Who Blew the Leads? (Time Magazine on Big FBI Coverup)

[paulthompson]

I think this is a very important story. Please read this entry from my 9/11 Timeline first, then keep Abdel-Hafiz in mind when the read the article below it. How could Time magazine miss everything written about him in the past?! Should we be surprised that an FBI agent accused of hindering investigations goes and does it again on a bigger scale, later? This is scandalous and needs more attention!

Paul

March 21, 2000 - "Complaints About FBI Agent Are Ignored, Dubious Agent Promoted to Head FBI Investigations in Saudi Arabia"
FBI agent Robert Wright, having been accused of tarnishing the reputation of fellow agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, makes a formal internal complaint about Abdel-Hafiz. FBI agent Barry Carmody seconds Wright's complaint. Wright and Carmody accuse Abdel-Hafiz, a Muslim, of hindering investigations by openly refusing to record other Muslims. The FBI was investigating if BMI Inc., a New Jersey based company with connections to Saudi financier Yassin al-Qadi, had helped fund the 1998 US embassy bombings. (Wall Street Journal, 11/26/02; ABC News, 12/19/02) Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner and other FBI agents back up the allegations against Abdel-Hafiz. (ABC News, 12/19/02) Carmody also claims that Abdel-Hafiz hindered an inquiry into the possible terrorist ties of fired University of South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian by refusing to record a conversation with the professor in 1998. (Tampa Tribune, 3/4/03) Complaints to superiors and headquarters about this never get a response. (Fox News, 3/6/03) Furthermore, "Far from being reprimanded, Abdel-Hafiz (is) promoted to one of the FBI's most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country." (ABC News, 12/19/02) Abdel-Hafiz is finally suspended in February 2003, after his scandal is widely reported in the press. (Tampa Tribune, 3/4/03) Bill O'Reilly of Fox News claims that on March 4, 2003, the FBI threatens to fire Wright if he speaks publicly about this, one hour before Wright is scheduled to appear on Fox News. (Fox News, 3/4/03)


Who Blew the Leads?

The Saudis get blamed for not revealing more after 9/11. Maybe they said more than the FBI took in

by Adam Zagorin
Time
June 27, 2005
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1074148,00.html


In the wake of 9/11, Saudi authorities came under criticism in the U.S. for sluggishness in investigating the attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Now it appears that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the slackness with which leads were pursued. According to several former employees of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, the FBI legal attaché's office housed within the embassy was often in disarray during the months that followed 9/11. When an FBI supervisor arrived to clean up the mess, she found a mountain of paper and, for security reasons, ordered wholesale shredding that resulted in the destruction of unprocessed documents relating to the 9/11 investigations. A letter obtained by Time confirms that the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the matter.

In 2001 the FBI's Saudi office comprised a secretary and two agents--Wilfred Rattigan and his lieutenant, Egyptian-American Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. They also oversaw six nearby countries. The FBI sent reinforcements within two weeks of 9/11, but it appears that the bureau's team never got on top of the thousands of leads flowing in from the U.S. and Saudi governments. In a June 6 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Senate Judiciary Committee renewed a request for information about allegations that the FBI's Riyadh office was "delinquent in pursuing thousands of leads" related to 9/11.

When the senior FBI supervisor was sent to the Riyadh office nearly a year after 9/11, she found secret documents literally falling out of file drawers, stacked in binders on tables and wedged behind cabinets, according to an FBI briefing to Congress. The process of sending classified material to the U.S. had fallen so far behind that a backlog of boxes, each filled with three feet of paper containing secret, time-sensitive leads, had built up. Since embassies must be prepared for the possibility of a hostile takeover, the rule is that officials should need no more than 15 minutes to destroy all their sensitive documents. Accordingly, the supervisor ordered the shredding of hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages, many of them related directly to the ongoing 9/11 investigation, an FBI briefer told Congress.

In a statement to Time last week, the FBI said the shredded material was "duplicative" or "only informational." But the Judiciary Committee's letter cites reports that some of the documents "had not been translated or reviewed." Or copied, according to several former Riyadh embassy employees. The result, they say, was that over two or more months, agents had to go back to Saudi security officials to try to obtain copies of what had been destroyed. "It was leads, suspicious-activity material, information on airline pilots," says an employee. In a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Bassem Youssef, the FBI's previous No. 1 in Riyadh, Mueller conceded that there were problems in the office after 9/11.

[papau]

1. A huge story - I wonder why it gets permission for printing now?

Saudi at $59 for oil are no longer worthy of full cover-up - so a side angle shot is now permitted?

No matter - it is great that it is out there for public view.

[formercia]

2. 2 FBI agents and a secretary?

