprised has not already been pointed out by those in the media!) I don't know how you or anyone at FBI Headquarters, no matter how much genius or prescience you may possess, could so blithely make this affirmation without anything to back the opinion up than your stature as FBI Director. The truth is, as with most predictions into the future, no one will ever know what impact, if any, the FBI's following up on those requests, would have had. Although I agree that it's very doubtful that the full scope of the tragedy could have been prevented, it's at least possible we could have gotten lucky and uncovered one or two more of the terrorists in flight training prior to September 11th, just as Moussaoui was discovered, after making contact with his flight instructors. It is certainly not beyond the realm of imagination to hypothesize that Moussaoui's fortuitous arrest alone, even if he merely was the 20th hijacker, allowed the hero passengers of Flight 93 to overcome their terrorist hijackers and thus spare more lives on the ground. And even greater casualties, possibly of our Nation's highest government officials, may have been prevented if Al Qaeda intended for Moussaoui to pilot an entirely different aircraft. There is, therefore at least some chance that discovery of other terrorist pilots prior to September 11th may have limited the September 11th attacks and resulting loss of life. Although your conclusion otherwise has to be very reassuring for some in the FBI to hear being repeated so often (as if saying it's so may make it so), I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all costs. I think the only fair response to this type of question would be that no one can pretend to know one way or another.
Mr. Director, I hope my observations can be taken in a constructive vein. They are from the heart and intended to be completely apolitical. Hopefully, with our nation's security on the line, you and our nation's other elected and appointed officials can rise above the petty politics that often plague other discussions and do the right thing. You do have some good ideas for change in the FBI but I think you have also not been completely honest about some of the true reasons for the FBI's pre-September 11th failures. Until we come clean and deal with the root causes, the Department of Justice will continue to experience problems fighting terrorism and fighting crime in general.
I have used the "we" term repeatedly herin to indicate facts about others in the Minneapolis Office at critical times, but none of the opinions expressed herin can be attributed to anyone but myself. I know that those who know me would probably describe me as, by nature, overly opinionated and sometimes not as discreet as I should be. Certainly some of the above remarks may be interpreted as falling into that category, but I really do not intend anything as a personal criticism of you or anyone else in the FBI, to include the FBIHQ personnel who I believe were remiss and mishandled their duties with regard to the Moussaoui investigation. Truly my only purpose is to try to provide the facts within my purview so that an accurate assessment can be obtained and we can learn from our mistakes. I have pointed out a few of the things that I think should be looked at but there are many, many more.8 An honest acknowledgment of the FBI's mistakes in this and other cases should not lead to increasing the Headquarters bureaucracy and approval levels of investigative actions as the answer. Most often, field office agents and field office management on the scene will be better suited to the timely and effective solution of crimes and, in some lucky instances, to the effective prevention of crimes, including terrorism incidents. The relatively quick solving of the recent mailbox pipe-bombing incidents which resulted in no serious injuries to anyone are a good example of effective field office work (actually several field offices working together) and there are hundreds of other examples. Although FBIHQ personnel have, no doubt, been of immeasurable assistance to the field over the years, I'm hard pressed to think of any case which has been solved by FBIHQ personnel and I can name several that have been screwed up! Decision-making is inherently more effective and timely when decentralized instead of concentrated.
Your plans for an FBI Headquarters' "Super Squad" simply fly in the face of an honest appraisal of the FBI's pre-September 11th failures. The Phoenix, Minneapolis and Paris Legal Attache Offices reacted remarkably exhibiting keen perception and prioritization skills regarding the terrorist threats they uncovered or were made aware of pre-September 11th. The same cannot be said for the FBI Headquarters' bureaucracy and you want to expand that?! Should we put the counterterrorism unit chief and SSA who previously handled the Moussaoui matter in charge of the new "Super Squad"?! You are also apparently disregarding the fact the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), operating out of field divisions for years, (the first and chief one being New York City's JTTF), have successfully handled numerous terrorism investigations and, in some instances, successfully prevented acts of terrorism. There's no denying the need for more and better intelligence and intelligence management, but you should think carefully about how much gate keeping power should be entrusted with any HQ entity. If we are indeed in a "war", shouldn't the Generals be on the battlefield instead of sitting in a spot removed from the action while still attempting to call the shots?
I have been an FBI agent for over 21 years and, for what it's worth, have never received any form of disciplinary action throughout my career. From the 5th grade, when I first wrote the FBI and received the "100 Facts about the FBI" pamphlet, this job has been my dream. I feel that my career in the FBI has been somewhat exemplary, having entered on duty at a time when there was only a small percentage of female Special Agents. I have also been lucky to have had four children during my time in the FBI and am the sole breadwinner of a family of six. Due to the frankness with which I have expressed myself and my deep feelings on these issues, (which is only because I feel I have a somewhat unique, inside perspective of the Moussaoui matter, the gravity of the events of September 11th and the current seriousness of the FBI's and United States' ongoing efforts in the "war against terrorism"), I hope my continued employment with the FBI is not somehow placed in jeopardy. I have never written to an FBI Director in my life before on any topic. Although I would hope it is not necessary, I would therefore wish to take advantage of the federal "Whistleblower Protection" provisions by so characterizing my remarks.
Sincerely
Coleen M. Rowley Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel
NOTES
1) And both of the violations originally cited in vain by the Minneapolis agents disputing the issue with FBIHQ personnel are among those on which Moussaoui is currently indicted.
2) Just minutes after I saw the first news of the World Trade Center attack(s), I was standing outside the office of Minneapolis ASAC M. Chris Briesse waiting for him to finish with a phone call, when he received a call on another line from this SSA. Since I figured I knew what the call may be about and wanted to ask, in light of the unfolding events and the apparent urgency of the situation, if we should now immediately attempt to obtain a criminal search warrant for Moussaoui's laptop and personal property, I took the call. I said something to the effect that, in light of what had just happened in New York, it would have to be the "hugest coincidence" at this point if Moussaoui was not involved with the terrorists. The SSA stated something to the effect that I had used the right term, "coincidence" and that this was probably all just a coincidence and we were to do nothing in Minneapolis until we got their (HQ's) permission because we might "screw up" something else going on elsewhere in the country.
4) Certainly Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which begins, "Upon the request of a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government" does not contain this requirement. Although the practice that has evolved is that FBI agents must secure prior approval for any search or arrest from the United States Attorneys Office, the Federal Rule governing Search and Seizure clearly envisions law enforcement officers applying, on their own, for search warrants.
5) During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre-September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone's first question was "Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.) Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all "unnecessary" actions/decisions by FBIHQ managers (and maybe to some extent field managers as well) has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course. Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions. In a large hierarchal bureaucracy such as the FBI, with the requirement for numerous superiors approvals/oversight, the premium on career-enhancement, and interjecting a chilling factor brought on by recent extreme public and congressional criticism/oversight, and I think you will see at least the makings of the most likely explanation. Another factor not to be underestimated probably explains the SSA and other FBIHQ personnel's reluctance to act. And so far, I have heard no FBI official even allude to this problem-- which is that FBI Headquarters is staffed with a number of short term careerists* who, like the SSA in question, must only serve an 18 month-just-time-to-get-your-ticket-punched minimum. It's no wonder why very little expertise can be acquired by a Headquarters unit! (And no wonder why FBIHQ is mired in mediocrity! -- that maybe a little strong, but it would definitely be fair to say that there is unevenness in competency among Headquarters personnel.) (It's also a well known fact that the FBI Agents Association has complained for years about the disincentives facing those entering the FBI management career path which results in very few of the FBI's best and brightest choosing to go into management. Instead the ranks of FBI management are filled with many who were failures as street agents. Along these lines, let me ask the question, why has it suddenly become necessary for the Director to "handpick" the FBI management?) It's quite conceivable that many of the HQ personnel who so vigorously disputed Moussaoui's ability/predisposition to fly a plane into a building were simply unaware of all the various incidents and reports worldwide of Al Qaeda terrorists attempting or plotting to do so.
*By the way, just in the event you did not know, let me furnish you the Webster's definition of "careerism - - the policy or practice of advancing one's career often at the cost of one's integrity". Maybe that sums up the whole problem!
6) For example, at one point, the Supervisory Special Agent at FBIHQ posited that the French information could be worthless because it only identified Zacarias Moussaoui by name and he, the SSA, didn't know how many people by that name existed in France. A Minneapolis agent attempted to surmount that problem by quickly phoning the FBI's legal Attache (Legat) in Paris, France, so that a check could be made of the French telephone directories. Although the Legat in France did not have access to all of the French telephone directories, he was able to quickly ascertain that there was only one listed in the Paris directory. It is not known if this sufficiently answered the question, for the SSA continued to find new reasons to stall.
