There's something odd about the current tempest. It was known almost immediately that the FBI screwed up. Consider:
The strange case of Zacarias Moussaoui: FBI refused to investigate man charged in September 11 attacks wsws.org
The instructor and a vice president of the flight school briefed two Democratic congressmen from the Minneapolis area in November about their repeated efforts to get the FBI to take an interest in Moussaoui’s conduct. Their accounts were first reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, then in the New York Times December 22.
The vice president of the flight school, who briefed Minnesota Congressmen James Oberstar and Martin Sabo, said it took four to six phone calls to the FBI to find an agent who would help. The instructor became so frustrated by the lack of response that he gave a prescient warning to the FBI that “a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb.”
Investigation blocked in Washington
Moussaoui was detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on charges of violating the terms of his visa. Local FBI investigators in Minneapolis immediately viewed Moussaoui as a terrorist suspect and sought authorization for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant to search the hard drive of his home computer. This was rejected by higher-level officials in Washington, who claimed there was insufficient evidence to meet the legal requirements for the warrant.
FBI agents tracked Moussaoui’s movements to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, where he logged 57 hours of flight time earlier in 2001 but was never allowed to fly on his own because of his poor skills. This alone should have set off alarm bells, since a confessed Al Qaeda operative, Abdul Hakim Murad, had trained at the same school, as part of preparations for a suicide hijack attack on CIA headquarters. Murad testified about these plans in the 1996 trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yusef, the principal organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center car-bombing.
Several of the September 11 hijackers had either enrolled in or visited the Oklahoma flight school, as a more thorough investigation determined in the aftermath of the suicide hijackings.
On August 26, FBI headquarters was notified by French intelligence that Moussaoui had ties to the Al Qaeda organization and Osama bin Laden. Even this report did not spur the agency to action. A special counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA reviewed the information against him, but concluded there was insufficient evidence that he represented any threat, despite his refusal to answer questions and the French allegations. Moussaoui was not even transferred from INS detention to FBI custody until after September 11.
The French warning arrived on the day after the first two suicide hijackers purchased their one-way, first class tickets for flights on September 11. More tickets were purchased on August 26, 27, 28 and 29, while the FBI was refusing to pursue a more intensive investigation into Moussaoui or search his computer.
The New York Times commented December 22 that the Moussaoui case “raised new questions about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies did not prevent the hijackings.”
The first mention of Moussaoui here was in #reply-16431652 , which refers to a story in the NYT from 9/29. The first story I could come up with in a newspaper database was from 9/15 in a Minnesota paper:
SPECIAL REPORT: AFTER THE ATTACK
Copyright Star Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Sep 15, 2001
A man who trained briefly at an Eagan flight school this summer is believed to have been a high-ranking operative for Osama bin Laden.
Law enforcement authorities confirmed reports that the student pilot is being investigated in connection with the terrorist organization that officials suspect is responsible for the attacks Tuesday on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Just days after Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in mid-August for carrying a false passport, the FBI was told by French intelligence officials that he was a high-ranking operative in Bin Laden's organization, according to media reports and a law enforcement official.
On Friday, authorities transferred Moussaoui from a Minnesota jail, but wouldn't say where he was taken.
A reporter for Europe 1 Radio in Paris and the Boston Herald have reported that Moussaoui was carrying Algerian and French passports, but that one had been forged.
When the FBI learned about the passport they contacted French intelligence officials, who said he had strong ties in the terrorist organization, according to the news media reports and a law enforcement official. The FBI was also told Moussaoui had recently travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the group has been known to be active.
Agents for at least three local and federal law enforcement agencies have been working out of the Minneapolis office of the FBI around the clock on local leads, authorities said.
At least three local defense attorneys say they have been contacted by people of Arabic descent, including one from New Jersey, seeking advice or representation. Those people, described as "ancillary" to the investigation, say they have been approached or interviewed by federal authorities and fear cooperating further without an attorney present.
One attorney described the Twin Cities investigation as "very aggressive."
Minneapolis FBI Agent Jay Brunn and Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Tim Counts said they were instructed not to comment on any aspect of the investigation. Federal prosecutors also have declined to comment.
It's unclear which FBI bureau was making inquires with French authorities about Moussaoui. He had been arrested Aug. 17 on suspicion of illegally entering the United States.
After his arrest, an FBI search of his home turned up technical literature on airline and flight manuals, said Frederic Helbert, a reporter with Europe 1 Radio. ...
What this all reminds me of is the end of a CIA related story from last December. The conclusions seem equally applicable to the FBI.
The Trouble with the CIA nybooks.com
When I began to work on this article, the first person I called was the CIA officer I have known longest, a man who started his career during World War II, joined the CIA at its birth, and worked closely with just about every chief of covert operations until he retired after the first round of CIA scandals and subsequent reengineerings in the early 1970s. This man remains extremely active in retirement. He is a member of numerous study groups, panels, and commissions, and he rarely misses a conference on intelligence. He hates to criticize the agency he served all his life, but the failure of September 11 is not something he is ready to pass over in silence. "I don't think even Pearl Harbor matches this one," he said. "How often do you lose half a division in a day? Nothing has ever happened on this scale before. This was totally beyond anybody's beliefs or dreams. Nobody wanted to think the unthinkable."
Was anybody talking about an investigation—a post-mortem to figure out what went wrong?
"I don't understand it," said my friend. "There was a little talk but then it suddenly quieted down. Not even [Senator Richard] Shelby [former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee]—he knows he can't raise his head. Nobody is pushing for an investigation."
Is it possible to handle the problem —whatever the problem—without an investigation?
"No."
What would an investigation require?
"You need presidential and congressional authority. You can't just do it in-house."
Could it be done while Tenet was still running the CIA?
"If he's still there everybody will know he's watching. People won't tell you the truth. Everybody will be covering his ass, protecting his boss. They try to get rid of rivals. They hide paper and destroy evidence. I've seen it. You can overcome it by being a sonofabitch but only if the top guy is gone."
There is nothing this man hates more than the way politics has torn apart the CIA over the years. I would say he about half agrees with the dissidents—not 100 percent on half what they say, but 50 percent on all of it. But he has little sympathy for people who talk out of school, and he knows how hard it is for investigators to keep political meddlers at bay, get to the bottom of what went wrong, and fix what isn't working. He was the first one to tell me, like someone describing a jewel, that Tenet had the President's ear, which meant the agency could do its job. To give that away, take your chances with someone new, open up a whole can of worms by asking how this could have happened... Talking about it he sounds like a man facing open-heart surgery.
But?
"It ought to be done. He ought to go."
—December 19, 2001 |
