Unwatched
By Joe Giambrone, Political Film Blog.
Orlando spree shooter Omar Mateen was on an FBI “Watch List,” but then removed. Not much watching it seems. Had the FBI better things to do than keep track of a possible terrorist? The military-industrial-complex desires all of our emails, phone records, web searches and location data in real time―the whole planet’s as a matter of fact―but when they actually have a terrorism suspect handed to them in a ribbon they find better things to do than to continue watching what he does.
Haven’t we seen this charade before?
Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was also on a “Watch List” during the time he traveled to Chechnya and Dagestan and was a great fan of “Russia’s Bin Laden” Dokka Umarov. Look how much the FBI learned as a result of that incident:
“When Mr. Tsarnaev returned in July, the travel alert ‘was more than a year old and had expired,’ Ms. Napolitano said.”
So, if a terrorist, any terrorist, simply waits a year it becomes open season. Good to know. Are you feeling protected? The idea that a terrorism suspect should be removed from a Watch List is absurd on its face. Who decided that there was a ticking clock for terrorists to act within some set time frame?
The 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar were in the USA for 18 months prior to striking. The absurd so-called failure of the “watch list” in that case was already the subject of fifteen years of scrutiny since. The utterly ridiculous actions noted by Ms. Napolitano above make no sense whatsoever. More than a year? So what?
In Omar Mateen’s recent case the FBI canceled his watch listing after 10 months. The Tsarnaev case has similarities to Mateen, which persist:
“The picture emerging Wednesday was of a counterterrorism bureaucracy that had at least four contacts with Russian spy services about Mr. Tsarnaev in the year before he took a six-month trip to Russia…”
That NY Times story ignored a more recent Russian warning after Tamerlan’s trip to Russia, warnings that were censored from US news media. You’d have to go to UK media to see that “Russia asked FBI to investigate bomber just 6 MONTHS ago after being spotted with a militant on trip to Dagestan.・That was in December of 2012. A little math, and we find at least five contacts with Russian intelligence over Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was allowed to freely roam Boston in a car with “Terrorista #1” on the frontlicense plate. Even sources in the Saudi Arabian government claimed to have warned the US about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to his attacks, and they disallowed his pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Tsarnaev family had connections to both CIA and USAID, facts that never did appear on US airwaves.
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou claims widespread “incompetence” at FBI. I’m not so certain about that. Not at all. Incompetence implies something unintended, and intent is that grey area we have yet to penetrate.
You see, the “double game” of America’s foreign policy needs to be understood and factored in, the game where America divides up terrorists into the “good” kind and the “bad” kind. This empire routinely arms, trains and protects terrorists whom it considers “assets.” A terrorism asset or proxy is one who blows up America’s designated enemies (Syrians, Libyans, Iranians, Russians).
FBI 9/11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley shed a bit of light on how things worked there. Rowley came the closest of anyone to actually stopping 9/11 by attempting to get inside 20th hijacker Zacharias Moussaoui’s laptop. Moussaoui was already detained for suspicious behavior at a flight school the month before the attacks:
“Yet FBI Headquarters officials balked at allowing a search of his laptop and other property, still refusing to recognize that:
1) the Chechen separatists were themselves a “terrorist group” for purposes of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) legal requirement of acting “on behalf of a foreign power” and
2) that Moussaoui’s link to Ibn al Khattab inherently then linked him to bin Laden’s well-recognized Al Qaeda group for purposes of FISA (the point in my memo).”
You see: Chechen terrorists were not officially designated as “terrorists” by Washington, much the same way that many Syrian terrorists today are not designated as terrorists in DC. Was the episode with Moussaoui “incompetence” or deliberate… Treason? Materail aid in support of international terrorism? We do not actually know at this juncture given the scale of the ongoing September 11th cover-up.
We do see a recurring pattern of protecting actual terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, and that should disturb every American.
“The FBI scrutinized Mateen for 10 months beginning in 2013, putting him under surveillance, recording his calls and using confidential informants to determine whether he had been radicalized after he talked at work about his connections with al-Qaeda and dying as a martyr.”
So they had this guy on a silver platter, but someone decided that if he hadn’t blown himself up by some arbitrary ・10 month・ date to just let him off the hook. Is that a sensible response to people who claim ties to Al Qaeda and want to die as martyrs? To give them all the guns they may desire and look the other way? All the ammunition too?
Mateen had an extensive history of these Jihadist threats:
“Omar [Mateen] became very agitated and made a comment that he could have al-Qaida kill my employee and his family,” [St. Lucie County Sheriff] Mascara said Wednesday. “If that wasn’t bad enough, he followed it up with very disturbing comments about women and followed it up with very disturbing comments about Jews and then went on to say that the Fort Hood shooter was justified in his actions.”
Many people at FBI should be immediately fired and replaced with people who possess at least a modicum of common sense. There is no expiration clock on terrorists choosing to carry out attacks. That is a policy without any basis in reality whatsoever and is glaringly absurd on its face. If they’re actually looking for terrorists, they need to keep track of the ones they’ve been alerted to and have reasonable suspicion of carrying out a future attack.
“Two months later, in July 2014, [FBI] investigated a Florida man who’d blown himself upin Syria in support of al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate also considered an ISIS rival.The suicide bomber knew Mateen, investigators discovered, but those ties were not of “any consequence,” [FBI head] Comey [claimed].”
The Al Nusrah Front has been protected by the White House, as shown as recently as last week! It is a proxy army fighting against the government of Syria, a guerrilla war which the US and its many partners support covertly and overtly. The connection with Syria is the problematic point in this Omar Mateen story, and all we have at this juncture are stories from authorities. The US CIA has created unlawful insurgent armies on the ground inside Syria for years. Recruiting more fighters is an obvious and crucial part of that process.
We still remain in the dark as to any potential links to Mateen’s employer G4S, which is a multi-national “security” firm with its own suspicious past. These people operate in the shadows without even the public oversight that CIA and FBI must submit to.
The multi-trillion dollar defense/security industrial complex has been repeatedly handed real terrorists, put them on “Watch Lists,” and then inexplicably removed them so that they may commit acts of terrorism domestically. This is now a recurring pattern and a great risk to the general public, who should demand immediate change and a complete overhaul of the dysfunctional system.
As the old saying goes:
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
-Ian Fleming
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