It was the idiots at the top who kept line agents from investigating possible terrorists at the flight schools. Sure there will be abuses but I trust the line agents more than I trust the idiots at the top who hinder investigations. But certainly I don't trust the present administration granting this power. I want to see latitude given to line agents but still the edict to obey the constitution under an Obama administration. Some of the relaxation I don't like - I'd like them to be very careful in what type of groups they allow them to infiltrate. Too much abuse occurs now and certainly occured in the 60's.
Colleen Rowley:
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.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.htmlAgent Williams Phoenix:
What is the Phoenix Memo?
On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix sent a memorandum to FBI headquarters in New York listing evidence that Osama bin Laden was helping his operatives in the U.S. attend flight training schools. That memo, now known as the "Phoenix Memo" was ignored, according to congressional investigators.
Who's investigating the Phoenix Memo?
The House and Senate Joint Select Committee On Intelligence, chaired by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida), has been holding public and private hearings to investigate events surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States. The committee is trying to discover what information federal intelligence, law enforcement and military officials had prior to the attacks and what was done -- or not done -- with that information.
What did the Phoenix Memo say?
In her testimony, Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint inquiry, stated that FBI Agent Williams, whose testimony was not made public wrote in his memo that "there were an 'inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest' attending this type of training
in Arizona and speculated that this was part of an effort to establish a cadre of individuals in civil aviation, who would be in a position to conduct terrorist activity in the future."
However, stated Hill, the memo failed to "raise any alarms" and that FBI officials, finding the information "speculative and not particularly significant," decided not to follow up on it.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa092502a.htm
John O' Neill: Remember they made it so miserable for him he retired and took over security at the WTC in Sept 2001
In death, John O'Neill has become something bigger than he was in life -- a human embodiment of unheeded warnings. Here was a man who had studied and understood bin Laden, the cycles of his attacks, the escalation of the deaths, but whose arguments weren't followed up by government action. This had much to do with bureaucratic inertia, but it also, undoubtedly, had something to do with O'Neill -- his aggressiveness, his charisma, the fact that he didn't fit the mold of the standard-issue FBI agent.
For him, the real job started after five; his friends were his contacts, his contacts his friends. He was the only agent who could be found smoking Dominican cigars with De Niro on Tommy Mottola's yacht one night and introducing Scotland Yard spooks to the China Club's VIP level the next. He'd invariably be dressed in dark-blue pin-striped Burberry suits with white shirts and ties, his jet-black hair slicked back, his feet in size 91/2 Bruno Magli shoes, his ear to his cell phone, his hands fiddling with a BlackBerry with intelligence contacts organized by country -- Saudi Arabia, Yemen, England, Spain, France -- many of whom he'd escort to Elaine's when they came to town.
Those friends brought him intelligence that no one else in the Bureau could nail down. "You could see that come home to roost in the investigations," says U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, whose summary arguments in the embassy-bombings case against bin Laden and others are packed with evidence that O'Neill unearthed. "John went at it comprehensively, yielding things from people in London or people in Yemen we never otherwise would have gotten."
His expertise on bin Laden was unquestioned. He took that expertise personally, and had no trouble correcting anyone, above or below him. "He was the paramount, most knowledgeable agent we had in the FBI, probably in the government, with respect to counterintelligence matters," says Louis Freeh.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/features/5513/
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