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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism
CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July
French report claims terrorist leader stayed in Dubai hospital

Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.

Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA.

The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. He was recalled to Washington soon afterwards.

Intelligence sources say that another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. Soon afterwards Turki resigned, and more recently he has publicly attacked him in an open letter: “You are a rotten seed, like the son of Noah”.

The American hospital in Dubai emphatically denied that Bin Laden was a patient there.

Washington last night also denied the story.

Private planes owned by rich princes in the Gulf fly frequently between Quetta and the Emirates, often on luxurious “hunting trips” in territories sympathetic to Bin Laden. Other sources confirm that these hunting trips have provided opportunities for Saudi contacts with the Taliban and terrorists, since they first began in 1994.

Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years.

According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Whether the allegations about the Dubai meeting are confirmed or not, the wider leaks from the French secret service throw a worrying light on the rivalries and lack of coordination between intelligence agencies, both within the US and between western allies.

A familiar complaint of French intelligence is that collaboration with the Americans has been essentially one-way, with them happy to receive information while giving little in return.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml

For Immediate Release
Sep 11, 2002 Contact: Press Office
202-646-5188

FBI AGENT ROBERT WRIGHT SAYS FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS CONTINUE TO PROTECT TERRORISTS FROM CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

Agents Lied To Federal Court for Wiretap Authority and Compromised Criminal Investigations of Terrorists

FBI Headquarters’ International Terrorism Unit Acted as a “Spectator” While Americans Died at the Hands of Terrorists

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, represents “whistleblowing” FBI Special Agent (SA) Robert G. Wright, Jr., of the bureau’s Chicago Division, who said today that the FBI continues to dodge accountability and cover-up its negligence and dereliction of duty in pursuing terrorists who pose a direct threat to the United States. SA Wright is the only FBI agent to seize terrorist funds (over $1.4 million) from U.S.-based Middle Eastern terrorists using federal civil forfeiture statutes, prior to the September 11th attacks. The original source of the funds was Yassin Kadi, a Saudi businessman, who is reportedly a financier of Osama bin Laden.

SA Wright points to recent misconduct and falsifications of wiretap warrant applications by FBI agents (signed-off by the former FBI Director, Louis Freeh) to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. Prior to September 11th, SA Wright alleged FBI intelligence agents lied and hid vital records from criminal agents for the purpose of obstructing his criminal investigation of the terrorists in order to protect their “subjects,” and prolong their intelligence operations. SA Wright was stunned to learn recently that some of the FBI intelligence agents that had stalled and obstructed his criminal investigations of terrorists in Chicago had also lied to the judges of the FISA Court in Washington, DC.

SA Wright says that, in his opinion, prior to September 11th, the ITU’s incompetence and repeated failures to support criminal investigations contributed directly to the deaths of five Americans. The ITU’s absolute failure to detect and identify the September 11th terrorist plot, and the radical Islamists that carried it out, is further evidence of the ITU’s negligence, and places the deaths of thousands of Americans at their door.

Over the last year, SA Wright has repeatedly tried to lawfully expose the FBI’s incompetence and dereliction: 1) through FBI and Justice Department channels, 2) through individual Congressmen and Senators, 3) to the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee and, 4) at a press conference held by his legal counsel, Larry Klayman, the Chairman of Judicial Watch, Inc., and co-counsel, David Schippers, Esq., of Schippers and Bailey of Chicago, IL.

The FBI continues to illegally refuse the release of SA Wright’s 500 page manuscript, Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, that SA Wright submitted for prepublication review in October 2001. In fact, the FBI refused to turn the manuscript over to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Commitee, charged with investigating the FBI’s intelligence failures. The FBI falsely claims that the manuscript contains grand jury material, although SA Wright has publicly available, “open source,” references for all of the material in the manuscript. Schippers, a former federal prosecutor, has suggested that the committee petition U.S. District Court Chief Judge Charles P. Kocoras to disclose any such grand jury material under Criminal Rule 6(e)(3)(D), as matter involving intelligence and counterintelligence.

In anticipation of being subpoenaed by the Joint Intelligence Committee, SA Wright has prepared a statement detailing the FBI’s negligence and dereliction of duty in pursuing the terrorist threat to the American public.

“SA Wright is performing a service for his country by exposing the FBI’s dereliction of duty – particularly by FBI headquarters staffers. Director Mueller survived the ‘bad press’ of last May, and the nation’s attention has moved on to something else – until the next terrorist attack. How many more dead Americans will it take to get accountability from the FBI?,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.

Judicial Watch’s new book, Fatal Neglect: The U.S. Government’s Continuing Failure to Protect American Citizens from Terrorists, details FBI and other government incompetence that leaves American citizens exposed to terrorism. Click here for the book.

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