Peter Lance, Crisscrossed
By Larry Johnson on November 18, 2006 at 10:10 PM in Current Affairs
by
Larry C Johnson
Peter Lance is back hawking his latest book, Triple Cross.
Unfortunately, it does not come with a “Buyer Beware” label. Peter, in
my judgment, confuses self-promotion with analysis and is prone to jump
to conclusions not supported by actual evidence. Consider for example
Lance’s specious claim in his recent post on Huffington Post, touting
his book and his accomplishments:
What isn’t known and will be revealed for the first time in
Triple Cross was that Ali Mohamed had been acting as an FBI informant
on the West Coast since 1992 - a year before the WTC bombing carried
out by the same cell members he’d trained.
Really? Here’s what Kit R. Roane; David E. Kaplan; Chitra Ragavan wrote in the January 8, 2001 edition of US News and World Report (Vol. 130 , No. 1; Pg. 25):
Ali Mohamed is a man of many faces: Egyptian intelligence
agent, U.S. Army paratrooper, FBI informant, aide to accused terrorist
mastermind Osama bin Laden. Before bombs shattered U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, Mohamed says, he scouted possible targets and
personally brought bin Laden photos of Nairobi sites. "Bin Laden looked
at the picture of the American Embassy," he claims, "and pointed to
where a truck could go as a suicide bomber."
Or, how about the November 4, 2001 article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Lance Williams and Erin McCormick:
According to Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert and author who has written about the case, Mohamed by the early 1990s had also established himself as an FBI informant.
"He agreed to serve (the FBI) and provide information, but in fact he was working for the bad guys and insulating himself from scrutiny from other law enforcement agencies," Emerson said in an interview.
Got the picture? Peter thinks that writing about something that has been in the public domain for almost six years is a first-time revelation.
But let’s not stop there. Peter also engages in hyperbole and pronounces on “facts” that on closer scrutiny are wrong or inaccurate. In the same HuffPo puff piece he writes:
[Ali Mohamed] got himself assigned to the highly secure JFK Special Warfare Center (SWC) at Fort Bragg, N.C. — the advanced training school for officers of the Green Berets and Delta Force.
“Highly secure JFK Special Warfare Center”? It would help if Peter would actually visit these sites. For starters, the correct title is the JFK Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS). But it is not a highly secure facility by any stretch. Anyone who is on Fort Bragg or Pope Air Force Base can drive right up to the headquarters.
Peter also is wrong with his claim that USAJFKSWCS is the advanced training school for officers of the Green Berets and Delta Force. The school is devoted to the training of Special Forces, both officers and enlisted. The USAJFKSWCS does not train Delta Force. In fact, they do not even acknowledge that there is a Delta Force. Just call them and ask.
Beyond Peter’s sloppiness with basic facts, the real flaw with his breathless pronouncements is that he is the ultimate Monday morning quarterback. Note, Peter has never held a security clearance in his life. He has never recruited and managed informants. He has never put together evidence for a criminal case and successfully prosecuted it. Nonetheless, he wants you to believe that he can prove that the key to unlocking the 9-11 plot was plain as day and that negligence by Patrick Fitzgerald and a host of FBI agents allowed it to go forward.
Peter does a slick job of intermixing facts and conjecture to create the impression that he has a special truth. Consider the following from Peter:
Using evidence from the SDNY court cases, interviews with current and retired Special Agents and documents from the FBI’s own files, I prove in Triple Cross that Patrick Fitzgerald and Squad I-49 in the NYO could have prevented those bombings - not just by getting the truth from FBI informant Ali Mohamed, but by connecting him to Wadih El-Hage, one of the Kenya cell leaders.
Here’s the truth—there is not one document, piece of court evidence, or retired FBI agent that supports the claim that in the year prior to the bombing of the US Embassies in East Africa Ali Mohamed was recorded stating his intent to attack those embassies. Not one. You see, clever Peter uses the benefit of hindsight to insist that law enforcement officers and prosecutors only had to look and listen to see the threat. If they had listened to wiretaps they might have heard something. If they had kept tighter rein on Ali Mohamed he might have spilled the beans. Yes, and if Peter was not such a cheap shot artist he might have written a book worth reading.
