No wonder we can’t find Bin Laden

Let bin Laden Stay Free, Says Ex-Number Three. CIA Man Warns Capturing Most Wanted Terrorist Could Trigger New Wave of Terror Attacks

Posted: January 9, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Three years after the attack on New York’s World Trade Center, the manhunt for Osama bin Laden has failed to produce the world’s most wanted terrorist, and, according to the former No. 3 man at the CIA, that’s just fine.

Former Central Intelligence Agency executive, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, has told the London Times that letting the al-Qaida leader run free may actually make the world a safer place.

“You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large),” Krongard said. “Because if something happens to bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.”

Krongard, former head of Alex. Brown & Co., a Baltimore-based investment bank, came to the CIA in 1998 as then Director George Tenet’s counsel. He was appointed executive director of the CIA in March 2001 by President Bush.”

Krongard, 68, stepped down six weeks ago as the agency’s third most senior executive following the appointment of Porter Goss as director.

Krongard sees bin Laden’s role “not as a chief executive but more like a venture capitalist. “Let’s say you and I want to blow up Trafalgar Square,” Krongard says. “So we go to bin Laden. And he’ll say, ‘Well, here’s some money and some passports and if you need weapons, see this guy.’ I don’t see him keeping his fingers on everything because the lines of communications are just too difficult.”

Krongard is the most senior official to date to publicly question the wisdom of capturing Osama. If his views are widely shared – and the London Times reports that other U.S. officials have privately said pinning bin Laden down on the Afghan-Pakistan border is preferable to making him a martyr or trying him – they represent a break with three years of official pronouncements about bringing him to justice.

The shift in thinking certainly reflects the difficulty the CIA has had getting inside Islamist groups. “There are hundreds and hundreds of cells — it’s like a living, moving bit of protoplasm,” Krongard explains. “In order to penetrate you not only have to be language-proficient, you also have to commit acts that exceed criminality. It’s very hard.”

Only this week the U.S. re-stated its desire to capture the elusive bin Laden and more than a dozen other al-Qaida figures by placing a half page ad in the Urdu daily “Jang” promising millions of dollars in rewards. “All the information would be kept secret,” the U.S. Justice Department advertisement promised.

Krongard continues. “He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind. Some of his lieutenants are the ones to worry about.”

“To the embarrassment of investigators, it has also emerged that the firm used to buy many of the `put’ options … on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by `Buzzy’ Krongard, now executive director of the CIA.” Krongard was chairman of Alex Brown Inc., which was bought by Deutsche Bank. “His last post before resigning to take his senior role in the CIA was to head Bankers Trust–Alex Brown’s private client business, dealing with the accounts and investments of wealthy customers around the world.” [U.K. Independent, 10/14/01]

He was a high-flying trader with a taste for flashy cars, pretty women, and fast cash. But when Kevin Ingram turned his World Trade Center office into a money laundromat for alleged arms dealers, not even his powerful friends could save him–especially after the name Osama bin Laden came out in the wash. Talk Magazine

In 1996 Ingram was tipped off by his gurus that he was unlikely to make partner that year, either. When his mentor Jacobson jumped to Deutsche Bank and offered him an opportunity to double his salary to $2 million, Ingram informed Mortara he was quitting. Sources say Mortara was furious; he had planned to push Ingram for partner in 1998. “Mike would have gone to the wall for him if he’d stayed and not screwed up,” says [Sen.]Corzine.

INGRAM WAS NOW POISED FOR A roll with Randy Glass. Glass, a 49-year-old from Boca Raton, Florida, with the affect of a Jewish Joe Pesci, was well known to Florida law enforcement officials. A putative jeweler who also went by the names Randy Goldberg and Randi Goodstein, Glass had bilked diamond and jewelry wholesalers in locales ranging from South America to Toronto out of $6 million. He’d also conned insurance companies by pretending he had been robbed… and in 1998 he suddenly found himself facing 13 federal charges, which carried a maximum penalty of 130 years.

Desperate to avoid jail, on December 2, 1998, Glass approached the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and said he knew someone involved with illegal arms deals. He agreed to cooperate with an ATF sting if prosecutors helped reduce his jail time.

Five days later Glass called a meeting with Diaa Mohsen, whom he identified to ATF agents as an arms dealer he had met two years earlier at the Taj Mahal casino in Las Vegas. A former Olympic long-jumper who speaks nine languages, Mohsen had been a US. citizen for 30 years; he claimed to be a lumber and commodities broker but he’d also worked as a ticket-taker at New Jersey’s Meadowlands sports complex. Glass told Mohsen he knew army-base people who could supply him with artillery. Court papers say that Mohsen eagerly inquired about howitzers, grenade launchers, and surface-to-air missiles, and even asked if Glass could get hold of an MR2020, a nuclear-weapon component. The ATF affidavit says that Mohsen told Glass that a friend of Mohsen’s--Mohammed “Mike” Malik–was negotiating with an individual who was seeking arms on behalf of an unnamed foreign country According to court papers, Mohsen says this individual wondered whether Glass would accept heroin as partial payment. By August, court papers say, Mohsen, Malik, and an individual named “Abbas” had flown down to Fort Lauderdale to inspect Glass’s goods, which had been assembled by the ATF. Throughout the sting, Glass made tape recordings for the government, and he was talking one night with Diaa Mohsen, say court papers, when Mohsen suddenly said that the Taliban was seeking arms, too.

The question of how Glass would dispose of some of the $32 million in arms payments naturally arose. Mohsen suggested that Glass get in touch with Ingram, whom he’d met through their mutual car detailer, says a source close to Mohsen.

Ingram took his first meeting with Glass and Mohsen at the World Trade Center in June 1999, according to an ATF affidavit. Glass handed the fallen trader $100,000 in cash and told Ingram that the money was proceeds from illegal weapons sales. A paranoid Ingram asked Glass to “retract” the statement–perhaps suspecting that Glass was wearing a wire (which he was). Calming down, Ingram handed Glass a check for $91,000– keeping $9,000 for himself as a commission.