Why Louis Freeh Should Be Investigated For 9/11
Posted by Orangutan. on Sun, 11/25/2012 - 3:03pm
By Kevin Ryan
In the summer of 2001, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent
Robert Wright, a counterterrorism expert from the Chicago office, made
some startling claims about the Bureau in a written statement outlining
the difficulties he had doing his job. Three months before 9/11, he
wrote: “The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and
prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at
home and abroad. Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part
of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and
suspected terrorists residing within the United States.”[1]
Revelations since 9/11 have confirmed Wright’s claims. FBI
management did little or nothing to stop terrorism in the decade before
9/11 and, in some cases, appeared to have supported terrorists. This is
more disturbing considering that the power of the FBI over terrorism
investigations was supreme. In 1998, the FBI’s strategic plan stated
that terrorist activities fell “almost exclusively within the
jurisdiction of the FBI” and that “the FBI has no higher priority than
to combat terrorism.”[2]
Anumber of people are suspect in these failures, including the leaders
of the FBI’s counterterrorism programs. But at the time of Wright’s
written complaint, which was not shared with the public until May 2002,
the man most responsible was Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI from 1993
to 2001.
Agent Wright was not FBI leadership’s only detractor, and not the
only one to criticize Freeh. The public advocacy law firm Judicial
Watch, which prosecutes government abuse and corruption, rejoiced at the
news of Freeh’s May 2001 resignation.[3] Judicial Watch pointed to a
“legacy of corruption” at the FBI under Freeh, listing the espionage
scandal at Los Alamos National Laboratories, as well as “Filegate, Waco,
the Ruby Ridge cover-up, the Olympic bombing frame-up of Richard
Jewell, [and] falsification of evidence concerning the Oklahoma City
bombing.”[4]
Judicial Watch said that Director Freeh believed he was above the
law. The group went on to say that Freeh was “a man so corrupt he
destroyed the office he led, and a man so cowardly he refuses to face
the music for the illegalities he has allegedly committed.”[5] To this
was added a claim that the FBI under Freeh was being directed by
sinister yet unknown forces. ”In case after case throughout the 1990′s,
the FBI seems to have tailored its investigative efforts to fit
somebody’s pre-arranged script. The question is, who wrote that script —
and why?”
Freeh became FBI Director on July 19, 1993, just five months after
the first WTC bombing, three months after the Waco siege, and one day
before the alleged suicide of Hillary Clinton’s former Rose Law Firm
associate, deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster. Freeh’s
predecessor was William Sessions.
Prior to his appointment by President Clinton, Freeh was a federal
judge. He had been selected for that position by President George H.W.
Bush in 1991. Before that, Freeh had been an Assistant District
Attorney for the Southern District of New York and an FBI field agent.
Freeh was involved with U.S. counter-terrorism efforts for many years
prior to his appointment as FBI Director in 1993. As an FBI agent he
worked for the New York Field Office, which led the FBI’s
counterterrorism effort. It was later the lead field office for Bin
Laden investigations and was the first to establish a Joint Terrorism
Task Force (JTTF) of state and federal law enforcement and intelligence
personnel. Freeh worked there for seven years until he was promoted to
Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1981. Throughout the 1980s, Freeh worked
with or for U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City
on 9/11.
Although Clinton was a Democrat, after his appointment as FBI
Director Freeh immediately began forming alliances with Republicans in
Congress. This apparently caused difficulty between the FBI and
Clinton’s White House. Freeh also developed a secret relationship with
his former supporter, former President George H. W. Bush. He used that
relationship to communicate with the Saudi royal family without
Clinton’s knowledge.[6]
Ignoring or facilitating domestic terrorism
Just five months before Freeh’s appointment as FBI Director, the
World Trade Center (WTC) was bombed in an attack that killed six people
and wounded a thousand others. It was blamed on a Pakistani-Kuwaiti by
the name of Ramzi Yousef, along with about half a dozen others.
However, as the New York Times reported, it was clear that the FBI was somehow involved as well.
“Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a
bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and
they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless
powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and
supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I.
supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem,
should be used, the informer said.”[7]
The 1993 WTC bombing was a terrorist operation that had been
infiltrated by the FBI but the role that the FBI played in trying to
prevent that operation, or allow it to go forward, has never been
revealed. What has been revealed is that forensic data was falsified
and “conclusions were altered to help the government’s case.”[8] These
facts were revealed by Frederick Whitehurst, the chemist and supervisory
special agent in charge of the FBI’s crime lab who became a
whistleblower. The altered conclusions that Whitehurst described were
made under the leadership of Louis Freeh.
A similar case occurred in April 1995, when the Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City (OKC) was bombed, killing 168 people including
19 children. Investigators have since learned that the FBI played a
role in that bombing as well. Reasons that the OKC bombing was
suspicious include the fact that there were secondary explosives found
in the building that were not reported as part of the official account.