7) Another factor that cannot be underestimated as to the HQ Supervisor's apparent reluctance to do anything was/is the ever present risk of being "written up" for an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) "error." In the year(s) preceding the September 11th acts of terrorism, numerous alleged IOB violations on the part of FBI personnel had to be submitted to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) as well as the IOB. I believe the chilling effect upon all levels of FBI agents assigned to intelligence matters and their manager hampered us from aggressive investigation of terrorists. Since one generally only runs the risk of IOB violations when one does something, the safer course is to do nothing. Ironically, in this case, a potentially huge IOB violation arguably occurred due to FBIHQ's failure to act, that is, FBIHQ's failure to inform the Department of Justice Criminal Division of Moussaoui's potential criminal violations (which, as I've already said, were quickly identified in Minneapolis as violations of Title 18 United States Code Section 2332b [Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries] and Section 32 [Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities]). This failure would seem to run clearly afoul of the Attorney General directive contained in the "1995 Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations" which mandatorily require the FBI to notify the Criminal Division when "facts or circumstances are developed" in an FI or FCI investigation "that reasonably indicate that a significant federal crime has been, is being, or may be committed." I believe that Minneapolis agents actually brought this point to FBIHQ's attention on August 22, 2001, but HQ personnel apparently ignored the directive, ostensibly due to their opinion of the lack of probable cause. But the issue of whether HQ personnel deliberately undercut the probable cause can be sidestepped at this point because the Directive does not require probable cause. It requires only a "reasonable indication" which is defined as "substantially lower than probable cause." Given that the Minneapolis Division had accumulated far more than "a mere hunch" (which the directive would deem as insufficient), the information ought to have, at least, been passed on to the "Core Group" created to assess whether the information needed to be further disseminated to the Criminal Division. However, (and I don't know for sure), but to date, I have never heard that any potential violation of this directive has been submitted to the IOB or to the FBI's OPR. It should also be noted that when making determinations of whether items need to be submitted to the IOB, it is my understanding that NSLU normally used/uses a broad approach, erring, when in doubt, on the side of submitting potential violations.
8) For starters, if prevention rather than prosecution is to be our new main goal, (an objective I totally agree with), we need more guidance on when we can apply the Quarles "public safety" exception to Miranda's 5th Amendment requirements. We were prevented from even attempting to question Moussaoui on the day of the attacks when, in theory, he could have possessed further information about other co-conspirators. (Apparently no government attorney believes there is a "public safety" exception in a situation like this?!)
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2005-08-11 05:06 | User Profile
Slam dunk, Weisbrot.
You're in deep denial, Jeffersonian.
2005-08-11 05:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]Think about what we're dealing with Walter. We can understand why that notion is unthinkable. We have a centralized government that acts as our societal brain. It coordinates activity, distributes resources, stores and disseminates "information", etc. For an American to accept that his government is his enemy is for a part of an organism to accept that its brain is its enemy. Think of the cost of reaching such a conclusion in error. And think of the implications of reaching such a conclusion correctly! The solution involves dismantling the brain, i.e., the suicide of the organism![/QUOTE]
Your point is well taken, but I don't think the implications need to be quite so dramatic as "suicide" of the organism, at least objectively speaking.
As matters now stand, what we're really talking about is, at a minimum, removing all Jews from the intelligence service in general and from all upper-echelon government posts.
At a maximum we're talking about excluding Jews, and probably as well Jewish sympathizers such as red heifer Judeo-Christians, from the federal service altogether. That's a much more dramatic step, but still far short of mass deportations/internment, much less organismic suicide.
If most Americans could just break through their denial, then we could still take measured steps to address the problem.
Ah, but there's the rub.
That just won't happen. I admit that millions of white Americans simply waking up one day with a firm grip on reality is something of a pipe dream.
The problem is, IMHO, that most people just lack the mental equipment for that (I suspect the ability to think for oneself instead of part of the herd is related to IQ). Most folk's brains are configured to follow and not think too much. In evolutionary terms that's a trade-off between group cohesion on the one hand and the inevitability of bad leadership on the other.
