Why the FBI Squelched an Investigation of a Post-9/11 Meeting Between White Supremacist and Islamic Extremists

By Mark Levine, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2009.

But German had kept his trump card: a copy of that very transcript! As he plopped the "non-existent document" on the desk of the stunned Justice Department employee, German watched the man's eyes widen. Stunned, the official vowed to German to get to the bottom of it all. If German expected the Justice Department to discipline the Tampa FBI, he was sadly mistaken. Instead, the Inspector General's office -- an office institutionally designed to protect against professional misconduct -- compounded the problem. They tipped Tampa off, warning the Tampa FBI that German had a copy of the very transcript that Tampa had just denied ever existed. And lo and behold, a day or two later, German learned that Tampa had changed its story. The tape recording and transcript had been miraculously "found". And agents in Tampa had back-dated and changed their earlier false submissions (the ones denying the transcript) by counterfeiting official reports, so casually that the office literally used "white out" to cover up the fraud.

Tampa's new tale conceded that, yes, a transcript existed. However the information in the transcript, they said, did not contain serious enough threats to warrant further investigation. Apparently, an incipient conspiracy to assassinate journalists, launder money, and "shoot Jews" was not all that dangerous, coming from a White Supremacist that approved of suicide bombings and an Islamic Extremist known to have obtained arms from Iran. Realizing the apparent contradiction, the Justice Department's Inspector General's Office sent the issue back to the FBI to investigate itself.

This was a step backward. The FBI's inspection division lacks the supposed independence of the Justice Department's Inspector General to investigate whether the FBI itself is lying and participating in a cover-up. But Agent German did not give up. Knowing the FBI would not successfully investigate itself, German finally took his concern all the way up to FBI Director Robert Mueller himself. German formally provided Mueller's office with the full transcript of the proto-terrorists' conversation and a detailed description of exactly what had occurred between the two men and in the Tampa Office.

Mueller's response was quick and devastating. Within a week of Mueller's office receiving the transcript, Special Agent German was investigated for his alleged improper behavior. German's superiors were told to investigate a $50 expense German had incurred during his trip to Tampa to see if it was justified. (German was later exonerated for this expense.) German was officially kicked off the Tampa case, and told he would "never work undercover again," even though German had spent more than a decade developing an expertise in infiltrating white supremacist organizations and preventing their domestic terrorist attacks. With 80% of his workload now gone, German had no future at the FBI.

Near the end of 2003, almost two years after what German refers to as the "terrorist summit meeting" in Florida, the FBI's internal inspection division finally issued its report. They concluded no one was at fault, no terrorism had occurred, and no laws were broken. Furthermore, because the FBI inspection division claimed it was unable to determine who in Tampa had falsified the records and lied to the Inspector General, no one at the FBI would be punished whatsoever (except for German). And in the most severe blow to the security of Americans, the FBI decided it would no longer send informants to investigate this incipient White-Supremacist/Islamic-Extremist Terrorist Alliance.

Months passed. German repeatedly urged the Department of Justice's Inspector General to reopen its earlier investigation. No response. Finally, Agent German had had enough. He had tried everything. He saw that the FBI, from the bottom to the very top, was more interested in protecting itself than in prosecuting terrorists. So, in the spring of 2004, he decided he had only one option left: to inform Congress, even if it meant ending his sixteen-year status as a covert agent. He resigned from the FBI and marched into the office of Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa to tell his story.

Under strict FBI orders, German had to leave behind the damaging transcript of the conversation between the White Supremacist and the Islamic Extremist. German's superiors warned him never to publicly identify the terrorist groups represented by the two men. No one except German seemed to notice the apparent incongruity between this order and the FBI's continued official denial that any terrorist meeting had taken place in the first place.

Without a transcript or anything other than Agent German's say-so, Senator Grassley's staff proceeded to investigate. Meanwhile, the FBI went into full damage mode. A FBI spokeswoman went on Dateline NBC to publicly deny that the White Supremacist and Islamic Extremist groups had even discussed working together, much less discussed terrorist acts. The FBI also issued a false press release, retreating to its old lie that no transcript of the conversation ever existed. Apparently, the FBI hoped to trick Senator Grassley into believing their august organization was telling the truth, rather than accepting the word of one of its renegade G-men.

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Mark Levine, a former congressional attorney serving a high-ranking representative on the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, currently hosts The Inside Scoop, a political talk radio and television show, with the motto: "All the News the Government Does Not Want You to Know." He lives in Washington and can be reached at Mark@RadioInsideScoop.com. His show is streamed live and archived at Inside Scoop.

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