Michael J. Sniffen of the Associated Press has an interesting article on the FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui on August 16, 2001.
FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui.
The government is seeking the death penalty for Moussaoui, but in order to succeed they need to prove that Moussaoui’s action led to at least one American death. Moussaoui has confessed to “conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings.” But he insists he was assigned to attack the White House in a follow-up attack and didn’t have anything to do with the 9/11 hijackers. His defense team, therefore, is trying to prove that it wasn’t Moussaoui’s dishonest answers to questioning that prevented the uncovering of the 9/11 plot, but the government’s negligence. And Agent Samit gave them a lot of ammunition.
MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was “very dangerous,” had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London’s Finnsbury Park mosque, was “completely devoted” to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.
Based on what he already knew, Samit suspected that meant Moussaoui had been to training camps there, although the communication did not say that.
The communication arrived Aug. 30, 2001. The Sept. 11 Commission reported that British intelligence told U.S. officials on Sept 13, 2001, that Moussaoui had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. “Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention,” the commission concluded.
But Samit told MacMahon he couldn’t persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie’s boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters.
They fought over Samit’s desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists.
Samit testified that on Aug. 22 he had learned from the French that Moussaoui had recruited someone to go to Chechnya in 2000 to fight with Islamic radicals under Emir Ibn al-Khattab. He said a CIA official told him on Aug. 22 or 23 that al-Khattab had fought alongside bin Laden in the past. This, too, failed to sway Maltbie or Frasca.
Under questioning from MacMahon, Samit acknowledged that he had told the Justice Department inspector general that “obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism” on the part of FBI headquarters officials had prevented him from getting a warrant that would have revealed more about Moussaoui’s associates. He said that opposition blocked “a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks.”
“Obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism” are pretty loaded words. How did preventing a warrant for Moussaoui advance someone’s career? What was ‘criminal’ about their negligence? Is this a partial explanation?
Thomas Pickard, interim director of the FBI after the departure of Louis Freeh in June 2001, said in sworn testimony that he briefed Ashcroft at “seven or eight meetings” about the FBI’s counter-intelligence activities, and on two occasions mentioned mounting evidence of an al Qaeda attack.
Pickard said Ashcroft told him to stop talking about the al Qaeda threats.
“He did not want to hear about this anymore,” Pickard said. “That is correct.”
The interim director of the FBI gave sworn testimony that Attorney General Ashcroft didn’t want to hear about al-qaeda threats. Even more curious, Pickard was allegedly not even made aware of the Moussaoui case, but George Tenet was made aware of it.
From the 9/11 Commission Report:
There is no evidence that either FBI Acting Director Pickard or Assistant
Director for Counterterrorism Dale Watson was briefed on the Moussaoui case
prior to 9/11.
And Tenet on the morning of 9/11 (approximately 8:50 am, four minutes after the first plane hit, and 13 minutes before the second plane hit):
CIA Director Tenet is told of the first WTC crash while he is eating breakfast with his mentor, former Senator David Boren (D). They are interrupted when CIA bodyguards converge on the table to hand Tenet the cell phone. Tenet is told that the WTC has been attacked by an airplane. Boren later says, “I was struck by the fact that [the messenger] used the word ‘attacked.’
” Tenet then hands a cell phone back to an aide and says to Boren, “You know, this has bin Laden’s fingerprints all over it.”
“
‘He was very collected,’ Boren recalls. ‘He said he would be at the CIA in 15 minutes, what people he needed in the room and what he needed to talk about.’
”[ABC News, 9/14/02; USA Today, 9/24/01]
According to other accounts, Tenet responds to the caller, “They steered the plane directly into the building?” Tenet then says to Boren, “That looks like bin Laden.” Tenet muses aloud, “I wonder if this has something to do with the guy [Zacarias Moussaoui] who trained for a pilot’s license.”
David Boren is (and was) the president of the University of Oklahoma, where Moussaoui obtained the email password of the later-to-be-beheaded-in-Iraq Nick Berg. Can you hear the wrinkling tin-foil? In any case, the behavior of the FBI in response to the Moussaoui arrest is curious, at best.
Samit’s complaints echoed those raised in 2002 by Coleen Rowley, the bureau’s agent-lawyer in the Minneapolis office, who tried to help get a warrant. Rowley went public with her frustrations, was named a Time magazine person of the year for whistleblowing and is now running for Congress.
Samit revealed far more than Rowley of the details of the investigation.
