THIS STORY suggests that claims the FBI was trying too hard not to offend the Saudis before September 11th are well-founded. I’d like to disbelieve this story, but sadly it’s all too believable. Excerpts:
In a dramatic interview with ABCNEWS, FBI special agents and partners Robert Wright and John Vincent say they were called off criminal investigations of suspected terrorists tied to the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. U.S. officials say al Qaeda was responsible for the embassy attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
“September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that,” Wright said. “You can’t know the things I know and not go public.”
In the mid-1990s, with growing terrorism in the Middle East, the two Chicago-based agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected terrorist cell that would later lead them to a link with Osama bin Laden. Wright says that when he pressed for authorization to open a criminal investigation into the money trail, his supervisor stopped him.
“Do you know what his response was? ‘I think it’s just better to let sleeping dogs lie,'” said Wright. “Those dogs weren’t sleeping. They were training. They were getting ready.”
The FBI says its handling of the matter was appropriate at the time.
Then there’s this:
Perhaps most astounding of the many mistakes, according to Flessner and an affidavit filed by Wright, is how an FBI agent named Gamal Abdel-Hafiz seriously damaged the investigation. Wright says Abdel-Hafiz, who is Muslim, refused to secretly record one of al-Kadi’s suspected associates, who was also Muslim. Wright says Abdel-Hafiz told him, Vincent and other agents that “a Muslim doesn’t record another Muslim.”
“He wouldn’t have any problems interviewing or recording somebody who wasn’t a Muslim, but he could never record another Muslim,” said Vincent.
Wright said he “was floored” by Abdel-Hafiz’s refusal and immediately called the FBI headquarters. Their reaction surprised him even more: “The supervisor from headquarters says, ‘Well, you have to understand where he’s coming from, Bob.’ I said no, no, no, no, no. I understand where I’m coming from,” said Wright. “We both took the same damn oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and he just said no? No way in hell.”
Far from being reprimanded, Abdel-Hafiz was promoted to one of the FBI’s most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country.
The FBI just isn’t up to the war on terrorism. I’d like to think that this culture of political ass-covering and political correctness is a thing of the past, but I doubt it, considering that no heads have rolled for these failures.
And what does Abdel-Hafiz think the law-enforcement agencies in Muslim countries do? This guy should be fired if the story is true.