Posted on 08/01/2002 12:00:36 PM PDT by honway
WHEN FBI COUNSEL COLLEEN ROWLEY DROPPED her bombshell, a now-famous letter to the director, detailing how bureau higher-ups thwarted attempts to investigate accused 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, before the September 11 attacks, she set off a firestorm. The scorching produced a mea culpa of sorts in June from FBI Director Robert Mueller and a promise of reform.
Now there's another whistle blower telling a similar pre-9/11 tale. And so far, the FBI has gone to great lengths to silence him.
The Weekly has learned that Chicago-based special agent Robert Wright has accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City. The apparent goal of the training camps, according to confidential documents obtained by the Weekly, was to recruit and train Palestinian-American youths, who would then slip into Israel. Recruits at these camps reportedly received weapons training and instruction in bomb-making techniques in the early 1990s. The bomb-making curriculum included the sort of explosives later used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And government documents state that two trainees came from the Oklahoma City area.
One alleged trainer at the terror camps is now fending off a government lawsuit to seize his bank accounts, car and property for alleged money laundering on behalf of the militant group Hamas. So far, no one has been prosecuted for these alleged terrorism-related activities.
The official government position is that Middle Eastern groups had no involvement in the 1995 bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, and that conclusion may stand the test of time. The FBI, however, never fully investigated leads suggesting a different verdict, according to law-enforcement and government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Congressional investigators are starting to re-examine the entire matter. There's also another troubling question: Why has the FBI dismissed or ignored evidence linking the Oklahoma City bombing to the Middle East? Is it because these leads are unlikely to pan out or because the agency still has something to hide regarding its own intelligence-gathering lapses?
ROBERT WRIGHT'S STORY IS DIFFICULT TO PIECE together because he is on government orders to remain silent. And by extension so are his attorneys when it comes to confidential information. Wright has written a book, but the agency won't let him publish it or even give it to anyone. All of this is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her.
Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels, sending his book off for an internal review and asking for permission to respond to reporters' queries. Neither of those efforts panned out, and he has since sued the agency over this publication ban. The best he could do was a May 30 press conference in Washington, D.C., where he told curious reporters that he had a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could.
Wright did say that FBI bureaucrats "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists." And that "FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the U.S." Wright was careful not to i llegally disclose any confidential details about what he knew, but tears filled his eyes as he apologized to the families of September 11 victims for the Bureau's mistakes leading up to 9/11. He also made a tantalizing reference to his removal from a money-laundering case that, he implied, had a direct connection to investigations into terrorism.
This still-active case centers on Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, 49, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Jerusalem. Salah has described himself as a humanitarian who distributed money collected in the U.S. to needy West Bank Palestinian families. He's also reportedly worked in Arab-owned grocery stores, as a used car salesman and as a computer analyst for a Chicago-based Islamic charitable group, the Quranic Literacy Institute, which the FBI alleges was involved in money laundering. Institute and Muslim leaders have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Both the American and Israeli governments contend that Salah served as a money courier for the terrorist group Hamas. Salah's attorney in the civil action, Mathew Piers, did not return phone calls from the Weekly. But in published accounts, Piers adamantly denied that his client was a bagman for Hamas. Salah and his wife are still living
in Chicago in a house the government is trying to seize.
In June 1998, the feds filed a civil assets-forfeiture suit against Salah. Such actions are frequently used to seize the money and property of drug dealers. In the Salah case, the U.S. Attorney's Office went after personal property and accounts in seven banks, with a total estimated value of $1.5 million. In the civil complaint, the government alleged that Salah intended the funds would "support a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities, [and] the domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities, including extortion, kidnapping and murder of citizens of Israel."
Attached to the complaint is a 40-page sworn affidavit from agent Wright. In it, Wright details bank accounts, property deals and money transfers designed to support Hamas. But among the most intriguing elements is a reference to Salah's earlier trial in Israel, which received substantial press coverage in Israel at the time.
In 1993, Israeli intelligence arrested Salah and another naturalized American, Mohammed Jarad, on suspicion of transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas for guns and ammunition.
Salah was interrogated by Israeli military intelligence -- he says he was tortured, a claim the Israelis deny. Under interrogation, Salah reportedly confessed to recruiting Islamic militants and then helping to instruct them in the use of poisons, chemical weapons and explosives. The training supposedly occurred in the late 1980s. Later, in 1991, Salah allegedly served as a financial agent for Hamas, opening accounts at a number of Chicago-area banks. Wright's affidavit states that between June 1991 and December 1992, Salah spent more than $100,000 in direct support of Hamas military activities. Wright added that the weapons purchased were used in Hamas assaults and suicide attacks on Israeli citizens.
In 1994, at Salah's secret military trial, Israeli prosecutors introduced a statement signed by another Palestinian detainee, Naser Hidmi, formerly a student at Kansas State University. Hidmi stated in an affidavit that he accepted Salah's invitation to a four-day "retreat" at a camp in the Chicago area in June 1990. At the camp, he reportedly studied Hamas philosophy and received explosives training. Hidmi also asserted in his statement that he met Salah again at a conference of Muslim youth held in Kansas City in December of the same year. On that occasion, Hidmi claimed he got more Hamas training and Salah participated in the instruction.
