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.

Grassley was not buying it. When, at his behest, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a formal letter to the FBI demanding they turn over the "non-existent" transcript, the FBI was caught in a difficult choice: they either had to criminally obstruct a United States Senator or finally admit they'd been lying all along. The FBI stonewalled. They simply did not answer the letter, hoping Grassley would go away.

Senator Grassley's staff then turned to the Justice Department's Inspector General's office (the same office which had tipped off Tampa and ignored German following the FBI's internal self-inspection) and pressured them to re-investigate the matter. In February 2006, more than four years after the terrorist meeting and some two years after German complained about it to Grassley, the Inspector General finally issued a new report, finding serious misconduct by the FBI. The report confirmed the FBI had: (1) mishandled the investigations, (2) intentionally falsified documents, and (3) intentionally retaliated against German.

Inspector's Report in hand, Grassley's staff again turned to the FBI and insisted it turn over the "non-existent" transcript. Six months later in August 2006, the FBI finally (and, one imagines, sheepishly) sent Grassley the very transcript whose existence they had so vociferously denied. But the FBI still refused to investigate the "terrorist summit," already four and a half years stale.

At an official oversight hearing in March 2007, Senator Grassley had his first opportunity to face Director Mueller mano a mano to ask him publicly under oath why the FBI did not jump at the chance to infiltrate these organizations instead of wasting its time retaliating against Special Agent German. (This question came as no surprise to Mueller. Grassley had informed Director Mueller that the subject would come up and forwarded him a copy of German's elusive transcript prior to the hearing.) Mueller told Grassley publicly that he had never read the transcript(!), but promised he would get back to the Senator "within the next several days." A year passed with no response.

The annual oversight hearing came up again in March 2008, giving Grassley once more his opportunity to confront Mueller. The FBI prepared in advance with typical obfuscation, issuing a new report claiming "insufficient evidence of terrorist activity to warrant further investigation." Concealing its mostly unclassified report by stuffing it with a few small bits of classified information, the FBI hid it out of public view in the Senate Security Office. Then, in an amazing display of the power of Catch-22, the FBI issued two stark and dramatically contradictory conclusions: (1) there was never any "missed opportunity" to investigate these terrorist groups; and (2) the FBI could not tell Grassley why these terrorists did not pose a threat because explaining the lack of a threat would endanger national security. Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky could not have said it better.

This refusal to provide information made the public hearing itself a sharp disappointment. Senator Grassley again queried Director Mueller on the FBI cover-up. And Mueller again stonewalled. Grassley sighed in frustration. It was a waste of time. After all, it was Mueller's office that had allowed the investigation to be squelched and punished German for having the audacity to put American lives ahead of FBI lawlessness. Why would anyone ever expect Mueller to come clean? It's not like the story was on the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

Another year and some months have passed to bring us to the present day. Last month, a known White Supremacist killed a security guard on a shooting rampage at the Holocaust museum. But high-level operatives of White Supremacist and Islamic Extremist organizations -- the first known foreign/domestic terrorist alliance -- are able to plan similar shootings and worse, unmolested by the FBI. Sure, the FBI concedes, they met at a summit meeting and discussed their plans to shoot Jews and journalists. Sure, they discussed laundering money, the arms they obtained from Iran, and their approval of suicide bombings. But, according to the same FBI that originally investigated them -- until its own agents were caught breaking the law -- these proto-terrorists never posed a threat serious enough to warrant investigation. (Of course, as Coleen Rowley discovered, detailed preparation by Islamic Extremists to fly airplanes into American buildings was also considered by the FBI an insufficient threat and unworthy of investigation.). Why not? We can't tell you, says the FBI. Because learning why this dangerous plotting does not pose a terrorist threat does endanger national security. George Orwell would be proud.

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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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