The New York Times had a fascinating/disturbing report today about Mike German, a former FBI agent who sounded like he was key crime-fighting asset, right up until he was forced out of his job for pointing out the agency’s shortcomings.
In the early 1990’s, [German] infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.
So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group.
But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a “pariah.” He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time — the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.
There are at least two reasons why this story is so important.
First, it appears to be part of a trend.
[Sibel] Edmonds was a contract linguist for the FBI — translating material from Turkish, Persian, and Azerbaijani — who was dismissed in 2002 after complaining that the bureau’s staff linguists had poorly translated important pieces of intelligence on terrorism, before and after Sept. 11. She also charged that one of these linguists had blocked the translation of material that implicated an acquaintance who had come under FBI suspicion.
For her repeated efforts, Edmonds was not only dismissed, she was also barred from testifying in a lawsuit brought by family members of 9/11 victims. The Justice Department further prohibited her from speaking out anywhere about her own case. All facts about her job at the FBI, even which languages she translated, were declared “state secrets.”
And, as we now know, Edmonds was fired because she had the gall to point out her superior’s incompetence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Times article raises the specter of domestic militia-types working with Islamic fundamentalists to commit terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
[O]fficials with knowledge of [German’s] case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla., area and centered on an informant’s tip about a meeting between suspected associates of a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, who were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said.
Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.
The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr. German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned that “the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.”
He also wrote, “Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur, which is purported to be the F.B.I.’s number one priority, continue to be lost, yet no one is held accountable.”
Unless I’ve been missing this in the news, cooperation between domestic militias and Islamic fundamentalists is a fairly new development.
Will Ashcroft’s Justice Department pursue white American men in the Plains states with the same zeal as Middle Eastern families?