Peter’s venom spewed at Patrick Fitzgerald is particularly crazy. Consider the following claim by Lance:
How was it that Fitzgerald, the man Vanity Fair described as the bin Laden "brain," possessing "scary smart" intelligence, had not connected the dots and ordered the same kind of "perch" or "plant" to watch Sphinx that the Bureau had used against Gotti?
Well, for starters, prosecutors in the United States are not like prosecutors in France. Fitzgerald and other junior prosecutors do not have the luxury of waking up each morning and deciding on their own to follow a hunch. Moreover, they normally don’t direct Federal investigations. The investigative part is handled by FBI agents who run field offices. They collect evidence until they have a case put together that enables them to secure an indictment or an arrest warrant and then the prosecutor gets involved. Once again, Peter misses a basic fact that anyone who has watched Law and Order already knows.
What we do know about Patrick Fitzgerald is that he succeeded in putting terrorists behind jail without violating the Constitution or torturing a soul. He deserves better than to be attacked by a lightweight like Lance.
UPDATE:
I got ahold of a portion of Peter’s book that mention’s me. It is a typical example of how misleading and disingenuous Peter is. Lance writes:
As late as May 2002, eight months after 9/11,
that same story was repeated by Larry C. Johnson, the former State
Department counterterrorism official (under Bush 41 and Clinton) infamous for
his July 2001 New York Times quote minimizing the importance of Osama bin Laden
and al Qaeda: "To listen to some of the news reports a year or two ago, you
would think bin Laden was running a top Fortune 500 multinational company,"
said Johnson, "people everywhere, links everywhere." He then compounded
that mistaken assessment five weeks later with a Times Op-Ed piece entitled "The Declining Terrorist Threat," describing al Qaeda as a "a loose
amalgam of people with a shared ideology, but a very limited
direction."
Wrong again Peter. Wrong again. Here’s the link. I said nothing in that op-ed describing al Qaeda at all. But that doesn’t phase Peter he makes up facts and, when convenient, ignores what was really said. One point I made in that July op-ed that is especially relevant highlights the concern of Islamic extremists. I wrote:
The most violent and least reported source of international terrorism is the undeclared war between Islamists and Hindus over the disputed Kashmir region of India, bordering Pakistan. Although India came in second in terms of the number of terrorist incidents in 2000, with 63, it accounted for almost 50 percent of all resulting deaths, with 187 killed, and injuries, with 337 hurt. Most of the blame lies with radical groups trained in Afghanistan and operating from Pakistan.
That is particularly relevant in light of the op-ed I co-wrote with Milton Bearden in November of 2000. While I stand by my statements that we tend to exaggerate the capabilities of Bin Laden (e.g., having sleeper cells all over the world), I have consistently identified him as a serious threat that should not be ignored. Here’s what Milt and I wrote in the NY
Times op-ed (November 7, 2000):
Mughniyeh and Bin Ladin are the two most prolific mass murderers currently at large. A new administration will have to take on the fundamental task of bringing to American justice the two men who have killed so many Americans. The full range of options, including military force, covert action, clandestine operations and diplomatic pressure must be brought to bear. The experience of the last two decades has shown that putting terrorists in American prisons is a very effective policy, but we must be prepared to take other steps if that option is not feasible.
Knowing firsthand that Peter makes glaring, inexcusable mistakes about what I have said and done then I have little doubt that his so-called revelations about Patrick Fitzgerald are pure unadulterated crap. In fact, I have spoken to someone who has read the book and has first hand knowledge of several events and that person identified two other significant errors. If you feel the need to throw your money away and buy his book I suggest you invest in a big box of Kosher Salt. You’ll need some hefty grains of salt to get thru Peter’s mess.
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Well, what’s hokey right of the bat is the so-called authenticating detail of the master of the plot, Osama heself, pointing out what any half-assed idiot could, that is where a suicide bomber could go. Pretty simple, really, and very possible perfectly true. But maybe not.
Is this a salvo across The Mighty Fitz’s bow?