And as with the events of 9/11, the FBI immediately confiscated, and
refused to release, security videos that would have revealed what
actually happened.[9]
Freeh’s colleague and personal friend, Larry Potts, was the FBI
supervisor who was responsible for the tragedies at Ruby Ridge in 1992,
and Waco in 1993. Potts was then given responsibility for investigating
the Oklahoma City bombing.[10] Later it was claimed by one of the
convicted conspirators that lead bomber Timothy McVeigh was actually
acting under the direction of Potts.[11] As an apparent reward for
Potts’ performance, in May 1995 Freeh promoted him to be his number two
man as Deputy Director of the FBI. Two months later, Freeh removed
Potts from that position due to public outrage at the appointment.
On the FBI links to the OKC bombing, author Peter Dale Scott wrote —
“One such case of a penetrated operation “gone wrong” in 1993 might be
attributed to confusion, bureaucratic incompetence, or the problems of
determining when sufficient evidence had been gathered to justify
arrests. A repeated catastrophe two years later raises the question
whether the lethal outcome was not intended.”[12].
The result of the OKC bombing in governmental terms was the passage
of a new anti–terrorism law in April 1996. This was a bill that would
be mirrored by the USA Patriot Act six years later, and it was described
as representing an assault on civil liberties. The Houston Chronicle called the bill a “frightening” and “grievous” attack on domestic freedoms. But Louis Freeh supported it.
Because many Congressional representatives opposed the bill, it was
passed only after having been watered down. In Freeh’s words, it had
been “stripped… of just about every meaningful provision.”[13] Freeh’s
call for this legislation to be more restrictive of civil liberties must
be considered with the fact that his agency was accused of facilitating
the event that precipitated the legislation.
One of the obstacles often cited as a root cause for the FBI not
doing its anti-terrorism job effectively was “the Wall.” This was a set
of procedures that restricted the flow of information between law
enforcement officers pursuing criminal investigations and officers
pursuing intelligence information via the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). The procedures, set out in a 1995 memo from
deputy attorney general (and future 9/11 Commissioner) Jamie Gorelick,
were seemingly intended to prevent the loss of evidence, due to
technicalities, that might be obtained via a FISA warrant.[14] Because
such losses were never actually experienced, later claims about “the
Wall” appear to be weak excuses to explain why information was not
shared or actions were not taken.
In July 1996, TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean just
after taking off from JFK Airport in New York, killing all 230 people on
board. Freeh later claimed that “No one knew what brought it
down.”[15] Curiously, the FBI took over the investigation despite the
fact that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had priority
over the investigation as established by law. FBI agents then blocked
attempts by the NTSB to interview witnesses.[16]
One month after the explosion, chemists at the FBI crime laboratory
in Washington found traces of PETN, an explosive component of bombs and
surface-to-air missiles, in the wreckage.[17] Despite this, in November
1997, the FBI closed its investigation and announced that “No evidence
has been found which would indicate that a criminal act was the cause of
the tragedy of TWA flight 800.”[18]
This reversal of findings was led by Freeh and Jamie Gorelick. After
meeting with Freeh and Gorelick, James Kallstrom, the agent in charge
of the New York office where the TWA 800 investigation was being
handled, produced several unlikely explanations for the detection of the
PETN. Although none of these hypotheses was probable, the FBI was able
to convince the media to change the story.[19]
Louis Freeh was leading the FBI during the investigation into the
1993 WTC bombing, at the time of the OKC bombing, and at the time of the
crash of TWA Flight 800. All of these events suggest the facilitation,
or cover-up, of terrorist acts by the FBI. However, these were not the
only indications that Louis Freeh was leading an agency that
facilitated terrorism.
Ignoring or facilitating “Islamic” terrorism
Before leaving his position in the summer of 2001, Freeh was
responsible for overseeing more than a dozen failures related to
“Islamic” terrorism and the alleged 9/11 hijackers. Here are the first
nine.
Between 1989 and 1998, Ali Mohamed was an FBI informant. He was also a
U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant and al Qaeda’s primary trainer.[20]
According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Mohamed “trained most of
al Qaeda’s top leadership – including Bin Laden and Zawahiri – and most
of al Qaeda’s top trainers. He gave some training to persons who would
later carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”[21] Mohamed had
been an FBI informant, since at least 1992, and was previously a CIA
“contract agent.” In a move indicative of U.S. oversight, he
transitioned directly from the U.S. Special Forces to fighting and
training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.[22] When he was arrested in
1998, Mohamed was allowed to plea bargain and, to this day, he has never
been brought to trial.
