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Whistleblower Coming In Cold From the F.B.I. by Gail Sheehy
Sibel Edmonds says she was shocked at the lack of security in the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence squad when she went to work there shortly after Sept. 11. But when she spoke up, she was canned. Gail Sheehy tells her story.
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Last Friday, the four women from New Jersey who have faced down the F.B.I. on its failures in preventing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that claimed their husbands’ lives were personally invited to the bureau’s Hoover Building offices in Washington, D.C., for a second visit. Their host was none other than F.B.I. director Robert Mueller.
Cordial and fully engaged, Mr. Mueller introduced the newly appointed head of the Bureau’s Penttbom investigation (Pent for Pentagon, Pen for Pennsylvania, tt for the Twin Towers and bom for the four planes that the government was forewarned could be used as weapons—even bombs—but ignored).
The new Penttbom team leader, Joan-Marie Turchiano, politely suggested the widows present their questions.
"O.K." said Kristin Breitweiser, the group’s hammerhead, "have you solved the crime yet?"
The Penttbom leader said they had been investigating the 19 hijackers and had run down every connection. Ms. Breitweiser recalls her next words indelibly: "As far as our investigations are concerned, we can say the hijackers had no contacts in the United States."
But the scathing 800-page report on intelligence failures produced by a joint congressional investigation had already revealed that the F.B.I. had open investigations on four of the 14 individuals who allegedly had some kind of contact with the hijackers while they were in the U.S.
The Four Moms from New Jersey , or "the girls" as they refer to themselves, waste little time on niceties these days. They were the firecrackers behind the creation of the 9/11 commission, which after a year of meager progress, is finally ready to call key administration officials to testify in public hearings on some of the most important questions we have before us as a nation.
Rest of very interesting story that will unfold in Feb.2004
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