several articles in the Wall Street Journal on the incident revealed the FBI learned of this illegal activity accidentally. As it turns out, the FBI happened to have been monitoring the activity of its own agents in the aftermath of the Robert Hanssen spy conviction. Elgindy was also being monitored for potential terrorist activities as he is a Muslim and a well known contributor to many Muslim organizations.
This is also interesting:
Fox Special Report With Brit Hume (by Brit Hume, Bret Baier, Carl Cameron, Brian Wilson, Jim Angle, Fox News, October 16, 2001)
There's now a disturbing indication that Robert Hanssen, the FBI man accused of spying for the Russians in what officials said at the time of his arrest was a massive security breach, ended up helping Osama bin Laden. As correspondent Carl Cameron reports, Hanssen sold the Russians an extremely sensitive piece of U.S. technology, and the indications are that they, in turn, sold it to bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network. . .Hanssen lived in a quiet Virginia neighborhood outside Washington until his arrest. Sources say to avoid the death penalty, for what some have described as the worst U.S. intelligence breach in decades, he confessed to giving Russia vast amounts of information, including, sources say, a software program developed by the Inslaw company in Washington. The software program is called Promis. Sources tell Fox that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have used and constantly modified Promis software to manage caseloads, track and store classified information, and keep it secure for decades. But the concern is that bin Laden or Al Qaeda could get on-line and use it to monitor the worldwide criminal investigation and hide themselves, to monitor the worldwide financial investigation and hide their money, or monitor government operations of the governments that use the software. . .It's interesting to note that shortly after the attacks, when the U.S. crackdown on bin Laden's finances began, bin Laden in Afghanistan granted an interview to a near eastern journalist, and he was talking about the efforts to freeze his money. And he said -- quote -- "Al Qaeda's youths are highly educated and are as aware of the cracks in the financial and the computer systems of the world as they are in the lines in their hands."