AT&T and Verizon obey FBI emergency requests, even if they're of dubious legality, and they get paid for it. But AT&T can't be sued, they say, because that would endanger national security.
posted on Mar 20, 2007 - View this thread

Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite? Should the FBI's counter-terrorism chief know the difference? How about the head of the FBI national security branch? How about a vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence?
posted on Oct 17, 2006 - View this thread

Missed Opportunities ...Lawrence Wright tells, for the first time, the story of the F.B.I. agent who had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot. Here, with Amy Davidson, Wright talks about how turf wars with the C.I.A. got in the way. Wright’s book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” will be published by Knopf in August.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

Miguel Tinker Salas is the Arango Professor in Latin American History at Pomona College, a political historian and sometime commentator on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. On Tuesday, an FBI/LA County Sherrifs Office Joint Terrorism Task Force came calling during Tinker Salas's office hours. "After identifying themselves, they proceeded to ask about my relation to Venezuela, the government, the community, my scholarship, my politics...After they departed, the three or four students who were outside my office informed me that these individuals had asked them about my background, my classes, what I taught, my politics and they even wrote down the cartoons that are on my door."
posted on Mar 9, 2006 - View this thread

The FBI knows you're reading MetaFilter. [WashPost link]
posted on Nov 7, 2005 - View this thread

One of Ashcroft's "credible sources" from last week's terror warning came from Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group that has also claimed responsibility for the blackout in the Northeast last year, the power outage in London, the Madrid bombing and has been called "notoriously unreliable" by U.S. officials. “The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington". Ashcroft blames the FBI who have admitted that claims that terrorists were 90 percent ready to attack came not from al-Qaida, but from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades’ statements.
posted on May 29, 2004 - View this thread

DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts --- FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.  "My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which I won't go into right now." Incredibly, Edmonds said "The senate Judiciary Committee, and the 911 Commission have heard me  testify for  lengthy periods of time time (3 hours) about very specific plots, dates, airplanes used as weopons, and specific idividuals and activities." Is this true? and OMFG
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

Interesting Debka post re: Al-Queda and a scheduled nuking on 2/2/04 of NYC. Supposedly the original web site was removed from the Internet by the FBI.
posted on Jan 3, 2004 - View this thread

Ashcroft and FBI not doing enough to fight domestic terrorism. More information on the Krar posion gas plot at thememoryhole.org.
posted on Dec 15, 2003 - View this thread

Did the Feds bungle intelligence on the 1995 OKC Bombing? FBI officials feared that white separatists might lash out on April 19, 1995 -- the day McVeigh chose. They were so concerned that a month earlier they questioned a reformed white supremacist familiar with an earlier plot to bomb the Murrah federal building, the one McVeigh selected. Does this affect earlier theories on OKC? Does it make the current advisories more significant?
posted on Feb 11, 2003 - View this thread

Buy a Flight Manual, Get a Grand Jury Subpoena? A guy qualified to fly and instruct on the Boeing 737 buys a CD on Ebay that contains the ground course for the same plane. Then the FBI gets involved, and, courtesy of section 501 (d) of the "USA Patriot Act", he can no longer even discuss the issue. [more inside]
posted on Dec 23, 2002 - View this thread

The man who knew was John O'Neill, former FBI counterterrorism expert who spent six years connecting the dots to bin Laden and the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks last year. Last night Frontline broadcast an excellent documentary on the tragic ironies of his life, detailing the actions of the fatuous bureaucrats who stymied his investigations, and his own death in the World Trade Center. This one-man Office of Homeland Security shows that it's not about money or departments or posturing or color-coded alerts -- it's about a commitment to truth and a willingess to act.
posted on Oct 4, 2002 - View this thread

Operation TIPS calls routed to "America's Most Wanted" (Salon premium, sorry) What hack wrote this script we Americans now find ourselves playing out, and why does he have such an on-the-nose sense of humor? Is this funny, depressing, painful or outrageous? Or all four?
posted on Aug 6, 2002 - View this thread

