FBI's chance to break the Blind Sheikh's cell
As I reported in the first of my three 9/11 investigative books, 1000 Years For Revenge, Salem had been recruited in 1991 by FBI Special Agent Nancy Floyd, a Texan who worked Russian Foreign Counter Intelligence in the FBI's New York Office.
Risking his life for $500.00 a week, Salem got so close to the blind Sheikh that he became his bodyguard. For more than half a year he burrowed into the al Qaeda-funded cell around Abdel Rahman, interacting with Hampton-El and regularly visiting Nosair, then in Attica for the Kahane murder, as well as reporting back to SA Floyd an incipient al Qaeda plot to blow up "12 Jewish locations" in New York, including the Diamond District in midtown Manhattan.
Meanwhile, while she chased Russian spies during the day, the tenacious Nancy Floyd had to work double duty debriefing Salem each night.
It seems that Salem's two "control" agents, NYPD Detective Lou Napoli and Special Agent John Anticev, were rarely around when he needed to talk to them. Since Salem wasn't wearing a wire, he had to spill his guts each night to Floyd, playing for time as he sought to defuse the bombing plot.
Then, in the summer of 1992, Salem was effectively forced out of his undercover job by Carson Dunbar, an Assistant Director In Charge (ADIC) of the FBI's New York Office who had zero terrorism experience.
Once Salem withdrew from the cell, Sheikh Rahman contacted Pakistan and Ramzi Yousef, an engineer trained in Wales, was shipped to N.Y. to begin building a real weapon of mass destruction.
Starting in early September, 1992, in the waning days of the first Bush presidency, Yousef connected with Abouhalima, Salameh and Ayyad, all trained by Ali Mohamed, whom the FBI's elite SOG had under surveillance three years earlier.
The "lone gunman" shooting
Incredibly, way back in 1990, the red-headed Abouhalima and Salameh had been the getaway drivers on the night Ali Mohamed's other Egyptian trainee, El Sayyid Nosair, gunned down Rabbi Meier Kahane. They'd even been taken into custody the night of the killing at Nosair's Cliffside Park, N.J. home where the FBI recovered top secret memos stolen by Mohamed from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.
The murder of Kahane, a world figure, had international conspiracy written all over it, especially when the Feds recovered bomb formulas and pictures of the World Trade Center from the home.
But the very next day, after the NYPD declared the murder a "lone gunman" shooting, "The Red" and Salameh were released. Over the next two years, Det. Lou Napoli and SA John Anticev made some attempt to track the six foot, two inch Abouhalima, born with red hair, as his fellow jihadis would joke, because of his "Crusader's Blood."
Posing as Con Ed workers, they searched his Brooklyn apartment, and he later bragged that he led them on wild goose chases up into Connecticut – where he continued his gun training.
One of the most astonishing discoveries I made in researching Triple Cross, was an FBI #302 memo written by Napoli – a member of the NYO's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) – just days after the Kahane murder in November of 1990. In an interview with the officer of the shooting range in Connecticut, Napoli learned that every weekend for two years, a group of "Mid-Easterners" had been seen firing up to 1,000 rounds per day at silhouette targets vs. bullseyes.
Think about that. Napoli's office had 1989 surveillance photos of Abouhalima, Ali Mohamed's trainee, firing an AK-47 at a Calverton, Long Island range. The next year, Abouhalima was the getaway driver for Nosair, the Egyptian killer of a world figure like Meier Kahane, and a few days into the murder investigation, Napoli learned that up to 15 "Mid-Easterners" were firing two thousands rounds each weekend in Connecticut, one of the most densely populated states in the Northeast.
Later, he and his partner FBI agent Anticev attempted to follow "The Red" on those shooting sprees into the Nutmeg State, but they failed, somehow, to connect the dots.
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