{"id":8845,"date":"2016-05-24T15:07:29","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T22:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=8845"},"modified":"2016-05-24T16:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T23:34:29","slug":"four-years-ago-my-huffpost-with-the-truth-about-how-the-fbis-obsession-with-getting-gotti-caused-them-to-miss-a-chance-to-stop-911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=8845","title":{"rendered":"Five years ago, my HuffPost with the truth on how the FBI&#8217;s obsession with &#8220;Getting Gotti&#8221; caused them to miss a chance to stop 9\/11."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Five%20years%20ago%2C%20my%20HuffPost%20with%20the%20truth%20on%20how%20the%20FBI%27s%20obsession%20with%20%22Getting%20Gotti%22%20caused%20them%20to%20miss%20a%20chance%20to%20stop%209%2F11.\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong>By Peter Lance May 25th, 2016 GMT.\u00a0<\/strong>As we wait for the White House to decide on the release of <a title=\"PL 28 pages\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=8649\"><strong>28 pages<\/strong><\/a> redacted from the 9\/11 Joint Inquiry&#8217;s report and the accused &#8220;mastermind&#8221; of the attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed <a title=\"Daily News 5.23.16 KSM awaits trial\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/opinion\/karen-greenberg-28-pages-4-trials-article-1.2644458\"><strong>awaits a trial<\/strong><\/a> that may never come, consider <strong><a title=\"Huff Post al Qaeda &amp; The Mob\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/peter-lance\/al-qaeda-and-the-mob-how-_b_34336.html\">this piece\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>that I filed on the Huffington Post five years ago today with proof of how, if the FBI had connected the dots on Sphinx Trading, a mailbox-check cashing story in Jersey City, located a few floors down from the mosque of convicted &#8220;Day of Terror&#8221; perpetrator blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, they could have been onto the &#8220;planes as missiles&#8221; plot in the summer of 2001.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Huff Post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/peter-lance\/al-qaeda-and-the-mob-how-_b_34336.html\">Huff Post Politics<\/a> May 25th, 2011 By Peter Lance:<\/strong> After whacking \u201cBig Paul\u201d Castellano and taking control of the Gambino Family in 1985 John Gotti set up headquarters at The Ravenite Social Club &#8211; located on the ground floor of a five story brick building at 227 Mulberry St. in Little Italy. Over the next seven years, the FBI\u2019s York Office (NYO) conducted an around the clock surveillance of the site: taking pictures of The Dapper Don in the street outside the club from a plant or \u201cperch\u201d across the street, bugging his phones and planting dozens of surveillance devices in the building owned by Gambino wiseguy Joseph \u201cJoe The Cat\u201d LaForte.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.33.28-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-8857\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.33.28 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.33.28-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"230\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.33.28-PM.png 255w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.33.28-PM-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>By 1997 \u201cgetting Gotti\u201d became the \u201ctop investigative priority\u201d of the NYO and the personal obsession of Special Agent Bruce Mouw who called the Gambino boss as \u201ca stone cold killer.\u201d The investigation cost the Feds millions, but during three separate prosecutions in Federal Court \u201cThe Teflon Don\u201d eluded conviction. It wasn\u2019t until Mouw and the FBI\u2019s Special Operations Group (SOG) were able to install mikes in the apartment of Netti Cirelli, who lived upstairs from the club, that they caught Gotti in the incriminating conversations with Sammy \u201cThe Bull\u201d Gravano that finally brought him down in 1992. It was a victory that cemented the reputation of the FBI as the law enforcement agency that \u201calways gets its man.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>This story is very well known. What\u2019s not known \u2014 and will be revealed in detail in my new HarperCollins book\u00a0<a title=\"Triple Cross\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Triple-Cross-Laden-2019s-Master-Penetrated-ebook\/dp\/B003JBHVLS\/ref=pd_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51KoO7AkyzL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_OU01_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&amp;refRID=WCXRT75MAKBVVZJKR077\"><strong><em>Triple Cross<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is that the same New York Office of the FBI &#8211; also known as the bin Laden \u201coffice of origin,\u201d blew an opportunity in the summer of 2001 &#8211; to stop the 9\/11 \u201cplanes