Is the FBI dragging it's feet in the anthrax investigation? It appears they have reason to do so. Dr. Barbara Rosenberg presents a compelling argument that the likely homegrown terrorist is known but revealing his identity could be embarrassing to the government.
posted on Jun 25, 2002 - View this thread

Who bombed Judi Bari? We'll likely never know because of FBI bungling. Pursue and blame the victim to stifle activist speech. So is this a running theme at the FBI?
posted on Jun 12, 2002 - View this thread

Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I. (NY Times link) As part of a sweeping effort to transform the F.B.I. into a domestic terrorism prevention agency, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying in counterterrorism operations, senior government officials said today. Here's the Wash. Post's take on the story.
posted on May 30, 2002 - View this thread

FBI orders ISP to remove Daniel Pearl murder video
The video [not work safe, or even home safe] that surfaced shortly after his death has been targeted by the FBI for removal on the internet, apparently using the 1996 federal obscenity law. Anyone want a Bonsai Kitten or a Y2K Video also? The Editors Note speaks volumes: After this story was edited, FBI spokeswoman Sandra Carroll called Wired News to say the bureau was merely giving advice to websites hosting the Pearl video -- and was not threatening prosecution.
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread

Anthrax and the Agency "Now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially put the anthrax investigation on a back burner, it is time for Americans to think the unthinkable: that the FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator because that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself. Evidence is mounting that the source of the anthrax was a top secret U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland and that the perpetrators involve high-level officials in the U.S. military and intelligence infrastructure." Granted, there's more than a few blips on the radar screen these days, but...whatever happened to this investigation? I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the case laid out in this piece gives me pause. Any other good theories out there?
posted on Apr 10, 2002 - View this thread

U.S. authorities had seven chances to catch the hijackers before September 11th.
posted on Feb 13, 2002 - View this thread

FBI Declines to Release Hijack Flight Cockpit Tape "While we empathize with the grieving families, we do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way,'' [an FBI spokesman] said. While the FBI claims they need to keep the information secret due to a criminal investigation, partial transcripts of the tape have shown up in Newsweek. If the FBI can leak to Newsweek, surely they could get the family members to sign a confidentiality agreement and let them in on the secret too, no?
posted on Dec 21, 2001 - View this thread

The New McCarthyism This is so scary. It doesn't seem like anything more than intimidation, but, that's now. What will happen next?
posted on Dec 19, 2001 - View this thread

8 former FBI agents "have offered the first substantive critique of the Ashcroft program." A senior Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that none of the changes ordered by Ashcroft would have enabled the FBI to interrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. After the rebuke mentioned previously here, perhaps the worm is turning?
posted on Nov 27, 2001 - View this thread

FBI did not test..or..Notify City Hall The FBI has done a lousy job on everything connected with recent events. Why are they so crummy?
posted on Oct 13, 2001 - View this thread

FBI Most Wanted Terrorists I wonder how Reuters News Service will cover this story since they have removed the word "terrorist" from the reporting of 911?
posted on Oct 10, 2001 - View this thread

weekend alert as FBI warns of new attack *
oh swell.

make sure everyone you love knows what's going on.

*via little green footballs.
posted on Sep 19, 2001 - View this thread

So tragically wrong... Proof that the FBI didn't have a clue. From a year ago: "Even the American cells of violent Middle East political movements as Hamas and Hezbollah, [then FBI Director Louis] Freeh declared, are devoted exclusively to "fundraising and low-level intelligence gathering." Salon writer Bruce Shapiro even goes so far as to call the National Commission on Terrorism's finding that "The threat from terrorists is so high, the potential for massive casualties is so real, that an independent panel is pushing the government to take immediate, drastic action" as a con job.
posted on Sep 15, 2001 - View this thread

$5 million reward.
posted on Sep 13, 2001 - View this thread

FBI Currently storming Copley Hotel (Streaming Windows Media) I am truly amazed at the speed at which this investigation is unfolding.
posted on Sep 12, 2001 - View this thread

Report: Five Suspects Identified in NYC Attack Seems FBI, etc. is working double time (as expected). There are some more updates streaming.
posted on Sep 12, 2001 - View this thread