====================
Kim are you off your ” Meds” ?
Is someone off the reservation about Fitz? Or having new reservations?
The one Mother gives you doesn’t do anything at all.
====================
Load both barrels with several grains of Double OO bullshot.
=============================
The guy was a ringer, he agrees with every incident being investigated, and his stuff matches too much on leads.
Usually the best way to fish that out is to provide a false lead and see if he agrees. Then you know he is bullshit if he goes on and on about that.
Fitz didn’t use him, witness was trying to be a ‘yes man’ and mislead the trail of evidence on other cases. His being added to those trials would jeapordize effective prosecution or compromise other security assets and sources. For someone who was shitwhistling his way through the IC’s efforts, we risk losing other convictions?
His not being executed had more to do with Egypt pressuring us so as not to further inflame radicals there. They are currently a rendition staging point, George W. Lawbreaker doesn’t really want to have the events unfolding in the terror war from there being transparent. If you want to play dirty about it, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Every time a repub tries to start a terror scandal, and blame it on people working before AWOL, he ends up selling his own and dubya’s noose to the public.
Finally, some rather generously attributed accounts list Chertoff as the boots on ground prosecutor working the New Jersey side of WTC One’s bombing. That would be Mike Chertoff the counsel to a suspected HMO veterans health care scam launderer, whose desitnation of monies was for and to Al Qaeida.
The ABC man is a Chertoff Mole and neglects to mention the Homeland Security director’s role in the failure to connect dots at said time of the specific prosecution of the bombing.
Hmmmm.
Larry,
This guy has no creedence - what little I’ve read by him seems to firmly qualify him as a bloviatin’ bullshit artist - intellectual dishonesty appears to be a staple of this man’s diet. IMO -There’s gotta be some kind of jive screenplay involved for him to get the play he’s getting. What’s up at HuffPo?
Peter Lance who?
Triple Cross is not on my reading list, Larry.
Of course there is nothing wrong with mittigated conjecture. We all make mistakes. Some of us mistake Bill for Bob or Bob for Bill. It does seem this guy attempts to ‘force’ an argument. Now that is dangerous, particularly when he is lecturing those without substance.
The chain of ignorance finds no true commander.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived where a free press could ask Fitz what he thought of Lance’s book?
=======================
Larry, thank you for the insight.
My casual first read of Lance’s self promotion on HuffPo, was that it sounded a little too fantastic to be accepted at face value. He makes Ali Mohamed sound like he has powers far beyond those of us mortals; the cunning genius of Lex Luther combined with the evasiveness of Frank “Catch Me If You Can” Abagnale. Of course Abagnale is a real guy, but instead of destroying the world as we know it, he ended up doing consulting for the Treasury Dept.
O.K. so Mohamed is clever, and criminal at the same time. Are we supposed to be afraid, or perhaps very afraid, that maybe he’s Super-Satan?
I have to wonder, what exactly IS the standard that publishers use to validate the authenticity of author’s work? If they really expect to sell a lot of books, wouldn’t it be worth the expense to hire fact checkers? Then again, maybe publishing fact-sloppy pulp just generates additional book sales. After all; entire well selling books have been written about the false “facts” of people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.
Its getting to a grey area between fact and fiction. At least when Dan Brown wrote “The DaVinci Code”, we knew up front it was fiction, even though he claimed there were things he used that were real, like Opus Dei. Well, big wow, Opus Dei does exist. They even have their own web page.
As always, Mr M, great, thought provolking information.
Thankyou for keeping up the good work.
The Peter Lance incident reminds me of the time that I was speaking to a senior editor of a weekly news magazine (on a strict non-attribution promise) about the difference between intelligence and journalism. Journalism, he told me, only had to have the intent of being right at the date and time of the deadline, and there was intense market pressure to be first on the street. On the other hand, “If you guys (meaning intel officers) get it wrong, sometimes people get killed.” At least in the way he portrayed it to me, he saw a substantial difference in a journalist’s responsibility to be accurate then that of the intelligence profession. I left that encounter thinking that when it came to rationalization, politicians have little over some journalists.