Monday, November 20, 2006

Jason Leopold reviews Peter Lance's Triple Cross

* Jason Leopold reviews Peter Lance's Triple Cross (thnx Prissy):
"Triple Cross adds a new wrinkle to the 9/11 debates and calls into question the veracity of the historical record the public has been forced to accept. Lance's reporting is bound to stir up debate about the integrity of the 9/11 Commission's investigation and the panel's lengthy final report on the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,973 Americans. Be forewarned, Triple Cross presents no conspiracy theory. It's a 489-page thriller. And it's all true. Lance, a five-time Emmy award-winning reporter and former ABC News correspondent, sticks closely to the facts. He provides readers with exhaustive footnotes and copies of some of the more crucial government documents he obtained to build a compelling case of the FBI's incompetence in reining in one of the most dangerous terrorists next to Osama bin Laden, who ended up playing a crucial role in 9/11. It should be noted as well that Lance steers clear of partisan politics: his book - unlike so many others that came before it - leans neither "right" nor "left."
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Triple Cross covers 1981 through 2001 and tracks the rise of al-Qaeda, focusing heavily on former Egyptian army major and al-Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed, who successfully infiltrated the FBI. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Triple Cross is the appearance of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the CIA leak case, who plays a leading role in Lance's book and is featured prominently on the dust jacket and in the subtitle: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI - And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him. In the 1990s, Fitzgerald was the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York directing the FBI's elite bin Laden squad.

Still in his early 30s, Fitzgerald made some costly blunders early on that might have changed the course of history if more attention had been paid to detail. Indeed, in 1991, the FBI discovered that a mailbox store in New Jersey had direct ties to al-Qaeda but failed to monitor the location. Yet four years later, Fitzgerald named the owner of the store as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Day of Terror case he was prosecuting. However, since no charges were filed against the owner, the store continued to stay in business and once again fell beneath the Justice Department's radar. Six years later, two of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their phony identification cards from that very store.

Lance presents convincing evidence in the form of court records, transcripts, and interviews with key players that casts Fitzgerald, along with numerous other Justice Department and CIA officials, as terribly negligent in allowing the agencies to be hoodwinked by Mohamed, who succeeded in penetrating the CIA's Europe division and the FBI in California, all while Mohamed was secretly helping bin Laden orchestrate the African Embassy bombings. The story of Mohamed, a man Fitzgerald called the "most dangerous man I have ever met," is groundbreaking and has never been fully fleshed out before.
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Triple Cross would end up being a highly entertaining Tom Clancy-esque thriller, in other words, pure fiction, if Lance didn't have tens of thousands of pages of documents locked up in a safe-house to back up this explosive account. Remarkably, Mohamed was never sentenced for the crimes he pleaded guilty to. He is in the witness protection program, his existence shrouded under a veil of secrecy."

6 comments:

Andrew Simon said...

Luke,

Just tell me that this isn't a massive smear job on Fitz cos he's got his sights on DC. Go on - Tell me - Tell me...

lukery said...

lol.

i dont know what to make of it all. i have no reason to doubt/mistrust Lance.

here's xymphora's take fwiw - http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/11/ali-mohamed-and-patrick-fitzgerald.html

Anonymous said...

Well, he isn't telling the full story and I think he's using Fitz name to publish his book. Fitz wasn't the lead counsel on that case.

See what BooMan clipped from Larry Johnson too: Peter Lance, Crisscrossed

What we do know about Patrick Fitzgerald is that he succeeded in putting terrorists behind jail without violating the Constitution or torturing a soul. He deserves better than to be attacked by a lightweight like Lance. If you are planning to buy Peter’s new book I suggest you get a big box of Kosher or Sea Salt. You’ll need to take more than a grain of salt to get thru Peter’s mess.
------

Fitz is not of the dark side-but his name will sell a book

lukery said...

thnx prissy

Anonymous said...

Yes, thanks Prissy!

Good ol' Larry. I especially like this part:

"Fitzgerald and other junior prosecutors do not have the luxury of waking up each morning and deciding on their own to follow a hunch. Moreover, they normally don’t direct Federal investigations. The investigative part is handled by FBI agents who run field offices. They collect evidence until they have a case put together that enables them to secure an indictment or an arrest warrant and then the prosecutor gets involved. Once again, Peter misses a basic fact that anyone who has watched Law and Order already knows."

Ever since I first heard about this book I've been thinkin' I'm detecting the whiff of a too-convenient smear campaign in advance of the Libby trial. Nothing would please the KGB regime more than discrediting Fitz and this seems altogether too similar to other schemes they've perpetrated, which also had unseemly, easily-discovered loose ends. Now I have to start holding my breath to see if the alleged MSM is going to make a big fuss and present Lance's Fitz smear as real. Grr.

Anonymous said...

"Triple Cross" is what's referred to as a "limited hangout." The "hangout" here is "incompetence" to divert from the truth which is "complicity."

Ali Mohammad was a CIA agent provacateur from the the start. Al Queda was always a CIA/MI-6 asset. It's purpose was to cultivate the Myth of Islamo Fascism, to foment chaos, to destabilize and fail as many states as possible in the Middle East, to establish the War of Terror and give a pretext to the War of Civilizations and ultimately salvage the collapsing petro/arms/drug-dollar. All this was done through extensive, cellularly insulated networks of patsies, moles and professionals. A handful of FBI moles killed every lead on the 9/11 plot that came their way. Moles in every security agency in the government paved the way. It was not, as Woodward has written, "an intelligence failure," on the contrary, it was a stunning "intelligence success."

Ali's story is too widely known to kill. The best they can hope for is a dense smoke and mirrors ploy that points to incompetence. At this point, with recent polls showing fewer than 20% of Americans still believing the government did not lie about 9/11, incompetence is the only way out for the 9/11 criminals.

We're now seeing numerous similar "limited hangouts" streaming through the media on various 9/11-related issues," e.g. "State of Denial," "Fiasco," "Target Iran," etc. each a lightning rod to stave off full blown 911 truth. There are serious 9/11 studies, but the main stream media won't touch them. The best is "911 Synthetic Terror - Made in USA" by Webster G. Tarpley, #1 Bestseller in Oct. '06 at Amazon.com and called by former CIA analyst, Robert Steele, the best of the 770+ books he's reviewed for Amazon. This is where you'll find an accurate account of the Ali Mohammad and Able Danger stories.