By Russ Baker on Feb 28, 2014
The
FBI had a human source in direct contact with
Osama bin Laden in 1993 and discovered that he was eager to finance terror
attacks on the United States, according to little-noticed testimony in a court
case several years back.
The testimony, just reported by the Washington Times, underlines how poorly we understand the degree to which the
federal government was interacting with Osama bin Laden and monitoring the
activities of a network that came to be widely known as Al Qaeda.
The information, which emerged during
an obscure employment dispute case filed by an agent, was provided by Edward J.
Curran, who had been a top official in the Bureau’s Los Angeles office. “It was
the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al Qaeda, directly
involved,” Curran told a nearly empty courtroom in 2010.
The source was credible enough that the
Bureau was able to use his information to prevent an attack on a Los Angeles
Masonic temple at the time.
Several former lawmakers involved with
9/11 reviews told the newspaper they were unaware of the FBI-Al Qaeda
connection.
“I think it raises a lot of questions
about why that information didn’t become public and why the 9/11 Commission or
the congressional intelligence committees weren’t told about it,” said
former Rep.
Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who chaired the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the aftermath of the
9/11 report.
The Commission’s former executive
director, Philip Zelikow, now a history professor at the University of
Virginia, characterized the panel’s limited appetite for a long view of the
events culminating on September 11, 2001. Of the 1993 time frame when the FBI
apparently had its source into bin Laden’s outfit, he said, “We did not
delve as deeply in this period because it was so distant from the plotting that
led directly to the 9/11 attack.”
The notion that what was happening in
1993 had little to do with the 2001 attacks, however, is questionable. It was
in 1993 that plotters who had been trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan
detonated a truck bomb beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center in a
plot that failed to bring the towers down. The alleged financier of that early
attack, Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, is credited with coming up with the subsequent
idea of crashing a plane
into CIA headquarters and later conceptualizing the 9/11 attacks for Al Qaeda.
Furthermore, an FBI informant, Emad
Salem, was deeply involved with the 1993 plotters while apprising his
Bureau handlers.
FBI
Hotline to Osama
According to Curran’s testimony, the
agent developed a source who was connected to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called
“Blind Sheik” credited with the 1993 Trade Center bombing. Even more
significantly, the source went overseas and personally met with bin Laden. He
was described as “very in tight, close,” to bin Laden’s leadership team.
While with bin Laden, the source
learned that the Saudi had picked out a target for a bombing in the LA
area—which is believed to have been a Masonic lodge. The FBI supervisor said
the source also knew all about California-based cells.
The general thrust of Curran’s
testimony was borne out by documents.
In a particularly revealing moment,
Curran explained how the Al Qaeda source was pressured to cooperate, including
by working with the source’s wife from an arranged marriage to first deport the
source and then let him come back in return for betraying his comrades.
FBI
Defaults to Not Remembering
The FBI, which has not in memory
admitted to having withheld information from elected officials, predictably
told The Washington Times that it
could not document whether or not it had briefed the 9/11 Commission about the
1993 asset or plot. One question might be: Why not? Does it not keep records on
briefings to government officials? The
Times does not appear to have asked this of the Bureau, but did note its
standard, highly qualified disclaimer, quoting Assistant Director Michael P.
Kortan:
“The FBI made
all relevant information available to the 9/11 Commission and the joint
intelligence community inquiry. Throughout both of these reviews, the FBI shared
pertinent documents and knowledgeable personnel in order to present all known
information to commission and inquiry personnel.”
Of course, as Zelikow’s analysis
underlines, words like “relevant” and “pertinent” are highly subjective and can
be used to exclude crucial evidence that would fundamentally alter our
understanding of major events.
In fact, the FBI clearly withheld the
information about its Al Qaeda asset. Stephen Kohn, attorney for the FBI agent
who filed the discrimination suit, Bassem Yousef, and who has represented
numerous important FBI whistleblowers, said the information might never have
come out through normal channels. Even his client did not reveal the Al Qaeda
angle because it was classified—it only emerged in the legal proceedings.
“I was shocked when it came out, and I
was frustrated because the FBI had
censored that information clearly to hide it from the public,” said Kohn,
who has represented some of the FBI’s
most famous whistleblowers over the years.
“There was absolutely no reason for
that to be kept secret,” he told The
Washington Times. “In some respects, it was kind of demeaning for the FBI because
they had kept secret one of the most significant triumphs in the war on terror
all so they wouldn’t have to give credit to Bassem for
the work he had done. As a result, none of the bureau got the credit it was due
for what was a spectacular counterterrorism triumph.”
What Kohn seems to have missed—or
perhaps could not say as it is not in his narrow purview as an attorney
representing clients, is that it is hardly likely that the FBI withheld
information about a source in Osama bin Laden’s inner circle and had to keep
its successes quiet just to best one agent in a job dispute.
Indeed, had the FBI revealed what has
only emerged now, everything would be different. For one thing, the 9/11
commission would not have been able to pooh-pooh notions that the 2001 attack
had domestic roots going back years.
Growing
Questions about the FBI
This is hardly the first instance in
which the FBI has been involved in controversial or unexplained interactions
with terrorists, alleged terrorists, or potential witnesses—and failed to
properly brief elected officials with purported responsibility for providing
oversight of security matters on behalf of the public. In addition to the
harassment and shooting of potential Boston
bombing case witnesses, there is the suppression of information about an
FBI investigation into Saudi-9/11
ties out of Florida, and of information concerning the targeting of Occupy
movement leaders by
snipers.
Former Congressman Hoekstra, clearly
alarmed by the latest revelation, nonetheless resorted to pro forma, cautious
language and failed to raise larger questions about the FBI and who is in
control of the powerful agency. “This is just one more of these examples that
will go into the conspiracy theorists’ notebooks, who say the authorities are
not telling us everything,” Hoekstra told
The Times. “That’s bad for the
intelligence community. It’s bad for law enforcement and it’s bad for
government.”
To be sure, though, it is difficult in
this matter, as in others involving the Bureau, to sort out willfulness from
incompetence. Bassem’s discrimination case stemmed from the FBI blocking
Bassem from his job as a top anti-terrorism officer because superiors worried
that he was a Muslim of dubious loyalties. In fact, Bassem was and is
Christian.
If the FBI truly did not know that, then it deserves a whole other
level of scrutiny
- See more
at:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/02/28/fbi-direct-link-bin-laden-1993/#sthash.HyMDeckI.dpuf
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