By Garland Favorito

December 5, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

After three years, multiple Congressional investigations and the recent 9/11 Commission Report produced by an ï¿½independentï¿½ panel of Democrats and Republicans, no accountability has ever been assigned to any government agency and the basic question still remains: ï¿½How could the federal government of the most powerful country on earth have allowed such a horrendous terrorist act to occurï¿½? Several isolated incidents of astounding incompetence or worse have been identified at different agencies. For example:

The CIA knew that alleged hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, attended a Malaysia terrorist meeting in Kuala Lumpur during January 2000 but did not inform the FBI or the State Department so that the suspected terrorists could be placed on a State Department watch list;

The FAA Indianapolis Control Center lost track of flight 77 which eventually allowed it to fly off course for 52 minutes (8:46am ï¿½ 9:38am) before crashing into the Pentagon without standard military intercept and escort procedures ever being implemented;

But the most severe question of government accountability must reside with the U.S. Justice Department and specifically its Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. FBI headquarters has an incredible documented trail of actions in both assisting the 9/11 terrorists and promoting agents who appear to have assisted them. Here are a dozen examples: Marion ï¿½Spikeï¿½ Bowman, FBIï¿½s National Security Law Unit deputy general counsel who was implicated by Democrat and Republican Senators for refusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in the Zacarias Moussaoui investigation, received a Presidential Rank Award and a 20%+ pay increase;

Michael Maltbie, FBI supervisory special agent who was implicated in removing FISA application information that may have helped obtain the warrant against Moussaoui, was promoted to field supervisor in Cleveland;

Maltbieï¿½s boss, David Frasca, the FBI's Radical Fundamentalists unit chief, was implicated by FBI field offices in thwarting the Moussaoui investigation and ignoring the memo from Ken Williams in Phoenix about flight training for Hani Hanjour and other potential hijackers;FBI agent, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz who refused to secretly record another suspected Arab terrorist, was promoted to an anti-terrorism investigation post at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia;

A still to be identified representative from FBI headquarters refused to allow special agent Robert Wright and John Vincent to investigate Saudi money laundering from Chicago to Saudi Arabian businessman, Yassin al-Kadi. Wright was specifically told: 'I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects,'

The U.S. Justice Department shut down the Chicago money laundering investigation down despite supportive efforts from local federal prosecutor, Mark Flessner;

FBI counter intelligence informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, hosted, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid AlMihdhar, two of the alleged hijackers in San Diego during October 2000 to December 2000 and provided enough information for San Diego field agents to request an investigation of them;

FBI headquarters refused the plea from a San Diego FBI agent to investigate the two alleged San Diego hijackers;

Thomas Frields, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism at the FBI Washington Field Office, took no action after his employees filed FBI 302 forms to document information received about the pending 9/11 attacks from an intelligence officer in Iran;

An FBI intelligence analyst assigned to the Cole investigation cited a National Security Law Unit opinion in her refusal to provide information to a Cole case agent who wanted to open an investigation on alleged hijacker Khalid Al Mihdhar in August of 2001;

Immediately after 9/11 while the FBI searched for lead and suspects, Mike Feghali, told Sibel Edmonds and other FBI translators to slow down or even stop translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of an "extensive backlog of untranslated documents" and justify its request for budget and staff increases;

Immediately after 9/11 the FBI hired Melek Can Dickerson, a Turkish translator, who was given a top-secret clearance although she worked for organizations that were FBI targets of investigation and had ongoing relationships with two individuals who were FBI targets of investigation. Dickerson used her translator position to block investigations into those organizations until she left hastily in 2002 and to take top secret documents out of the FBI with the assistance of her supervisor, Mike Feghali, who was subsequently promoted to supervisor of the Arabic languages unit;

While any one or two of these 9/11 incidents could be an honest mistake or oversight by sincere hard working individuals, the unbelievable combination of a dozen different instances, all directly involving the headquarters of the FBI raises the serious question as to whether or not the FBI was complicit in the 9/11 attacks during the period of July to September 2001.

So who was the FBI director during this horrible period in its history? No, it was not Robert Mueller, the Bush administration appointee who took office in September just after 9/11. And no, it was not Louis Freeh, the Clinton administration appointee who resigned in June 2001 after presiding over a period of unprecedented FBI corruption. It was Thomas Pickard, the former acting FBI director from June 2001 to September 2001 and past recipient of another Presidential Rank Award.

So why would Pickard allow his agency to be run in such a horrible manner during this key time frame? In his April 13, 2004 testimony, he told the commission that after the second briefing about the heightened terrorist threat during the summer of 2001, his boss, Attorney General, John Ashcroft, told him thatï¿½ he did not want to hear about these threats anymoreï¿½.

If all of this surprises you consider the role of the FBI in other terrorists acts against the United States:

In the 1993 WTC bombing, the FBI actually had an Egyptian informant, Emad Salem, helping to make the bomb. Audio transcripts show that he was furious with the FBI N.Y. Field office director, William Garvin, for not stopping the plot and FBI Agents John Anticev and Nancy Floyd agreed with him;

In the 1995 OKC bombing, the FBI refused to investigate Hussain Al Hussaini, despite the fact that witnesses in the remarkable KFOR-TV investigative series identified him as being with Timothy McVeigh before the bombing, at the scene of the crime when the bombing occurred and driving a getaway vehicle that matched the description broadcasted over police radio. Hussaini later became a baggage handler at Bostonï¿½s Logan International Airport where two of the hijacked 9/11 flights originated;

In the 1993 Branch Davidian massacre near Waco, the FBI intentionally attacked and killed over 80 men, women and children who had never committed any crime;

In the 1992 Ruby Ridge Idaho murders, an FBI sniper shot and killed Vicky Weaver while she was standing on her porch holding her baby in her arms;

In the 1996 TWA 800 plane crash, the FBI attempted to prosecute James Sanders when he provided evidence of rocket fuel from the cover of a seat near where a missile entered the plane;

In the 2001 Anthrax case, the FBI never made an arrest even though the evidence immediately limited the suspects to a few dozen military scientists who formerly worked for the CIA.

The evidence seems clear that the FBI may have done more damage to America than good. This goes to show that the founding fathers were right all along when they explicitly excluded any mention of federal law enforcement in the Constitution. It simply becomes too evil, too corrupted and too unaccountable.





ï¿½ 2004 Garland Favorito - All Rights Reserved

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