Rossini remembered that the staff operations officer working under that redhead had ordered him and his fellow FBI agent Doug Miller not to tell their colleagues at the bureau, including John O'Neill's New York office, that Mihdhar was likely on his way to the United States in early 2000.
"She got a little heated," Rossini recalled. "She just put her hand on her hip and just said to me, "Listen, it's not an FBI case. It's not an FBI matter. When we want the FBI to know, we'll let them know. And you're not going to say anything.'"
Only two days before, this same officer had sent a message internally throughout the CIA misleading her fellow agents into believing that the information had been passed on to the FBI. Her later conversation with Rossini makes it appear that this was a deliberate misstatement. According to the Justice Department inspector general, she sent the misleading message only hours after posting an electronic note on Doug Miller's draft warning to the FBI: "pls hold off ... for now per [the CIA deputy chief of bin Laden unit]," a reference to Tom Wilshere.
We now know the staff officer is a woman named Michael Anne Casey. Her red-haired supervisor was a woman named Alfreda Frances Bikowsky.
Google penetrates the CIA
How we learned the names of those two CIA personnel can be summarized in one word: Google. In the case of the redhead, an Associated Press article from February 2011 seemed to refer to her. She had also been referenced in Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side," by her middle name, Frances. The AP article stated that she had an unusual first name. After searching State Department nominations from the past decade -- often cover positions for CIA personnel but still entered into the Congressional Record -- a contemporary historian named Kevin Fenton with whom we work closely found a name that seemed to fit.
For the staff officer, we knew three important facts. She had a "man's name" -- most likely Michael, the name used in the Commission Report. She was in her late 20s at the time of the incident, and was a "CIA brat," meaning she had at least one parent or another family member inside the agency. We wondered if she might be related to a prominent CIA figure, as her boss Richard Blee had turned out to be. One of the first names that came to mind, given her probable birth year, was William J. Casey, Ronald Reagan's CIA director.
Pairing the first name "Michael" with the last name "Casey," we found a number of people with that name working in State Department or military positions. Again looking in the Congressional Record, we found the name Michael Anne Casey -- a woman with a man's name -- and another website listing Casey as 27 years old in 1999 and living in the D.C. area, which seemed to make her very likely the person in question. (Incidentally, we were later informed that she is no relation to William J. Casey.)
A CIA threat
When we informed the agency's Public Affairs office that we planned to release an investigative podcast on iTunes on Sunday, Sept. 11, that named Bikowsky and Casey, the agency replied immediately.
"We strongly believe it is irresponsible and a potential violation of criminal law [emphasis added] to print the names of two reported undercover CIA officers who you claim have been involved in the hunt against al-Qaida," said spokesman Preston Golson.
Erring on the side of caution, we took the names out of our podcast. On the day we released the revised podcast on our website, we heard from Sibel Edmonds. A former FBI analyst and prominent whistleblower, Edmonds posted a story on her blog Sept. 21 stating that she had three credible sources and a document confirming that the redhead in our revised story was Bikowsky. She also stated that the staff officer involved was Michael Anne Casey and cited our website, Secrecy Kills. It was only then that we discovered our webmaster had briefly and inadvertently placed our entire email to the CIA on our site. Edmonds saw the information and published it.
Within minutes the information had spread widely through social media on the Internet. Before long Gawker breathlessly announced the latest of the CIA's problems: that Bikowsky, who had risen to become the head of the CIA's global jihad unit, had been outed. The rather more significant story -- that a CIA intelligence failure had contributed to the 9/11 attacks -- got short shrift from the popular gossip site.
In an effort to clarify the story, we asked the CIA two factual questions. We asked if Bikowsky's statement to the congressional 9/11 inquiry -- that she had delivered Mihdhar's visa information to the FBI prior to the attacks -- was accurate.
We also asked if former FBI agent Mark Rossini's recollection that Michael Anne Casey had told him not to report information about Mihdhar and Hazmi was accurate.
The agency did not address the specifics of either question.
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