Legal Commentary

FBI Informant Says Agency Blew Chance to Stop 9/11

By Jeralyn

Tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Tonight, on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, Elie Assaad, a former FBI informant, says he became suspicious of Mohammed Atta in early 2001, when the FBI sent him to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.

Assaad, who worked in at least 10 states and overseas since becoming an FBI operative in 199, tells ABC News the FBI was so focused on undercover stings they missed a chance to stop Mohammed Atta and prevent the al Qaeda plot.

Assaad, who posed as "Mohammed" – a personal representative of Osama bin Laden, says he's a "million percent positive" the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped if the FBI had gone after Atta and Shukrujumah. But because Atta and his men were suspicious of the FBI undercover operative, and secretive, Assaad says his FBI agent handlers sent him after the easier target – two wannabe terrorists whose cases were easy to crack and who were both eventually convicted and sent to prison.

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The FBI won't comment, but Former national security official Richard Clarke, says the case is "yet another example of the way the system broke down prior to 9/11."

"If the system had worked," Clarke said, "we might have been able to identify these people before the attacks."

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).