They Let It Happen

Via Laura Rozen:

The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before Sept. 11 told a federal jury Monday that his own superiors were guilty of "criminal negligence and obstruction" for blocking his attempts to learn whether the terrorist was part of a larger cell about to hijack planes in the United States.

During intense cross-examination, Special Agent Harry Samit — a witness for the prosecution — accused his bosses of acting only to protect their positions within the FBI...

Samit wanted to seek a criminal search warrant, and later one from a special intelligence court. But officials at the FBI headquarters refused to let him, because they did not believe he had enough evidence to prove Moussaoui was anything but a wealthy man who had come to this country to follow his dream of becoming a pilot.

He said that as Washington kept telling him there was "no urgency and no threat," his FBI superiors sent him on "wild goose chases."

For a while, Samit said, they did not even believe Moussaoui was the same person whom French intelligence sources had identified as a Muslim extremist. Samit said that FBI headquarters wanted him and his fellow agents to spend days poring through Paris phone books to make sure they had the right Moussaoui.

Samit said that when he asked permission to place an Arabic-speaking federal officer as a plant inside Moussaoui's cell to find out what Moussaoui was up to, Washington said no.

And he said that when he prepared a lengthy memo about Moussaoui for Federal Aviation Administration officials, Washington deleted key sections, including a part connecting Moussaoui with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. [...]

Samit said his immediate boss in Minneapolis, FBI Special Agent Greg Jones, did urge Washington to be more receptive.

Samit said he once overheard Jones on the phone with headquarters, telling FBI superiors that Minneapolis was trying to keep Zacarias Moussaoui "from flying an airplane into the World Trade Center."

The Bush administration let it happen.