9-11: FBI futility and failure: FBI agents have testified that FBI headquarters has blocked investigations of certain terrorists with connections to 9-11. Why? The bureau itself appears to need investigation. (Terrorism).

"September 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that."

These words were spoken by FBI Special Agent Robert Wright during the December 19th edition of ABC's Prime Time Live. Wright and his partner, Special Agent John Vincent, described in agonizing detail how their superiors shut down a 1998 investigation tying a suspected terrorist cell in Chicago to Yassin al-Kadi, a Saudi Arabian financier suspected of funneling millions of dollars to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Following the summer 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Wright and Vincent, as part of a terrorism task force, began building a case against suspected terrorists in Chicago. FBI HQ was willing to let the agents follow suspects and file reports, but adamantly refused to allow them to make arrests. "The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me: 'You will not open criminal investigations,'" Wright told Prime Time Live.

According to federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, who had been assigned to build a criminal case against al-Kadi and other terrorist suspects, "There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let it [the criminal case] happen." According to Wright, in January 2001, his supervisor responded to his repeated efforts to open a criminal investigation by telling him: "I think it's just better to let sleeping dogs lie." "Those dogs weren't sleeping," Wright ruefully remarked. "They were training. They were getting ready."

Subsequent to Black Tuesday, the CIA ironically validated Wright and Vincent's investigation by placing al-Kadi's name on its "dirty dozen" list of suspected terrorist financiers. Further validation came on December 6th--about two weeks prior to the Prime Time Live interview with Wright and Vincent--when the U.S. Customs Service raided Ptech, a Boston-area software company suspected of having ties to al-Kadi. The company, incredibly, provides computer software to the FBI and other key U.S. military and security agencies.

Assembling the Pieces

In our March 11, 2002 cover story entitled "Did We Know What Was Coming?" THE NEW AMERICAN quoted an active federal counter-terrorism investigator who stated that the impending terrorist strike had been provided to FBI Headquarters by "some of [the Bureau's] most experienced guys, people who have devoted their lives to this kind of work. But their warnings were placed in a pile in someone's office in Washington.... In some cases, these field agents predicted, almost precisely, what happened on September 11th." That description certainly fits the story told by 12-year FBI veteran Wright and 27-year veteran Vincent. (Vincent retired from the bureau shortly after going public in the Prime Time Live interview.)