Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape
recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents,
portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to
foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers. The explosion left
six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion
dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian army officer, was used by the
Government to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists now charged in two bombing
cases: the World Trade Center attack and a foiled plot to destroy the United
Nations, the Hudson River tunnels and other New York City landmarks. He is the
crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was
erratic, and for months before the trade center blast, he was feuding with the
F.B.I.
Supervisor 'Messed It Up'
After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript
of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier
with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed
it up."
"He requested to meet me in the hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. "He
requested to make me to testify and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going
building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved
in it. But since you, we didn't do that."
The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to
F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about the bureau's failure to stop the
bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.
"He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of
the New York office to go to Washington, D.C.," Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had
told him.
Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's
account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the New York people:
"Well, of course not, because they don't want to get their butts chewed."
Mary Jo White, who, as the United States Attorney for the Southern District
of New York is prosecuting defendants in two related bombing cases, declined
yesterday to comment on the Salem allegations or any other aspect of the cases.
An investigator close to the case who refused to be identified further said, "We
wish he would have saved the world," but called Mr. Salem's claims "figments of
his imagination."
The transcripts, which are stamped "draft" and compiled from 70 tapes
recorded secretly during the last two years by Mr. Salem, were turned over to
defense lawyers in the second bombing case by the Government on Tuesday under a
judge's order barring lawyers from disseminating them. A large portion of the
material was made available to The New York Times.
In a letter to Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, Andrew C. McCarthy, an
assistant United States attorney, said that he had learned of the tapes while
debriefing Mr. Salem and that the informer had then voluntarily turned them
over. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being withheld pending Government
review, of "security and other issues," Mr. McCarthy said.
William M. Kunstler, a defense lawyer in the case, accused the Government
this week of improper delay in handing over all the material. The transcripts he
had seen, he said, "were filled with all sorts of Government misconduct." But
citing the judge's order, he said he could not provide any details.
|
The transcripts do not make clear the extent to which Federal authorities
knew that there was a plan to bomb the World Trade Center, merely that they knew
that a bombing of some sort was being discussed. But Mr. Salem's evident anguish
at not being able to thwart the trade center blast is a recurrent theme in the
transcripts. In one of the first numbered tapes, Mr. Salem is quoted as telling
agent Floyd: "Since the bomb went off I feel terrible. I feel bad. I feel here
is people who don't listen."
Ms. Floyd seems to commiserate, saying, "hey, I mean it wasn't like you didn't try and I didn't try." In an apparent reference to Mr. Salem's complaints about the supervisor, Agent Floyd adds, "You can't force people to do the right thing." The investigator involved in the case who would not be quoted by name said that Mr. Salem may have been led to believe by the agents that they were blameless for any mistakes. It was a classic agent's tactic, he said, to "blame the boss for all that's bad and take credit for all the good things." In another point in the transcripts, Mr. Salem recounts a conversation he said he had with Mr. Anticev, saying, "I said, 'Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we could avoid that.' " At another point, Mr. Salem says, "You get paid, guys, to prevent problems like this from happening." Mr. Salem talks of the plan to substitute harmless powder for explosives during another conversation with agent Floyd. In that conversation, he recalls a previous discussion with Mr. Anticev. "Do you deny," Mr. Salem says he told the other agent, "your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?" Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it. "We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down." The transcripts reflect an effort to keep Mr. Salem as an intelligence asset who would not have to go public or testify. A police detective working with the F.B.I., Louis Napoli, assures Mr. Salem in one conversation, "We can give you total immunity towards prosecution, towards, ah, ah, testifying." But he adds: "I still have to tell you that if you're the only game in town in regards to the information," then, he says, "you'll have to testify." Studied for Signs of Illegality The transcripts are being closely studied by lawyers looking for signs that Mr. Salem and the law enforcement officials, in their zeal to gather evidence, may have crossed the legal line into entrapment, a charge that defense counsel have already raised. But the transcripts show that the officials were concerned that by associating with bombing defendants awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Mr. Salem might have been accused of spying on the defense. In an undated conversation, Mr. Anticev tries to explain the perils. "We're not allowed to have any