In 1995, Salah pleaded guilty to funneling funds to Hamas and he served about five years in prison before being released and deported to the U.S. Mohammed Jarah served six months in jail following a plea bargain to a lesser charge.
While Salah sat in an Israeli prison, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added his name to the list of "Specially Designated Terrorists," because of his alleged Hamas connections. After he returned to Chicago, Salah found himself squarely in the FBI's crosshairs. In 1995, Wright began investigating money laundering on behalf of international terrorist organizations. This investigation led him to Salah.
Wright's affidavit alleges that Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a Hamas leader, directed Salah's activites, at one point authorizing him to give $790,000 to Hamas military units. The Israeli government indicted Marzook, while he was living in the U.S., for abetting terror attacks in Israel. American authorities arrested Marzook and held him for two years before deporting him to Jordan.
Wright also alleged that Salah funneled money through Switzerland via Saudi businessman Yassin Kadi. The U.S. government has since designated Kadi as a financial supporter of Osama bin Laden and frozen his American assets. Kadi too has denied any wrongdoing.
The assets-forfeiture case against Salah, which was filed in an Illinois federal court, remains active. Wright was removed from the case shortly after it was filed. And he would apparently contend, if allowed to talk, that his FBI superiors ordered him to drop any criminal investigation into Salah and the terrorist camps allegedly run by Hamas.
WRIGHT'S WAS NOT THE ONLY PROBE of Middle Eastern links to terrorists and acts of terror in the U.S. Unbeknownst to Wright, an investigation of Salah and his alleged involvement in training camps was undertaken by the House of Representatives Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. This task force, as previously reported in the Weekly, had issued alerts to law enforcement and U.S. intelligence agencies in the months prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. It had warned of an impending Islamist terror campaign, allegedly run by Hamas and directed by Iran.
After the 1995 blast, Oklahoma Citybased television reporter Jayna Davis spoke numerous times with task-force executive director Yossef Bodansky. He eventually gave her a memo in which he'd summarized intelligence reports detailing the operations of the terror camps. In the memo, constructed from his intelligence reports, Bodansky wrote that Iranian intelligence had ordered Hamas to develop cadres from among Palestinian youth living in the U.S.
"The idea," Bodansky wrote, "was to build a group of highly trained Arabs with U.S. passports who can be inserted into Israel to replace local cadres killed or arrested by Israeli Forces." The Iranians, Bodansky contended, argued that Israel would treat the Americans with "kid gloves." He also stated it would be easier for these recruits to infiltrate Israel with U.S. documents.
Bodansky declined to be interviewed by the Weekly, but in the memo, Bodansky also alleged that the first round of training took place in Chicago, "organized by Muhammad Salah" in 1990. Bodansky stated that "25 trainees" took part and all were given code names.
"Salah and five other instructors, including a Libyan-American, who was a former Marine," he wrote, conducted training. The instruction included military topics, sabotage, and one group received "detailed instructions on building car bombs from readily available, off the shelf materials."
Bodansky also wrote that a second round of training occurred at a December 1990 Hamas youth conference in Kansas City. "Secret sessions," he added, "were devoted to leadership and command training." Another round of training also occurred in Kansas City in 1991. During this meeting, he said, some people were given "highly detailed and practical instructions in supervising the construction of explosives, including car bombs like the one used in Oklahoma City."
The operatives, Bodansky stated, were then assigned to locations throughout the U.S. He also alleged that so-called "Lilly whites" were subsequently trained at the same Chicago camps in 1993. These were people, whose backgrounds he stated, would not make them suspect. These individuals were given weapons training as well as the latest instruction in bomb-making techniques. Two individuals from Oklahoma City, he added, attended this camp. Bodansky did not name these men.
The information supplied to reporter Davis mirrors the information about Salah and the terror training camps that emerged from Israel and through Wright's affidavit. Wright's attorney told the Weekly that Wright knew nothing of Bodansky's parallel investigation.
TO DATE, THE FBI AND DEPARTMENT OF Justice have seemingly exerted more effort in shutting down these leads than pursuing them. Last October, the Justice Department blocked the court appearance of retired Oklahoma City FBI agent Dan Vogel at a hearing in the state murder case against convicted Oklahoma Cityaccomplice Terry Nichols. In an interview with the Weekly, Vogel said he intended to tell the court the truth -- that he had accepted evidence from former TV reporter Jayna Davis that tied Timothy McVeigh, Nichols and a group of Iraqis working in Oklahoma City to a larger bombing conspiracy.
Vogel said he passed the materials to the Bureau but was later told the documents were returned because of questions regarding who owned the documents. Davis and her attorneys contend that the documents were never returned. Whatever the case, the Bureau's reputed rationale for spurning potential evidence is slim indeed.
Wright got no explanation at all when he was ordered to cease his own probe, said Chicago-based attorney David Schippers, who is representing Wright along with Judicial Watch, a Washington, D.C.based legal foundation. (Schippers is most famous for his role as lead counsel spearheading the House impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.) "Bob was simply pulled off these investigations," said Schippers. The FBI "just shut down the operations and never told him why."
