Throughout his career, Lance shows, Mohamed would often play the role of "emissary" or "liason". Where the CIA and Sadat's assassination are concerned, with the hypothesis that Mohamed could have played such a role, a more descriptive term would be "block cut-out", or someone whose apparent ideology and behavior (in this case as a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad) made him into a trusted inside member of a criminal/terrorist cell, but who was actually taking orders from, and/or passing information to, another party, in this case, the CIA.

Nafeez Ahmed, in The War on Truth, addresses Mohamed's connections to the CIA in some depth. One rather eye-popping account that Ahmed relates is that of Yossef Bodansky, a former U.S. intelligence official. According to Bodansky:

In the first half of 1997, Ayman al-Zawahiri . . . met a man called Abu-Umar al-Amiki [a likely alias for Ali Mohamed] at a camp near Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. High level Islamist leaders insist that in this meeting, Abu-Umar al-Amriki made Zawahiri an offer: The US will not interfere with nor intervene to prevent Islamists' rise to power in Egypt if the Islamist Mujahedin currently in Bosnia-Herzegovina refrain from attacking the US forces. Moreover, Abu-Umar el-Amriki promised a donation of $50 million (from undefined sources) to Islamist charities in Egypt and elsewhere. This was not the first meeting between Abu Umar al-Amriki and al Zawahiri. Back in the 1980s, Abu Umar al-Amriki was openly acting at an emissary for the CIA with various Arab Islammist militant/terrorist movements then operating under the wings of the Afghan jihad. In the late 1980s, in one of his meetings with al-Zawahiri, Abu-Umar el-Amriki suggested that al Zawahiri would "need $50 million to rule Egypt." At the time, al-Zawahiri interpreted this assertion as a hint that Washington would tolerate his rise to power if he could raise the money . . . The islamist leaders are convinced that in November 1997, Abu-Umar al-Amriki was speaking for the CIA — that is the uppermost echelons of the Clinton administration . . . There is no doubt that the November 1997 meeting between Abu-Umar al-Amriki took place. 2

"If true," Ahmed writes, "Bodansky's report suggests that throughout the 1990s until the 1998 embassy bombing, Mohammed was working for the CIA." And Mohamed would not have been a run-of-the-mill asset: he had incomparable combined skills as a soldier, as a spy, as a linguist, and as an undercover deal-maker — a terrorist diplomat. This diplomatic acumen, as Bodansky describes, corresponds to an extraordinary story Lance relates wherein Ali Mohamed in 1993 had "brokered an historic meeting" between the Shiite terrorist Imaz Fayez Mugniyah and (Sunni/Wahabi) Osama bin Laden. (Mugniyah in 1984 had kidnapped CIA officer William Buckley in Beirut, and Buckley was tortured for 444 days before being killed.) If "Abu-Umar al-Amriki" was indeed the same person as Ali Mohamed, this would mean that he was trusted enough by the CIA to represent the U.S. in a very dicey foreign policy maneuver.

So the story of a loose-lipped Ali Mohamed being let go by the CIA in 1984 is a highly questionable "official story". A more rational explanation for the existence of this story might be that it is a fabrication — or at least a half-truth — meant to distance the CIA from a man who, especially after the 1998 African embassy bombings, was becoming a major liability.

Very dark and sticky questions bubble up with the notion that Ali Mohamed has been continually a highly valued and trusted CIA operative. One can draw no conclusions, but a cascade of questions exist. What information did the CIA have about Mohamed training the Blind Sheikh's NY cell in the early 1990s? To what degree did the CIA have oversight and command over Ali Mohamed's activities as he facilitated the two embassy bombings in Africa? Was the CIA running an expert terrorist asset in the U.S.?

Lance describes Mohamed, after his arrest, breaking down and finally admitting to Fitzgerald and the Federal Judge, Leonard B. Sand, that he was involved in planning the embassy bombings. This came after Mohamed had been offered an "exit strategy" – some form of plea bargain according to which Mohammed would provide information about al Qaeda and testify against terrorist suspects. Says Lance:

The details of Ali Mohamed's deal remain secret to this day. But at least one knowledgable attorney . . . has concluded that his arrangement with the feds was clearly in Ali's favor. 'Mohammed has made some kind of deal with the government,' [the attorney] believes, 'that will surely have him out of prison on some date certain that he knows about.' (my emphasis)

Of course, one of the crucial witnesses against Osama bin Laden (tried in absentia), in Patrick Fitzgerald's 2000 embassy bombing trial should have been Ali Mohamed, who had already admitted to having helped plan the bombings, and had admitted to working for al Qaeda. But, even after the unprecedented plea bargain was given to Mohammed, Fitzgerald did not call him as a witness. It is not that Mohamed refused: Fitzgerald did not call him as a witness. This to me is the most incredible and insanely jaw-dropping moment of this book, and it's what earns Fitzgerald his position on the cover of Triple Cross, lodged between bin Laden and Ali Mohamed. Here is the court transcript after Ali Mohamed's conviction for conspiracy in the 1998 bombings (which is in Triple Cross on p. 360):

THE COURT: Your offer is to plead guilty to five counts charging you with conspiracy to kill nationals of the United States, conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim at places outside the United States, conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and conspiracy to destroy national-defense utilities of the United States. Do you understand that pursuant to the relevant statutes, conviction on those five counts would subject you to a total maximum sentence of incarceration of life inprisonment plus any term of years. Do you understand that you would be subject to that potential sentence?

