[Infowarrior] - FBI Agent Goes Public With Counterterror Critique

[Richard Forno]

Spytalk: FBI Agent Goes Public With Counterterror Critique
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002654526.html

Breaking silence and defying warnings from his FBI bosses, the agent whose
internal protests revealed the bureau¹s illegal use of secret national
security letters was scheduled to go public this weekend at an American
Library Association conference.

Bassem Youssef, once the FBI¹s top Arab-American Middle East expert, ³is
expected to discuss a number of critical failures within the FBI¹s
counterterrorism program . . . ² the ALA said in a press release.

FBI officials last week demanded that Youssef clear any prepared remarks for
the association¹s conclave in Philadelphia early Saturday morning, Jan. 12.

In response, Youssef, whom the CIA honored with a National Intelligence
Medal for his undercover work against Islamic terrorists in the early 1990s,
scrapped plans for a speech in favor of responding to questions from the
audience.

³I had nothing to do with the press release,² Youssef told me, before
referring more questions on his remarks to his attorney. ³It was something
that the ALA put out, and I think the one sentence that caught their
attention was that ŒMr. Youssef will be speaking out on failures of the
FBI¹s counterterrorism division.¹²

His supervisor ³didn¹t like that and basically said that you need to have
that pre-cleared and that speech needs to be pre-approved.² Youssef said.

His lawyer, Stephen M Kohn, characterized the FBI¹s actions as a threat.

³They essentially have threatened Bassem. At first they granted the
permission and then they turned around and threatened him with what he¹s
going to talk about,² Kohn said.

³So he is making no presentation whatsoever. It¹s only going to be
extemporaneous questions and answers that are all unprepared. The audience
people can ask him a question and he¹ll do his best to answer it, and that¹s
it. So there is no presentation anymore because the FBI has blocked that,²
Kohn said.

An FBI spokesman confirmed that Youssef had been warned not to give a speech
without clearance. That process can take days, if not weeks.

Saturday¹s event marks the first time Youssef has talked publicly about FBI
counterterrorism programs outside of remarks at closed law enforcement
conferences and an interview with NBC News when he filed a discrimination
suit against the bureau in 2003.

He said he was nervous about facing such an audience.

³I am. It¹s not something I look forward to,² he said. ³There are people
that are public speakers ‹ that¹s not where I¹m coming from.²
Victim of Retaliation

The son of immigrant Christian Egyptians, Youssef grew up in Los Angeles and
joined the FBI in 1982.

At one point he coordinated the bureau¹s investigation into the Islamic
terrorists who carried out the first, 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center. Later he was put in charge of the FBI¹s liaison with seven Middle
East countries from the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, where his work also
won lavish praise from his bosses,

But on the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks, in what appears to be a bizarre case
of mistaken identity, his superiors evidently confused him with one or more
other Arab-American FBI agents who had received poor job performance
evaluations and put him on the shelf.

Youssef complained to his congressman, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., who
abruptly summoned FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to his office to meet
with Youssef.

Mueller¹s aides were incensed at Youssef¹s temerity, they later admitted in
depositions. Eventually the FBI¹s Office of Professional Responsibility,
which is responsible for reviewing misconduct allegations, found ³sufficient
circumstantial evidence² that they had retaliated against him.

But in the meantime, Youssef was relegated to jobs where his
counterterrorism expertise, Arabic fluency and undercover experience went
unused, At the same time, the FBI was struggling to find such skills to
defend against new al Qaeda attacks.

In 2005, Kohn got several high FBI officials to admit in his now infamous
videotaped depositions that they didn¹t know the most basic facts about
Islamic terrorism, including the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

Youssef¹s discrimination case is pending in U.S. District Court.

Youssef was eventually assigned to the FBI Headquarters¹ Communications
Analysis Unit, which also boomeranged.

He quickly discovered that supervisors were routinely, and falsely, claiming
³emergencies² to obtain the telephone, financial, Internet and even library
records of thousands of U.S. citizens via National Security Letters, or
office warrants that supervisors could write for themselves without court
approval.

The Justice Department¹s Inspector General would later find that the letters
³contained factual misstatements,² such as claims that the FBI had submitted
subpoena requests to a U.S. attorney¹s office when, in fact, it hadn¹t. The
IG also found the letters were often issued when there was no emergency.

Youssef promptly complained to the FBI General Counsel¹s office, according
to a letter his lawyer, Kohn, sent to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, a
longtime critic of the FBI on the Judiciary Committee.

³At all times, the [National Security Law Branch] and the FBI [Office of the
General Counsel] knew that the field offices and operational units were
non-compliant in obtaining the legal documentation,² Kohn wrote.
ALA vs. FBI

National security letters, or NSLs, had long nettled the American Library
Association, which in 2003 passed a resolution condemning their use.
Librarians were forbidden to tell patrons that their records had been
reviewed by the FBI.

Kohn suggested that Youssef would draw a direct line on Saturday between the
NSL excesses and a lack of terrorism expertise in the ranks of the FBI, for
his audience of librarians.

³They¹re a strong civil liberties group, so what they need to understand is
that the incompetence and lack of subject matter expertise in
counterterrorism not only hurts the terrorism investigations but also
impacts civil liberties,² Kohn said.

³For example, if a case agent can¹t understand the nature of a threat and
classifies a benign incident as an emergency and gets a wiretap of some
sort, or does an NSL search [of personal records] when there was no real
reason to do it, you¹re violating privacy.²

The FBI takes strenuous exception to charges that it lacks terrorism
expertise and language capabilities.

³The FBI uses a combination of Special Agents, Language Analysts, and
Contract Linguists to address its foreign language translation requirements,
all with tested foreign language proficiency as determined by the
Interagency Language Roundtable,² FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.

The number of FBI Special Agents who could speak at least some Arabic had
increased from 29 to 46 since Sept. 11, 2001, he said. The number of
Contract Linguists and Language Analysts ³who meet FBI Arabic language test
standards² has ballooned from 70 to 285 in the same period.

³The FBI also has access to the National Virtual Translation Center, which
serves as the clearinghouse to provide timely and accurate translation of
foreign intelligence for Intelligence Community agencies,² Kolko added.
³Although we always look to increase the numbers through our recruiting
efforts, we have the tools available to do our job.²
BACKCHANNEL CHATTER

My Dec. 20 column warning that ³Libya is close to getting off the hook² for
millions of dollars due families who suffered the loss of loved ones in the
PanAm 103 and LaBelle discotheque bombings drew plenty of heat.

Some suggested that I had somehow taken Libya¹s side by merely reporting on
the conclusion of a Scottish criminal commission that a ³miscarriage of
justice² might have occurred in the Pan Am trial. Critics who support that
view point to the early suspicions of U.S. intelligence that an Iranian-back
terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command, had really downed the airliner (in response to the accidental
downing of an Iranian passenger jet by a U.S. Navy ship six months earlier).

Critics also denounced my reporting that at least two informants had
received million-dollar rewards for providing evidence against the Libyans.

One of those who wrote me was the FBI agent in charge of the U.S. side of
the PanAm 103 case, retired Special Agent Richard Marquise. After several
e-mail exchanges, I invited him to write a critique for publication here. It
is reproduced in its entirety below:

³We initially speculated it was the PFLP-GC based on events which had
occurred in Germany in late 1988. We went with that premise until the
painstaking evidence collection in Scotland (done by police officers not
having any political agenda) turned the investigation in a different
direction.

³By this time, we had reached an agreement with the CIA and other
intelligence agencies to completely share information. With their assistance
and the meticulous police investigation, this led to the eventual
indictments.

³You quote several sources but Vince Cannistraro [the CIA official in charge
of the agency¹s investigation of PanAm 103] retired before the evidence
began to lead to Libya.

³Your quote Œmore sinister factors were at work in the investigation¹ which
was attributed to Professor Black and other Œauthoritative sources close to
the case¹ is taken from people who only know what they believe but have no
inside information.

³I can promise you as a 31-year FBI veteran who was proud of my service to
America; no sinister forces were ever involved. If you (or anyone) were to
speak with Stuart Henderson (the Scottish Senior Investigating Officer) or
myself, we would tell you we followed the evidence, the way we were trained
and no political or sinister forces were involved. Libya was implicated
because of the evidence, not because we wanted to blame someone other than
Syrian-backed terrorists.

³Edwin Bollier, the Swiss businessman who made the timer which blew up Pan
Am Flight 103, seems to forget he went to a US Embassy in January 1989 after
reading in the news that the Œevidence¹ pointed to the PFLP-GC cell in
Germany (and therefore to Syria). He left an unsigned note implicating Libya
‹ long before we knew anything about the timer, MEBO or Bollier, as that
evidence was not developed until nearly two years would pass.

³Since 1992, Bollier¹s story has changed. I would prefer to believe what he
told a Swiss magistrate, the FBI and Scottish investigators in 1990 and
1991, not what he is now saying. I was the FBI official who met with Mr.
Bollier in Washington, and I can assure you no one offered him (or any other
witness for that matter) anything to implicate the Libyan Government.²
Source: CQ Homeland Security
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