Minneapolis agent says FBI headquarters rewrote requests for search warrants for Moussaoui

Minneapolis Star-Tribune ^ | May 25, 2002 | John Lumpkin & John Solomon

[Paul Ross]

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- An FBI whistle-blower alleges that FBI headquarters rewrote Minneapolis agents' pre-Sept. 11 request for surveillance and search warrants for terrorism defendant Zacarias Moussaoui and removed important information before rejecting them, government officials said Friday.

Agent Coleen Rowley wrote that the Minneapolis agents became so frustrated that they began to joke that FBI headquarters was becoming an "unwitting accomplice" to Osama bin Laden's efforts to attack the United States, the officials said.

[Paul Ross]

A more thorough version of the AP story here than was posted elsewhere.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Hinesight is never 20/20. The context is always removed. Does anyone think for one moment that civil lib groups, Democrats in Congress, news media would have stood by while Arab males were given special attention.

So maybe the FBI would have gotten warrants on Moussaoui, but they would have gotten little else. Most judges don't issue warrants on circumstantial evidence. And for the most part, that is all that has been presented through these illegal news leaks.The laws as they existed prior to 9/11 would not have supported the type investigation we have seen post attack. The current dog and pony show makes me sick.

[secretagent]

Officials familiar with Rowley's memo said she alleged that terrorism supervisors at FBI headquarters rewrote the Minnesota office's warrant applications and affidavit and removed intelligence about Moussaoui before sending them to a legal office that then rejected them as insufficient.

I wish the "officials" would let us know the intelligence removed from the warrant applications and the reasons for the removal.

Thanks for posting this.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Better yet, who are the "officials"?

[secretagent]

Most judges don't issue warrants on circumstantial evidence.

Please expand on this a bit. Thanks.

[at bay]

"Most judges don't issue warrants based on circumstantial evidence."

How wrong you are, bub. They could have easily found a judge to issue a search warrant with what they had. Federal judges hold their jobs for life. Had a warrant been issued 9-11 would have never happened. Frasca is scum.

[secretagent]

Yes. I can't understand what measly career considerations would keep an "official' silent on a matter this important. Name yourselves, oh musty ones!

But then perhaps the reporter never talked to any "officials". Safe enough to lie here.

[PogySailor]

Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., also praised Rowley and others in the Minneapolis office: "They have created a better climate for people to raise questions, without being accused of being unpatriotic," Wellstone said. "Clearly, there wasn't follow-through. Something went wrong."

Not to minimize the failures of the FBI, but Wellstone has got a lot of gall. He and Leahy would have been among the first to scream "racial profiling" before 9/11.

[secretagent]

Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the committee, said Friday that Rowley's allegations suggest a "lack of aggressive follow-through" by the FBI, a charge that would get high priority in the congressional investigation.

Suggests to me an aggressive smothering of a legitimate lead, for reasons of political correctness or intra-FBI rivalries.

[jtill]

The "officials" in this story seem to be heaping hot coals on Mueller's head. When did he become FBI Director? I thought it was just before 9/11 - does anyone know for sure?

[secretagent]

"This [Rowley] letter documents exactly what headquarters knew and when, and how midlevel officials sabotaged the Moussaoui case before the attacks," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Friday.

Yes, Wellstone and Leahy have D's after their names, so they might well have screamed "racial profiling".

But Grassley joined the Republican Party, so perhaps he has more credibility.

[PogySailor]

He was nominated on July 5th. I believe he took office in late August or very early September.

[Betty Jo]

The parents of those young sailors on the USS Cole that were murdered would have applauded the special attention given to Arab males!

[Betty Jo]

Soon the "officials" will tell all!

[secretagent]

Would that the careerists learn some honor from Agent Rowland.

More info on Rowland

[Mike Darancette]

After arresting Moussaoui at an Eagan flight school in August, the Minneapolis agents were concerned that he was seeking to hurt Americans, and they wanted to gather more information through national security and search warrants, including data off his computer.

All of these stories are so incomplete ie. when was the search warrant request made?

What seems to fall through the cracks is that this was still Clinton's FBI in Aug 2001.

[RJCogburn]

So maybe the FBI would have gotten warrants on Moussaoui, but they would have gotten little else

Maybe, maybe not. What was on his computer? What other information was there that might have pointed them in the right direction?

You are too dismissive here, I think.

[RJCogburn]

What seems to fall through the cracks is that this was still Clinton's FBI in Aug 2001.

My enmity for the Clintons is unbounded, but it is WAY too easy to blame them as you seem to. These were, so far as we know, 'career' people who pre and post dated the Clintons. Problems at the FBI seem to be institutional.

[glorygirl]

Sorry to ask this question guys, but has anybody wondered about the fact that *women* seem to be the *whistleblowers* these days? (here, Enron)

What does this say about our society?