This is all the coverage the FBI had in Saudi Arabia after 9/11?
Indian reservations get more coverage.

[Old and In the Way]

3. One could conclude that this administration did not want the FBI

to get that info out of Saudi Arabia. They couldn't airfreight that paper back to Washington for follow-up examination?

[Village Idiot]

4. "shredding that resulted in the destruction of unprocessed docs..."

Gee - what a surprise...

[leveymg]

5. The FBI legat's office in Riyadh was never the center of US CT in SA

Paul -

You and I know that the Saudis were (and still are) extremely secretive and defensive about the subject of terrorism and terrorism funding. Before 9/11, they barely tolerated any open US CT presence, and actively obstructed the Khobar Towers bombing investigation. That whole function was considered to be so sensitive that CT operations were operated covertly by the CIA, and much of this relied on third party intelligence coverage. The FBI office in which Abdel-Hafiz worked was very much outside the loop, and he may have been placed inside that fishbowl so he could be watched.

The CIA, additionally, did not want the FBI tripping over real, ongoing operations in SA that touched on several areas: nuclear proliferation (Saudi funding of Pakistan's Khan network); terrorism funding (Khadi's Chicago-centered operations for one, another major money center was in NJ); and political influence peddling in the US by the Saudis and other wealthy Gulf sponsors (this was the most sensitive of all, as it involved the Bush family).

At the higher policy-making levels, the FBI and the Agency did communicate with each other. There was some Congressional notification about some of these Saudi operations (Porter Goss and Bob Graham were the main Hill "insiders"). George Tenet was between a rock and a hard place with regard to what he could do, Bush having refused to roll up the UBL cells.

The 9/11 attack was timed to strike just ahead of important Washington meetings on this subject. The September 11-12 meetings were forced by FBI field officers having earlier in the summer stumbled over parts of the al-Qaeda network in the US. These incoordinated Bureau investigations threatened to blow the rest of it into the public spotlight.

The FBI is taking more than its fair share of the blame for this. We all know that they were stepping on the Agency's toes, and the main operations ahainst UBL was run out of CIA CTC. It is also abundantly clear that the ultimate responsibility is with W, as only he could order the CIA and FBI to move in on the Al-Qaeda network, but for his own reasons he refused to do so.

[paulthompson]

7. I agree

Let's also not forget former consular official Michael Springmann's experience that the US consulate in Saudi Arabia was used by the CIA to essentially launder terrorists and other dodgy figures from the whole region into the US for training and who-knows-what other purposes. Supposedly, those were the "good" terrorists, a.k.a. the "freedom fighters," fighting in say, Bosnia or Chechnya, against governments we didn't like. So you wouldn't want the FBI to stumble across that, either.

By the way, what's this about hearings scheduled for Sept. 12, 2001? Do you have more info on that?

[leveymg]

8. There was a whole series of meetings in different offices scheduled

for which the ISI and others were in town. There was a follow-on meeting scheduled after the long-delayed principals meeting of 9/4. I recall Condi mentioned they were planning on talking about some major new initiatives.

I'll have to dig this out for you.

The 9/11 meeting I referred to was the one going on the time of the attacks, Sen. Graham and Rep. Goss were having coffee w/Gen. Ahmad.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. The MSM is catching up with what real reporters told us long ago

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated November 7, 2001

FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated
Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
By Greg Palast and David Pallister

FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.

US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.

FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.

The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected terrorist organisation".

Read more.

[SoCalDem]

9. How they miss EVERYTHING..

They "miss" important issues/stories/research/information because it's expedient to do so.

Our media/government is crippled by the FEAR of taking ANY stand. They have fallen to the depths of permanent negligence. By NOT taking a real stand on anything, they have absolved themselves of any responsibility for the shit storm of controversy that may follow a "revelation".

This is why there is so much emphasis on the truly nonsensical and highly unlikely.

If REAL issues and information were actively discussed, people would DEMAND resolution. Resolution would require some real effort, and real pain to people who are not used to suffering.

It's infinitely easier to keep the public scared of the invisible monster, or the child-abductor-behind-every-hedge, or the ever-present shark in every tourist infested waterway...or to make the public think that the "winner" of some stage-managed "reality" show should take up hours of their energy and thought.

It's all about "self". No one wants to risk their own position or their family's security, or their future worth. The way to preserve all of those, is to always fly under the radar...never court controversy...never ruffle feathers.

It was "convenient" to ignore warnings because usually the monster under the bed is imaginary...but sometimes it's not.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

10. kick

[Al-CIAda]

11. rc'd & kick

[stickdog]

12. Great lead-in simmary, Paul.

Nice work, as usual.

[Al-CIAda]

13. .