In early 1995, Freeh was behind the cancelation of a raid on a
suspected terrorist-financing organization. Recent legislation had
enabled plans for the raid and prosecution of The Holy Land Foundation
in Arlington, Texas, a suspected terrorist financing operation. But
Freeh stopped the raid using the dubious excuse that it would alienate
Arabs in the United States.[23] Holy Land was finally raided just after
9/11 and, years later, it was convicted of providing material support
to a terrorist organization.[24]
In May 1995, FBI agents wrote a memo about what they had learned in
their interrogation of Abdul Hakim Murad, a Kuwaiti who allegedly helped
bomb the WTC in 1993. Murad told the FBI about another plan to hijack
multiple airliners in Asia and crash them into buildings in the U.S.,
including the WTC. Inexplicably, the FBI memo omitted all of the
details the agents had learned about this plot, called Operation
Bojinka.[25] In 1996, Murad was convicted of crimes related to Bojinka
yet, as author Peter Lance wrote, the FBI seemed to be “go out of its
way to avoid even a hint of the plot that was ultimately carried out on
9/11.”[26]
Gregory Scarpa Jr was an organized crime figure who, when imprisoned
for an unrelated crime in 1996, was located in a cell between Ramzi
Yousef and Abdul Hakim Murad. Working undercover for the FBI, Scarpa
was able to gain significant information about an active al Qaeda cell
in New York City, and a “treasure trove of al Qaeda plans.” After
working closely with Scarpa to gain the intelligence, Freeh and his
subordinates ended up calling the whole thing a “hoax” and buried the
information. [27]
On May 15, 1998, an FBI pilot sent his supervisor in the Oklahoma City
FBI office a memo, warning that he had observed “large numbers of
Middle Eastern males receiving flight training at Oklahoma airports in
recent months.” The memo went on to suggest that these people were
planning terrorist activities. It was sent to the Bureau’s Weapons of
Mass Destruction unit but no action was ever taken.[28]
In September 1999, FBI agents showed up at Airman Flight School in
Norman, OK, to investigate the school’s training of Ihab Ali Nawawi. A
suspect in the 1998 embassy bombings who was allegedly the personal
pilot of Osama bin Laden, Nawawi had been arrested in Orlando four
months before.[29] He has been in U.S. custody ever since but has never
been brought to trial. Despite the investigation of Nawawi and the
1998 warning from an OKC FBI pilot, the FBI apparently never thought to
keep a closer eye on Airman Flight School. Zacarias Moussaoui and
several alleged 9/11 hijackers trained or were seen at the school in
2000 and 2001.
In October 1999, Hani El-Sayegh, a suspect in the 1996 Khobar Towers
Bombing, was deported from a prison in Atlanta to Saudi Arabia. This
was the result of an agreement between Freeh and Prince Naif, Saudi
Arabia’s interior minister. After his deportation, El-Sayegh was
reportedly tortured as FBI agents watched and submitted questions to his
Saudi interrogators. David Vine from the Washington Post
remarked — “Such practices are sharply at odds with Freeh’s oft-stated
message about the FBI’s need to respect human dignity and the tenets of
democracy while fighting crime.”[30] Another problem with this incident
was that the U.S. had control over a suspect in the 1996 terrorist
murder of 19 U.S. servicemen and yet, instead of bringing that suspect
to trial, they sent him back to Saudi Arabia. A reporter from Time magazine
expressed the problem this way: “Run that one by again: The United
States doesn’t want to try a man suspected of a bomb attack that killed
Americans—and they’re sending him home?!”[31] It is presumed that
El-Sayegh was ultimately executed by the Saudis.[32]
In April 2000, a Pakistani from England named Niaz Khan told the FBI
that he was recruited by al Qaeda, trained in Pakistan to hijack planes
and sent to the U.S. for a terror mission, as were several pilots. Khan
said that he told the FBI, about a year before 9/11, that al Qaeda
planned to hijack airliners in the United States.[33] The FBI confirmed
that Khan passed two polygraphs. Yet FBI headquarters supposedly didn‘t
believe Khan and sent him home to London.
When two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf
Al-Hazmi, came to the U.S. in January 2000, they immediately met with
Omar Al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi government spy and an employee of a
Saudi aviation company. Al-Bayoumi, who had been the subject of an FBI
investigation in 1998 and 1999, became a very good friend to the two
alleged hijackers, setting them up in an apartment and paying their
rent.[34] Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi then moved in with a long-time FBI
asset, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been working closely with the Bureau
on terrorism cases since 1994. Apparently the FBI was not able to make a
timely connection between its suspect Al-Bayoumi or its informant
Shaikh and the two alleged 9/11 hijackers they supported for two years
prior to 9/11. In 2003, the FBI gave Shaikh $100,000 and closed his
contract.[35]
was not working to prevent “Islamic” terrorism in the years before
9/11. These examples also suggest that the FBI was suppressing and
ignoring information about terrorism, perhaps for the purpose of
protecting or co-opting the related terrorist networks. As for al
Qaeda, author Lawrence Wright wrote that, in the late 1990s, “Director
Freeh repeatedly stressed in White House meetings that al Qaeda posed no
domestic threat. Bin Laden didn’t even make the FBI’s most wanted list
until June 1999,” nearly a year after the embassy bombings.[36]
Robert Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, was arrested
for espionage in February 2001.[37] Freeh claimed the CIA and FBI
worked very well together to catch Hanssen. Apparently there was no
difficulty, of the type later cited by the 9/11 Commission, that
prevented collaboration between the two agencies.
