What You "Ought Not to Know."
Closing the agencies eyes to the Khan bomb was not the only spike. That same week in November 2001, unhappy FBI agents "accidentally" left an astonishing dozen-page fax on the desks of our NSNS colleagues. It was marked, "199-I -- WF" and "SECRET."
The code "199-I" means "national security matter" in FBI-speak. It was about what the FBI deemed "a suspected terrorist organization." What made the document special -- and earned the anger of the two agents who "lost" it for us -- is that it indicates that the "suspected terrorist" activities were not investigated until September 13, 2001, despite a desire by agents to investigate these characters years earlier.
Why did buildings have to fall before the FBI could question the bin Ladens? Because, frustrated agents noted, the "suspected terrorist organization" was funded directly by the Saudi Royal family.
The suspect group, the World Association of Muslim Youth, operated soccer clubs -- and a whole lot more. For example, there was its shuttle operation for jihadi warriors to Bosnia and, foreign intelligence agencies told us at BBC, alleged involvement of WAMY members in bombings.
In the face of these accusations, the Saudi supreme dictator, King Abdullah, praised WAMY, saying, "There is no extremism in the defending of the faith." That's his opinion.
Abdullah bin Laden brought WAMY to the USA where, in a summer camp in Florida, little kids were given instruction in baseball and in the glories of hostage-taking (no kidding).
But the FBI's investigation of the bin Ladens and their group was out of the question so long as the Bush Administration kept intelligence agencies from following the funds transfers of the House of Saud.
That November night in 2001, when we were about to televise the 199-I memo, my BBC producer, Meirion Jones, sought out the FBI's comment, assuming we'd get the usual, "It's baloney, a fake, you misunderstand, it ain't true."
But we didn't get the usual response.
Rather, FBI headquarters in Washington told us: "There are lots of things the intelligence community knows and other people ought not to know."
"Ought not to know"?!?
We ran the story of the Bush Administration's impeding investigations of the funding of terror. BBC ran it at the top of the nightly news in Britain and worldwide. It hit the front pages of newspapers around the globe -- except in the USA. In America, the New York Times and our other news outlets were still accepting the Bush Administration's diktat that intelligence "information" -- that is, news of disastrous intelligence failures -- was something the Times' readers, "ought not to know."
So I'm tempted to say that, Yes, the New York Times has committed treason -- not by reporting on what Bush's spies are doing, but on failing to report on what Bush's spies did not do: a deadly failure to follow the money before September 11 because the House of Bush chose to protect the House of Saud.
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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.
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