as missiles\u201d plot dead in its tracks. How? by merely applying the same dogged surveillance techniques across the Hudson in Jersey City to an al Qaeda hot spot that one former FBI informant had called \u201ca nest of vipers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The address was 2828 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City; the location of Sphinx Trading, a check cashing and mailbox store that does millions of dollars in wire transfers each year between New Jersey and the Middle East. Sphinx was <a title=\"Sphinx incorp\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Sphinx_Certificate_of_Incorp.pdf\"><strong>incorporated<\/strong><\/a> on December 15th, 1987 by Waleed al Noor and Mohammed El-Attris, an Egyptian. The store was located only four doors down from the al-Salam mosque, presided over by blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (OAR). Rahman runs like a hot circuit cable through the epic story of FBI failures on the road to 9\/11.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Sphinx-Trading-al-Salam1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-8856\" title=\"Sphinx Trading al Salam\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Sphinx-Trading-al-Salam1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"310\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Sphinx-Trading-al-Salam1.png 387w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Sphinx-Trading-al-Salam1-300x156.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/><\/a>Convicted by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 1995 along with 9 other members of a \u201cjihad army\u201d for seditious conspiracy, OAR was the leader of the hyper-violent al Gamma\u2019a Islamyah (Islamic Group) responsible for the Luxor Massacre in 1997. He was also spiritual head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) the terror group headed by Osama bin Laden\u2019s number two: Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri.<\/p>\n<p>Not only was the Sheikh\u2019s cell responsible for the first attack on the WTC in 1993, but the 1998 African Embassy bombings and the October, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole were committed in his name. OAR was so important to the al Qaeda leadership that the infamous Crawford Texas, <a title=\"PDB\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Presidential_Daily_Brief_Free_Shaykh.pdf\"><strong>Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6th,<\/strong><\/a> 2001 referenced a 1998 intelligence report of a plot by bin Laden to hijack planes to free him. A similar report was contained in a PDB to Bill Clinton in 1998. So the NYO \u201coffice of origin\u201d had good reason to focus on the dingy gray three-story building at 2824 Kennedy Boulevard that also housed what the Feds called \u201cThe Jersey Jihad Office.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.23.53-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-8864\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.23.53 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.23.53-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"131\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>AL QAEDA\u2019S MASTER SPY<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>One of the most astonishing revelations in my five year investigation into the FBI\u2019s handling of the war on terror was that Bureau agents knew as early as 1991 that Sphinx Trading was the location of a mailbox used by El Sayyid Nosair. A Prozac popping Egyptian-born janitor, it was Nosair who spilled the first al Qaeda blood on U.S. soil on the night of November 5th, 1990 when he gunned down Rabbi Meier Kahane, founder of The Jewish Defense League. <em>The Jerusalem Post<\/em> covered my findings on the Kahane murder in <strong><a title=\"J Post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jpost.com\/International\/Sharon-was-Kahane-killers-target\">a page one story<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in 2010.\u00a0Nosair had been trained by the principal subject of\u00a0<em>Triple Cross<\/em>: <a title=\"ALi M\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=1703\"><strong>Ali A. Mohamed,<\/strong><\/a> an ex Egyptian Army Major who had by then succeeded in penetrating the CIA in Hamburg Germany in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>Then after slipping past a Watch List and entering the U.S. a year later, Mohamed enlisted in the U.S. Army where he reached the rank of E-5 and got himself assigned to the highly secure JFK Special Warfare Center (SWC) at Fort Bragg, N.C. \u2014 the advanced training school for officers of The Green Berets and Delta Force. It was members of Mohamed\u2019s radical Egyptian Army unit who had gunned down Anwar Sadat in 1981 and his C.O. at Bragg likened the chances of an ex-Egyptian Army officer with that kind of pedigree ending up at the JFK SWC with winning the Powerball Lottery.