MOHAMED: Yes, your honor.

THE COURT: Do you understand that in addition to that, you would be subject to a term of supervised release of five years on Counts One, Two Three and Five and three years' supervised release on Count Six? Do you understand that?

MOHAMED: Yes, your honor.

Amazingly here, even before sentencing, the judge has spelled out the terms of Mohamed's release pretty clearly. Lance writes, "As this investigation has revealed for the first time, almost six years after entering that guilty plea, Ali Mohamed has yet to be sentenced . . . Yet we can say for certain that even today . . . he remains in witness protection somewhere in the New York area."

Lance is convinced that it was the FBI's collective, and Fitzgerald's individual, fear of being exposed which led to this extraordinary judicial situation:

[Fitzgerald's] motivation in hiding Ali from public view may have been similar to that of his cocounsel Andrew McCarthy, who had sought to keep Mohamed off the stand in the Day of Terror trial. "Mohamed would have been opened up by defense lawyers and told the whole sad tale of how he'd used the Bureau and the CIA and the DIA for years," says retired special agent Joseph F. O'Brien. "The Bureau wouldn't risk that kind of embarrasment."

As for Fitzgerald's personal motive, Lance adds:

...despite multiple wiretaps monitoring conversations and faxes to the Nairobi cell right up to the day of the bombings on August 7, 1998, and despite evidence from Squad I-49's search of El-Hage's house a year earlier that Mohamed was involved with the plot, Fitzgerald and the agents of his elite unit had been unable to stop it. That's not a story that Fitzgerald would have wanted to see exposed by defense lawyers during United States vs. bin Laden.

Lance has obviously nailed something very important here, but it doesn't completely make sense. With other conspirators who have similar status, who have admitted guilt, and who have equally embarrassing tales to tell — Ramzi Yousef, Greg Scarpa Jr., and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the rule has been to lock these people up in solitary confinement, pretty much indefinitely, and, more recently, to torture them. Ali Mohamed, clearly, is a different animal altogether. Lance's case truly begins to rattle loose when one looks closer at Mohamed's role in the CIA. Had Mohamed actually been a highly-placed CIA operative, it would explain in much clearer terms why the federal government hid him for months after his arrest, booked him as"John Doe" to keep his name secret, kept him in legal suspended animation, refused to call him as a witness and, critically, actually allowed this accomplished terrorist a plea bargain wherein his eventual release was assured. Lance's explanation falls apart when one considers the supreme embarrassment the FBI and Fitzgerald would suffer were Mohamed to be released, or to escape, and then commit another enormous and heinous terrorist act — something we can all assume he is capable of. Somehow, they are assured that such a crime would not occur.

In the above quote, a "retired special agent" Joseph F. O'Brien says that Mohamed "used . . . the CIA and the DIA". There is very little evidence presented here that Mohamed "used" the CIA. That he was granted visas repeatedly, despite being on a watch list most directly points to the idea that the CIA had an interest and a purpose in allowing Mohamed passage. Other explanations — that he was somehow lucky, or slipped off the radar, or benefited from a mindless bureaucratic snafu — are indirect and less rational, but these are the default explanations by writers like Lance and Wright.

I am not saying that Lance is wrong, per se, because the FBI did indeed have plenty to hide. Admirably, Lance's modus operandi as a journalist is similar to that of a Federal prosecutor. Like a good attorney, for the strict purpose of getting a guilty verdict, he has narrowed his focus on the defendants sitting in the courtroom — Patrick Fitzgerald, Dietrich Snell, Valerie Caproni, and other DOJ officials. The CIA has been left in the nebulous position of an "unindicted co-conspirator." Perhaps Lance felt that introducing evidence against the CIA in this "trial" would complicate matters, confused the jury, or lead to conclusions that were too dark to be believable. Or perhaps he felt that there simply wasn't enough evidence. These are indeed the shared prerogatives of journalists and attorneys.

Patrick Fitzgerald and his team did indeed fail to stop the bombings of the two embassies in Africa, and they bear some responsibility for not stopping the 9/11 plot. Fitzgerald — not only in his dealings with Ali Mohamed, but possibly also in the way he has handled the Valerie Plame case — has capitulated to a pattern of preserving the basic framework of high level corruption while creating the false impression of justice being served. Lance has truly indicted and convicted these FBI and DOJ figures on these counts.

Despite its black hole, anyone serious about understanding the big picture of 9/11 should read "Triple Cross". Lance signs off with this: "I sincerely hope this is my last 9/11 book. I don't want to have to write another one." I have heard that he is working on a book about the CIA — a hopeful sign with respect to the story of Ali Mohamed because I doubt Lance would let an interesting or implicating lead go unexamined.

footnotes

1. Trento, Joseph, "Prelude to Terror", Carrol and Graf, New York, 2005, page 247.

This book is a fragmented read, but well worth it, as it shows how far back the corruption of the CIA runs — especially through Bush family veins, but also how the CIA has been a revolving door nightmare with oil industry executives, weapons dealers, and crooks in general.

2. Your knowledge about 9/11 will remain incomplete until you have read all of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's The War on Truth (Olive Branch Press, Northampton, MA), and especially, in this context, Chapter 2, titled "Terrorism and Statecraft Part 1". This quote is from page 51. Bodansky's entire paper can be read here: http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb98/bodansky.htm.

End