Enemies: A History of the FBI (91 page)

  
1.
“destroying the structure of their civilized pillars”:
United States v. Abdel Rahman
, 93 Cr. 181, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Government exhibit 76T.

  
2.
“If it had been properly”:
Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.

  
3.
“We were feeling pretty good”:
Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.

  
4.
“I believe the defendant”:
State of New York v. El Sayyid Nosair
, sentencing hearing, Jan. 29, 1992, Manhattan Criminal Court.

  
5.
“Salem’s penetration had”:
Andrew C. McCarthy,
Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad
(New York: Encounter Books, 2009), p. 10.

  
6.
“We couldn’t let you make a bomb”:
Salem recorded his conversations with both the FBI and the targets of the investigation on his own; transcripts of the tapes quoted here were introduced as trial evidence in
United States v. Abdel Rahman
. As Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote: “Salem had installed a home recording system that would have made the Nixon White House blush. He would sometimes wear amateur body wires to meetings with FBI agents and cops. He was not systematic about it. When he was out of tape and wanted to make new recordings, he would haphazardly grab an old tape and record over it. But what tapes he had, he maintained—here, there and everywhere in the clutter of his home. All sixty-seven of them, capturing well over two thousand conversations which I was just thrilled beyond words to have to share with over a dozen salivating defense lawyers. Salem wanted to help the FBI and, in his supreme self-confidence, believed he could infiltrate the jihad group. He would not try it, however, unless he was given iron-clad assurance that he was involved only in intelligence-gathering, just as it had been with the Russians, and not in an investigation regarding which his public testimony might one day be required … The [FBI] agents misled Salem, Salem lied to the agents, and it ended in a disastrous parting of the ways.”

  
7.
“Egypt’s most militant Sunni cleric”:
Unsigned CIA analysis, “Hizballah Ties to Egyptian Fundamentalists,” in CIA
Near East and South Asia Review
, April 24, 1987, CIA/FOIA.

  
8.
“Quickly, when I came into office”:
Reno testimony, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission), April 14, 2004.

  
9.
“The speed at which this occurs”:
Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

10.
“I told you they will blow bombs”:
United States v. Abdel Rahman
.

11.
“The big house, I will take care of it”:
United States v. Abdel Rahman
.

42.
F
LAWS IN THE
A
RMOR

  
1.
“He came to believe”:
Louis J. Freeh with Howard Means,
My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), pp. 177ff. Freeh’s book is a classic Washington memoir, though often dubious and disingenuous. I cite it only to reflect Freeh’s direct experience. Freeh distorts many aspects of his dealings with the White House. A small case in point: The FBI created a pointless controversy after it mistakenly sent the Clinton White House the files on four hundred people who had held security clearances under Presidents Reagan and Bush. When these files turned up, Freeh’s aides asserted that Clinton had solicited them. That was false. But Freeh publicly protested that the White House was smearing the good name of the FBI. This was a symptom of a far more serious problem.

  
2.
“One of the greatest flaws”:
Steinberg oral history, Sept. 27, 2000, National Security Council Project, Brookings Institution/Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland;
“His mistrust of the White House”:
Clinton’s national security aides Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin reported in
The Age of Sacred Terror
(New York: Random House, 2002), p. 301. More pithily, Clinton’s political aide John Podesta told the reporter John Harris, then at
The Washington Post
, that Freeh’s first name never passed Clinton’s lips: it was always
Fucking Freeh
, as in
Fucking Freeh has screwed us again
.

  
3.
When President Clinton expressed:
Freeh,
My FBI
, p. 263. The FBI’s expenditure of working hours on the Chinese campaign contributions case exceeded all terrorism investigations from 1995 to 2002: “Federal Bureau of Investigation Casework and Human Resource Allocation,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, September 2003. On the Katrina Leung case and its suppression during Freeh’s tenure at the FBI, see “A Review of the FBI’s Handling and Oversight of FBI Asset Katrina Leung,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, May 2006. FBI Agent Smith was sentenced to three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. FBI Agent Cleveland—“a very religious man who was universally well regarded, dedicated to the FBI, and considered a mainstay in the FBI’s China Program in the 1980s and early 1990s,” according to the inspector general’s report—was not charged with a crime. As the investigation surfaced, Cleveland was the chief of security at a leading American nuclear weapons research laboratory.