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.22.28-PM1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8858 alignleft\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.22.28 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.22.28-PM1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"149\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>On weekends Mohamed would travel up to New York and stay with Nosair -bringing along TOP SECRET memos he\u2019d stolen from the SWC including the location of all Special Operations units worldwide &#8211; a treasure trove of intel that made its way to the al Qaeda leadership.<\/p>\n<p>On four successive weekends in July, 1989, during the tenure of Bush 41, Ali\u2019s trainees drove out from the al Farooq Mosque on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn (another OAR venue) to a shooting range in Calverton township on Long Island. There they spent hours firing AK-47\u2019s, handguns and other semi-automatic weapons. How do we know this? Because every weekend these \u201cM.E.\u2019s\u201d or \u201cMiddle Eastern\u201d men as they were known in Bureau speak were photographed by the Special Operations Group, the same unit that \u201cGot Gotti\u201d at the Ravenite Social Club.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Of the Ali Mohamed trainees photographed by the FBI half an hour above the Hamptons that hot July of \u201889, three were later convicted in the WTC bombing, Nosair, was convicted in the Kahane assassination and a third U.S. Black Muslim was convicted with the Blind Sheikh and Nosair in the plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan in 1995.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.22.47-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8859 alignright\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.22.47 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.22.47-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"147\" height=\"137\" \/><\/a>Billed as the Day of Terror case, it was presided over by U.S. Attorneys Andrew McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald. As proof of their awareness that OAR\u2019s \u201cjihad army\u201d was an effective al Qaeda cell, Fitzie, as he was known, named <a title=\"un-indicted\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/172_unindicted_co-conspirators_Day_of_Terror.pdf\"><strong>173 unindicted co-conspirators<\/strong><\/a> including Osama bin Laden, his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, and Ali Mohamed &#8211; who by now was operating a sleeper cell in Silicon Valley. Also named on that list was Waleed al-Noor the co-incorporator of Sphinx Trading &#8211; proof that the Feds still had the Jersey City mailbox store on its radar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>WORKING FOR AL QAEDA AND THE FBI<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>What isn\u2019t known and will be revealed for the first time in\u00a0<em>Triple Cross<\/em>\u00a0was that Ali Mohamed had been acting as an FBI informant on the West Coast since 1992 &#8211; a year before the WTC bombing carried out by the same cell members he\u2019d trained. More amazing, the revelation that in 1993 Ali had confessed to his hapless West Coast \u201ccontrol\u201d agent John Zent that he was working for bin Laden and had helped set up al Qaeda training camps for jihadis in Khartoum. He\u2019d also admitted that he\u2019d provided al Qaeda members with anti-hijacking and intelligence training in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>If anyone in the bin Laden \u201coffice of origin\u201d had been inclined to connect the dots, that single statement to a Special Agent in the San Francisco office should have set off alarm bells at 26 Federal Plaza &#8211; home of the FBI\u2019s NYO. But it didn\u2019t. Worse, when Mohamed was captured by alert Royal Canadian Mounted Police operatives in 1993 while attempting to smuggle al Qaeda terrorist into the U.S. from Vancouver, it was Special Agent Zent who vouched for Ali &#8211; effectively springing him from the custody of the Mounties. After that, on the orders of Mohamed Atef, al Qaeda\u2019s military commander, Ali went to Nairobi where he took the pictures of the U.S. Embassy that bin Laden personally used to locate the suicide truck bomb that exploded five years later in August 1998. Along with simultaneous truck bombing in Tanzania 224 people died and 4,000 more were injured.