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Fbi warned bosses about moussaoui 70 times { March 21 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3737023.htmlhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3737023.html
March 21, 2006, 3:03AM
FBI agent says he warned his bosses about Moussaoui
While asserting agency's bungling, his testimony may also aid defense
By JERRY MARKON and TIMOTHY DWYER
Washington Post
WASHINGTON - An FBI agent who interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui before Sept. 11, 2001, warned his supervisors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was a terrorist and spelled out his suspicions that the al-Qaida operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to testimony Monday.
Agent Harry Samit told jurors at Moussaoui's death penalty trial that his efforts to secure a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings were frustrated at every turn by FBI officials he accused of "criminal negligence." Samit said he had sought help from a colleague, writing that he was "so desperate to get into Moussaoui's computer I'll take anything."
That was on Sept. 10, 2001.
Samit's testimony added striking detail to the voluminous public record on the FBI's bungling of the Moussaoui case. It also could help Moussaoui's defense.
Samit is a prosecution witness who had earlier backed the government's central theory of the case — that the FBI would have raised "alarm bells" and could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks if Moussaoui had not lied to agents. But under cross-examination by the defense Monday, Samit said that he did raise those alarms — repeatedly — but that his bosses impeded his efforts.
The testimony came as the sentencing hearing resumed for the only person convicted in the United States of charges stemming from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Jurors will determine whether Moussaoui will live or die. The proceeding was derailed last week by the misconduct of government lawyer Carla Martin, who improperly coached witnesses.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema halted the hearing for a week. She barred the testimony of the witnesses Martin had contacted and all aviation evidence, gutting the government's case. After prosecutors offered a compromise, Brinkema said they could use new aviation witnesses not tainted by Martin's conduct.
Samit remains an agent in the FBI's Minneapolis office. The primary supervisor Samit accused of impeding his investigation, Michael Maltbie, said Monday that the issues raised in court "have been looked at extensively by Congress, the Justice Department, my own people."
"The (FBI) director has given me a chance to respond to some of these issues that have come up," said Maltbie, a former counterterrorism supervisor in Washington and now a supervisory special agent in Cleveland.
Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Moussaoui was sitting in jail on that day of terror because of his arrest a month earlier after his activities raised suspicion at a Minnesota flight school.
The FBI's missteps have been examined in depth by congressional investigators and the independent commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.
On Monday, defense attorney Edward MacMahon Jr. walked Samit through a recital of government mistakes, prefacing nearly every question with: "You wanted people in Washington to know that ... right?"
MacMahon zeroed in on increasingly urgent warnings Samit issued to his FBI supervisors after he interviewed Moussaoui at a Minnesota jail in mid-August 2001.
Moussaoui had raised Samit's suspicions because he was training on a Boeing 747 simulator with limited flying experience and could not explain his foreign sources of income.
By Aug. 18, 2001, Samit was telling FBI headquarters that he thought Moussaoui intended to hijack a plane "for the purpose of seizing control of the aircraft."
A few days later, he learned from FBI agents in France that Moussaoui had been a recruiter for a Muslim group in Chechnya that was linked to Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden link edited out
But when Samit tried to use the French intelligence in his draft application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings, he said, Maltbie edited out the bin Laden link because it did not show a foreign government was involved.
"How are you supposed to establish a connection with a foreign power if it's deleted from the document?" MacMahon asked.
"Well, sir, you can't," Samit replied.
Samit said he also sent an e-mail to the FBI's bin Laden unit, but he did not receive a response before Sept. 11, 2001. By late August, the agent had concluded that Maltbie and other FBI officials were no longer interested in investigating Moussaoui. Samit acknowledged that he told the Justice Department's inspector general's office that his supervisors engaged in "criminal negligence" and were trying to "run out the clock" because they wanted to deport Moussaoui rather than prosecute him.
"You thought a terrorist attack was coming, and you were being obstructed, right?" MacMahon asked.
"Yes, sir," Samit answered.
Samit said he kept trying to persuade his bosses to authorize the surveillance warrant or a criminal search warrant right up until the day before the planes hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"You never stopped trying, did you?" MacMahon said.
"No, sir," Samit replied.
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