FBI: CATCHING THE DC SNIPER SAME AS TRYING TO CATCH BIN LADEN

[lukery]

The following is a press release sent by The National Whistleblower Center

details here: http://www.whistleblowers.org/html/inside_the_fbi.html

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FBI DEPOSITION OF MUELLER: CATCHING THE DC SNIPER SAME AS TRYING TO CATCH BIN LADEN


Newly Released FBI Documents Disclose Grave Deficiencies in the War on Terrorism

Washington, D.C. December 13, 2006. The National Whistleblower Center, a nationally recognized watchdog group, released today extensive sworn and documentary evidence concerning the FBI’s actual response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The documents include the sworn deposition of every major FBI manager responsible for the creation of the FBI’s post September 11 counterterrorism division and the implementation of the FBI’s “War on Terror,” including the sworn depositions of FBI Director Robert Mueller, former Director Louis Freeh, and numerous other senior officials in the bureau’s post-9/11 counterterrorism program. Most of the material has not previously been released to the general public.

Perhaps the most startling revelation was contained in a 2005 deposition of FBI Director Robert Mueller, when he testified that the skills needed to capture the DC sniper were the same skill sets he was looking for in FBI mangers assigned lead the campaign against sophisticated Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda. The Mueller deposition, released in its entirety, contains the following exchange:


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QUESTION: In terms of the sniper case, do you think background experience running the sniper case would provide a manager with the expertise they would need to manage an intelligence-based counter-terrorism operation?

MUELLER: Yes, I think absolutely it would give, contribute to his ability to handle counter-terrorism, whether it be intelligence based or responsive to an act, absolutely.

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In addition to providing the complete documentation supporting recent investigative exposes on NBC Nightly News and the Washington Post, the material includes substantial documentation of misconduct in the FBI's response to the 9/11 attacks which have not previously been released to the public, including:


* After 9/11, no efforts were made to recruit managers into the FBI who had experience with Al Qaeda or other Middle Eastern terrorism groups (Pikus Deposition);


* After 9/11 no changes made to the FBI’s terrorism-related promotional policies, including no effort to recruit Arabic speakers, no effort to require counterterrorism experience among managers, no effort to recruit managers with knowledge or expertise in the Middle East (Pikus Deposition);


* After 9/11, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, believed that the only “skill sets” needed by FBI agents to “better identify, penetrate and/or prevent a future Osama bin Laden-style terrorist attack” was knowledge of the “Attorney General guidelines for counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence investigation(s)”.


* The FBI manager placed in charge of the investigation into the hijacking of Flight 77 (the plane that attacked the Pentagon), Ellen Knowlton, had no terrorism background and had never conducted a counterterrorism operational investigation.


* A sworn statement from a FBI supervisor documenting the fact that high level FBI managers could not tell the difference between Bassem Youssef (who won awards for his work in counterterrorism) and another FBI agent with an Arabic sounding name who was the subject of an internal investigation for failing to perform a counterterrorism investigation.


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feel safer?

[rzemanfl]

1. So, it's simple, Bin Laden is sleeping in an old Impala

somewhere. They should be able to find him now.

[Swede]

7. Send the Marines to the rest stops nationwide.

Make a patriotic song about it.

[rzemanfl]

8. You do it, I am no good at patriotic songs. n/t

[ewoden]

2. Didn't the MD state police capture the snipers on a tip

from a citizen who saw the Chevy sedan parked at a rest stop? Weren't the FBI still looking for a white truck at that time? Oh I'm feeling real safe right about now.

[LostinVA]

4. Yes -- a truck driver at a rest stop tipped off the cops

It wasn't an FBI arrest.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Damn. So the FBI airlifted the DC Sniper out of a police trap too?

I didn't know that...

[lukery]

9. it was in the movie

it was in the movie: Dialled 911, Pressed for Truth

[ftr23532]

15. Here's an MSNBC article about the CIA commander at Tora Bora

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8853000/site/newsweek">Here we go:

...
But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the ground out there. I was."

In his book—titled "Jawbreaker"—the decorated career CIA officer criticizes Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department for not providing enough support to the CIA and the Pentagon's own Special Forces teams in the final hours of Tora Bora, says Berntsen's lawyer, Roy Krieger. (Berntsen would not divulge the book's specifics, saying he's awaiting CIA clearance.) That backs up other recent accounts, including that of military author Sean Naylor, who calls Tora Bora a "strategic disaster" because the Pentagon refused to deploy a cordon of conventional forces to cut off escaping Qaeda and Taliban members. Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman, says the problem at Tora Bora "was not necessarily just the number of troops."
...

[Bitwit1234]

5. The FBI didn't get the sniper

I used to live in the area outside DC between Bethesda and Bowie. They had a tip...the tip was from a priest THAT'S how they caught the two shooters. If that had not been the case they probably wouldn't have caught the guys if they had fallen over them.

Example....A lady going shopping in a mall in Laurel, Md got out of her car...(after the fact they knew the car was the two snipers) she saw Mohammad acting strange and she thought someone was moving around in the back seat. Mohammad kept watching her. Because of the shootings she was spooked. And hurried in between the cars to get into the Best Buy store. She called the police when she got home, described the blue car, tag number etc. The task force never checked it out. The local newspaper interviewed her. And she said the task force blew her off. THEN AFTER THEY CAUGHT HIM, THEY FOUND THE CAR MATCHED, THE TAGS MATCHED AND IT HAD TO HAVE BEEN THEM. If they had checked it out, the would have saved some lives.

[ContraBass Black]

6. Well, the FBI didn't catch either of them.

[savemefromdumbya]

10. It is very difficult for the ordinary FBIs to operate when they are trodden on

can you imagine what it's like to have the gestapo overriding any decision that the ordinary agent would make?

[lukery]

12. sibel edmonds case

is a classic example - all these agents know exactly what has happened, and they can't say anything.

in fact, all the counter-intelligence cases simply don't even get referred to the other divisions - narcotics, counter-terrorism etc - so all the CI work is for nought.

[ftr23532]

14. for another example of how FBI agents get screwed

Go http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-12-slick-powerful-brotherhood_11.html">here, skip down to the article "A Vulgar Betrayal", and make a note of the role Francis Townsend played back in the late 90's w/regard to the FISA "wall" separating the criminal and intelligence divisions of the FBI and how that . She's now http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0926/p25s01-usmb.html">Bush's Homeland Security/Counter-Terrorism adviser. :D

[Selatius]

11. Wouldn't this undermine the justifications for the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act?

Yes, let's junk the Bill of Rights everytime somebody like Osama or McVeigh comes around. :sarcasm:

[lukery]

13. anthrax

perhaps he should have said: "CATCHING THE anthrax perp SAME AS TRYING TO CATCH BIN LADEN"