I'm movin' on,
the rest of you partisan
coyotes can chase the Clinton drifters.
Posted on 07/25/2002 10:55:57 AM PDT by 1bigdictator
HOMELAND INSECURITY Why FBI missed Islamic threat Agents: Clinton shifted counterterror efforts to fighting 'right-wing' groups
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 25, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – The Clinton administration "de-emphasized" fighting Arab international terrorism to focus on domestic terrorism – namely, white "right-wing" militia groups – which led to the FBI ignoring Arab nationals flocking to U.S. flight schools, veteran FBI agents told WorldNetDaily.
They say the shift was so dramatic at the FBI that dozens of boxes of evidence that agents gathered in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case were never analyzed – until it was too late. The evidence held valuable clues to al-Qaida's network and operations, they say.
Some 40 boxes of material left over from the WTC investigation, which lasted through the late '90s, "were never gone through," said one Washington-based agent familiar with the probe. Another seven to eight boxes of evidence from the Manila, Philippines, side of the investigation also were never looked at, he added.
"It was data tailor-made for analysis," the agent said.
The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – now one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, with a U.S. bounty as high as Osama bin Laden's – is accused of working with Ramzi Yousef in the first bombing of the WTC, which left six dead and more than 1,000 injured. Yousef was convicted in 1998.
While living in Manila in 1995, Mohammed and Yousef, his nephew, were also accused of plotting to blow up several trans-Pacific airliners heading for the U.S. Yousef, moreover, is believed to have planned to crash a plane into CIA headquarters.
Meanwhile, despite evidence of an increased threat to U.S. security from such Islamic terrorist groups, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and his former deputy, Robert "Bear" Bryant, were shifting the bureau's counter-terrorism efforts to combatting threats from anti-government militia groups, violent white supremacists, anti-abortion groups and other "right-wing extremists."
"When I left in 1998, domestic terrorism was the No. 1 priority," said retired FBI agent Ivian C. Smith, former head of the analysis, budget and training section of the bureau's National Security Division.
"And as far as I know, it was still a higher priority than foreign terrorism on Sept. 11 (2001)," he said in an exclusive WorldNetDaily interview.
Other agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say pressure to change priorities came from the White House.
After the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, President Clinton made great political hay of the tragedy by drawing parallels between the anti-government extremists behind the plot and the anti-big-government Republican revolution that had swept Congress.
Also, Bryant moved FBI counterterrorism analysts over to tracking right-wing groups. He eventually grouped all analysts together at headquarters, putting them under operations staff in what he called the Investigative Support Division, whereupon agents say analysts were constantly being diverted to areas other than their specialty, such as helping in criminal prosecutions.
Around the same time, he moved the bureau's counterterrorism programs under its National Security Division, and "de-emphasized" the bureau's counterintelligence program, agents say.
They say intelligence-gathering on foreign threats suffered as a result.
Veteran FBI agents say intelligence is the best weapon against terrorism – something Bryant didn't get.
"Bear Bryant had very little appreciation for the whole thing," said one agent.
Attempts to reach Bryant for comment were unsuccessful.
He also made the mistake of subordinating terrorism analysts to operations staff, agents say, because the analysts ended up just telling their bosses what they wanted to hear, rather than giving them fresh analysis.
"Operations agents working on terrorism leads need predictive, forward-looking analysis, but they weren't getting that kind of raw data from analysts," Smith said.
"Operations agents were writing the analysts' performance evaluations," he continued, "so the analysts weren't free to conduct truly independent analysis."
As a result, "counterterrorism analysts were used more as clerks," said another agent.
This was the counterterrorism system in place Sept. 11.
About three weeks after Sept. 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller disbanded Bryant's Investigative Support Division.
However, the bureau's new chief of counterintelligence and counterterrorism operations, Dale Watson, was a protégé of Bryant.
"He was one of Bear Bryant's favorites," an agent said.
As one of Mueller's executive assistant directors, Watson – who agents complain has no real experience outside headquarters (he never headed a field office nor was an inspector) – is now one of the top four officials in the FBI.
The FBI did not return calls for this story.
But former Clinton officials defend the FBI's counterterrorism shift by pointing to the alarming rise in domestic terrorism cases in the '90s – from Waco to Oklahoma City to the Atlanta Olympics bombing. They also cite the Unabomber case.
Difference is, agents point out, those home-grown attacks came from different sources, all unconnected, while the foreign threats all came from one source – radical Islam, and mainly al-Qaida.
Indeed, the Clinton administration emphasized tracking home-grown terrorism, despite a clear pattern of al-Qaida terrorism against U.S. and U.S. assets overseas – from the WTC bombing to the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa (1998) to the USS Cole bombing (2000). There were also two attacks on U.S. military installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996. And while the domestic terrorism for the most part stopped, the foreign terrorism didn't, culminating in another attack on the WTC and also on the Pentagon.
