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.

The recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum serves as a stark reminder to us all that murderous racial and religious hatred still endures in America. One would expect the FBI to infiltrate and prosecute individuals and organizations that threaten domestic terrorist acts. But as this investigative report details, the large FBI bureaucracy, from the bottom to the very top, may well be more concerned with covering up its agents' own illegal misconduct than it is with actually protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

If the leader of the White Supremacist Organization was uncomfortable meeting the brown-skinned supporter of the Islamic terrorist group in Florida, he tried not to show it. After all, the two men had a common agenda, and in the up-coming War Against the Jews, the Islamic Extremist had agreed, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." It was January 2002 -- a mere four months after 9-11 -- and both men were intent on following up on that deadly terrorist attack with a "summit meeting" to discuss how their respective organizations could cement an alliance to cause more death and destruction in the United States and around the world.

It was the first meeting between the men. To break the ice, the White Supremacist mentioned his admiration for Adolf Hitler. The Islamic Extremist readily agreed that he shared that admiration and looked forward to joining with the White Supremacist in the goal of fomenting civil war in the USA. They both approved of suicide bombings. And they discussed how the White Supremacist Organization could launder money and provide financial assistance to the Islamic Terrorist Organization, which had already received arms shipments from Iran.

Perhaps, the Islamic Extremist suggested, they could begin by killing journalists that support the State of Israel. He was warming up quickly to the White Supremacist, untroubled by the latter's conviction that inferior brown-skinned people were destined to serve the Master White Race. "Anyone willing to shoot a Jew is a friend", the Islamic Extremist told the White Supremacist.

The first meeting went well, with neither man knowing that their friendly conversation had been recorded by a third person in the room, an informant working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Soon, a transcript of this nasty conversation lay on the desk of the proto-terrorists' formidable opponent, FBI Special Agent Michael German, a blond-haired sixteen-year veteran of infiltrating white supremacist organizations, whose dedicated work had disrupted several attempted bombings, including an attempt to bomb a prominent African-American church in Los Angeles in the early 1990's.

Special Agent German was determined to investigate this incipient alliance before any great damage occurred to Americans. Keeping in mind Coleen Rowley, the FBI Special Agent whose detailed evidence that terrorists planned to fly airplanes into buildings before September 11th was ignored by her supervisors, German intended to make sure that his case, unlike hers, would not be ignored. If he had to, he would go all the way to the very top -- all the way up to FBI Director Robert Mueller himself.

Yet German's insistence on protecting American citizens from terrorists -- and doing it legally by the book -- eventually cost this venerable Special Agent his job. Director Mueller allowed the investigation to be squelched, with no evidence he ever reviewed the transcript of the murderous conversation between the White Supremacist and the Islamic Extremist.

Why would the Director of the FBI thwart scrutiny into this strange and deadly incipient partnership between domestic and foreign terrorists? And why would the Director cover up the FBI's refusal to investigate by isolating and punishing Agent German? Was Mueller a racist? An antisemite?

No. Mueller just wanted to protect the common lawlessness practiced everyday at the FBI. And he was willing to sacrifice American lives to do it.

In the era of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI actively spied on civil-rights activists and those opposing the Vietnam War. They bugged Martin Luther King and set up COINTELPRO to infiltrate and disrupt civil-rights and anti-war movements. But here, where the FBI could actually spy on and disrupt a racist terrorist group bent on murdering Americans, it quickly shelved the investigation.

Why? The answer is more mundane than Hoover's machinations but, in some respects, more troubling. The FBI of today is not so much racist as it is interested in covering up its rampant illegality and its regular violations of American civil liberties.

It seems the Tampa Office had made a slight error, easily repairable, in taping the conversation between the two extremists. The third person in the room, the FBI informant, had briefly excused himself for a few minutes. (It is not clear exactly why, but presumably "nature calls," even to the most hardened of FBI agents.) But during these few minutes, the informant's hidden microphone continued to record the conversation between the White Supremacist and the Islamic Extremist.

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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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