The Louis J. Freeh thread-maybe he's on a par with John Edgar Hoover???

[bobthedrummer]

Put anything about former FBI Director Louis Freeh into this thread.

What a scumbag...Prince Bandar's slave...

I'll start with a Muckety.com relationship map
Louis Freeh & Freeh Group International
http://www.muckety.com/8FDE92458F1E1DF1A75DDB5A39DF0F66.map?autoGroup=7,7&big=true

[EFerrari]

1. PBS interview with Freeh, "former FBI director, now attorney to Prince Bandar"

04.07.09

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bribe/2009/04/louis-freeh-interview.html

[EFerrari]

2. Louis Freeh: What some people do for money, Ken Silverstein (LA Times)

Louis Freeh: What some people will do for money

By Ken Silverstein

From the Los Angeles Times

Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh says $2 billion that flowed from a British arms manufacturer to U.S. bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the U.S., was not a bribe, but was instead part of a complex barter involving the exchange of Saudi oil for British fighter jets.

The transfer of funds to accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., has come under scrutiny as the Justice Department continues an international corruption investigation involving British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. Freeh, who is now a lawyer and consultant for Bandar, made his comments to the Public Broadcasting Service for a “Frontline” documentary to be broadcast this evening. Bandar is now a national security advisor to the Saudi king. He has denied any wrongdoing, as have other Saudi officials…

The British government has halted its own corruption investigation into the BAE contract. At the time it terminated the probe, there were published allegations that the Saudis were threatening to stop cooperating on counter-terrorism matters if the investigation continued. In the statement issued Monday, Freeh’s office said that “the claim that Prince Bandar attempted to interfere” with the British investigation is “refuted by the facts.”

Richard Clarke, a top counter-terrorism advisor to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and others said they have concerns about Freeh’s defense of Bandar. “Someone who characterizes himself as a U.S. patriot and national security advocate ought not to be on the side of someone blackmailing people not to investigate crimes by threatening to withdraw a nation’s cooperation against terrorists,” Clarke said.


http://harpers.org/archive/2009/04/hbc-90004706

[EFerrari]

3. History Commons: Louis Freeh Profile

Louis J. Freeh was a participant or observer in the following events:

September 1993: Freeh Becomes FBI Director


President Clinton appoints Louis Freeh to be the new director of the FBI. Freeh was once an FBI field agent. He will forge alliances with Republicans in Congress. This will drive a wedge between the FBI and Clinton’s White House and national security staff. Freeh will retire in the summer of 2001 (see May 1, 2001). The New York Times will later claim that he “left the FBI badly damaged. Lawmakers in both parties clamored for change at an agency they attacked as ineptly managed, resistant to change, and unwilling to admit mistakes.” Increasingly opposed to Clinton, Freeh develops a secret back-channel relationship with former president George H. W. Bush. He uses this relationship to liaison with the Saudi royal family without Clinton’s knowledge.

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Louis J. Freeh, Federal Bureau of Investigation, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton

1995-1996: Reports: FBI Watches Hamas Supporters But Make No Arrests


In January 1995, the New York Times reports, “For more than a year the Federal Bureau of Investigation has closely monitored supporters of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in several cities, including Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Dallas.” In August 1995, the Times reports, “For well over a year, the FBI has monitored Hamas supporters in several American cities.” On March 12, 1996, FBI Director Louis Freeh says to Congress, “We have several instances where we have been able to show the transfer of substantial cash funds from the US to areas in the Mideast where we could show Hamas received, and even made expenditure of, those funds.” He says some of the money raised is sent back from the Middle East to the US to support and expand phony front organizations for Hamas. The FBI, he adds, has a “very inadequate picture of what perhaps is much greater activity” in the US. He notes the difficulty of tracing “those funds to actual military or terrorist operations anywhere outside the US.” Hamas leaders say any such money raised is used for charitable and humanitarian purposes. (Legally, after 1995 it became a crime in the US to fund Hamas, no matter how they spent their money (see January 1995)) In 1997, a Congressional analyst will say it is estimated Hamas receives from 30 percent to 80 percent of its budget from sources inside the US. But in 2002, FBI agent Robert Wright will claim, “Against the wishes of some at the FBI in 1995, when I uncovered criminal violations in several of my cases, I promptly initiated active terrorism criminal investigations on these subjects. I developed probable cause to believe that some of these transfers or transmissions had been of money intended to be used in the support of domestic and international terrorism activities. The illegal transfers that supported specific terrorist activities involving extortion, kidnapping, and murder…” Much of Wright’s evidence will focus on Hamas figures Mohammad Salah and Mousa Abu Marzouk. FBI agent Joe Hummel will say in 1997 that he has evidence “millions of dollars” passed through the bank accounts of Marzouk. But even though Marzouk is in US custody, he will merely be deported later in 1997 (see July 5, 1995-May 1997). Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner will later claim that Wright and others in the Vulgar Betrayal investigation were building a strong criminal case against some in this Hamas support network, but they were not allowed to charge anyone no matter how strong their evidence was (see October 1998). In March 2002, the FBI will still publicly claim that it is watching an “elaborate network” of Hamas supporters in the US (see March 15, 2002).

Entity Tags: Mark Flessner, Robert Wright, Joe Hummel, Vulgar Betrayal, Louis J. Freeh, Mohammad Salah, Mousa Abu Marzouk, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hamas

(much more at link)
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=louis_j._freeh

[EFerrari]

4. Freeh's Self-Whitewash, John Podesta (Waho)

Freeh's Self-Whitewash

By John Podesta
Sunday, October 16, 2005

During his tenure as director of the FBI, Louis Freeh presided over a series of blunders and failures that brought the bureau to a low point in its history. From the embarrassment of the Russian mole Robert Hanssen to the bungling of the Wen Ho Lee investigation to the wasting of hundreds of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to build a modern, computerized case management system, the bureau under Freeh's leadership stumbled from one blunder to the next, with little or no accountability. The nadir, as the nation knows too well, was reached in the astonishing string of failures that helped leave America vulnerable to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In the face of this record, Freeh has now published "My FBI," a book distinguished by its shameless buck-passing. Nothing, it seems, was ever Louis Freeh's fault.

Who was to blame for the fact that there weren't enough FBI agents working on counterterrorism? According to Freeh, it was Congress. But in testimony three years ago, Freeh declared that "Congress has shown great foresight in strengthening" counterterrorism efforts, tripling the FBI's counterterrorism budget from $97 million in 1996 to more than $300 million in 1999. Whose fault was it that the FBI remained incapable of basic file management? Congress's, Freeh contends -- it underfunded the bureau's technology program. But as the report of the Sept. 11 commission points out, Congress did not meet FBI requests in the late 1990s because the bureau had squandered so much money already. Equally appalling is Freeh's recent claim on "60 Minutes" that the bureau was too distracted by the many "scandals" in the Clinton White House to attend to the terrorist threat. Of course, none of those politically motivated witch hunts, in which Freeh did the bidding of his congressional patrons on the partisan right, resulted in a conviction. And never mind that Freeh's FBI ought to have been able to protect the American people while pursuing other investigations at the same time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101401784.html

[bobthedrummer]

5. Louis J. Freeh FBI Director 1993-2001 bio

(zpub.com)
http://www.zpub.com/un/fbi-freeh.html

"Heckuva Job Louis Freeh Endorses Rudy" by Taylor Marsh (5-31-07 Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/heckuva-job-louis-freeh-e_b_50159.html

Thanks Beth!

[bobthedrummer]

6. Anyone else wanting to add to this Louis Freeh thread now's the time...