Al Zawahiri’s death by drone strike. Examine his place in the bloody history of terrorism, in the context of his protegé: Ali Mohamed, al Qaeda’s master spy

By Peter Lance Aug. 2nd, 2022 In light of the killing of of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, in Afghanistan, you can see how he fits into the TIMELINE of FBI failures on the road to 9/11, in the context of one of his principal protegés: al Qaeda’s master spy, Ali Mohamed, who eluded the Bureau and DOJ for years as he moved Al Zawahiri and bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, planned the East African Embassy bombings and infiltrated the JFK Special Warfare Center & School at Fort Bragg.

For much of that Ali he was acting as an informant for The Bureau. This presentation recorded by C-Span on the publication of TRIPLE CROSS, my third HarperCollins book on counter-terrorism, opens with the story of how U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the most powerful Fed in the DOJ at the time (below The Attorney General) spent months trying to keep the full truth of his failure to stop “Ali the American” from coming out.

This is a link to the 32 pages of threat letters Fitzgerald, then, U.S. Attorney in Chicago and Special Prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation, sent to HarperCollins demanding that they “cease publication” of the hardcover edition of the book, which was already in book stores and that the trade paperback edition never see the light of day.

The pushback from the Justice Department was so relentless that Fitzgerald’s former colleague, ex-SDNY Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy attacked the hardcover edition of the book, within days of its publication in an interview I did with former Ohio Governor (and later Presidential candidate) John Kasich, who was guest hosting The O’Reilly Factor on Fox.   You can read CHAPTER ONE and order TRIPLE CROSS from Amazon, where you can also buy my latest book HOMICIDE AT ROUGH POINT in any one of four editions.