Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency (NYT)

[huckleberry]

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: August 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could go.

In the early 1990's, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.

So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group.

But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a "pariah." He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time - the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.


more at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/politics/02whistleblower.html

[blm]

1. HOLY SH!T!!!!!!

This is BIGTIME serious. It really looks like LIHOP is the cause....why else would they "falsified documents to discredit THEIR OWN SOURCES" fer chrissakes?

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Much of what's called "conspiracy theory" is simply pattern recognition.

Have we seen enough yet to establish a pattern?

Reminds me a bit of the story of Robert Wright, FBI special investigator. He claims FBI agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism. Says the FBI "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists." He was suspended and ordered to remain silent, and has been the subject of at least three internal FBI investigations. He's written a book that the FBI is not only refusing to allow publication, but is not permitting anyone to even see it.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/37/news-crogan.php

More names in the "9/11 whistleblowers get screwed" data dump:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1293947

Thanks for posting this.

[UpInArms]

3. adding warp and weave to the texture of your cloth

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,249500,00.html

Why Didn't the FBI Fully Investigate Moussaoui?
In a letter to bureau chief Robert Mueller, an FBI agent speaks out against what she calls a 'climate of fear' that prevented agents from doing their jobs

Thursday, May. 23, 2002
In the hours after September 11th, FBI agents in Minneapolis shared a macabre joke. For weeks prior, they had tried to interest FBI headquarters in Washington in Zacarias Moussaoui, now known as the 20th hijacker. They had begged FBI Headquarters to give them permission to seek a search warrant of Moussaoui's computer. They were denied. In their frustration, they joked that headquarters back in Washington must be infiltrated by agents of Osama Bin Laden. Why else would their work have been thwarted?

This disturbing story is told in a 13-page, single-spaced letter written to FBI Director Robert Mueller by Colleen Rowley. The letter, portions of which TIME magazine has obtained, chronicle the efforts of Rowley, the Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel, to get the FBI interested in Moussaoui. Moussaoui was arrested in August on a visa violation after the Minnesota flight school at which the French national was taking lessons notified the FBI about his suspicious behavior.

Much of the letter recounts Rowley's efforts to convince FBI headquarters to pursue a search warrant of Moussaoui's computer. The FBI maintained that probable cause did not exist and that a warrant would not be approved by the U.S. Attorney. Rowley argues forcefully that a warrant was indeed appropriate, citing French intelligence reports given to the bureau that linked Moussaoui with radical Islamic causes.

The letter portrays the FBI as a place where agents are thwarted from doing their job by a "climate of fear." She writes: "Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/ decisions. In a large hierarchical bureaucracy such as the FBI, with the requirement for numerous supervisors' approvals/oversight, the premium on career enhancement, and interjecting a chilling factor brought on by recent extreme public congressional criticism/oversight, and I think you will see at least the makings of the most likely explanation."

...lots more at link...

[Rose Siding]

4. Last week the headlines all praised the FBI

saying how swell they looked since the 911 investigation began.

Thank you, Mr. German.

[goforit]

5. Sounds like Cheney fingerprints all over the place!!!

"....a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group...."

Hmmmmmm..........more evidence of this
administration's plans of MIHOP!!!!

[tlcandie]

6. They will find some way to discredit him I'm sure...

Same old song and dance where normal people will not even listen to what he has to say. :cry:

[Dover]

7. They are, of course, trying to steer their conclusions away from LIHOP

citing the 'bureaucratic problems' and 'incompetence' excuse again. What a crock. Decisions were MADE at the top to NOT pursue these clearly important investigations. WHY?
_______________


...German's account of what he considers undue restraint in pursuing terrorism leads may give pause to civil libertarians who have accused the F.B.I. of rushing to judgment and using overly aggressive tactics in some terror cases.

At the same time, however, his assertions raise questions about whether the bureau has fixed some of the bureaucratic problems that stymied terrorism investigations before the Sept. 11 attacks, and his perspective could add grist to the debate over restructuring intelligence operations.

Mr. German, in his letter to lawmakers, cited "a continuing failure in the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism program," which he said was "not the result of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of action."

..snip..

While Mr. German would not confirm the location of the investigation, he said in an interview at the office of his Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, that his problems intensified after he complained about the management of the case in September 2002. He said F.B.I. officials whom he would not name backdated documents in the case, falsified evidence and falsely discredited witnesses in an apparent effort to justify their approach to the investigation. He cited institutional inertia, even after Sept. 11.

"Trying to get approval for an operation like this is a bureaucratic nightmare at the F.B.I.," he said.

Mr. German said that beginning in late 2002, he took his concerns to his supervisors at the F.B.I. and to officials at headquarters in Washington, including Mr. Mueller himself, in an e-mail message that he said went unanswered. He also went to the Justice Department's inspector general and, frustrated by what he saw as a languishing investigation, brought his concerns this spring to several members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.

In the meantime, Mr. German said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an "unblemished" record and an award for his work in the Los Angeles skinhead case.

Soon after raising his complaints about the 2002 terrorism investigation, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. officials wrongly accused him of conducting unauthorized travel, stopped using him to train agents in "proactive techniques" and shut him out of important domestic terrorism assignments.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Another very interesting source of information.

[struggle4progress]

9. kick for truth stranger than fiction

:kick: