"We cannot let this man out on the street..."

March 5, 2007 3:57 PM

The greatest enigma of the US "war on terror":He was an intelligence officer of the Egyptian army, a CIA agent, a drill seargent and instructor at Fort Bragg, an FBI informant, and Al Qaeda's number one man inside the US. He was directly or indirectly involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the 1993 WTC bombing, the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and 9/11. He trained al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and Sudan and wrote manuals on intelligence, terrorism and asymmetric warfare while living in Silicon Valley with his American wife. He plea bargained, never went to trial, and may be free or in witness protection today. Incidentally, he is barely mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report. Is there some sort of conspiracy or are officials simply afraid of having their gross negligence exposed?
posted by inoculatedcities (26 comments total)

Sorry so many of the links point to or mention Peter Lance's work so frequently, but he really is one of the only journalists who's written extensively on Ali Mohamed.
posted by inoculatedcities at 4:00 PM on March 5, 2007

Huh. Pretty intresting stuff.
posted by serazin at 4:25 PM on March 5, 2007

Wow. Sounds like stint with the CIA didn't really work out though (see this link from above).
posted by timelord at 4:30 PM on March 5, 2007

Intelligence ... remains a very ugly business. And is anyone surprised that the official versions of 9/11 and other incidents are incomplete?
posted by homodigitalis at 4:31 PM on March 5, 2007

Between Conspiracy and negligence I will always bet on negligence.
posted by darkripper at 4:42 PM on March 5, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Intelligence ... remains a very ugly business.

Yes, and one driven mainly by the beliefs and practices of the subculture rather than any body of knowledge about what provides optimal intelligence for defending the country. This happens over and over again in country after country (Kim Philby, anyone), to no discernible benefit to any of those nations.

I say raze the current lot and start over. Gotta be better.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:45 PM on March 5, 2007

Very much in agreement with you, darkripper, especially on matters related to 9/11. Thankfully Lance's books are well-argued, present a lot of evidence, and sensational as the topic matter can sometimes be, avoid conspiratorial angles as much as possible. If you want to be disturbed and assured that intelligence agency bureaucrats are more worried about their careers than protecting American citizens, check out his 1000 Years For Revenge.
posted by inoculatedcities at 4:48 PM on March 5, 2007

What about a conspiracy that takes advantage of negligence? This isn't an either/or, you know.
posted by solistrato at 4:52 PM on March 5, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

sounds like the guy is in jail to me.

the only one who says otherwise is the esteemed author of FORCES AT WORK TO BUILD A U.S. POLICE STATE

Unless of course "FORCES" sprang Mohamed from jail.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:00 PM on March 5, 2007

US District Judge Leonard B Sand first said the agreement guaranteed a minimum of 25 years in prison,

From the BBC article. Somehow I trust them a little more than "newswithviews.com"

Interesting stuff, though.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:03 PM on March 5, 2007

Let's see now. This "conspiracy" or "negligence", whichever it is, is brought to us mainly in the work of one Peter Lance, whose web site identifies him as "investigative reporter, novelist and screenwriter." Sounds like a guy with a good imagination. See here, also, for documentation of inaccuracies and questionable reporting by lance.
posted by beagle at 5:07 PM on March 5, 2007

Lance.
posted by beagle at 5:08 PM on March 5, 2007

drjimmy11 - Nobody has publicly stated the whereabouts of Ali Mohamed today. One would think that if he were rotting in ADX Florence, the Feds would be leaking photos of him in his underpants to the press -- unless they were still using him as an intelligence asset (he did plea bargain and avoided the death penalty in very hush-hush circumstances) or if they are completely embarrassed that he was able to go so long as an undetected double-agent. These are legitimate questions.

beagle - Did Ali Mohamed infiltrate the US government to exceedingly high levels all while being a central al Qaeda operative or not? Does the fact that Lance is a screenwriter and novelist as well as an ABC reporter have anything to do with the fact that Ali Mohamed completely fooled and manipulated the US government in the interest of al Qaeda?