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.39.35-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-8861 alignleft\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.39.35 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.39.35-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"213\" height=\"219\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.39.35-PM.png 266w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.39.35-PM-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 213px) 100vw, 213px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>THE FBI COULD HAVE STOPPED THE EMBASSY BOMBINGS<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Using evidence from the SDNY court cases, interviews with current and retired Special Agents and documents from the FBI\u2019s own files, I prove in\u00a0<em>Triple Cross<\/em>that Patrick Fitzgerald and Squad I-49 in the NYO could have prevented those bombings &#8211; not just by getting the truth from FBI informant Ali Mohamed, but by connecting him to Wadih El-Hage, one of the Kenya cell leaders. How would the Feds have done that? Easily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>They\u2019d had wiretaps on El-Hage\u2019s Kenyan home since 1996. In August 1997, a year before the bombings, Special Agent Dan Coleman (of I-49) had searched El-Hage\u2019s house where he\u2019d found Ali Mohamed\u2019s U.S. address and phone number. In fact, Fitzgerald himself had a face to face meeting with Mohamed in Sacramento, California in October 1997.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>At that meeting Mohamed boldly told Fitzie that he \u201cloved\u201d bin Laden and didn\u2019t need a fatwa to attack the U.S. This \u201cstone-cold\u201d killer who had moved bin Laden and his entire al Qaeda entourage from Afghanistan to Khartoum in 1991 and trained the Saudi Billionaire\u2019s personal bodyguards in 1994 &#8211; then told Fitzgerald and other I-49 FBI agents including Jack Cloonan that he had dozens of al Qaeda sleepers that he could make operational on a moment\u2019s notice and that he himself could disappear at any time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Then, After Mohamed walked out on him, Fitzgerald turned to Cloonan and declared that Ali was \u201cthe most dangerous man\u201d he\u2019d ever met and insisted, \u201cWe cannot let this man out on the street.\u201d But he did and ten months later in August, 1998 the bombs went off in Africa &#8211; delivered by another cell that Ali had helped train. It took Fitzgerald another month before he arrested Mohamed on September 10th bringing his 14 year terror spree to an end.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/ALi-1998-mugshot2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-8865\" title=\"ALi 1998 mugshot\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/ALi-1998-mugshot2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"157\" height=\"204\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>The immediate threat to the American people from Ali may have ended, but not his threat to the FBI and the Justice Department. You see, Ali, aka \u201cAmiriki\u201d or \u201cAli the American,\u201d was a one-man 9\/11 Commission capable of ratting out the Feds on how he had eaten their lunch for years &#8211; how the two bin Laden \u201coffices of origin\u201d in the NYO and the SDNY where Fitzgerald was head of Organized Crime and terrorism &#8211; had been outgunned by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri dating back to that Calverton, L.I. surveillance in 1989.<\/p>\n<p>Fearful of what he would say if put on the stand and subjected to cross examination by defense lawyers in the upcoming Embassy bombing, Fitzgerald made sure that Ali was hidden away under a John Doe warrant. Finally, by October, 2000 Fitzie had cut a deal allowing the master spy to cop a plea and escape the death penalty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>In the end, Fitzgerald made his bones as the Justice Department\u2019s top al Qaeda buster by convicting El Hage and several other relatively minor bomb cell members. in U.S. vs. bin Laden in 2001. But the real \u201cmastermind\u201d of the Embassy bombings skated. Mohamed was allowed to slip into the security of custodial witness protection where he remains today &#8211; the greatest enigma of the war on terror.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>SPHINX TRADING AND THE 9\/11 PLOT<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>All of this brings us full circle back to the big question: why should we care? What does it matter if an al Qaeda spy turned CIA asset, U.S. citizen, active duty Army sergeant and FBI informant was able to operate with virtual impunity for years, right under the noses of the best and the brightest in the FBI and DOJ?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Because Ali Mohamed was a metaphor for the dozens and dozens of <a title=\"Timeline\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Triple_Cross_2009_Timeline.pdf\"><strong>counterterrorism failures<\/strong> <\/a>by the NYO and SDNY on the road to 9\/11 &#8211; while agents in the New York office like Bruce Mouw remained so obsessed with bringing down \u201cThe Dapper Don.\u201d Worse, at some point &#8211; I fix the date in 1996 &#8211; the evidence in\u00a0<em>Triple Cross<\/em>\u00a0shows that officials like Fitzgerald began suppressing evidence that might have proven embarrassing to the Bureau.