It was claimed that Hanssen, while betraying his country for
financial gain, sold a special software program called PROMIS to the
Russians. William Hamilton, the president of Inslaw, the company that
manufactured PROMIS, said that the Russians then sold the program to
Osama bin Laden and that it might have played a part in facilitating the
9/11 attacks.[38] This claim was also reported by The Washington Times and
it was said that the software would have given Bin Laden the ability to
monitor US efforts to track him down and also the ability to monitor
electronic-banking transactions, enabling money-laundering
operations.[39]
PROMIS had a history going back over two decades. In the 1980s,
Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame had used the software to create lists
of national security threats in conjunction with the secretive
Continuity of Government (COG) program. In an interesting coincidence,
before his death British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of
Commons that “Al Qaeda” was not really a terrorist group but a database
of international Mujahideen and arms smugglers used by the CIA and
Saudis.[40]
The Justice Department oversight committee on the use of PROMIS
included Rudy Giuliani and, therefore presumably, Louis Freeh. The
lawyer for Inslaw, in its legal dealings with the Justice Department,
was Roderick M. Hills, who would shortly thereafter be Frank Carlucci’s
boss at Sears World Trade.
Investigator Michael Ruppert and his colleagues have proposed that
software programs evolving from PROMIS were used on 9/11 to disable the
U.S. air defenses. This hypothesis involves Mitre Corporation and its
contractor PTech, which were known to be operating at the Pentagon on
projects that affected the operability of Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) systems.[41] It is not clear how a database
program might have evolved into an executable aviation control program,
but there are other reasons to consider PTech.
After 9/11, the FBI did not report known links between PTech and its
Saudi investor Yassin al Qadi to the U.S. Customs Department
investigation into terrorist financing. This concealment was despite
PTech having contracts with many U.S. agencies controlling sensitive
information, including the FBI, and Al-Qadi being declared a terrorist
financier. It is also known that PTech director Yaqub Mirza had
contacts at high levels within the FBI.[42]
Working for the Bush Administration
The month before Hanssen’s arrest, George W. Bush was inaugurated as
President. The only cabinet-level figure to be retained from the
outgoing Clinton administration was CIA Director George Tenet, who was
said to be a long-time friend of George H. W. Bush. But Freeh stayed on
as well until his unexpected resignation in May that year. Freeh did
not give specific reasons for leaving at the time and he remained in the
position until June 25.
Having been FBI Director for eight years, Freeh had put most of the
FBI’s leadership in place. This included his deputy as of 1999, Thomas
Pickard, who would go on to be acting director of the FBI from June to
September 2001. It also included Dale Watson, head of the FBI’s
counterterrorism program as of 1999, and the people in his
organization. Watson had worked with Freeh in the New York FBI office
years before and had worked on the investigations into the U.S. embassy
bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole. Between FBI assignments, in 1996 and 1997, Watson had been the Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
Working for Watson in the FBI’s counterterrorism division was Michel
Rolince, the head of the International Terrorism Operations Section
(ITOS). Under Rolince were the heads of the Usama Bin laden Unit (UBLU)
and the Radical Fundamentalism Unit (RFU).
Three major FBI failures relating to “Islamic” terrorism occurred during the early months of 2001.
The first was on March 7, 2001 when, during trial proceedings for the
1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, FBI agent Stephen Gaudin read
aloud in court a phone number that had been used by the alleged al Qaeda
plotters to plan and execute the embassy attacks.[43] This was the
phone number of the “Yemen Hub,” which doubled as the home phone of
Ahmed Al-Hada, the father-in-law of alleged 9/11 hijacker Khalid
Al-Mihdhar. According to U.S. officials, the same phone was purportedly
used for planning the USS Cole bombing and, later, the 9/11 attacks. The phone number was also published in the British weekly the Observer, just five weeks before 9/11. As author Kevin Fenton wrote: “Any of the Observer’s
readers could have called the number and asked for a message to be
forwarded to Osama bin Laden.”[44] This widely reported FBI gaffe
should have alerted al Qaeda to U.S. knowledge of its secret Yemen
operations center while also ensuring that anyone listening would know
the exact al Qaeda phone number being monitored by U.S. intelligence.
Despite this major tip-off, al Qaeda continued to use the phone to plan
the 9/11 attacks, until “only weeks before 9/11.”[45] Why did the
Bureau not work to intercept the calls made in the months and weeks
before 9/11 and use them to help stop the attacks?
