Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
dave@davesweb.cnchost.com
This transcript comes courtesy of the BBC's Newsnight. The original is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm
This transcript is produced from the teletext subtitles that are
generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the
programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no
responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to
correct serious errors.
Has someone been sitting on the FBI? 6/11/01
GREG PALAST:
The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their
connections cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism?
UNNAMED MAN:
There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our
government.
JOE TRENTO, (AUTHOR, "SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA"):
The sad thing is that thousands of Americans had to die needlessly.
PETER ELSNER:
How can it be that the former President of the US and the current
President of the US have business dealings with characters that need
to be investigated?
PALAST:
In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and
potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the
hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special
charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama
Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the
White House.
Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion -
apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family
name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal
household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove
embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on
the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to
terrorist organisations before and after September 11th.
This document is marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199
is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage.
199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office
special agents were investigating ABL - because of it's relationship
with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist
organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of
WAMY.
This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia where
almost every home displays the Stars and Stripes. On this
unremarkable street, at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the
former home of Abdullah and another brother, Omar, also an FBI
suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of
Muslim Youth is in this building, in a little room in the basement at
5613 Leesburg Pike. And here, just a couple blocks down the road at
5913 Leesburg, is where four of the hijackers that attacked New York
and Washington are listed as having lived.
The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to
them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan
expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an
organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines
military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did
look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the
trail.
TRENTO:
The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. This is not something that
they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to.
PALAST:
The secret file fell into the hands of national security expert, Joe
Trento. The Washington spook-tracker has been looking into the FBI's
allegations about WAMY.
TRENTO:
They've had connections to Osama Bin Laden's people. They've had
connections to Muslim cultural and financial aid groups that have
terrorist connections. They fit the pattern of groups that the Saudi
royal family and Saudi community of princes - the 20,000 princes -
have funded who've engaged in terrorist activity.
Now, do I know that WAMY has done anything that's illegal? No, I
don't know that. Do I know that as far back as 1996 the FBI was very
concerned about this organisation? I do.
PALAST:
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between
the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the
American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
MICHAEL SPRINGMAN:
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept
officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were,
essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to
their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I
returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the
General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and
to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.
PALAST:
By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman
was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA
were playing "the Great Game".
SPRINGMAN:
What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits,
rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by
the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against
the then-Soviets.
The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State
Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American
barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which
19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was
being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents
are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi
connections?
MICHAEL WILDES, ( LAWYER)
I would never be surprised with that. They're cut off at the hip
sometimes by supervisors or given shots that are being called from
Washington at the highest levels.
PALAST:
I showed lawyer Michael Wildes our FBI documents. One of the Khobar
Towers bombers was represented by Wildes, who thought he had useful
intelligence for the US. He also represents a Saudi diplomat who
defected to the USA with 14,000 documents which Wildes claims
implicates Saudi citizens in financing terrorism and more. Wildes met
with FBI men who told him they were not permitted to read all the
documents. Nevertheless, he tried to give them to the agents.
WILDES:
"Take these with you. We're not going to charge for the copies. Keep
them. Do something with them. Get some bad guys with them." They
refused.
PALAST:
In the hall of mirrors that is the US intelligence community, Wildes,
a former US federal attorney, said the FBI field agents wanted the
documents, but they were told to "see no evil."
WILDES:
You see a difference between the rank-and-file counter-intelligence
agents, who are regarded by some as the motor pool of the FBI, who
drive following diplomats, and the people who are getting the shots
called at the highest level of our government, who have a different
agenda - it's unconscionable.
PALAST:
State wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control
of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a
blind eye to any terrorist connection so long as America was safe. In
recent years, CIA operatives had other reasons for not exposing Saudi-
backed suspects.
TRENTO:
If you recruited somebody who is a member of a terrorist
organisation, who happens to make his way here to the US, and even
though you're not in touch with that person anymore but you have used
him in the past, it would be unseemly if he were arrested by the FBI
and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA. What
we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is
embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.
PALAST:
Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blow-back?
The younger Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil
company partly funded by Salem Bin Laden's chief US representative.
Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of
Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has, in
just a few years of its founding, become one of Americas biggest
defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid advisor.
And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the Bin Ladens
held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.
ELSNER:
You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former
President of the US who happens to be the father of the current
President of the US. And you have all sorts of questions about where
does policy begin and where does good business and good profits for
the company, Carlyle, end?
PALAST:
I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US
intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been
constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten
much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off"
investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered
agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been
reversed. FBI headquarters told us they could not comment on our
findings. A spokesman said: "There are lots of things that only the
intelligence community knows and that no-one else ought to know.
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