Able Danger

Fear of Backlash Kept pre-9/11 data from FBI
From the Washington Times
Excerpt: Pentagon lawyers, fearing a public-relations "blow back," blocked a military intelligence unit from sharing information with the FBI that four suspected al Qaeda terrorists were in the country prior to the September 11 attacks, after determining they were here legally, a former Defense Department intelligence official says.
Members of an intelligence unit known as Able Danger were shut out of the September 11 commission investigation and final report, the official said, despite briefing commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI...
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Former Flight School Owner says US Intelligence Failure Ruined His Life
From the Herald Tribune (SW Florida)
Excerpt: ...The revelation had particularly strong ties to Venice because Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who each piloted a hijacked jetliner into the World Trade Center, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation, a flight school that operated out of Venice Municipal Airport.

Huffman’s former owner, Rudi Dekkers, was angered that the government may have known about Atta but never shared it with the FBI or other agencies who could have stopped the terrorists.

“We are civilians here. We’re supposed to be protected, and we apparently were not,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers claims the fallout from unwittingly training the terrorists cost him his business, his reputation and his marriage. Huffman closed six months after the attacks.

“Everywhere I come, they say, ‘Are you not that guy that trained terrorists?’” said Dekkers, who now lives in Naples. “I am without a job right now. I have no income anymore. My life was destroyed.”
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Labels: al qaeda, FBI, pentagon, September 11

CIA Director Cuts Meeting on Terrorism
From the Washington Post
Excerpt: The daily 5 o'clock meeting at CIA headquarters that for the past three years has coordinated tactical counterterrorism operations involving senior CIA, FBI, Pentagon and Homeland Security Department officials has been cut back by new CIA Director Porter J. Goss to three a week, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials...
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Labels: CIA, FBI, national security, pentagon

Lost in Translation: Why the FBI didn't translate foreign documents
From CBS News
Excerpt: ... Sibel Edmonds, a translator who worked at the FBI's language division, says the documents weren't translated because the divison was riddled with incompetence and corruption. Edmonds was fired last year after reporting her concerns to FBI officials...
Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency - that she should take longer to translate documents so that the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget for the next year...

Labels: FBI

FBI Agents Probing Terror Links Say They Were Told, ‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’
ABC News

FBI lawyer who rejected Moussaoui search is given award
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Labels: FBI, iraq

The FBI informant who lived with the hijackers
Newsweek

U.S. allows Syria to trade with Iraq
and
Bush's "Iraq Evidence" disputed
Both articles from MSNBC

West Nile Watch
954 cases
43 deaths
Centers for Disease Control

Labels: FBI

Pornographer Hacks Al Queda; FBI not interested
From CNN

Labels: FBI

Congress To Postpone Revamping Of FBI, CIA
Washington Post

Labels: FBI

FBI memos: Hoover knew Salvati was innocent
From the Boston Globe
Excerpts: CBS' ``60 Minutes'' probes the wrongful conviction of Boston man Joseph Salvati again tonight with additional 1965 memos showing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew the wrong men went to prison for the Edward ``Teddy'' Deegan murder. Uncovered by congressional investigators, the June 9, 1965, memo from the Boston FBI acknowledges its own informant Vincent ``Jimmy The Bear'' Flemmi actually killed Deegan in Chelsea...
Salvati spent 30 years in prison for the crime until his sentence was commuted in 1997 and the charges were officially dropped last year.
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) will file legislation in July to remove Hoover's name from FBI headquarters, committee sources said. Reported by the Herald in May, the '65 memo to Hoover says Flemmi is a psychopath who will kill again but concludes, ``the informant's potential outweighs the risk involved.'' Congressional investigators said Department of Justice files show tacit approval from Hoover for Flemmi's continued use.

