Peter Lance, Crisscrossed

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.