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March 29th, 2024

Insight

It's Not Your Father's FBI

Alicia Colon

By Alicia Colon

Published June 26, 2017

It's Not Your Father's FBI
What would J. Edgar think of today's FBI?

When former FBI Director Comey testified that President Trump had smeared the reputation of the FBI, I wanted to ask, "What reputation?"

Whenever I see that Lifelock commercial of a bank being robbed while a security guard stands by saying, "I'm not a security guard. I'm a security monitor" I think that's what the FBI has become --- mere monitors who stand by until the terrorists they've been watching carry out their attacks.

Omar Mir Seddique, also known as Omar Mateen, was an American mass murderer who killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016. He had been interviewed by the FBI three times and was on their radar because he had made comments sympathetic to terrorists and attended the same Florida mosque as a suicide bomber named Moner Abusalha, who had gone to Syria to blow up Syrian government soldiers in 2014.

When asked why Mateen was dropped from the FBI list, Comey indicated that the FBI's concerns about Mateen were eased after a witness told the bureau that Mateen got married, had a child and found steady work. Oh!

Likewise, the Boston Marathon terrorists, the Tsarnaev brothers had been investigated and the FBI had even received warnings from Russia of a possible terror attack. NBC reported: In March 2011, the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency that arose from the remnants of the KGB, sent a cable to the FBI with its concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Tsarnaev family.

By then, the Tsarnaevs, a Muslim family of mixed Chechen ancestry, had been living in Massachusetts for almost a decade. Tamerlan, born in 1986, had attended a local high school, married an American and become an amateur boxer.

The letter was a page and a quarter long and very detailed. It included contact information, with addresses and phone numbers, for many of the members of the Tsarnaev family, including Tamerlan and his mother . . . .in June 2011. The FBI investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was closed. According to the report, "the assessment found no links to terrorism."

Remember the Fort Hood terrorist, Col. Nidal Hasan? An FBI-run terrorism task force knew last December that Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, sent 16 e-mails to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen who supports violence against the West. Had the FBI perceived him as a threat, they absolutely would have intervened. So the fundamental question is: Why they didn't see him as a threat?

FBI under Comey has excused this disconnect by explaining how difficult it has been to uncover the Lone Wolf with no apparent contact with known terrorist organizations. Many innocent individuals have been under FBI surveillance but the real reason for the FBI failures may be due to an increase in a PC policy.

Several years ago I attended a seminar about libel tourism which included several well known journalists who had been attacked and sued for their literary works warning of jihadist terrorism. Mark Steyn was among the speakers and told of his battle with a Canadian Human Right Commission which was trying to restrict his free speech. The term libel tourism was coined to describe taking advantage of the legal system of a foreign country where it is easier for you to file a libel lawsuit against a writer or journalist for publishing serious criticisms of or accusations against you. Britain's one of those countries where Muslim hardliners find it easier to protest writing it finds offensive.

While I found the authors' experiences illuminating, I was rather shocked by what one of the speakers alleged. Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official who heads a small Washington think tank called the Center for Security Policy, is much maligned by conservative elitists. Gaffney claimed that the FBI was being given sensitivity training to deal with Muslims and terrorism activity. I later learned that this charge was accurate and was even more surprised when I learned who was training the FBI agents.

An Insight Magazine writer, Rowan Scarborough wrote in a column in March, 2008, "An American Muslim group, C.A.I.R., has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal terrorism case, is being used by the FBI to train its agents about Islam." Other points in the article:


CAIR trains FBI agents across the country on Islam and how to treat Muslims. CAIR's archived press releases show numerous instances of CAIR representatives training the FBI, as well as the Marine Corps, local law enforcement and government employees.

"CAIR-CT Trains FBI Agents on Islam," said a May 2007 press release about instructions given to agents in Connecticut.

"Representatives of the Connecticut chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CT) recently offered diversity and sensitivity training on Islam and Muslims to officials at the New Haven office of the FBI," the release said. "The hour-long training included information on basic Islamic beliefs and practices."

The public affairs office of FBI headquarters in Washington did not respond to questions from Insight on whether the bureau would continue to rely on CAIR.


In 2013, the Department of Justice released a highly redacted statement announcing that it had reviewed its relationship with C.A.I.R.: From 2009 through 2011, the FBI's Office of Public Affairs also sent out several guidance memoranda on the topic of Muslim outreach and the FBI's relationship with CAIR. These guidance memoranda indicated that the FBI had determined that CAIR was not an appropriate partner for formal liaison activities. The guidance memoranda were issued to FBI field office media coordinators and included background information and suggested responses for anticipated questions from the media regarding the FBI's relationship with CAIR

I can certainly understand how difficult it must be to predict which 'lone wolf' will act as a jihadist if there is no specific link to a terrorist organization but since we know that all our texts, calls and other communications are taped and recorded, it is obvious that whoever is deciphering this data is doing a piss-poor job. The very idea that after 9/11 we needed to be sensitive to the concerns of Muslim moderates and that the FBI had to tread lightly so as not to offend these communities is beyond absurd.

J. Edgar Hoover must be spinning in his grave.

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