Posted on 05/25/2002 9:41:44 AM PDT by friendly
FBI agent Roberta Parker can certainly sympathize with Coleen Rowley, her Minneapolis colleague who charged this week that bureau higher-ups stymied her office's efforts to learn more about "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui before the 9-11 attacks.
Adding an explosive new detail to revelations known since last September, Rowley now charges that a memo she wrote a month before the attacks begging bureau officials for a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer hard drive was altered.
Someone removed portions covering key evidence that would have likely persuaded the bureau's national security lawyers to approve the warrant, she claims - a move that had Minneapolis agents joking that FBI brass was behaving like al Qaeda accomplices.
Unfortunately for Rowley - and the nation - the kind of FBI stonewalling that short-circuited the Minneapolis bureau's Moussaoui probe is nothing new, as agent Parker well knows.
Five years ago she and three of her colleagues were desperate to obtain a search warrant for the Little Rock home of suspected Chinese spy, Bill Clinton crony Charlie Trie.
Parker told congressional investigators in 1999 that they watched as Trie and his assistant shredded financial documents and other subpoenaed evidence right under their noses.
Her immediate boss, Special Agent I. C. Smith, told Congress, "I was actually quite astounded at the type of documents that were being destroyed." The agents believed the shredded records showed that the White House was keeping Trie updated on the status of the FBI probe into his activities.
Despite the compelling circumstances, Justice Department lawyers declined the search warrant request.
Two years later, when Congress began probing Trie's ties to the Clinton White House, Parker gave FBI brass her spiral notebook detailing what she and her partners had learned about Trie. Her notes also documented their losing battle with the Justice Department over the search warrant.
When the bureau released Parker's notebook to Congress, 27 pages had mysteriously gone missing.
As with agent Rowley in the Moussaoui case, it appears that FBI brass deep-sixed Parker's evidence because it was deemed inconvenient.
Still, even with an outrageous case of apparent internal Justice Department obstruction, the major media didn't much care about agent Parker's claims - and the story quickly faded away.
In fact, throughout the 1990's, inconvenient evidence had repeatedly disappeared or been misplaced while in FBI custody. And numerous witnesses have come forward alleging that their FBI 302 witness statements had been altered.
In one particularly egregious example, key crime scene photos in the Vincent Foster death case turned over by the Park Police to the FBI simply vanished.
Though the FBI's receipt for the missing photos was reprinted in the Independent Counsel's final report on the case, mainstream reporters just weren't interested.
Too bad. If the media had paid more attention to the FBI's habit of playing fast and loose with the facts in sensitive investigations like the Foster and Trie cases, perhaps bureau higher ups would have thought twice about altering agent Rowley's Moussaoui memo.
And 3,000 Americans killed on 9-11 might still be alive today.
The fact that the corrupt appointees are at the top makes the
'goodness' of the operatives a moot point. Freedom of the
press was carved out to allow for unbridled criticism and
examination of what government does. The complete
failure of investigative journalism to uncover and persist
in its role as watchdog is one of the greatest unremarked
disasters of our time.
key crime scene photos in the Vincent Foster death case turned over by the Park Police to the FBI simply vanished
Is there a reason that people do not make copies of papers and photos? It is certainly simple enough to do.
Some of the things they have done over a 10 year period are most heinous. Starting with Ruby Ridge, they set him up and then killed his wife and got off scott free. Tanked and burned a church, looked the other way and possibly destroyed evidence in the OKC bombing, handed over 900+ confidential FBI files to the Clintons, didn't insist on back ground checks for hew hirees of the Clintons, messed up the investigation of the spying and thefts taking place at our nuclear labs, let some innocent guy rot in jail for almost 20 years to protect one of their snitches, completely and totally missed the terriost attacks etc,etc,etc.
Then when there is finally a whistle blower, congress has to protect them from their own. Want to refute these charges or add to them, anyone?? It sure looks like a criminal enterprise to me!!
Is this a felony?
An al Quida mole in the FBI is probable in my view. I remember reading about a number of incidents with "arab-american" FBI agents... Does anyone else recall reports of investigations into moslim terrorist cells (pre 9-11) stymied by irate arab FBI agents opposed to such "ethnic profiling."
Not without my Pepto-Bismol close at hand.
Only if someone is interested in investigating and prosecuting it.
Just like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, someone needs to hear it. Unfortunately the press, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department are not listening.
sigh.
The unfolding of MORE traitorous FBI behavior must be a real source of comfort to the families of 3000 be-headed, castrated, mangled, mutilated and incinerated victims of the Twin Towers Islamakaze attack.
But then again, WHO is going to vote the responsible Republicrats/Demicans out??????
An investigation was in progress and certain information came to light which led an agent to submit documents, via established departmental procedures requesting that a search warrant be issued. I have to assume that it is a normal procedure for the agent to submit the information to a superior rather than directly to a magistrate. Here is what is tricky about this situation. The superior may be able to show that changing the information was reasonable. One reason might be that the superior sought to "clarify" something in the documentation, and that as a result of a good faith attempt to "clarify" the document a search warrant couldn't be issued. (You can probably dream up anything as well as the superior.) But, if it can be shown that the altering of the information was because of something like political correctness and the superior didn't want to take heat for an Islamic backlash, then we might be in business here. If the supervisor acted alone, and was acting beyond the scope of official duties, then I would believe that the changing of the information would be a felony, because it altered a legal document which was needed in support of a search warrant. Another issue would be that we may now have an "obstruction of justice" issue. I would tend to think that the failure to obtain a search warrant because the information was illegaly altered would certainly be prosecutable as a criminal matter. There then becomes a question of civil liability. Failure to obtain the warrant, and perform the search for information because someone in the FBI illegally altered the supporting documents may have led to FOUR airliners being hijacked, resulting in the deaths of THOUSANDS of civilians at NYC and the deaths of Military personnel at the Pentagon, and the targeting of the White House. In addition, this failure by the FBI could be seen as having led to the involvement of the United States in a WAR on foreign soil, which has caused additional deaths of Americans and has resulted in the expenditure of huge amounts of financial resourses from the Treasury. But, I'll make a bet here. The Government will cover this up. I love President Bush, but I think he will allow the FBI to get away with this. I bet there will be no successful criminal investigation against responsible management personnel, and there will be no successful civil litigation against the Government. If anything, the agent who tried to prevent the attacks will be successfully persecuted and villified. (Official disclaimer - ALL the above is OPINION only.)
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