The FBI had Mohamed Atta and one of his colleagues under surveillance
in early 2001, according to an FBI informant. The informant later said
he was a “million percent positive” that the 9/11 attacks could have
been stopped if the FBI had gone after Atta at the time. Instead, FBI
handlers steered the informant away from Atta.[46]
Several FBI agents, including Dina Corsi, Margaret Gillespie, Doug
Miller and Mark Rossini, were involved in a concerted attempt to hide
information about Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi from other intelligence
officers who almost certainly would have captured the suspects. These
acts of inexplicable secrecy included not sharing cables on the subject,
not sharing photographs of the suspects, misrepresenting “the Wall”
restrictions, and misrepresenting comments from the National Security
Law Unit.[47]
liaisons to the CIA’s Alec Station unit, focused on Osama Bin Laden. It
is interesting that neither Richard Blee, the head of that unit at the
time, nor Rodney Middelton, the head of the FBI’s UBLU, were ever
interviewed by independent journalists about these critical issues.
Middleton left the FBI the day before 9/11, and Blee went on to be named
CIA station chief in Kabul as the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began.
Between April and September 2001, several major changes occurred in
the FBI’s counterterrorism program. In May, the head of the RFU was
replaced by Dave Frasca, who would go on to be a central character in
the obstruction of opportunities to identify and capture the alleged
hijackers. At the same time, Louis Freeh announced his resignation
despite not having another job.
Freeh left the FBI on June 25, 2001 with nowhere to go. It was said
that he approached acting New Jersey Governor Donald DiFrancesco and
offered to serve, without salary, as the state’s anti-terrorism “czar”.
This would have brought Freeh close to the 9/11 attacks in NYC but it
didn’t happen. Instead, Freeh was apparently doing nothing for the
three months before 9/11, or at least doing nothing that we know about.
Freeh then took a job as director, counsel, and ethics officer at credit
card issuer MBNA.
The final three 9/11-related failures that can be attributed to
Freeh, through the subordinates he put in place, are as follows. If any
of these had been handled appropriately, the alleged 9/11 hijackers
would have been caught and their alleged plans foiled.
On July 10, 2001, Phoenix FBI counterterrorism agent Ken Williams sent
FBI headquarters what is called the “Phoenix Memo,” warning that Osama
bin Laden was sending students to U.S. flight schools. Williams listed
cases of suspected Arab extremists training in Arizona flight schools
and urged the FBI to search for such cases in other cities. The FBI
failed to respond to the memo at all and it was dismissed as
speculative. As 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey would later point out
about the memo – “had it gotten into the works at the—up to the highest
possible level, at the very least, 19 guys wouldn‘t have gotten onto
these airplanes with room to spare.”[48]
In mid-August 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota. The
FBI agents who made the arrest called Moussaoui a “suspected airline
suicide attacker.” The agents requested permission to search
Moussaoui’s belongings, including his laptop computer, but they were
denied that permission. A week later the FBI supervisor in Minneapolis,
trying to get the attention of those at FBI headquarters, said he was
trying to make sure that Moussaoui — “did not take control of a plane
and fly it into the World Trade Center.”[49] Still, FBI headquarters
denied the field agents’ requests. In May 2002, one of the agents,
Coleen Rowley, described this obstruction. She wrote that FBI
headquarters personnel – “ …continued to, almost
inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis’ by-now
desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French
intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became
clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their
apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause. In all of their
conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the
Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately
three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools
seeking flight training for terrorist purposes! Nor did FBIHQ personnel
do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other
appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities. When, in a
desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the
Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA’s Counter
Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the
Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their
approval!”[50]
Finally, on August 23, 2001, less than three weeks before 9/11, the
CIA formally told the FBI that Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi might be in the
United States. But even though the two alleged hijackers had their
names listed in the San Diego phone book and had been living with an FBI
informant, the Bureau supposedly could not find them.
to take the August information and use it to search databases looking
for Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi but he claims to have found nothing. Fuller
had another JTTF officer help him to search a database run by
Choicepoint, the company known for purging Florida voters in the 2000
presidential election.[51] The Justice Department IG report says Fuller
did an NCIC criminal history check, credit checks, and a motor vehicle
records search. But the 9/11 Commission Report clearly contradicted
this, saying “Searches of readily available databases could have
unearthed the drivers licenses, the car registration, and the telephone
listing” all of which were in Al Mihdhar and Al Hazmi’s names.[52]
Later it was noted that “the hijackers had contact with 14 people
known to the FBI because of counterterror investigations prior to
9/11.”[53] This was known to the 9/11 Commission as the staff director
for 9/11 Commission made a clear statement about how close the FBI was
to catching the alleged hijackers. “Rather than the hijackers being
invisible to the FBI, they were, in fact, right in the middle of the
FBI‘s counterterrorism coverage,” said Eleanor Hill. “And yet, the FBI
didn‘t detect them.”[54]
All of this certainly seems to suggest that FBI headquarters and
Director Freeh had sufficient information to track and capture the
alleged 9/11 hijackers. Freeh’s close association with the Saudis is
also troubling considering the role of suspected Saudi spy Al-Bayoumi.