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Much of it was contained in dozens of FBI 302 memos that can be examined by going to <a title=\"FBI 302s\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/PLfbi.htm\"><strong>my website<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0This treasure trove of intelligence was passed to the FBI, ironically, by a wiseguy name Greg Scarpa Jr. locked up in the cell next to WTC bomber and 9\/11 plot mastermind Ramzi Yousef in the MCC &#8211; federal jail in Lower Manhattan. It was Yousef\u2019s uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohamed (KSM) who merely executed his nephew\u2019s \u201cplanes as missiles\u201d plot after Ramzi\u2019s capture in 1995.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.24.53-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8862 alignleft\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.24.53 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.24.53-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"303\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.24.53-PM.png 303w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.24.53-PM-300x167.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"302 free Sheikh\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/302\/123096p2.htm\"><strong>Among those 302\u2019s,<\/strong><\/a> a warning in December, 1996 of a plot by bin Laden (aka Bojinga) to hijack planes to free the blind Sheikh and the convicted defendants in the 1993 WTC bombing and &#8220;Day of Terror&#8221; trials. the identical threat warning that was to appear in PDB\u2019s to Clinton in \u201898 and Bush 43 \u201801. Also, evidence of an active al Qaeda cell operating in New York City in 1996.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>AL QAEDA MEETS THE MOB<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>But all of that intel got flushed by Patrick Fitzgerald and other DOJ officials in order to suppress a scandal in the NYO involved former Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio. Lin or \u201cthe girlfriend\u201d as he was called by Scarpa\u2019s father &#8211; a notorious Colombo Family killer &#8211; had been the target of a 1994 FBI internal affairs (OPR) investigation that threatened to derail the 60 remaining Colombo War cases in the (EDNY) Brooklyn. So, as I reported first in my last book COVER UP, Fitzgerald and other DOJ officials \u2014 including current FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni &#8211; entered into an ends\/means decision to discredit the younger Scarpa, bury the Yousef intel (falsely calling it a \u201choax\u201d and a \u201cscam\u2019) and allowing DeVecchio to retire with a full pension. They did this after he\u2019d taken \u201cthe Fifth\u201d and answered \u201cI don\u2019t recall\u201d more than 40 times after a grand of immunity &#8211; something that would have landed any other U.s. citizen in jail for contempt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>I\u2019d told that tangled story of \u201cThe G-Man and The Hit Man\u201d for the first time in\u00a0<a title=\"cover up amazon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cover-Up-Peter-Lance-ebook\/dp\/B000UMVN1I?ie=UTF8&amp;ref_=asap_bc\"><strong><em>Cover Up<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0published in 2004. A year later, the deputy head of the Rackets Bureau in the Brooklyn D.A\u2019s office met with me. Later, armed with evidence supplied by forensic investigator Angela Clemente they empanelled a grand jury. On March 30th 2006 DeVecchio was indicted on four counts of second degree homicide stemming from his alleged \u201cunholy alliance\u201d with Scarpa Sr.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.41.18-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8863 alignleft\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.41.18 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.41.18-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"301\" height=\"165\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.41.18-PM.png 301w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.41.18-PM-300x164.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 301px) 100vw, 301px\" \/><\/a>But it was the desire by Federal officials in 1996 to bury the DeVecchio scandal and preserve those Colombo War cases that led to their ends\/means decision to ignore all of that evidence from Ramzi Yousef to Greg Scarpa Jr. The belief that somehow the Mafia was more of a threat to New York than al Qaeda \u2014 that caused the FBI to let their guard down on the bin Laden threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>That\u2019s the only explanation I\u2019ve been able to come up with to understand their stunning inability to keep an eye on Sphinx Trading.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>There is now little doubt that if the Feds had devoted as much energy to a surveillance of Sphinx as they had to the Ravenite Social Club, they would have been in the middle of the 9\/11 plot months before Black Tuesday. Because in July of 2001, Khalid al-Midhar and Salem al-Hazmi got their fake I.D.\u2019s delivered to them in a mailbox at the identical location the FBI had been onto in the decade since El Sayyid Nosair had killed Meier Kahane. The man who supplied those fake ID\u2019s that allowed al-Midhar and al-Hazmi to board A.A. Flight #77 that hit the Pentagon, was none other than Mohammed El-Attriss the co-incorporator of Sphinx with Waleed al-Noor &#8211; whom Patrick Fitzgerald had put on the unindicted co-conspirators list along with bin Laden and Ali Mohamed in 1995.