We're stuck with it. Besides, it got us through three ice ages, so who am I to question it?
Anyway, this herd/groupthink instinct is the reason that if we're ever going to get free of our collective parasite, the sheeple are going to have to suffer badly. Since being a bleating-blind follower is all about survival, the only way they'll ever question their leadership is if their survival becomes a question.
So I guess I come full circle. You're right. We're really talking about this changing only in the face of Armageddon.
So, worse is better. For now.
On to Tehran.
2005-08-11 18:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Slam dunk, Weisbrot. You're in deep denial, Jeffersonian.[/QUOTE]
More of the same. Her memo clearly points to; disorganized, slow, and even incompetent assessment of the threat and gross neglegence in failure to follow up. Not treason.
[QUOTE]Although the last thing the FBI or the country needs now is a witch hunt, I do find it odd that (to my knowledge) no inquiry whatsoever was launched of the relevant FBIHQ personnel's actions a long time ago. Despite FBI leaders' full knowledge of all the items mentioned herein (and probably more that I'm unaware of), the SSA, his unit chief, and other involved HQ personnel were allowed to stay in their positions and, what's worse, occupy critical positions in the FBI's SIOC Command Center post September 11th. (The SSA in question actually received a promotion some months afterward!) It's true we all make mistakes and [B]I'm not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes.[/B][[/QUOTE]
Although I'm not entirely sure that some of her corrective suggestions were quite strong enough.
2005-08-11 20:06 | User Profile
Mr. Felzenberg is just stepping all over his finely circumscised scheinshtuker here.
The Commission knew, it didn't know. The Commission didn't meet with agents in the know - oops! it did meet with agents in the know.
Man, only the truly credulous can fail to see this.
Sorry, Jeffersonian. You're really not facing facts here.
[QUOTE][URL=http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sept-11-Hijackers.html?hp&ex=1123819200&en=75c8bf9eafed684c&ei=5094&partner=homepage]New York Times[/URL] August 11, 2005 9/11 Panel Decided to Omit a Reference to Atta
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sept. 11 commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday.
[B]Al Felzenberg, who had been the commission's chief spokesman, said Tuesday the panel was unaware of intelligence specifically naming Atta. But he said subsequent information provided Wednesday confirmed that the commission had been aware of the intelligence.[/B]
It did not make it into the final report because the information was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks, Felzenberg said. The commission has gone out of existence, although a follow-up organization called the 9/11 Public Discourse Project continues to follow closely the Bush administration's progress in implementing their recommendations.
The intelligence about Atta recently was disclosed by Rep. Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. The Pennsylvania Republican is angry that the intelligence never was forwarded by the military establishment to the FBI.
According to Weldon, a classified military intelligence unit called ''Able Danger'' identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in Brooklyn, N.Y. Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the unit's recommendation that the information be turned over to the FBI in 2000.
According to Pentagon documents, the information was not shared because of concerns about pursuing information on ''U.S. persons,'' a legal term that includes U.S. citizens as well as foreigners legally admitted to the country.
Felzenberg said an unidentified person working with Weldon came forward Wednesday and described a meeting 10 days before the panel's report was issued last July. During it, a military official urged commission staffers to include a reference to the intelligence on Atta in the final report.
[B]Felzenberg said checks were made and the details of the July 12, 2004, meeting were confirmed. Previous to that, Felzenberg said it was believed commission staffers knew about Able Danger from a meeting with military officials in Afghanistan during which no mention was made of Atta or the other three hijackers.[/B]
[Psst - Felzenberg's just been caught in two lies - Walter]
Staff members now are searching documents in the National Archives to look for notes from the meeting in Afghanistan and any other possible references to Atta and Able Danger, Felzenberg said.
He sought to minimize the significance of the new information.
''Even if it were valid, it would've joined the lists of dozens of other instances where information was not shared,'' Felzenberg said. ''There was a major problem with intelligence sharing.''
Weldon wrote a letter Wednesday to Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 commission, and Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman, asking for information to be sought that would look at why the information was not passed on by Pentagon lawyers to the FBI.
The letter also asks the commissioners to find out why the panel's staff members did not pass the information about Able Danger onto commission members and provide full documentation.[/QUOTE]
2005-08-12 12:42 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6923]9/11 Revisionsism,[/URL] Revisited (Antiwar.com)