The 9/11 Double Agents, Pentagon, CIA & FBI- From Ali Mohamed to Anwar al-Awlaki
Last Friday lawyers for Ali Al-Timimi, a Virginia man serving a life sentence for supporting jihad against the U.S., pushed to obtain more information from the federal government on evidence pertaining to the cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki’s recruitment as a U.S. government informant a decade ago. According to Al-Tamimi’s defense lawyer Jonathan Turley, recently-released FBI files suggest that Al-Awlaki may have been acting as an “asset” for some government agency. In response to Turley’s request for this crucial evidence government prosecutors insisted that they had no obligation to provide the detail of its dealings with Al-Awlaki:
“Mr. Turley has no right to know [whether the government] had an asset into Awlaki at that time. Mr. Turley has no right to know if Mr. Awlaki was an asset at that time!”
Leonie Brinkema, the presiding U.S. District Court Judge on the case, has not been inclined to grant motions filed by Muslim scholar Ali Al-Timimi seeking more details on the government’s relationship with Al-Awlaki. Further, last Friday Brinkema suggested that part of the answer to these concerns is so highly classified that she is the only person at the court who is allowed to see it, and that even a number of other personnel with “Top Secret” clearance were not allowed to see the documents pertaining to these concerns.
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You can read Al-Tamimi’s motion seeking evidence about Al-Awlaki here , and the government’s response here.
Politico, in an article written last Friday by Josh Gerstein, provided a decent albeit limited summary background on Al-Awlaki’s mind-bogglingly mysterious past:
In the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Al-Awlaki—then the head imam at a mosque in Falls Church, Va.—was regarded by many in the government and the media as a voice for moderate Islam. He made a presentation at the Pentagon and did interviews with news outlets like National Public Radio.
However, he was also under intense surveillance by the FBI, apparently because of indications he had ties to the September 11 hijackers. Al-Awlaki left the U.S. for London in 2002 and eventually made his way to Yemen, emerging as one of the most strident English-language voices for Al Qaeda.
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Isn’t it amazing how, in light of this new development, Politico mentions only some of the glaring facts pertaining to Al-Awlaki’s standing and status with the United States government? Let me cite a few significant documented facts:
1- Awlaki’s established and documented ties to and relationships with high-ranking FBI officials:
In 2001 Awlaki settled on the East Coast in the Washington Metropolitan Area where he served as imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque. This is where he led academic discussions and preaching frequented by FBI Director of Counter-Intelligence for the Middle East Gordon M. Snow.
Think about it, we are not talking about some lowly FBI field agent here. We are talking about the FBI’s Director of Counterintelligence being connected to and having a relationship with Awlaki.
2- Awlaki was a sought after figure by the Pentagon-He even dined with top brass:
In 2010, FOX and the New York New York Daily News reported that months after the 9/11 attacks, a Pentagon employee invited al-Awlaki to a luncheon in the Secretary’s Office of General Counsel. The U.S. Secretary of the Army had asked for a presentation from a moderate Muslim as part of an outreach effort to ease tensions with Muslim-Americans.
Anwar Al-Awlaki may be the first American on the CIA’s kill or capture list, but he was also a lunch guest of military brass at the Pentagon within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Fox News has learned.
3- Awlaki was a chosen man on Capitol Hill as well:
In 2002, al-Awlaki was the first imam to conduct a prayer service for the Congressional Muslim Staffer Association at the U.S. Capitol.[85][86] The prayers were for Muslim congressional staffers and officials for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
4- And of course he was a darling of the US mainstream media:
Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki was sought in DC as a media source to answer questions about Islam and its rituals, and its relation to the attacks. He was interviewed by National Geographic, The New York Times, NPR, and other media.
If we go a bit further back we’ll see that in 1994 Awlaki began service as a part-time imam of the Denver Islamic Society, where he encouraged Saudis to fight in Chechnya against the Russians. Now remember we are talking about the Post-Soviet period here. Because the relationship between Awlaki and the Pentagon cannot be written off as one of those overly used ‘well, that was during the Afghan-Soviet War when we aligned ourselves with one evil against another evil,’ lines.
When you put all these documented facts together with the recent development in Al-Tamimi’s trial, seeking US government documents pertaining to Awlaki’s position as an informant-Asset for the U.S. government, things begin to make sense. Don’t you think so?
One other important point within the latest developments in the subject court case should not go unnoticed [All Emphasis Mine]:
The defense lawyer said that recently-released FBI files suggest that Al-Awlaki may have been acting as an “asset” for some government agency when he returned to the U.S. from abroad just prior to his meeting with Al-Timimi.
I would say despite the documented evidence linking Awlaki to high-level FBI officials, the highlighted sentence in the quote above should read “The Agency.” Because when you view the bigger picture, if you go back a bit more, you would find more common interests and ties between Awlaki and the agency than his value to the subservient FBI. If you haven’t watched our series on Gladio please do so here to understand the dynamics here at a deeper level.
We must also not forget another parallel case: the case of Double Agent Ali Mohamed.
Let’s remember Ali Mohamed- A very special inmate who is currently being held in a secret section of a US federal prison. He was a top commando in charge of training Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard. He was Bin Laden’s and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s top spy inside the U.S. government. Here are some highlights of Ali Mohamed’s resume:
Major in the Egyptian Army Special Forces, then Sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg, Long-time al-Qaida operative and trainer of terrorists who bombed the New York World Trade Center, chief of security for Osama bin Laden, CIA agent, FBI informant, and applicant for a Department of Defense security clearance …
This is what Ali Mohamed’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, said: “I am convinced Mohamed was “sponsored” by a U.S. intelligence service I assumed the CIA.” And, he was right.
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And here is what Senator Graham told Abby Martin in a recent interview.
The mainstream media and quasi alternatives such as Politico have been very consistent in publishing stories in a limited fashion and in small controlled doses. To understand what is happening with the Awlaki case we must know its entire history and other parallel cases, and we must understand the context. Without doing that what we’ll end up with is a bunch of confusing intrigues and further unanswered questions when the answer actually lies before our eyes, all naked and clear.
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Sibel Edmonds is the Publisher & Editor of Boiling Frogs Post and the author of the Memoir Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story. She is the recipient of the 2006 PEN Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy” Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.
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