I agree the wealth of conspiratorial nonsense on a lot of these sites is irritating. You can find it on far-left and far-right sites of dubious integrity or value alike. Just because 9-11 Truth and A.I.M. report on something does that mean it's entirely imaginary?

Does any of it change the basic, established story about this man?
posted by inoculatedcities at 5:18 PM on March 5, 2007

So much about 9/11 has been dismissed on grounds of incompetence that it's become nigh-impossible to hold anyone responsible for anything nowadays, or indeed to punish anyone for being incompetent...

I mean, for chrissakes, the NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR on that day got a promotion to Secretary of State. You have to be fucking kidding me, right?
posted by clevershark at 5:31 PM on March 5, 2007

Once it was easier to plot something (most of the italian misteries of the 70s and 80s are still unresolved ). Today however, things are different. People get caught, because leaving traces it's easier. For some italian extravaganza read about the whole SISMI affair (I don't know if it received news coverage in USA - particulary the part about Telecom).
posted by darkripper at 5:54 PM on March 5, 2007

Oh, come on. Everybody knows that any conspiracy theory can be immediately dismissed because THEY'RE CRAZY!
posted by Sukiari at 6:20 PM on March 5, 2007

Yes, how "negligent" everyone seems to be...

Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must have been very negligent when he authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before 9/11, and he was a real scatterbrain to meet with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11.

Porter Goss must have had some kind of blackout when he met with Mr. Ahmed the morning of September 11th in his capacity as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence-- and it had no bearing whatsoever upon his selection by the White House to head the CIA. That was just a coincidence.

That Goss's congressional seat encompassed the 9/11 hijackers' Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid one of those nutty conspiracy theorists would bring up.

oops...
posted by wfc123 at 6:21 PM on March 5, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

But of course to suggest that any of this stuff is relevant is crazy! It's kooky, conspiracy-theorist stuff! Tin-foil-hat wingnuttery! Anyone who believes that must be teh fat like Michael Moore!!!
posted by clevershark at 6:41 PM on March 5, 2007

Between Conspiracy and negligence I will always bet on negligence.

followed immediately by conspiracy to cover up said negligence.
posted by quonsar at 7:22 PM on March 5, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

You guys are crazy for even suggesting that one thing has anything to do with another thing. Everybody knows that events like 9/11 are unrelated to anything else. There's no such thing as cause and effect - just meaningless events that happen to occur in a random sequence.
posted by Sukiari at 7:42 PM on March 5, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Just because you pre-emptively mock people who might call you crazy doesn't mean you aren't, in fact, crazy.
posted by Justinian at 8:00 PM on March 5, 2007

I’ll see you, Quonsar, and raise to existential negligence covered by stupidity.
posted by Huplescat at 8:10 PM on March 5, 2007

And mocking a conspiracy theory, especially without providing evidence to refute it, is crazier than proposing them in the first place.
posted by Sukiari at 11:05 PM on March 5, 2007

followed immediately by conspiracy to cover up said negligence.

And they can't even get that right.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:10 AM on March 6, 2007

Psst: in the first place the United States Government is itself a long-standing conspiracy against human freedom and dignity in America and elsewhere. How could such a phenomenally successful conspiracy maintain itself by negligence and stupidity? OTOH, what's better cover than looking stupid? ("What is the Columbo Effect?") So I must respectfully disagree with my colleague Mr. Quonsar.
posted by davy at 9:01 AM on March 6, 2007

I don't think conspiracy theory applies to the United States anymore. Too much of the information is out there in the open. I think it more like a Battered Spouse situation.

It used to be that to do evil you had to slip a roofi the population and do it to them while they were unconscious. Now you just do it and let the population's denial mechanisms cover for you.
posted by srboisvert at 1:52 AM on March 8, 2007