Agent Faults FBI on 9/11

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Agent Faults FBI on 9/11

 

The man who caught Zacarias Moussaoui testifies that higher-ups

blocked his efforts to determine whether there was a larger plot.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer

March 21, 2006

 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui weeks

before Sept. 11 told a federal jury Monday that his own superiors were

guilty of " criminal negligence and obstruction " for blocking his

attempts to learn whether the terrorist was part of a larger cell

about to hijack planes in the United States.

 

During intense cross-examination, Special Agent Harry Samit — a

witness for the prosecution — accused his bosses of acting only to

protect their positions within the FBI.

 

 

His testimony appeared to undermine the prosecution's case for the

death penalty. Prosecutors argue that had Moussaoui cooperated by

identifying some of the 19 hijackers, the FBI could have alerted

airport security and kept them off the planes.

 

Moussaoui is the only person to have been convicted in the United

States on charges stemming from Sept. 11. His sentencing trial began

several weeks ago, but the prosecution's case was nearly gutted when

it was learned that a lawyer for the Transportation Security

Administration had improperly coached key aviation security witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema decided to allow the government

to present a limited amount of aviation testimony and evidence.

 

Samit's recollections Monday were the first ground-level account of

how FBI agents in Minneapolis — where Moussaoui was arrested on a visa

violation 3½ weeks before the attacks — were appalled that their

Washington supervisors denied their requests for search warrants in

the effort to find out why the Frenchman was taking flying lessons and

what role he might have in a wider plan to attack America.

 

" They obstructed it, " a still-frustrated Samit told the jury, calling

his superiors' actions a calculated management decision " that cost us

the opportunity to stop the attacks. "

 

The government considers Samit's testimony essential to its case. On

March 9, the agent told the court about his arrest of Moussaoui, now

37, and his desperate efforts to win the suspect's cooperation.

 

Yet much of his testimony Monday might have backfired on the

government. The jury easily could have been left with the impression

of an FBI so at odds with itself that it not only missed critical

clues of an impending terrorist attack, but did not even know how best

to coordinate efforts to stop it.

 

Samit was not alone in his contempt for his superiors.

 

His suspicions were backed up by Coleen Rowley, then an FBI lawyer in

Minneapolis, who in a May 2002 memo to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller

III complained that Washington had blocked efforts to determine what

Moussaoui was really doing. Rowley is not scheduled to testify during

the sentencing phase.

 

Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to being a part of the Sept. 11

conspiracy. His lawyers maintain that the government had plenty of

leads in the summer of 2001 that a major terrorist action was afoot,

even without Moussaoui's cooperation. They point to a memo by an FBI

agent in Phoenix warning of Middle Eastern men taking flying lessons,

and the fact that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet was apprised of

Moussaoui's arrest.

 

Samit testified Monday that he never knew of the Phoenix memo or of

Tenet's interest in the case. He also said he was kept in the dark

about the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing given to Bush

during his vacation in Texas. That briefing, titled " Bin Laden

Determined to Strike in U.S., " noted " patterns of suspicious activity

in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other

types of attacks. "

 

" I didn't see it, " Samit testified. " I did not see anything like that. "

 

Defense lawyer Edward B. MacMahon Jr. also used his cross-examination

of Samit to suggest that law enforcement officials never took such

threats seriously then anyway.

 

Under MacMahon's daylong questioning, Samit said that officials at the

FBI headquarters in Washington rejected a series of attempts to obtain

a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal belongings.

 

Had the belongings been opened before Sept. 11, agents would have

found numerous small knives, jumbo-jet pilot manuals, rosters of

flight schools and other clues that might have helped them understand

the Sept. 11 plot.

 

Samit wanted to seek a criminal search warrant, and later one from a

special intelligence court. But officials at the FBI headquarters

refused to let him, because they did not believe he had enough

evidence to prove Moussaoui was anything but a wealthy man who had

come to this country to follow his dream of becoming a pilot.

 

He said that as Washington kept telling him there was " no urgency and

no threat, " his FBI superiors sent him on " wild goose chases. "

 

For a while, Samit said, they did not even believe Moussaoui was the

same person whom French intelligence sources had identified as a

Muslim extremist. Samit said that FBI headquarters wanted him and his

fellow agents to spend days poring through Paris phone books to make

sure they had the right Moussaoui.

 

Samit said that when he asked permission to place an Arabic-speaking

federal officer as a plant inside Moussaoui's cell to find out what

Moussaoui was up to, Washington said no.

 

And he said that when he prepared a lengthy memo about Moussaoui for

Federal Aviation Administration officials, Washington deleted key

sections, including a part connecting Moussaoui with Al Qaeda leader

Osama bin Laden.

 

Samit said he was so frustrated and so convinced that attacks were

imminent that he bypassed FBI officials in Washington and met with an

FAA officer he knew in Minneapolis. But he said FAA agents never got

back to him, and never asked to see a pair of small knives, similar to

box cutters, that Samit had found in Moussaoui's pocket and in his car.

 

Samit further described how he took it upon himself to cable the

Secret Service that the president's safety might be in jeopardy. He

recounted in the cable how Moussaoui had told him he hoped to be able

to one day fly a Boeing 747 from London's Heathrow Airport to New

York, and how he also hoped to visit the White House one day.

 

Samit said he warned the Secret Service that those desires could spell

disaster. " If he seizes an airplane from Heathrow to New York City, "

Samit alerted the Secret Service, " it will have the fuel on board to

reach D.C. "

 

Samit said he never heard back from the Secret Service either.

 

And yet, the agent said, he never officially complained to the FBI

hierarchy.

 

" Street agents don't call headquarters and request that supervisors be

removed from cases, " he said. " I didn't agree with them, but they are

in charge. "

 

But Samit said his immediate boss in Minneapolis, FBI Special Agent

Greg Jones, did urge Washington to be more receptive.

 

Samit said he once overheard Jones on the phone with headquarters,

telling FBI superiors that Minneapolis was trying to keep Zacarias

Moussaoui " from flying an airplane into the World Trade Center. "

 

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Samit said he asked Jones about that

conversation, and Jones said he had just made up the scenario as a

hypothetical to try to get Washington moving. " He pulled it out of the

air, " Samit said. " It was a lucky guess. "