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.04-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-8866\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.49.04 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.04-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"253\" height=\"156\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.04-PM.png 316w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.04-PM-300x185.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 253px) 100vw, 253px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>THE BIN LADEN BRAIN<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>How was it that Fitzgerald, the man\u00a0<em>Vanity Fair<\/em>\u00a0described as the bin Laden \u201cbrain,\u201d possessing \u201cscary smart\u201d intelligence, had not connected the dots and ordered the same kind of \u201cperch\u201d or \u201cplant\u201d to watch Sphinx that the Bureau had used against Gotti? Which \u201cstone cold\u201d killer was more a threat to the security of New York City? The Teflon Don or bin Laden\u2019s master spy who cut his deal without giving up those \u201csleepers\u201d he\u2019d told Fitzgerald about in October of 1997.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Here\u2019s an irony in a story pregnant with them:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.18-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8867\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 2.49.18 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-2.49.18-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"148\" height=\"163\" \/><\/a>Patrick Fitzgerald made his bones as a terror fighter by prosecuting U.S. vs. bin Laden, the trial of the African Embassy bombers that he and squad I-49 failed to stop. As a reward he was appointed U.S. Attorney in Chicago and got tapped as Special Prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. Between 2007 and 2009<a title=\"PF kill TC\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=544\"><strong> he spent 20 months<\/strong> <\/a>unsuccessfully trying to pulp the hardcover edition and prevent publication of the paperback edition of <a title=\"NY Mag\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=66\"><strong><em>Triple Cross.<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0We now know that even after learning the identify of the Plame leak source \u2014 Bush retainer Richard Armitage &#8211; in the early weeks of the investigation, Fitzgerald still subjected the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Time<\/em>\u00a0magazine to a barrage of subpoenas unseen since the McCarthy era &#8211; going so far as to force the jailing of ex-<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter Judith Miller for 85 days. Until now, Patrick Fitzgerald has been famous for two things: prosecuting al Qaeda members and chilling the press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>With the publication of\u00a0<em>Triple Cross<\/em>\u00a0his failure to contain bin Laden\u2019s master spy will now be on the record. Inside there\u2019s a 32 page<a title=\"Timeline\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Triple_Cross_2009_Timeline.pdf\"><strong> illustrated timeline<\/strong> <\/a>documenting Fitzgerald\u2019s negligence. Part One and a selection of <a title=\"Appendices\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/Triple_Cross_Appendices_One_to_Ten_2_13_09.pdf\"><strong>documentary appendices<\/strong><\/a> can be accessed now.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Triple-Cross-Laden-2019s-Master-Penetrated-ebook\/dp\/B003JBHVLS?ie=UTF8&amp;ref_=asap_bc\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8868\" title=\"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 3.02.00 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Screen-Shot-2016-05-24-at-3.02.00-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"178\" height=\"246\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Five%20years%20ago%2C%20my%20HuffPost%20with%20the%20truth%20on%20how%20the%20FBI%27s%20obsession%20with%20%22Getting%20Gotti%22%20caused%20them%20to%20miss%20a%20chance%20to%20stop%209%2F11.\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance May 25th, 2016 GMT.\u00a0As we wait for the White House to decide on the release of 28 pages redacted from the 9\/11 Joint Inquiry&#8217;s report and the accused &#8220;mastermind&#8221; of the attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed awaits a trial that may never come, consider this piece\u00a0\u00a0that I filed on the Huffington Post five [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8845"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8883,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8845\/revisions\/8883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}