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.
I did a search based upon your suggestion and found the following deeply distressing article, as reported by democrat David Schippers on the War Room program on 5/21/02:
Tuesday morning on The War Room, with FBI affidavit in hand, David Schippers reported that a Muslim FBI agent refused to wear a wire when asked to do so for an upcoming meeting with a Saudi president of a large financial institution. "Muslims don't tape Muslims," Mr. Schippers reports the agent as saying.
The Muslim FBI agent was contacted by an accountant for un unnamed middle Eastern financial institution that Mr. Schippers refers to as the "XYZ" Corporation for short. XYZ was being investigated by the FBI for irregularities and possible money laundering. The accountant arranged a meeting between the agent and the president of XYZ, to discuss the investigation. XYZ also happens to have several members of Osama bin Laden's family as employees. When the agent refused to wear a wire to the meeting, it was cancelled by his superiors. Reportedly this is the THIRD TIME that this agent has refused to tape Muslims.
Seeing him as a security risk since the time of his latest refusal, the Muslim agent's superiors and coworkers kept info from him. Guess what? He filed an EEOC suit for being discriminated against because he is a Muslim. Why did he still have a job anyway?
At this time the Muslim agent is now in Saudi Arabia. Can anyone say, "Saudi spy?"
The common expression over the previous eight years was, "mistakes were made", as I recall.
Losing the photos was not all the tampering that was done. The other document tampering occurred when Patrick Knowlton was interviewed. The FBI purposely altered Patrick's testimony to indicate the Foster car had been at the park, when Patrick has always maintained that Foster's car was not there. The tampering of Patrick's testimony was why he filed his lawsuit against them.
Since Patrick has been tested in the 90th percentile for memory retention, I think I'd sooner believe Patrick's recollection of events.
I do agree that some of the higher-ups in the FBI need to go. They are setting a bad example for the newer officers; most of whom are only there to do a good job.
At times it appears now that these are common standard operating procedures. Too bad. We once had an outstanding Government. Now it is a bloated dead pig covered with maggots.
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