http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188460,00.html
AP
"FBI Agent Says Superiors Ignored Warnings About Moussaoui"
Monday, March 20, 2006
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "ALEXANDRIA, Va. — An FBI agent testified Monday his superiors repeatedly ignored his warnings before 9/11 that Zacarias Moussaoui might be a terrorist intent on hijacking an airliner.
Agent Harry Samit, questioned by defense attorney Edward MacMahon in Moussaoui's death penalty trial, said he referred to Moussaoui in the context of terrorism some 70 times in communications with superiors after arresting him Aug. 16, 2001, but failed to get the FBI to conduct an all-out investigation."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600064/posts
"PAKISTAN : FORMER PM NAWAZ SHARIF DID MEET BIN LADEN, SAYS EX-INTELLIGENCE AGENT"
ADN Kronos International ^ | 20 March 2006 | Syed Saleem Shahzad
Posted on 03/20/2006 8:14:15 PM PST by Qaz_W
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif did meet al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at least three times in order to get financial help, according to Khalid Khawaja, the former official with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In an exclusive interview with Adnkronos International (AKI), Khawaja, once a close friend of Osama bin Laden, rejected the statements by a spokesperson for Sharif's political party, denying that Sharif had sought political cooperation from bin Laden in the past.
"Nawaz Sharif met Osama Bin Laden on at least three occasions and was desperately seeking his financial assistance," Khawaja told AKI in response to recent news reports regarding a possible meeting between the two.
In an interview with a national Urdu daily, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the largest Islamic party in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), and of the six party religious alliance MMA, said that Nawaz had repeatedly met Osama bin Laden who offered him money to buy the loyalties of parlimentarians in the late 1980s in order to topple the government of then prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Ahmad also said that bin Laden was a big supporter of Nawaz Sharif's bid to be prime minister in 1990.
Soon after the publication of the interview, the information secretary of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Siddiqul Farooq, denied any contact between Nawaz Sharif and Osama bin Laden.
"Osama is above all this politicking," said Khawaja. "He is a great man and will remain great. Even if Nawaz Sharif’s party refuse to admit a contact between Osama and Nawaz, it will not change the facts which were witnessed by many people including Khayyam Qaisar (Nawaz Sharif’s personal staff officer) and myself," Khalid Khawaja maintained.
Khalid Khawaja is a retired squadron leader of the Pakistan Air Force who was an official in Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, in the mid 1980s. After he wrote a critical letter to General Zia ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1977 till 1988, in which he labeled Zia as hypocrite, he was removed from the ISI and forced to retire from the airforce.
He then went straight to Afghanistan in 1987 and fought against the Soviets along side with Osama Bin Laden, developing a relationship of firm friendship and trust.
Khalid Khawaja’s name resurfaced when US reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted and subsequently killed. Pearl had come to Pakistan and met Khalid Khawaja in order to investigate the jihadi network of revered sufi, Syed Mubarak Ali Gailani."
Wonder if the FBI is still too busy (or lacking adequate investigatory personnel) to deal with such matters? It seems like a year or so ago someone posted an article concerning FBI agents who didn't even have PCs to work with.
Who killed the virtual case file?
Snip: Fine concluded that four years after terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI, which had been criticized for not "connecting the dots" in time to prevent the attacks, still did not have the software necessary to connect any new dots that might come along. And won't for years to come.
FBI field offices lack remote access to database
Snip: When a Phoenix FBI agent became suspicious of Middle Eastern men training at an Arizona flight school last summer, he wrote a now well-known memo suggesting a canvass of all U.S. aviation schools. FBI headquarters staff rejected the idea; the bureau didn't have the personnel to do it.
FBI policy office disciplines IT spending
Snip: In a February audit, Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general, blamed VCF's meltdown on poor management and oversight, design modifications during the project, and bad IT investment practices. Fine warned that the FBI must improve its antiquated computer systems or risk being unable to do its job.