August 18, 2006, - 10:43 am
Famous But Incompetent: 9/10 FBI Still Doesn’t Get It
By
**** UPDATED W/Excerpts of ****
Regular readers of this site know that political correctness–NOT counterterrorism–is the #1 interest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s why it’s frightening that the FBI is the lead agency in all terrorism investigations.
But those who are not frightened by that, need to read “Old-School Academy in Post-9/11 World,” a report that tells us everything we suspected about the FBI. Reporter Sari Horwitz got special access to the FBI Academy in Quantico, which trains all new agents. It’s starkly clear that the FBI remains in a 9/10 world, completely clueless and useless five years after 9/11.
This beginning excerpt says it all:
In a classroom at the FBI Academy in Quantico, instructor Rodney Loose was trying to introduce the history of Islam to a new group of future agents. He had one hour.
The 50 men and women would be joining the ranks of an agency whose top officials have declared fighting terrorism to be its No. 1 priority. They listened intently as Loose rushed through his topics: Sunnis and Shiites, the Koran, Mecca and Medina, four-part Arabic names, and the five pillars of Islam.
“Can you tell us about sleeper cells?” a recruit asked.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re going to have time to get into this,” a frustrated Loose said. “I wish I had more time to go through this. But it’s just not possible.”
Since the FBI came under withering criticism for its part in the intelligence community’s failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the bureau has added 37 hours of counterterrorism training at Quantico for new agents. But that represents just 5 percent of the curriculum, and only one hour is about Islam, Arabic culture and understanding the terrorist mind-set
With so little time, Loose could just make it through Page 7 of his 14-page handout. No time to discuss suicide bombers, Islamic extremism or terrorist psychology.
More:
For now, agents attend classes in the academy’s maze of aging buildings. They spend many days role-playing in “Hogan’s Alley,” a replica of a 1950s small town created by Hollywood set designers that Keith Slotter acknowledge “served us well for the bank-robbery scenario” but not so well for counterterrorism.
Read the whole thing.
Again, this is the agency that is supposed to be the LEAD on terrorism. Hardly comforting. Nor is the story from last year about depositions in the lawsuit by an Arab FBI agent, Bassem Youssef. Youssef’s lawyer deposed FBI Director Robert Mueller and FBI Counterterrorism directors. , they didn’t know the most basic things about terrorism that any idiot who reads a newspaper surely knows.
Mueller and the others, for example, didn’t know who the blind cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, was and how he was tied to Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. As anyone with a slight clue knows, Sheikh Rahman was convicted for being the spiritual leader of the 1993 Al-Qaeda bombing of the World Trade Center. Hello? . . . Rahman was a key figure in Islamic terrorist groups in Egypt, and it is incredible that Mueller & the other FeeB “terrorism” chiefs didn’t have a clue who he was.
Here’s an excerpt from about this and the astounding ignorance of the FBI’s top terrorism people:
[N]one of the top FBI brass felt knowledge or expertise in terrorism was important in the least. No surprise, since it would disqualify all of them, who–shockingly–don’t know the most basic characteristics regarding Islamic terror.
That FBI Director Robert Mueller didn’t know how the blind cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, was linked to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, would be hilarious–if it weren’t so pathetic and disturbing. (Rahman was the spiritual leader for the ’93 WTC terrorist attacks, and was convicted for it. Now, in prison, the attack he inspired was an Al-Qaeda attack. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is the uncle of Ramzi Youssef, mastermind of the ’93 WTC attacks.) Ditto for FBI Counterterrorism director through 2003, Dale Watson, who could not tell the difference between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims. That is significant because the major Islamic terrorist groups are allied with particular Islamic sects–Hezbollah is Shi’ite and is funded by Iran’s Shia government; and HAMAS and other Palestinian terrorist groups, as well as Al-Qaeda, are Sunni. (Though, these days, the groups have started to work together. They hate each other, but they hate us more.)
This reminds me of my own recent interaction, working with an FBI agent “investigating” an Islamic terrorism-related case in the heart of Islamic America, the Detroit area. The agent told me he was an expert in counterterrorism, that he had a Master’s Degree in the field. Well, somebody needs to sue someone for malpractice in education.
The agent did not know that there were several sects of Islam. He didn’t know about Shi’ites and Sunnis, which floored me since most Islamic terrorist groups are tied to one or the other of the two largest sects of Islam–ie. Hezbollah is a Shi’ite group, and Al-Qaeda and HAMAS are Sunni. The agent didn’t know what a hijab (Islami headscarf) was or pretty much anything else on Islam. He was fricking clueless.
But when it comes to pandering to the most extreme Muslims, the FBI is expert. Special Agents in Charge–like Michigan’s –are excellent at breaking pita and eating falafel and shawarmeh with men they know are agents of Hezbollah and HAMAS. They can bow down and applaud extremist Hezbollah agent imams–like , head of the second largest mosque in North America and a well-known agent of Iran–with aplomb.
So when the FBI constantly announces that this case or that case “isn’t connected to terrorism” and “there is no imminent threat,” you’ll know that, very likely, it’s the exact opposite.
Tags: Abdul Rahman, al-Qaeda, America, bank-robbery scenario, Bassem Youssef, bin Laden, blind cleric, Counterterrorism director, Dale Watson, Daniel Roberts, Detroit, director, Egypt, FBI Academy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hamas, head, Hizballah, Hogan's Alley, Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, instructor, Iran's Shia government, Islamic Republic of Iran, Keith Slotter, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Koran, lawyer, Mecca, Medina, Michigan, North America, Old-School Academy, Omar Abdul, Pentagon, Ramzi Youssef, reporter, Robert Mueller, Rodney Loose, Sari Horwitz, spiritual leader, World Trade Center
Not sure why my previous comment didn’t appear. Oh well…here goes again:
Your article just made me sick. Not about you, but what you wrote was horrific. And, there’s nearly nothing we can do about it, is there? Has PC mindlessness gone that far? What will it take to wake up Washington? An atomic bomb over D.C.?
Seymour
Seymour Paine on August 18, 2006 at 4:05 pm