information regarding that," he tells Mr. Salem. "That could jeopardize, you know, if you go see a lawyer, ah, you know, with the defendant's friend or whatever like that, and you're talking about things we're not suppose to, ah, condone that. We're not supposed to make people do that for us. That's like sacred ground. You can't be privileged, ah, you can't know what's being talked about at all." Mr. Salem seems to bridle. "I, I, I don't think that's right," he says. The agent insists: "Yeah, but that's just a guideline. If that ever happened, ah, you can back and reported on the meeting between, ah, you know, Kunstler and Mohammad A. Elgabrown. Forget about it. I mean a lot of people ah the case can get thrown out. You understand?" The references were to the defense lawyer, Mr. Kunstler, and his client in the second bomb case, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny. Mr. Salem seems to reluctantly agree. "They want you to have a hand in it," Mr. Anticev goes on, "but they're afraid that when you get that kind of, ah, too deep, like me, it's almost like, especially with all this legal stuff going on right now." If it were just intelligence gathering, the agent says, "You can do anything you want. You could go crazy over there and have a good time. Do you know what I mean?" The agent goes on: "But now that everything is going to court and there is legal stuff and it's just, it's just too hard. It's just too tricky, if, this, you know. And then there's the fact if you come by with the big information, he did this, ah, let me talk about this with the other people again." "O.K.," Mr. Salem says. "All right. O.K." CORRECTION-DATE: October 29, 1993, Friday CORRECTION: An article yesterday about accounts of a plot to build a bomb that was eventually exploded at the World Trade Center referred imprecisely in some copies to what Federal officials knew about the plan before the blast. Transcripts of tapes made secretly by an informant, Emad A. Salem, quote him as saying he warned the Government that a bomb was being built. But the transcripts do not make clear the extent to which the Federal authorities knew that the target was the World Trade Center. |
And there's more--
The tapes offer a rare glimpse into the sensitive relationship between the
confidential informer and the law-enforcement officals with whom he worked. They
also reveal for the first time how Federal and police agents instructed him to
"pump up" a suspect for information and negotiate a $1 million fee from the
Government for his services.
Scattered through the hundreds of pages of transcripts are many instances in
which the Government agents appear to encourage Mr. Salem to lead the suspects
to incriminate themselves. Defense lawyers have long contended that the
Government crossed a legal line, instructing Mr. Salem in a fishing expedition
that became entrapment. Although the bulk of the transcripts does not appear to
show the agents steering Mr. Salem toward improper or illegal conduct, whether
they did so finally will be resolved in court.
Many New Details
Among the details included in the transcripts are the following:
*A reference by Mr. Salem to 12 possible bombs and hitherto unmentioned
targets, including Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building and Times
Square.
*A New York City police detective working with the F.B.I. told Mr. Salem, who
was getting $500 a week from the Government, that if he wanted a $1 million
informer's fee, he should press for $1.5 million and then negotiate.
*An unusual suggestion that some of the money sought by Mr. Salem was going
to be put up by private individuals.
*A reference from Mr. Salem, in a conversation with an F.B.I. agent, to an
argument between F.B.I. officials over whether Mr. Salem should remain an
unidentified informer or surface as a witness to testify at trial.
*A major defendant in the World Trade Center trial was tipped off by a
neighbor to an elaborate F.B.I. ruse to search the Brooklyn apartment of another
suspect, Mahmud Abouhalima, and replace explosives in his apartment with false
explosives supplied by the F.B.I.
*Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a defendant in the second bombing case, was using a
fax machine to command anti-Communist Muslim rebels, moving forces from Pakistan
to Afghanistan and dealing with a code-named agent from Hamas, the militant
Palestinian group, Mr. Salem told the F.B.I.
The transcripts cover Mr. Salem's dealings with the suspects and his work for
the Government over a period of at least two years, going back to the trial in
the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Mr. Salem recorded the conversations with
Government agents on his own, without the knowledge or consent of his contacts
in the F.B.I., apparently to use as an insurance policy to hold the Government
to its promises of money and protection.
Some of the most striking passages in the transcripts show Mr. Salem
agonizing over what he suggests was the failure of the F.B.I., despite his
information, to halt the Feb. 26 bombing of the trade center, in which six
people were killed. Although Mr. Salem is not a witness in that case, he was
working with the Government at that time.
"They told me that 'we want to set this,' " Mr. Salem said, referring to the
bomb in a conversation on April 1 with John Anticev, one of the F.B.I. agents he
reported to, and sometimes complained to others about. " 'What's the right place
to put this?' "
Then he added, still speaking to the agent: "You were informed. Everything is
ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that's that. That's why I
feel so bad."
Federal officials have acknowledged in the past that they dropped Mr. Salem
as an informer sometime before the trade center bombing over what they said was
his reluctance to wear a body recorder, as well as other disagreements. They
said he never provided detailed information of the attack in advance but that
they began using his services again after the bombing and credited him with
foiling the related but separate plot to bomb the United Nations, Holland and
Lincoln tunnels and the Federal building housing the F.B.I. in Manhattan.
The case is expected to come to trial next year, perhaps shortly after the
end of the related trial of four men charged with bombing the World Trade
Center. As the most important witness, Mr. Salem is expected to be called upon
to verify tapes he made of conversations with suspects and testify on his
dealings with them.
|
In several instances, the transcripts show Mr. Salem lecturing Federal agents
on how to do their jobs, criticizing their surveillance and interview
techniques. In one instance, he suggests that they tell a possible source that
his phone was tapped, when in fact it was not, and that they confront the man
and push him hard for information. "Don't give him a chance to think," Mr. Salem
is quoted as saying. "If he will think it's, 'I want my lawyer.' Then bingo, you
are gone."
Aid for Defense? By creating the so-called bootleg tapes, Mr. Salem has given ammunition to defense lawyers who argue that he entrapped the 15 defendants charged with conspiring to bomb New York City landmarks. In one instance that shows how Mr. Salem was prompted by Federal agents, Mr. Anticev is quoted as saying, "You know, pump, maybe kind of pump him up a little bit." The agent tells Mr. Salem to stress "the loyalty to his cousin." The target in that instance, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, is a cousin of the man who was charged with shooting Mr. Kahane and now a defendant in a plot to bomb New York City targets. In another instance, Mr. Anticev is quoted as instructing Mr. Salem to press to learn whether Mr. Elgabrowny or his associates were hiding explosives. He is quoted as telling Mr. Salem not to worry about being exposed as the source of the information. "We'll just know where stuff exists and where it is," Mr. Anticev is quoted as saying. "And then we'll make our move." "There's no danger, you know," he says later. "We can be sneaky and take our time." Mr. Salem has dropped from sight since the June arrests, and an effort to get in touch with him through the witness protection program of the Federal Marshals Service was rejected. But a member of the defense team said he was spotted within the last month in Manhattan. Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer and confidant of the radical Egyptian cleric, Mr. Abdel Rahman, surfaced as the Government's mole after a June 24 F.B.I. raid on a Queens garage that the Government said smashed an extremist Muslim plot to blow up the United Nations, Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the Manhattan Federal building housing the F.B.I., and to assassinate Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, among other targets. The unauthorized tapes came to light immediately after the raid as Mr. Salem hurriedly evacuated his West Side Manhattan apartment and was quickly identified by associates of the sheik and by law-enforcement authorities as the "confidential informant" who had secretly gathered evidence, including many tape-recorded conversations, against those later charged as conspirators in the case. Tapes Left Behind In the belongings Mr. Salem left behind either carelessly or by design were cassettes of the tapes he had secretly recorded with the F.B.I. Because these could shed light on the prosecution's evidence-gathering methods to the point of possible entrapment, defense lawyers convinced Judge Mukasey that they should gain access to this material as well as to Mr. Salem's authorized recordings, turned over earlier. Even before he came in from the cold of his undercover role in June, the burly, bearded Mr. Salem was an enigmatic figure, a private investigator who supported himself as a jewelry designer, a security guard for the sheik who freely gave interviews to news reporters. Officials in Cairo say he entered the Egyptian Army as a private and during an 18-year career fought in the 1973 war with Israel and was "pensioned out" as a senior officer while continuing a relationship with Egyptian military intelligence. His American wife, from whom he was divorced this year but to whom he is still close, told New York Newsday last week that he had recently sent a set of the bootleg tapes home to Egyptian authorities with a visiting relative. In the United States for about six years, he lived most recently in a fifth-floor suite at the Bretton Hall residence hotel at 2350 Broadway. A news reporter invited to interview him there shortly after the World Trade Center bombing found herself on camera as Mr. Salem insisted videotaping the encounter. He showed her photographs of what he said was his sandbagged bunker in the 1973 war, the reviewing stand where former President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and his grave site. He also showed pictures of people who had apparently been tortured: a woman with cigarette burns and a man confined in a cage. He said that he prayed at the Abu Bakr mosque in Brooklyn and the al-Salaam mosque in Jersey City, where Sheik Omar often preached, and that he had known the cleric from Egypt. He said he was attracted by Mr. Rahman's aura of power and fearlessness. Remembered as Benefactor Associates in Jersey City said they remembered Mr. Salem as a generous benefactor of the mosques and of the sheik himself. He also collected money for the defense of El Sayyid A. Nosair, an Egyptian contractor charged in the 1990 assassination of the militant Jewish leader, Rabbi Meir Kahane. Mr. Nosair was acquitted of that killing but convicted of related assault and weapons charges. He is also one of the 15 defendants in the bombing conspiracy case. Mr. Salem also had dealings with Mr.. Elgabrowny, a relative of Mr. Nosair for whom Mr. Salem said he helped obtain a pistol permit from the New York City Police Department. Associates and lawyers of some of the defendants said that Mr. Salem appeared rather abruptly on the scene around the time of the Kahane killing and that they now suspect he was sent to infiltrate the circle around Mr. Nosair. |
[
Reply |
Private Reply | To 1 | Top | Last ]
With thanks to Wallaby for finding this, and Uncle Bill for his excellent thread which originally included it. That thread--"The FBI and the Mad Bombers" can be found here.