The company Al-Bayoumi worked for, Dalla Al-Baraka, was owned by Saleh
Abdullah Kamel, an alleged member of the “Golden Chain” financiers of
Osama bin Laden. And the wife of Freeh’s friend Prince Bandar was
reported to have sent funding to the alleged hijackers through
Al-Bayoumi’s wife.[55]
In his resignation speech, Freeh praised the integrity of George W.
Bush and dedication of Dick Cheney. “President Bush has brought great
honor and integrity to the Oval Office. It was equally an honor to be
appointed by his father to serve as a federal judge. I also wish to
thank Vice President Dick Cheney for conducting an effective transition
process and for his dedication to duty in serving the Nation,” said
Freeh.[56]
Going on, Freeh thanked his colleagues at the CIA and emphasized how
well the two agencies had worked together. “Through the leadership of
Director George Tenet, we have forged an unprecedented relationship with
the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency in the
counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism arenas,” he claimed. “This,
in turn, has enabled us to place greater emphasis on
counter-intelligence [and] counter-terrorism.”[57]
These remarks are in direct contradiction to the 9/11 Commission Report,
which placed blame for the failure to track down and capture the
alleged hijackers on two root causes. The first was that, although the
“system was blinking red,” the intelligence communities were not working
well together, partly because of “the Wall” of procedures that
supposedly prevented adequate information sharing between the agencies.
The second presumed root cause was that the information needed to stop
the attacks did not rise high enough within the FBI and CIA to ensure
action would be taken. Neither of these excuses is believable, given
the examples already reviewed.
At the end of Freeh’s tenure as director, the FBI was under severe
criticism from all directions. Patrick J. Leahy, the chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee whose office would a few months later be one
of the targets of the anthrax attacks, said, “There are some very, very
serious management problems at the FBI.”[58] Richard J. Durbin, a
Democrat from Illinois, said, “It’s hard to believe the situation has
deteriorated and disintegrated the way it has. How did this great agency
fall so far so fast? The FBI has been starved for leadership.”[59]
Nine days after Freeh announced his retirement, the FBI told Timothy
McVeigh’s attorneys that it had failed to give them about 3,000 pages of
documents related to the OKC bombing investigation. “Self-righteous
and sanctimonious, Freeh never admitted a personal mistake. He never
pointed out his own role in the McVeigh debacle.”[60]
If there is nothing to hide, why hide it?
Testifying before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry in October 2002,
Freeh said: “I am aware of nothing that to me demonstrates that the FBI
and the intelligence community had the type of information or tactical
intelligence which could have prevented September 11th. In terms of the
FBI’s capability to identify, investigate and prevent the nineteen
hijackers from carrying out their attacks, the facts so far on the
public record do not support the conclusion that these tragic events
could have been prevented by the FBI and intelligence community acting
by themselves.”[61]
This assessment contradicts that of FBI agent Robert Wright, whose
written warning prior to 9/11 was ignored. Wright later stated that:
“September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI’s
International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt
about that. You can’t know the things I know and not go public.” Agent
Wright was prohibited by the U.S. Justice Department from telling all he
knew about the pre-9/11 FBI failures. But he added: “There’s so much
more. God, there’s so much more. A lot more.”[62]
Why did the FBI, if it had nothing to hide, go into full-blown
cover-up mode immediately after the attacks? For example, FBI agents
confiscated all of the surveillance videos which would have shown what
happened at the Pentagon.[63] The Bureau harassed witnesses in Florida
who suggested that the allege hijackers were not the devout Muslims the
official account made them out to be.[64] In Pennsylvania, FBI agents
took control of the United 93 crash site and intentionally ignored
eyewitness testimony that contradicted the official account.[65] At the
WTC debris collection site, FBI agents were caught stealing
evidence.[66]
The FBI also went to great lengths to avoid cooperating with the
Joint Congressional Inquiry. For example, the Bureau refused to allow
the interviewing or deposing of Abdussatar Shaikh, the FBI informant who
had lived with alleged hijackers Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi.[67] Through
the FBI’s maneuvering, Shaikh was never required to testify. The FBI
also tried to prevent the testimony of Shaikh’s FBI handler, which
occurred only secretly at a later date.
The protection of Abdusttar Shaikh by the FBI makes no sense
considering that the Bureau encouraged the torture of other suspects,
like Hani El-Sayegh. Alleged al Qaeda associate Abu Zubaydah, who was
later found to have nothing to do with al Qaeda, had already been
tortured many times to gain information related to 9/11 while Shaikh was
allowed to negotiate his entire removal from the 9/11
investigation.[68]
The FBI also failed to cooperate with the 9/11 Commission. According
to author Philip Shenon, the FBI was “as uncooperative with the 9/11
Commission as it had been in the Congressional investigation” and was
“painfully slow to meet the Commission’s initial request for documents
and interviews.”[69]
The only reasonable explanation for FBI management’s behavior in the
decade before 9/11 and in the ensuing investigations is that they were
somehow complicit in the attacks. But why would Freeh and the FBI want
to support the activities of alleged terrorists?
We know that the accused 19 hijackers could not have accomplished
most of what needs explaining about 9/11. They could not have disabled
the U.S. air defenses for two hours, they could not have made the U.S.
chain of command fail to respond appropriately, and they could not have
caused the destruction of the three tall buildings at the WTC. However,
the myth of al Qaeda was a necessary part of the official account and
was able to provide a grain of truth in an otherwise unbelievable story.
In 2006, Freeh joined George Tenet on the board of a company that had
been flagged, but never investigated, for 9/11 insider trading.[70] He
also became the personal attorney for Saudi Prince Bandar who, as
stated before, was implicated through his wife in financing of the
alleged hijackers. Recently he has been trotted out to pass judgment on
the late coach Joe Paterno. But he is in no position to pass judgment
on others.
Under Louis Freeh, the FBI failed miserably at preventing terrorism
when preventing terrorism was the FBI’s primary goal. Moreover, the
actions of FBI management suggest that it was facilitating and
covering-up acts of terrorism throughout the time that Freeh was the
Bureau’s director. Fifteen examples have been cited here from the time
of Freeh’s tenure and three other examples were given from the time just
after he left, when it was unclear why he left or what he was doing.
Add to these examples the fact that the FBI took extraordinary measures
to hide evidence related to the 9/11 attacks and it becomes startling
clear that Mr. Freeh should be a prime suspect in any honest
investigation.
[2] Statement of Louis J. Freeh, Former FBI Director, before the Joint Intelligence Committees, October 8, 2002, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/100802freeh.pdf
[3] News Release, JUDICIAL WATCH REJOICES AT RESIGNATION OF FBI DIRECTOR LOUIS FREEH, May 3, 2001, http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/printer_921.shtml
[4] Ibid
[5] Judicial Watch press release, U.S. Supremes Rule in Favor of JW, http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/newsletter/2003/0203b.shtml
[6] Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror: Edwin P. Wilson and the
Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network, Carroll & Graf,
2005, p 351
Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network, Carroll & Graf,
2005, p 351
[7] Ralph Blumenthal, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” New York Times, October 28, 1993
[8] Pierre Thomas and Mike Mills, FBI Crime Laboratory Being Probed, The Washington Post, September 14, 1995
[10] Stephen Labaton, Man in the Background at the F.B.I. Now Draws Some Unwelcome Attention, The New York Times, May 28, 1995
[11] Geoffrey Fattah, Nichols says bombing was FBI op, Deseret News, February 22, 2007
[12] Peter Dale Scott, Systemic Destabilization in Recent American
History: 9/11, the JFK Assassination, and the Oklahoma City Bombing as a
Strategy of Tension, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, September,
2012
History: 9/11, the JFK Assassination, and the Oklahoma City Bombing as a
Strategy of Tension, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, September,
2012
[13] Alasdair Scott Roberts, The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The
Crisis of Authority in American Government, NYU Press, 2008, p 35
Crisis of Authority in American Government, NYU Press, 2008, p 35
[14] April 1995 memo from Jamie Gorelick outlining the “Wall” procedures, http://old.nationalreview.com/document/document_1995_gorelick_memo.pdf
[15] Louis J. Freeh, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating
Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, MacMillan, 2006
Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, MacMillan, 2006
[16] James T. McKenna, Report Cites Obstacles To Witness Interview, Aviation Week and Space Technology, December 15, 1997
[17] Don Van Natta Jr, Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800, The New York Times, August 23, 1996
[18] CNN, FBI: No criminal evidence behind TWA 800 crash, November 18, 1997
[19] Peter Lance, Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated
the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI – and Why Patrick Fitzgerald
Failed to Stop Him, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006
the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI – and Why Patrick Fitzgerald
Failed to Stop Him, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006
[20] Peter Lance, Triple Cross
[21] Patrick Fitzgerald, Testimony before 9/11 Commission, June 16, 2004, http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12.htm
[22] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America, University of California Press, 2007, p 152-160
Future of America, University of California Press, 2007, p 152-160
[23] Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, Simon and Schuster, 2004
[24] Department of Justice news release, Federal Jury in Dallas
Convicts Holy Land Foundation and Its Leaders for Providing Material
Support to Hamas Terrorist Organization, November 24, 2008
Convicts Holy Land Foundation and Its Leaders for Providing Material
Support to Hamas Terrorist Organization, November 24, 2008
[25] Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI–the Untold Story, Harper Collins, 2003
[26] Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge
[27] Peter Lance, Greg Scarpa Jr. A Mafia wiseguy uncovers a treasure trove of al Qaeda intel, http://peterlance.com/wordpress/?p=682
[28] Greg B. Smith, Panel told bureau rejected flight school warnings, new York Daily News, September 25, 2002
[29] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile for Ihab Ali NAwawi
[30] The Washington Post, Fbi’s Uneasy Role: Work In Lands With Brutal Police, October 29, 2000
[31] Tony Karon, The Curious Case of Hani al-Sayegh, TIME, Oct. 05, 1999
[32] Wikipedia page for Hani El-Sayegh
[33] Transcript of Hardball Special Edition, MSNBC, July 24, 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5486840/
[34] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile for Omar Al-Bayoumi
[35] U.S. Justice Department office of Inspector General’s Inquiry into 9/11, http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0606/final.pdf
[36] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, p 296
[37] FBI website, Veteran FBI Agent Arrested and Charged with Espionage, February 21, 2001
[38] Jerry Seper, Osama access to state secrets helped 9/11, Computer Crime Research Center, http://www.crime-research.org/news/2003/01/Mess0801.htm
[39] Jerry Seper, Osama access to state secrets helped 9/11
[40] Pierre-Henri Bunel, Al Qaeda: The Database, Centre for Research on Globalization, May 12, 2011, http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-the-database/24738
[41] Jamey Hecht, PTech, 9/11, and USA-Saudi Terror – Part I, From The Wilderness Publications, 2005, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012005_ptech_pt1.shtml
[42] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, Profile for PTech Inc., http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=ptech_inc.
[43] United States v. Usama bin Laden et al., transcript of day 14, March 7, 2001, accessed at Cryptome, http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-14.htm
[44] Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots: How CIA and FBI officials
helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations, Trine Day,
2011, p 220
helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations, Trine Day,
2011, p 220
[45] Transcript of Hardball Special Edition, MSNBC, July 24, 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5486840/
[46] Brian Ross and Vic Walter, FBI Informant Says Agents Missed
Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta, ABC News, September 10,
2009
Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta, ABC News, September 10,
2009
[47] Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots
[48] Transcript of Hardball Special Edition, MSNBC, July 24, 2004
[49] The Associated Press, FBI official made pre-9/11 comment linking Moussaoui, World Trade Center, 2005, accessed at: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-24-moussaoui_x.htm
[50] Coleen Rowley’s Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, May 21, 2002
[51] U.S. Justice Department office of Inspector General’s Inquiry into 9/11,
[52] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, 2004, p 539
[52] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, 2004, p 539
[53] Transcript of Hardball Special Edition, MSNBC, July 24, 2004
[54] Transcript of Hardball Special Edition, MSNBC, July 24, 2004
[55] Julian Borger, Mystery men link Saudi intelligence to Sept 11 hijackers, The Guardian, November 24, 2002
[56] CNN, Text of Freeh’s statement, May 1, 2001, http://articles.cnn.com/2001-05-01/politics/freeh.statement_1_fbi-director-freeh-national-security?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
[57] CNN, Text of Freeh’s statement
[58] David Johnston, Senators Angered After F.B.I. Says Weapons Are Missing The New York Times, July 18, 2001
[59] Ibid
[60] Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, St. Martin’s Press, July 2002
[61] Statement of Louis J. Freeh, Former FBI Director, before the Joint Intelligence Committees, October 8, 2002,
[62] Brian Ross and Vic Walter, Called Off the Trail?: FBI Agents
Probing Terror Links Say They Were Told, ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’, ABC
News, December 19, 2002
Probing Terror Links Say They Were Told, ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’, ABC
News, December 19, 2002
[63] 911Research.wtc7.net, Pentagon Attack Footage, http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/footage.html
[64] Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida, MadCow Press, 2004
[65] History Commons Complete 9/11 Timeline, 11:30 p.m. September 11, 2001: FBI Uninterested in Flight 93 Witness’s Evidence, http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1130fbiuninterested#a1130fbiuninterested
[66] Kevin R. Ryan, Demolition Access to the WTC Towers: Part Four – Cleanup, February 11, 2010, 911Review.com, http://www.911review.com/articles/ryan/demolition_access_p4.html
[67] James Risen, THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE INQUIRY; Congress Seeks
F.B.I. Data On Informer; F.B.I. Resists, The New York Times, October 06,
2002
F.B.I. Data On Informer; F.B.I. Resists, The New York Times, October 06,
2002
[68] Kevin R. Ryan, Abu Zubaydah Poses a Real Threat to Al Qaeda, DigWithin.net, October 15, 2012
[69] Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, Hachette Book Group, 2008
[70] Kevin R. Ryan, Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11, Foreign Policy Journal, November 18, 2010, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/18/evidence-for-informed-trading-on-the-attacks-of-september-11/
