Quote:
Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear
(Post 18836277)
pretty sure remembering the 93 bombing was planned under fbi watch so not a very good example lol
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That's one way to interpret what Emad Salem has said, I suppose, although I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the 1993 was "planned under the FBI's watch," even if you believe what Emad Salem said on the tapes in question.
Here's
one of the more detailed articles I've read on the subject; if you read about the exchanges between Salem, John Anticev and Louis Napoli, do they really sound like a conversation between people who conspired with each other to carry off a bombing, or do they sound more like an informant disagreeing with his handlers about what details he told them, and when he relayed those details?
Here's an example of what I mean:
Quote:
Throughout, the transcripts reveal the mood of guilt and recrimination in the wake of the devastating trade center blast. In one early conversation secretly taped by Mr. Salem while riding in a car with two F.B.I. agents soon after the explosion, the informer and the agents argue whether Mr. Salem had specifically informed them months earlier that the attack on the World Trade Center would take place.
"I told you so, that this is one of the targets," Mr. Salem says. "You forgot. You have your papers. Go back to it. World Trade Center, Empire State Building, Grand Central. Times Square."
"I looked over my notes," one of the agents, John Anticev, says. "I didn't see anything about a target."
To this, Detective Napoli, says: "I was there also. I don't remember you saying target."
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So, if the FBI was organizing the attack, and using Salem to build the bomb, why would they even be talking about whether he told them one of the potential targets was the World Trade Center? Presumably, the people running the plot would already know what the target was, no?
Salem's claims are interesting, but to me, they don't even begin to suggest that the FBI built the bomb used in the WTC attack. Even the portion that is quoted on
Emad Salem's wikipedia page, which some people appear to believe represents a 'smoking gun' of some kind indicating the FBI was running the bomb plot, sounds to me like a dispute over how, when and how much Salem is to be paid for his work as an informant, with Salem offering a hypothetical situation as an example of how all this could blow up in the FBI's face, as part of his effort to get paid in the way he wants to be paid. (Listen to the actual MP3s, rather than just reading the excerpt quoted on the wikipedia page.)
The book
The Cell goes into a lot of depth about investigations into the 1993 bombings, the assassination of Meir Kahane and a number of other pre-9/11 plots. It includes a lot more information about the history of Emad Salem's relationship with the FBI, as well.
I'm sure that book is considered pure propaganda by a lot of people (particularly since one of the authors later became a spokesperson for the FBI), but I thought it was a good read, and its narrative seemed pretty credible to me. Some of what it reported has since been shown to be inaccurate and/or incomplete, but not in a way that suggests the authors were being intentionally misleading -- just that new facts have surfaced that they weren't aware of when they wrote the book. It certainly doesn't paint either the FBI or CIA in a very positive light, but it pegs incompetence and risk aversion as the primary causes of their lack efficacy, rather than a nefarious conspiracy to kill their fellow Americans.
I'm not entirely closed to the idea that there was more to these attacks than what we've been told, I just think that what has been omitted from the story is more likely to be additional evidence of insanely poor judgment and/or outright incompetence at FBI and CIA than it is to be some cloak and dagger conspiracy involving remote control planes, cruise missiles, the Mossad, voice simulators, holographic planes, grey aliens, and/or the Nabisco Corp. :2 cents:
