Stymied Investigations
Prior to 9-11, several investigations from various agencies were inexplicably shut down...
Summary:
1. Able Danger [Lt Col Anthony Shaffer]
2. FBI Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui [FBI Agent Colleen Rowley]
3. FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright
4. FBI Agent Sibel Edmonds
5. PTECH [FBI Agent Indira Singh]
Lt Col Anthony Shaffer, Former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program and former member of the Able Danger data mining program that targeted Al Qaeda’s global structure. The following is taken verbatim from PatriotsQuestion911:
Career. Commander of Special Troops Battalion, 9th Theater Support Command. Former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program, overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command’s global controlled HUMINT efforts. A former member of the Able Danger data mining program that targeted Al Qaeda’s global structure. Awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Fellow, Center for Advanced Defense Studies. 23-year military intelligence career.
His statements:
• Regarding the Able Danger project - "... basic law enforcement investigative techniques, with 21st Century data mining and analytical tools ... resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection – and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorists as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks. ... After contact by two separate members of the ABLE DANGER team, … the 9-11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a "preconceived" conclusion to the 9-11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9-11 staff – a failure that the 9-11 Commissioners themselves were victimized by – and continue to have perpetrated on them by the staff as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that ABLE DANGER’s findings were "urban legend".
• Why did this operation, which was created in '99 to target Al Qaeda globally, offensively, why was that turned off in the Spring of 2001, four months before we were attacked? I can't answer that, either. I can tell you I was ordered out of the operation directly by a two-star general. But I don't know what the bigger picture was of why you'd want to stop an operation going after the very target who attacked us, in advance, why you'd want to turn it off."
FBI Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui
FBI agent Colleen Rowley, while in the Minneapolis Division, was part of an investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui prior to, during, and after 9-11. In May of 2002, she wrote a memorandum to FBI Director Robert Mueller about her concerns regarding the FBI's response to evidence of terrorist activity in the United States prior to the attacks on 9-11. While it was originally classified, someone in the Congressional Committee released an edited version, which was printed in Time magazine under the title “Bombshell Memo” [1]. In it, she alleges a deliberate skewing and omission of facts by the FBI higher echelon. She also recounts how their investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui was so thwarted that “jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.”[2] Her accounts totally contradict the following statements [3] made by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in the days following 9-11 asserting that the FBI hadn’t known of these individuals receiving training at flight schools, that they had no warnings of this type of attack operation, and that they would have prevented the attacks if they had known:
• "The tragedies quite clearly astonish and shock me and the country. The fact that there were a number of individuals that happened to have received training at flight schools here is news, quite obviously. If we had understood that to be the case, we would have—perhaps one could have averted this. But beyond that, I and I think everyone else is just astonished at the extent of the tragedy." [September 14, 2001]
• "There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country." [September 17, 2002]
Agent Rowley’s report details how Moussaoui was identified as a terrorist threat from an early point, with a particular emphasis on terrorist acts involving airplanes due to his flight training. After he was arrested (August 15, 2001), the French Intelligence Service confirmed his affiliations with radical fundamentalist Islamic groups as well as activities connected to Osama Bin Laden. Agents became desperate to examine his laptop and personal effects, but needed a criminal search warrant.
For that, they needed FBI Headquarters' (FBIHQ's) approval in order to ask for DOJ OIPR's approval to contact the United States Attorney's Office in Minnesota. Before even receiving the information, and even after receipt of information provided by the French, FBIHQ disputed the probable cause and refused to contact OIPR to get authority. This was in direct contraction to a directive stating that only “"reasonable indication" was needed. In a “desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock”, Agent Rowley states that the local FBI office (Minneapolis Division) took it upon themselves to directly notify the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center (CTC). The agents were then “chastised” for making a direct notification without FBIHQ approval! On August 28, 2001, after continual roadblocks in their attempt to obtain a warrant, agents were told (without specifics or substantiation) that there wasn’t sufficient evidence of Moussaoui's connection to a foreign power. What they didn’t know was that FBIHQ had edited their search warrant affidavit to undermine it.
Finally, after the attacks happened, agents immediately attempted to obtain a criminal search warrant again for Moussaoui's laptop and personal property. Another attempt to block the warrant was made on the grounds that the attack on the WTC was “mere coincidence”. Further, agents were specifically instructed to “do nothing” since "we might ‘screw up' something else going on elsewhere in the country." Later, agents were prevented from even attempting to question Moussaoui on the day of the attacks when he might have had further information about other co-conspirators! Interestingly enough, the search warrant obtained AFTER the hijacking used the exact same probable cause the agents submitted for this warrant, minus the French intelligence.
Given these continual roadblocks by the FBIHQ, (Dave Frasca, who coincidentally got a promotion a few months later despite his constant screw-ups of the investigation), it is certainly understandable why Agent Rowley statement about “jokes” being made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be moles working for Osama bin Laden.
FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright
FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism [4]. In addition to his claims, another item that merits investigation is why the FBI has gone to such lengths to silence him[5]. Per an interview:
“He is on government orders to remain silent. And by extension so are his attorneys when it comes to confidential information. Wright has written a book, but the agency won't let him publish it or even give it to anyone. All of this is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her.
Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels, sending his book off for an internal review and asking for permission to respond to reporters' queries. Neither of those efforts panned out, and he has since sued the agency over this publication ban. The best he could do was a May 30 press conference in Washington, D.C., where he told curious reporters that he had a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could.
Wright did say that FBI bureaucrats "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists." And that "FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the U.S." Wright was careful not to illegally disclose any confidential details about what he knew, but tears filled his eyes as he apologized to the families of September 11 victims for the Bureau's mistakes leading up to 9/11.” [6]
Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator. She blew the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. "These culprits are protected by the Justice Department, the State Department, the FBI, the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee. They are foreign nationals and Americans." [7] She accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department[8], and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official [9] infrastructure of money-laundering [10] and narcotics trade [11] behind the attacks.
Once again, like Agent Wright, great lengths have been gone to in order to silence her. On October 18th 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft came out personally, in public, asserted this rare "state secret privilege" on everything that had to do with her case. He retroactively classified her public testimony. Ms. Edmonds is also under two gag orders that forbid her to testify in court or mention the names of the people or the countries involved.
Whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities [12]. Further damning is that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that "that person should be killed".
What’s extremely interesting is that the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack. [13]
References:
[1] http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html
[2] Agent Colleen Rowley’s 2002 Memorandum to FBI Director Robert Mueller, page 7
[3] New York Times, Friday, May 31, 2002, p. A18
[4] http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml
[5] http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/37/news-crogan.php
[6] http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/another-fbi-agent-blows-the-whistle/3706/
[7] http://baltimorechronicle.com/050704SibelEdmonds.shtml
[8] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&am...
[9] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...
[10] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&am...
[11] http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&fo...
[12] http://www.madcowprod.com/mc4512004.html
[13] http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/021208-secure01.htm