  
4.
“Merely solving this type”:
Freeh’s statement comes from the FBI’s fiscal 1995 budget request to Congress.

  
5.
“We allowed him”:
Schiliro interview by Lowell Bergman and Tim Weiner, Sept. 18, 2001. PBS broadcast, “Looking for Answers,” Oct. 9, 2001. The facts of Yousef’s arrest are taken from the records of his criminal trial,
United States v. Yousef
, and the appeals court’s summary in the case. The FBI did not arrest Yousef in a safe house owned by Osama bin Laden, as was widely reported at the time.

  
6.
“to make the American people”:
Pellegrino testimony,
United States v. Yousef
(appeals court record dated April 4, 2003).

  
7.
“disrupt, dismantle and destroy”:
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 22 USC 2237.

  
8.
“We will not allow terrorism to succeed”:
Presidential Decision Directive 39, “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” June 21, 1995, declassified Jan. 27, 2009.

  
9.
“exhausted, many sick”:
Freeh testimony, Senate and House Joint Intelligence Committee, hereinafter Joint Inquiry, Oct. 8, 2002.

10.
“Khobar represented”:
Ibid.

11.
“I have information about people”:
Al-Fadl testimony,
U.S. v. Osama bin Laden
, 98 Cr. 1023, Feb. 7, 2001.

12.
“no one was thinking”:
Watson interview, Joint Inquiry staff report, “Strategic Analysis,” p. 338.

13.
“The balance of power has shifted”:
O’Neill speech, National Strategy Forum, Chicago, Illinois, June 11, 1997.

14.
“double the ‘shoe-leather’ ”:
Freeh testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Jan. 28, 1998.

15.
“almost the primary responsibility”:
Clarke interview and Clarke testimony, 9/11 Commission.

16.
“Freeh should have been spending”
and
“We have to smash”:
Richard C. Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror
(New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 116, 219.

17.
“a Stalinist show trial”:
Clinton interview, Ken Gormley,
The Death of American Virtue
(New York: Random House, 2010), p. 249.

18.
“I wanted to hurt the Bureau”:
Ault oral history, FBI/FBIOH. Ault debriefed Pitts at length after his conviction.

43.
A
N
E
ASY
T
ARGET

  
1.
“The cell members in East Africa”:
The message was first published by
Frontline
in a PBS
/New York Times
documentary series, “Hunting Bin Laden,” and later entered into evidence in
U.S. v. Bin Laden
.

  
2.
“I was introduced to al Qaeda”:
Plea hearing,
United States of America v. Ali Mohamed
, 98 Cr. 1023, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Oct. 20, 2000.

  
3.
“He had been pitched to me”:
McCarthy,
Willful Blindness
, pp. 301–303.

  
4.
“MOHAMED stated”:
Coleman affidavit,
U.S. v. Ali Abdelseoud Mohamed
, sealed complaint prepared September 1998 but undated.

  
5.
“the only good thing”:
Scheuer testimony, House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 17, 2007.

  
6.
“O’Neill poisoned relations”:
Michael Scheuer,
Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 279.

  
7.
“I thought to myself”:
Bushnell testimony,
U.S. v. Bin Laden
, March 1, 2001. The author covered the 1998 embassy attack in Nairobi. A full factual summary of the case, which adds to (and significantly subtracts from) previous published accounts of the investigations, is found in the consolidated decision
In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa
, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Nov. 24, 2008.

  
8.
“I had been told”:
Bushnell oral history, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, July 21, 2005.

  
9.
“He stated that the reason”:
Anticev testimony,
U.S. v. Bin Laden
, Feb. 28, 2001.

10.
“He wanted to tell”:
Gaudin testimony,
U.S. v. Bin Laden
, Jan. 8, 2001.

11.
“He and I were to meet”:
Bushnell oral history, FAOH, July 21, 2005. Freeh’s memoir gives an entirely different account, placing him in command in Dar es Salaam at the time of the cruise missile attacks. News articles of the day place him in Nairobi, suddenly cutting his visit short, squaring with Ambassador Bushnell’s story.