Kip,
You are beautiful. You are on the trail. Here's the next piece of the return to sanity in George Bush's Godless Amerika:
Some fool sent me this without a URL. I dressed him down immediately.....
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Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency
By Eric Lichtblau
New York Times
Monday 02 August 2004
Washington - As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist
suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always
had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could
go.
In the early 1990's, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist
skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few
years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of
attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members
as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed
training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.
So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of
Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist
group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan:
go undercover and infiltrate the group.
But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched
the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own
sources, then froze him out and made him a "pariah." He left the
bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the
first time - the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who
claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how
management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the
Sept. 11 attacks.
"What's so frustrating for me," Mr. German said in an interview,
a copy of the Sept. 11 commission report at his side, "is that what I
hear the F.B.I. saying every day on TV when I get home, about how
it's remaking itself to fight terrorism, is not the reality of what I
saw every day in the field."
Mr. German refused to discuss details of the 2002 terrorism
investigation, saying the information was classified.
But officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation
took place in the Tampa, Fla., area and centered on an informant's
tip about a meeting between suspected associates of a domestic
militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist
organization, who were considering joining forces. A tape recording
of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official
said.
Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that
militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based
terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the
American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.
The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr.
German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned
that "the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active
terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national
security."
He also wrote, "Opportunities to initiate proactive
investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur,
which is purported to be the F.B.I.'s number one priority, continue
to be lost, yet no one is held accountable."
The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating Mr.
German's case, reviewing both how the F.B.I. handled his complaints
and whether he was retaliated against as a result, an official there
said.
Donna Spiser, an F.B.I. spokeswoman, said that the bureau
"thoroughly investigates all allegations of wrongdoing," but that it
could not comment on Mr. German's case because of the continuing
investigation.
Some law enforcement officials remain somewhat skeptical of Mr.
German's claims. But several prominent senators who have been
privately briefed on the case in recent weeks said they were troubled
by what they learned.
"Retaliating against F.B.I. agents and employees who point out
problems or raise concerns seems to be becoming the rule, not the
exception," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. He
noted that Robert S. Mueller III, acting director of the bureau, "has
said many times that whistle-blower retaliation is unacceptable, yet
it looks like some F.B.I. bureaucrats haven't gotten the message."
The F.B.I. has wrestled with accusations from a number of
employees who said they were discouraged from voicing concerns,
including Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who protested the
handling of the Zacarias Moussaoui terror case in August 2001. In a
report disclosed just last week, the inspector general found that
complaints by an F.B.I. linguist, Sibel Edmonds, about the bureau's
slipshod translation of terrorism intelligence, played a part in her
dismissal in 2002.
In Mr. German's case, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the
ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that "when an
F.B.I. agent with a distinguished record questions whether terrorism
leads are being followed, the F.B.I. needs to listen." He said Mr.
German's complaints "reflect the kind of insularity the 9/11
commission identified as a major management failing in the F.B.I.'s
antiterrorism work."
Indeed, Mr. German's assertions echo concerns raised about the
F.B.I. in the commission's report.
The commission said that while the bureau had made progress in
overhauling counterterrorism operations, its investigation "also
found gaps between some of the announced reforms and the reality in
the field." One concern was that the F.B.I.'s 56 field offices still
retain the power to reallocate agents and resources to local concerns
that may diverge from national security.
Mr. German's account of what he considers undue restraint in
pursuing terrorism leads may give pause to civil libertarians who
have accused the F.B.I. of rushing to judgment and using overly
aggressive tactics in some terror cases.
At the same time, however, his assertions raise questions about
whether the bureau has fixed some of the bureaucratic problems that
stymied terrorism investigations before the Sept. 11 attacks, and his
perspective could add grist to the debate over restructuring
intelligence operations.
Mr. German, in his letter to lawmakers, cited "a continuing
failure in the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism program," which he said was
"not the result of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of action."
Officials said Mr. German also complained internally about a
second case in the Portland, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he
was blocked from going undercover to pursue a domestic terrorism
lead. That case was also thought to center on a militia group
suspected of plotting violence.
In the Tampa case, officials said Mr. German complained that
F.B.I. officials had mishandled evidence concerning a suspected
domestic terrorist group and failed to act for months on his request
in early 2002 to conduct an undercover operation. That failure, he
said, allowed the investigation to "die on the vine."
While Mr. German would not confirm the location of the
investigation, he said in an interview at the office of his
Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, that his problems intensified
after he complained about the management of the case in September
2002. He said F.B.I. officials whom he would not name backdated
documents in the case, falsified evidence and falsely discredited
witnesses in an apparent effort to justify their approach to the
investigation. He cited institutional inertia, even after Sept. 11.
"Trying to get approval for an operation like this is a
bureaucratic nightmare at the F.B.I.," he said.
Mr. German said that beginning in late 2002, he took his concerns
to his supervisors at the F.B.I. and to officials at headquarters in
Washington, including Mr. Mueller himself, in an e-mail message that
he said went unanswered. He also went to the Justice Department's
inspector general and, frustrated by what he saw as a languishing
investigation, brought his concerns this spring to several members of
Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.
In the meantime, Mr. German said, his career at the F.B.I.
stalled, despite what he said was an "unblemished" record and an
award for his work in the Los Angeles skinhead case.
Soon after raising his complaints about the 2002 terrorism
investigation, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I.
officials wrongly accused him of conducting unauthorized travel,
stopped using him to train agents in "proactive techniques" and shut
him out of important domestic terrorism assignments.
"The phone just stopped ringing, and I became a persona non
grata," he said. "Because I wouldn't let this go away, I became the
problem."
For now, he has no job and is uncertain about his future.
"My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was
doing the right thing here," he said. |
