Half the FBI think it was a conspiracy

[KJF]

When discussing the intelligence failure before 9/11, Lawrence Wright, author of the Looming Tower, said in an interview:

How to explain this astonishing failure? One theory has it that the CIA may have been trying to turn the two Al Qaeda members into double agents as a means of infiltrating the terror group. “Half the guys in the Bureau think CIA was trying to turn them to get inside Al Qaeda,” Wright told me. “It’s never been proven, but it’s extremely suggestive that this was a failed CIA operation to recruit them.” If so, that would at least explain why, when FBI Cole investigator Ali Soufran repeatedly queried the CIA about the meeting in Malaysia – attended not only by the Cole bombers but also by the two 9/11 hijackers --- the information about al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi was withheld.

That seems very much like the best-case scenario to me.

This is interesting too:

Nor is the National Security Agency blameless, says Wright. “NSA also has lots of complicity,” he says. “The agency had crucial information that it did not share with the FBI either.” The NSA, for example, had been monitoring Al Qaeda telephone calls after the US embassy bombings to a number in Yemen. “That number was called by Osama bin Ladin both before and after the embassy bombings. Khaled al-Mihdhar was the son-in-law of the guy whose phone it was. He called there from California eight times! Had the NSA shared its information, the FBI could have mapped the entire global Al Qaeda network.”
http://www.mediachannel.org/LoomingTower.htm

The NSA is claiming it was physically impossible to trace the calls. Hmmm...

[Nozebro]

1. Wow! If I understand you, the "intel" failure (excuse) was a conspiracy?!

That's pretty funny.

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. There are a lot of good people in the CIA and FBI

who know more about Poppy Bush's Rogues then any of could ever imagine I'm sure. One thing is clear, the serious career types don't like these criminals any more then we do.

[Ezlivin]

3. I've got a family member recently retired from the FBI

So I know that there are (were?) good people in the Bureau.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. You're right there 'were'

A lot of people are retiring so they can come forward. Like the 3 retired generals who spoke out this week.

When guys like that come out, you know there are many more behind them who can't.

[rman]

6. Most likely ever fewer and ever further between

"In fact, and this has to be made very clear, there are some extraordinarily real patriotic Americans and good people in the FBI, as has been said by, I believe, Agent Colleen Rowley, one of the FBI whistleblowers’ bosses, that there’s a wall in the FBI, and this has been validated to me by various attorneys in Houston, who are very close to the power bases, and are pretty ticked-off at what’s happening in this country and are speaking out, as are many CIA agents who are very concerned that it has gone too far, as are many NSA agents who are concerned that it’s gone too far, and FBI agents. So we have a lot of people who are speaking out, they’ve kept quiet too long; they’re afraid, they’re afraid of what’s happening to this country. And when I say the Third Reich, what is happening to this country, they say, and I will identify ‘they’ if pressed, they say, will make the Third Reich look like a tea party."
- Indira Singh, Wall-street whistleblower, before the 9-11 Citizens' Commission



Sibel Edmonds and other Whistleblowers Group
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=344

[rman]

5. "can't do", "to expensive", "we didn't know"

The usual excuses.

And let's not forget the FBI itself.
After all it's only half that believes there was a conspiracy.


http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml
For Immediate Release
Sep 11, 2002 Contact: Press Office
202-646-5172

FBI AGENT ROBERT WRIGHT SAYS FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS CONTINUE TO PROTECT TERRORISTS FROM CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

Agents Lied To Federal Court for Wiretap Authority and Compromised Criminal Investigations of Terrorists

FBI Headquarters’ International Terrorism Unit Acted as a “Spectator” While Americans Died at the Hands of Terrorists


(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, represents “whistleblowing” FBI Special Agent (SA) Robert G. Wright, Jr., of the bureau’s Chicago Division, who said today that the FBI continues to dodge accountability and cover-up its negligence and dereliction of duty in pursuing terrorists who pose a direct threat to the United States. SA Wright is the only FBI agent to seize terrorist funds (over $1.4 million) from U.S.-based Middle Eastern terrorists using federal civil forfeiture statutes, prior to the September 11th attacks. The original source of the funds was Yassin Kadi, a Saudi businessman, who is reportedly a financier of Osama bin Laden.

SA Wright points to recent misconduct and falsifications of wiretap warrant applications by FBI agents (signed-off by the former FBI Director, Louis Freeh) to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Prior to September 11th, SA Wright alleged FBI intelligence agents lied and hid vital records from criminal agents for the purpose of obstructing his criminal investigation of the terrorists in order to protect their “subjects,” and prolong their intelligence operations. SA Wright was stunned to learn recently that some of the FBI intelligence agents that had stalled and obstructed his criminal investigations of terrorists in Chicago had also lied to the judges of the FISA Court in Washington, DC.

SA Wright says that, in his opinion, prior to September 11th, the ITU’s incompetence and repeated failures to support criminal investigations contributed directly to the deaths of five Americans. The ITU’s absolute failure to detect and identify the September 11th terrorist plot, and the radical Islamists that carried it out, is further evidence of the ITU’s negligence, and places the deaths of thousands of Americans at their door.

Over the last year, SA Wright has repeatedly tried to lawfully expose the FBI’s incompetence and dereliction: 1) through FBI and Justice Department channels, 2) through individual Congressmen and Senators, 3) to the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee and, 4) at a press conference held by his legal counsel, Larry Klayman, the Chairman of Judicial Watch, Inc., and co-counsel, David Schippers, Esq., of Schippers and Bailey of Chicago, IL.

The FBI continues to illegally refuse the release of SA Wright’s 500 page manuscript, Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, that SA Wright submitted for prepublication review in October 2001. In fact, the FBI refused to turn the manuscript over to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Commitee, charged with investigating the FBI’s intelligence failures. The FBI falsely claims that the manuscript contains grand jury material, although SA Wright has publicly available, “open source,” references for all of the material in the manuscript. Schippers, a former federal prosecutor, has suggested that the committee petition U.S. District Court Chief Judge Charles P. Kocoras to disclose any such grand jury material under Criminal Rule 6(e)(3)(D), as matter involving intelligence and counterintelligence.

In anticipation of being subpoenaed by the Joint Intelligence Committee, SA Wright has prepared a statement detailing the FBI’s negligence and dereliction of duty in pursuing the terrorist threat to the American public.

“SA Wright is performing a service for his country by exposing the FBI’s dereliction of duty – particularly by FBI headquarters staffers. Director Mueller survived the ‘bad press’ of last May, and the nation’s attention has moved on to something else – until the next terrorist attack. How many more dead Americans will it take to get accountability from the FBI?,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.

Judicial Watch’s new book, Fatal Neglect: The U.S. Government’s Continuing Failure to Protect American Citizens from Terrorists, details FBI and other government incompetence that leaves American citizens exposed to terrorism. Click here for the book.


© Copyright 1997-2004, Judicial Watch, Inc.

[KJF]

7. One wonders...

..., if it was physically impossible to trace a call, why the NSA could not have simply asked the telephone exchange at which the tap had been installed (for example through a partner in the Yemen intelligence community whose co-operation must surely have been required for the tap) for "Khalid's" number in the US, as telephone companies can easily obtain such data and are known to provide it to intelligence agencies. This seems to be a relatively easy solution.