MacMahon walked Samit through e-mails and letters the agent sent seeking help from the FBI’s London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA’s counterterrorism center, the
Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not identified publicly by name in court (possibly the National Security Agency), and the FBI’s Iran, Osama bin Laden, radical fundamentalist, and national security law units at headquarters.Samit described useful information from French intelligence and the CIA before 9/11 but said he was not told that CIA Director George Tenet was briefed on the Moussaoui threat on Aug. 23 and never saw until after 9/11 a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix about radical Islamists taking flight training there.
For each nugget of information, MacMahon asked Samit if Washington officials called to assess the implications. Time after time, Samit said no.
MacMahon introduced an Aug. 31 letter Samit drafted “to advise the FAA of a potential threat to security of commercial aircraft” from whomever Moussaoui was conspiring with.
But Maltbie barred him from sending it to FAA headquarters, saying he would handle that, Samit testified. The agent added that he did tell FAA officials in Minneapolis of his suspicions.
This is one example of why Ms Martin was freaking out after Samit’s initial testimony when the trial started. I guess it finally came down to each person being forced to decide who/what to protect as the choice became unavoidable. I can’t believe the govt was so intent on the death penalty that they would even chance this testimony coming out. It will only get more damaging for the govt as this progresses. At least a large portion of the most incriminating evidence for obstruction and coverup has been blocked by Martin’s witness tampering.
Mueller also connecting to so many other suspicious events in the past brings more ugliness to light.
This is a really good point. The defendant pled guilty – the government didn’t even have to have a trial. Why did they choose to do this with all that would come out? I have to think there is something behind this.
Isn’t this just a sentencing trial? Guilt is established by the defendant pleading guilty but the sentencing is not, I think.
I’m way outside my area of expertise here, but I don’t think you need a trial for sentencing unless the government asks for the death penalty. So they could just skip this whole proceding and let the judge sentence the guy.
He didn’t plead guilty to direct involvement of 9/11. On the first or second day of testimony, one of the agents admitted that ZM couldn’t be tied to direct participation. He’s an evil-doer, probably yes, but not for making 9/11 happen. Many think ZM is actually inept.
For more on the rampant careerism, criminal negligence and obstructionist behavior inherent in the FBI, PBS’ Frontline did a terrific story on FBI agent John O’Neill; how he was blocked from doing an effective job tracking the terrorist threat, how he finally left the FBI and how he died on his first day on the job, 9/11/01, as head of security at the World Trade Center.
The PBS show is available in segments here, and goes to the very heart of how bureaucratic instincts for self-preservation have so seriously undermined the eficiency and competency of government. (I watch this show again every few months just to remind myself of how easy it is for things to get so massively screwed up.)
Is it the general opinion here in this diary that ‘careerism’ is at fault rather than the possibility of deliberate obstruction of the investigations to prevent the attacks?
You mean a LIHOP or MIHOP situtation? I don’t really think that – certainly not on the part of FBI and FAA agents. THey just figured out that Ashcroft didn’t want to hear anymore about that terrorism nonsense, and most of them went along with it. What the people at the top were doing, I don’t know. I always come down on the side of criminal negligence, but I don’t entirely put it past them.
I just watched Long Kiss Goodnight a few nights ago. (Beware of spoilers coming up!)
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At the end the former agent learns that the first World Trade Center bombing was done by the CIA to improve funding levels, and that didn’t make enough of an impression, so now they are going to kill 4000 people to get everyone to get with the program. This was before 9-11, of course. But it did send a chill or two down my spine.
I stumbled onto that movie late one night a few months ago. I didn’t know what it was when I found it. Great ending coincidences, too.
I’m drawn to coincidences
The Lockerbie bombing was not the first time authorities were warned in advance of a pending terrorist attack. The situation would repeat itself five years later in New York City, and seven years later in Oklahoma.
It was an all too eerie coincidence.
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Lockerbie relatives cautious over deal
It’s always the coverup, they say, but in this case, what’s being covered up is also dynamite. The “I don’t want to hear about terrorism” from the then Attorney General echoes similiar reports of White House attitudes. At the very least, it was criminal negligence.
As for why they pursued the death penalty, and let all this come out, it is part of their over-reaction, compensating for their failure (if failure is all it was.) Since 9-11 they’ve failed to get bin Laden, failed to conquer Iraq, they’ve unlawfully imprisoned thousands, illegally spied on tens of thousands, and they have nothing to show for it. They want one execution, one dead body, to prove they did something.
Since it turns out that Cheney had more prior knowledge than Moussaoui and was remiss in preventing the events of 9/11, should he be sitting in that dock?
There is not enough evidence of a crime to convict Moussaoui of anything more than intent and that isn’t a death penalty crime.
Treason however is.