The FBI and the Department of Justice declined comment for this story.
Wright chronicled his allegations against the Bureau in a complaint filed with the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice. The FBI, in turn, has threatened to discipline or fire Wright if he publicizes the details of the complaint. The Inspector General's Office has failed to act, referring the matter to Congress instead. And there, finally, investigators got interested, and called Wright in for an interview, said sources close to the investigation. It remains to be seen how far and how vigorously these leads will be pursued.
The resettlement programme (of the Iraqi Gulf War refugees) will continue in 1997, which will be the seventh year at the camp for the remaining refugees, because there is no other solution,'' said Abdul Mawla al-Solh, UNHCR representative in Saudi Arabia.
Frustration (among refugees) is very high,'' he said in a telephone interview. Al-Solh said 617 Iraqi refugees left for the United States on Monday and another 511 are due to leave on Wednesday night and Thursday, leaving around 10,000 refugees at the Rafha desert camp.
By mid-1991 about 32,000 Iraqi refugees remained in Saudi Arabia out of up to 70,000 refugees and prisoners of war. The camp was set up as a transit location until refugees, including soldiers who surrended, were resettled or repatriated.
Al-Solh said from June 1991 to the end of this September the UNHCR will have resettled 19,372 refugees, while 3,005 had over the last five years accepted to return to Iraq.
He said delegations from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada and Australia were due in the next two months to interview remaining refugees and decide who to resettle in their countries. Al-Solh said Saudi Arabia, which has spent about 2.5 billion riyals ($666 million) for camp expenses including housing and services, has made it clear the refugees could stay until they are repatriated.
An UNHCR official had said in July the refugees were losing hope of ever leaving, felt betrayed by the West and were growing increasingly fed up with the isolation at the camp, known as the Refugee Hilton of the Gulf War. The camp is air conditioned and has schools and hospitals, but is ringed by barbed wire and the refugees are not allowed to leave. Three years ago 13 people were killed in a riot over the barring of new arrivals, but U.N. officials say since then there has been no trouble. (Reuters; Sept 25, 05:07 AM)
For further information please contact DHA/AERU in New York at (212) 963-3953
The West (mainly the U.S.)accepted 19,372 Iraqi POW's and refugees from Saudi Arabia from 1991-1997.
The U.S. accepted more than 6,500 Iraqi refugees from northern Iraq in 1996.
Today our leaders are discussing a possible war against Iraq. Before this war begins, someone needs to answer how many Iraqi soldiers like Hussain Al-Hussaini a.k.a. John Doe 2 were resettled in the U.S.
Based on the reluctance of our allies to accept refugees, we may have resettled as many as 25,000 former Iraqi soldiers and refugees in the U.S. and Canada.
In addition, during the mid to late 90's, over 6,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees were resettled in Jacksonville,Florida.
Today, between 4,000 and 6,000 refugees from Bosnia call Jacksonville home.
The family was placed here by a social services agency contracted by the U.S. State Department.
Your tax dollars at work.
Why thank you. Thank you very much. ; )
Now there's an angle I had never considered. The consummate 'war dodger'. This makes his recent declaration that he "would pick up a rifle and fight and die" for the Isrealis make sense. With this OKC stuff breaking he needs to counter it so his ball-less draft dodging character doesn't effect 'the Legacy'.
FBI Silences Agent Wright on Arab Terror Camps in U.S.
The FBI is trying to silence whistle-blowing FBI Special Agent Robert G. Wright Jr., reports LA Weekly. His crime: "accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City."
There were many pre 9/11 warnings. If a friend in my office got one...that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Iraqi Refugees In the aftermath of the Gulf War, 37,768 Iraqi refugees fled to Saudi Arabia and were housed in two camps, Rafha, for families, and Artewiyah, for single men.
The original group of refugees included roughly 10,000 Shi'ite rebel fighters who rose in rebellion against Saddam Hussein and another 4,000 or so former soldiers who defected, deserted, or were captured during Operation Desert Storm, and who refused to repatriate at the end of the war based on a fear of persecution if returned
By the end of 1996, 19,797 refugees had been resettled in third countries. The United States had resettled about half of the total, admitting 10,046 between June 1991 and the end of 1996
Before Gulf War II starts, is it unreasonable to ask our government how many Iraqi soldiers that our Armed Forces fought against in Gulf War I were resettled in the U.S.?
http://www.kscourts.org/ca10/cases/2000/11/00-6020.htm
Approximately two months after arriving in Oklahoma City from a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, petitioner(SAHIB LATEEF AL-MOSAWI) violently stabbed his wife Inaam, her uncle Mohammad, and her sister Fatima. Only Fatima survived.
In July, 1992, both families received permission to come to the United States, where they settled in Oklahoma City. Dr. Fakrildeen Albahadily and his wife Zayneb Attia of Edmond, Oklahoma were the sponsor family
Only 2,300 Iraqi Shi'ite civilians and former Iraqi soldiers have repatriated from Saudi Arabia over the last two years, leaving 23,000 persons in the refugee camp at Rafha
RIP
They don't posit the real reason....corruption.
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