Vacationing Bush Administration Ignored FBI Agent's Attempts to Prevent 9/11

While President Smirky McAWOL spent the month of August 2001 on vacation, FBI agents in Minnesota spent a fruitless month trying to get the FBI in Washington to take their information seriously. Testimony in Moussaoui's trial yesterday established that Agent Harry Samit made more the 70 separate attempts to get the Bush Administration to realize that Moussaoui was a serious threat, and that he was plotting to hijack an airplane. Samit contacted his superiors at the FBI, as well as FBI's London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA's counterterrorism center, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, possibly the National Security Agency (he couldn't say the name in court), and the FBI's Iran, Osama bin Laden, radical fundamentalist, and national security law units at headquarters. Yet no one took him seriously.

When incompetent, idiotic liars run the government, disasters happen.


WaPo:
FBI Was Warned About Moussaoui
Agent Tells Court Of Repeated Efforts Before 9/11 Attacks

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-Qaeda operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to federal court testimony yesterday.

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.

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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 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 believed 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 linked to Osama bin Laden.

AP: FBI Agent Slams Bosses at Moussaoui Trial

MacMahon walked Samit through e-mails and letters the agent sent seeking help from the FBI's London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA's counterterrorism center, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not identified publicly by name in court (possibly the National Security Agency), and the FBI's Iran, Osama bin Laden, radical fundamentalist, and national security law units at headquarters.

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MacMahon introduced an Aug. 31 letter Samit drafted "to advise the FAA of a potential threat to security of commercial aircraft" from whomever Moussaoui was conspiring with.

But [FBI headquarters agent Mike] Maltbie barred him from sending it to FAA headquarters, saying he would handle that, Samit testified. The agent added that he did tell FAA officials in Minneapolis of his suspicions.