FBI Agent: Bureau Prevented Terror
Probe
NewsMax
Staff
Monday, Sept. 23, 2002
"Whatever happened to this -- someday someone will die
-- and wall [between domestic and foreign intelligence agencies] or
not the public will not understand why we were not more effective
and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems,’” read a
pre-9-11 e-mail from a frustrated FBI field agent to his
headquarters.
The prophetic warning from the nameless and screened agent was
one of the alarming details disclosed in Friday’s testimony before
the House and Senate intelligence committees. The agent said he had
been instructed by superiors to stand clear of Khalid Al-Mihdhar, a
man later identified as a 9-11 terrorist.
The reasoning of his superiors, said the agent, was to prevent a
violation of the legal "wall" that prevented overseas intelligence
from being used in criminal prosecutions.
Written just 13 days before the attacks, the e-mail goes on to
lament, "Let’s hope the [FBI’s] National Security Law Unit will
stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest
threat to us now, UBL [Osama bin Laden], is getting the most
‘protection.’”
The FBI agent, who had been in on the investigation of the attack
on the USS Cole in Bahrain, told the congressional investigators
that he found about Al-Mihdhar in the spring of 2001 through a
confidential contact who claimed that a bagman hauling money to the
chief suspect in the Cole attack had met with Al-Mihdhar in
Malaysia.
After the 9-11 attacks when the hijackers’ names were revealed,
the agent recalled saying to his associates, "This was the same
Khalid al-Mihdhar that we had talked about for three months."
"The ‘Wall’ and implied, interpreted, created or assumed
restrictions regarding it, prevented myself and other FBI agents
working a criminal case out of the New York Field Office from
obtaining information from the intelligence community – regarding
Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi in a meeting on June 11, 2001,”
testified the agent.
"[D]uring the fourth week of August 2001, when, after it was
learned that Al-Mihdhar was in the country, FBI HQ representatives
said that FBI New York was compelled to open an "intelligence case”
and that I nor any of the other "criminal case” investigators
assigned to track Al-Qaeda could attempt to locate him…
"I hope…these proceedings are the time to break down the barriers
and change the system which makes it difficult for all of us…to have
and be able to act on the information that we need to do our jobs…
"In addition to the Wall, the system as it currently exists,
however, seduces some managers, agents, analysts, and officers into
protecting turf and being the first to know and brief those above…
"How and when did we, the CIA and the FBI, learn that Al-Mihdhar
came into the country on either or both occasions…and what did we do
with the information?”
The agent, whose identity has been withheld to protect his future
work, served as a military aviator between 1985 and 1993.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
War
on Terrorism
Editor's note:
Revealed:
The Terrorists Living Among Us
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