An interesting little nugget of information worked its way out of the Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial yesterday. An FBI agent testified that after he arrested Moussaoui on August 16, 2001, he told his superiors that the Al-Qaeda was planning something...he told them not once, but 70 times. The FBI failed to conduct an investigation, and the rest is history. So what happened?
August 16, 2001 was almost a month before 9/11. What's worse, on 8/18/01, the agent who testified told his superiors in a memo that he was suspicious that Moussaoui was a terrorist who might be trying to hijack airplanes. The reply from headquarters? Nothing. They yawned and put his memo in File 13. So what was the problem?
The mainstream media will report the headline that the FBI bungled a warning on 9/11. While that's true, you have to read all the way to the end of the story to know why. The agent who testified opened an intelligence investigation on Moussaoui. In order to get a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings, the agent needed Justice Department approval. There was a barrier in place between criminal and intelligence investigations put there by....drum roll please...the Clinton Justice Department, specifically former Assistant Attorney General and 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick.
It is a tragedy that the FBI did not investigate further. Maybe they could have stopped 9/11 from happening. But make no mistake of where the blame lies...and it's not with the current occupant of the Oval Office. When the final history of 9/11 is written, the lion's share of the blame will be placed squarely on the Clinton administration.