Agents told WorldNetDaily that the late John O'Neill, the FBI's lead investigator in the Cole case, was nearly fired by Deputy FBI Director Thomas Pickard for pressing Yemeni officials too hard to cooperate. Pickard, who initially headed the Sept. 11 probe before suddenly retiring just two months later, was earlier this year quoted as saying he was uneasy with agents questioning Muslims in America after the attacks.
"I don't want to see them feeling intimidated by us," he told the Washington Post. "Nobody feels good when an FBI agent knocks on the door."
The Clinton-era emphasis on "right-wing" terrorism wasn't limited to the FBI. Other federal law enforcement branches also focused on the domestic threat from militia groups over the foreign threat from Islamic groups.
The head of security at the Commerce Department, for one, sanitized a Y2K counterterrorism report distributed to the Census Bureau by removing Islamic threats. Only threats from white "right-wing" groups were included in the report, Commerce security officials told WorldNetDaily.
Previous story:
TSA honcho nixed Islamic groups in threat report
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
Ya better believe it will!!
Only because our national guard is an over seas billet now.
Can you point me to more info? I did a search on some of the terms in this para, but could find nothing about relocated Iraqi troops brought in by GHWB, not even at the most vile Bush bashing websites.
From --- http://www.infowars.com/transcript_schippers.html
In this interview, "Iraqi Terrorists" refers to the Iraqi Republican Guard, resettled after the Gulf War, near Oklahoma City by former Pres. Bush.
David Shippers Interview
Alex Jones Radio Show
October 10, 2001 (in progress)
DS: ....in Oklahoma City and, frankly, when I first heard the information, I just poo-pooed it, as did everybody else - they thought here comes another one of those crazy conspiracy theories, you know. The woman who is a former investigative reporter down in Oklahoma City wrote to me after I came back from Washington and just, you know - congratulations - you did a hell of a job. I wrote back and the next thing you know she wrote back again and told me that she had information indicating a middle eastern connection. I called her at that point and just for my own conscious if there was something out there I'd want to find out about it - she began to tell me what she had and she sent me a short summary - a couple of pages - laying out what she had garnered during her investigations. It really piqued by interest. So I asked her if she had more. She said yes she had an awful lot of stuff, but she wouldn't want to send it up through the mail or any other way. So she and her husband flew up to Chicago and brought a mass of information - I mean affidavits, all kinds of things.
AJ: And we've had Col. Craig Roberts, who was a detective working the case on this show many times, a month before attack, predicting one was imminent. He has all that same information. They actually arrested some of these guys and the Justice Dept. in 1995 said to release them.
DS: That's right - and the words out today that they are not even allowed to touch them, the Oklahoma City police are not allowed to touch these people. And from what I'm understanding, they are up to something again in Oklahoma City. I don't know what it is or what their target is but these same people are at it again. The terrible thing here else, something that few people know that there was a warning sent out. Have you ever heard of Ysolf Bodansky (sp)?" <<<< snips >>>>
"AJ: Wouldn't touch it. So we've got all this developing. We've got police officers and FBI on the ground who know who bombed Oklahoma City. They've got them in custody with blue jogging suits and bomb-making components. They are ordered to release them. All of this is unfolding - 3500 to 5000 Iraqi Republican Guard (living near OKC), we know there is a Saddam/Iraqi connection here - I mean they knew this. Why in the world, David Shippers, did they allow this to take place?" <<< snip >>>>
AJ: We're talking to David Shippers. We're discussing FBI agents across the country having prior knowledge of the attacks, trying to get these guys arrested or even to get a warrant, knowing they were associates of Bin Laden, others being trained at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, Clinton not wanting the names of Al Queda when they had the chance, there is so much evidence of prior knowledge. How did this happen with the Bush administration, when you are trying to get to Ashcroft and telling them that they is a plan to attack lower Manhattan very soon and what was the intel you were getting from these agents?
Sperry's article is more interesting for what it does not say than for what it does. No mention of Abe Foxman. No mention of Project Megiddo. No mention of the ADL. No mention of FBI cooperation with the ADL ( much different from the ADL cooperating with the FBI) not only continues but is greater than ever. No mention of the other civic groups which jumped on the "demonize Christians" campaign launched by Clinton, Freeh and Foxman.
If I knew what the hell you were talking about, I would not have bothered to go out and do a search to find out what the hell you were talking about before asking you what the hell you were talking about. I don't frequent conspiracy websites like you and Askel, I have a life. Alex Jones? Give me a break...give me a credible source. The only other source for this story that I have come across is Skolnick...you may as well be dealing with Art Bell.
In other words you think David Schippers is a Kook, huh?
I'm movin' on,
the rest of you partisan
coyotes can chase the Clinton drifters.
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