FYI--Your tax dollars at work.
You think the FBI handled OKC the same way? nawww
more terrorism = more power for the FBI. It's a simple equation.
bump
Echo thanks for this information. This kind of thing is the reason I refer to FBI as (watch for a euphemism here) the "Freaking Bunch of Idiots".
It would seem proper to extend automatic and mandatory capital punishment to any terrorist who operates anywhere within our borders, and include "hard" drug dealers in that category as well.
You don't really think that all that concrete was poured in record time for nothing.......
"You think the FBI handled OKC the same way?"
What is certain is that they've proven they're capable of that sort of thing.
Blumenthal was obviously assigned to cover the WTC bombing by the NYT. I don't recall any subsequent stories of his re the WTC though, and of course the tale of an FBI sting gone wrong just died. I guess the NYT lost interest.
ML/NJ
more terrorism = more power for the FBI = diminishing Constitutional Rights!!!
"You think the FBI handled OKC the same way?"
Evidence of prior knowledge:
GSA Warned of Bomb Threats To Murrah Building Day Care Center?
McVeigh Attorneys Say Government Still Witholding Evidence (Prior Govt' Knowledge & Co-Conspirators)
OKC investigating committee concludes U.S. 'had prior knowledge of the bombing'
'We knew this was going to happen' (World Net Daily)
Is This Evidence of a Practice Run for the OKC Bombing
ATF EXPERIMENTING WITH TRUCK BOMBS IN 1994!
Bomb squad seen before blast - Federal judge said many were warned of danger
OKC BOMBING FALLOUT Feds canceled pre-blast raid (Committee head: If government had acted)
Plans to raid conspirators dropped: ATF, FBI both had informants inside white-supremacist compound
Some of these links make a better case than others, of course. And I'm sure there are others, but I thought this would make a good start.
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor. . .If disturbing secrets are disclosed, but never again discussed so that few can hear of them, they cannot become common knowledge. Even the few who read this story when it first appeared might begin to presume, when they heard no more of it, that it could not be as important as it had originally appeared to be. Thankfully, Plummz did not have this reaction, and, recalling this old story on another thread, prompted my search for it.
If disturbing secrets are disclosed, but never again discussed so that few can hear of them, they cannot become common knowledge.
My thanks to all of you--because what you wrote above is exactly true. Let's keep this story bumped. It might be old, but it's instructive. If you read both articles, it tells you something very important about our government agencies. It's something that's not very pleasant to read, but we need to know it.
Thank you.
Old article, but possibly worth a re-read--and a bump.
Thanks for the heads up!
Thanks for taking the time to post this and all of those links.
Roger that.
Stay well - Yorktown
Bump
Stay well - Yorktown
An afternoon bump for a "golden oldie" article, perhaps worth a re-read.
I just want you to remember one thing. Despite the fact that Carol Howe, Andreas Strausmeir and the owner of Elohim City were each FBI informants, and Carol Howe testified that she had prior knowledge of the OKC Bombing and warned the FBI in advance, you should forget about this. Unlike the World Trade Center bombing where the FBI denied knowing it was going to happen in advance, they are now telling the truth when they say they didn't know of the OKC Bombing in advance.
Oh look their's a flock of pigs flying by...
I just want you to remember one thing. Despite the fact that Carol Howe, Andreas Strausmeir and the owner of Elohim City were each FBI informants, and Carol Howe testified that she had prior knowledge of the OKC Bombing and warned the FBI in advance, you should forget about this. Unlike the World Trade Center bombing where the FBI denied knowing it was going to happen in advance, they are now telling the truth when they say they didn't know of the OKC Bombing in advance.
Oh look there's a flock of pigs flying by...
LOL--I hate it when pigs take off, they are so slippery, and hard to catch----reminds me of certain three lettered agencies gone rogue?
Regards,
Stmoritz
Absolutely worth re-reading! I think I stuck a link over here:
DUBOB 5-- even *more* tales from the Dark Underbelly of the Beast.....
Thanks for posting this for us golitely
Atticus
Slipery... you sure got that one right! Har...
29 Posted on 02/24/2002 00:29:32 PST by SharpEye
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
[
Top
|
Latest Posts
|
Latest Articles
|
Self Search
|
Add Bookmark
|
Post
|
Abuse
|
Help!
]
FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 Forum Version 2.0a Copyright © 1999 Free Republic, LLC |