Labels: FBI

Feinstein demands answers from FBI on political spying
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpts: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, citing a Chronicle report that detailed wide-ranging and unlawful FBI activities at the University of California, has asked FBI Director Robert Mueller whether the bureau is currently involved in similar intelligence operations.
In a pointed letter expressing her "deep concern" about The Chronicle's disclosures, Feinstein also asked Mueller to outline steps taken to prevent the FBI from again misusing its power for political purposes.
"Bob, these allegations are serious, and could not come at a worse time," the senator said in her June 18, 2002, letter. "It is vital that we have a strong FBI that enjoys the confidence and trust of the American people. If there are things we need to do to tighten safeguards or to prevent a return to past misdeeds, we must do them now."
Feinstein's letter comes as the Bush administration and Congress are expanding the FBI's domestic intelligence powers to prevent terrorist acts like the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Labels: FBI

Two FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage
From the Washington Post
Excerpts: In separate cases, two new FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement and lax security -- and in one case possible espionage -- among those who translate and oversee some of the FBI's most sensitive, top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations.The allegations of one of the whistle-blowers have prompted two key senators -- Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) -- to pose critical questions about the FBI division working on the front line of gathering and analyzing wiretaps. That whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds, 32, a former wiretap translator in the Washington field office, raised suspicions about a co-worker's connections to a group under surveillance...Edmonds was fired in March after she reported her concerns. Government officials said the FBI fired her because her "disruptiveness" hurt her on-the-job "performance." Edmonds said she believes she was fired in retaliation for reporting on her co-worker.
In the second whistle-blower case, John M. Cole, 41, program manager for FBI foreign intelligence investigations covering India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said counterintelligence and counterterrorism training has declined drastically in recent years as part of a continuing pattern of poor management.Cole also said he had observed what he believed was a security lapse regarding the screening and hiring of translators. "I thought we had all these new security procedures in place, in light of [FBI spy Robert P.] Hanssen," Cole said. "No one is going by the rules and regulations and whatever policy may be implemented."

Labels: FBI

FBI Powers may feed Cyberspying
From Fox News
Excerpts: Magic Lantern is the FBI's latest and most closely-guarded program designed to let agents track Web browsing activity, including e-mail and password access, without detection. While some experts say it is still in the planning stages, most techies believe it already operates. Its existence, leaked to the press last December, enables agents to remotely bug a suspect’s computer and trace his or her movements online and offline by recording the keystrokes on the user's keyboard..."Magic Lantern certainly gives the federal government the ability to make creative use of the Patriot Act," said Sobel. "It’s not someone’s paranoid fantasy, there is the existence of such a thing."
Indeed, with the technology, agents now don't even need to leave the safety of their own offices to bug a computer. Magic Lantern can employ the use of an attached virus on an e-mail to target suspects.

Labels: FBI

Activists awarded $4.4 million for FBI frame-up
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpts: Twelve years after they were arrested in the bombing of their own car, two Earth First! activists were awarded about $4.4 million Tuesday in a federal suit claiming they were framed by Oakland Police and FBI agents...Cherney and Bari were injured when a bomb exploded in their Subaru while they were driving in Oakland in May 1990. Bari, who was at the wheel, suffered a crushed pelvis.
The two were arrested within hours, but the case fell apart weeks later when prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence to bring charges. Cherney and Bari sued investigators for false arrest, illegal search, slanderous statements and conspiracy. They claimed officials ignored evidence exonerating the activists and lied to try to make their case.

Labels: FBI

The FBI and the Making of Ronald Reagan
From the San Francisco Chronicle
Excerpt: Under the guise of protecting national security, the FBI conducted wide-ranging and unlawful intelligence operations concerning the University of California that at different points involved the head of the CIA and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, The Chronicle has learned.
According to thousands of pages of FBI records obtained by The Chronicle after a 17-year legal fight, the FBI unlawfully schemed with the head of the CIA to harass students, faculty and members of the Board of Regents, and mounted a concerted campaign to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr, which included sending the White House derogatory allegations about him that the bureau knew were false.

Labels: FBI