FBI Agent: Another 9/11 “Inevitable”

The Obama administration’s policies are making another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland “inevitable,” according to a former fbi agent. In an interview with Newsmax, John Vincent said the U.S. administration is repeating the mistakes of the past, leaving the country vulnerable.

“I’m not exactly sure where the president is coming from, but all the signals he gives out is that the United States is prepared to talk peace, we’re not going to do anything to upset any of the people that are conducting all these terrorist acts, we’re going to back out of everything we’ve done before, we’re going to apologize for everything we’ve done in the past—what kind of signals does that send?” Vincent asked. “It sends a signal of weakness and: ‘We are not willing to try and stop what you have planned.’”

Vincent and Special Agent Robert G. Wright worked together from 1997 to 1999 investigating financial links between U.S.-based charities and terrorist groups abroad. They found “an octopus” of financial connections to terrorist groups including Hamas and al Qaeda. The investigation, however, was shut down by the fbi in 1999 out of concern it would interfere with ongoing intelligence gathering, said Vincent.

On May 8, the fbi lost a lawsuit aimed at stopping Vincent and Wright from speaking out in an effort to prevent a repeat of 9/11.

“Vincent, a former Judicial Watch employee, says his primary concern today is that the leaders of the fbi and other counterterrorism agencies are taking their signals from the Obama administration, softening their approach to the war on terror, and leaving the country more vulnerable,” Newsmax reported May 14.

“That’s what we’re doing all over again now,” Vincent said. “We can play nicey-nice with the terrorists …. We’re tying the hands of law enforcement by these mixed signals going out. … This should be an all out war, not tying one hand behind our back because it’s not politically correct.”

Newsmax reports:

Drawing on his more than three decades of experience as an fbi agent, Vincent said the administration’s new approach to terrorism can only serve to discourage aggressive counterterror operations by various federal agencies. …With the Obama administration’s threat of prosecutions and its “kinder, gentler” approach to the war on terror, Vincent predicts “That’s exactly what [agents’ supervisors] are going to do. They’re going to say, ‘Why should I put my neck on the line here? If I go out and do something I’m going to be second guessed for it later on?’ And I think that’s the message that’s being put out by this new Congress and this new president, which is: ‘Well, we’re going to play nice guys with them, don’t do anything to upset them. …’”Vincent sees Obama’s approach to counterterrorism as less effective than the Clinton administration’s, because his willingness to negotiate will be seen as weakness in the Middle East. … Vincent, who speaks regularly with a network of former agents who are in touch with current agency employees, says Obama’s policies—from closing the Guantanamo prison, releasing memos on “enhanced interrogations,” negotiating with America’s enemies, apologizing internationally for Bush administration policies, and threatening of prosecutions—are inadvertently “emboldening the enemies” of America.

“And that’s where I think we’re headed,” said Vincent, “back to prior to the Clinton administration, prior to 9/11, to an area that we don’t want to go. Because … when you back off, and don’t keep doing what you think is the right thing to do, eventually you’ll have a bigger war on your hands—or a bigger catastrophe worse than 9/11.”

Vincent added that his sources tell him “morale within the organization is probably the lowest it’s ever been. And when you have people who are demoralized, they’re not going to do a good job.”

Shimshon Issaki, a 44-year veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, spoke to the Middle East Forum (mef) about the same subject on April 30. In its summary of his talk, the mef wrote:

Mr. Issaki claimed that 9/11 could have been averted “if things had been done in the right way,” but he sees similar barriers hindering intelligence work seven years later. In particular, he stated that Barack Obama’s release of documents on enhanced interrogation techniques has done “irreversible damage to security because [terrorists] are learning how to behave” during questioning.

Obama’s soft policies on terrorism and terrorist-sponsoring nations are a perpetuation of a trend that was already in place before he came to power. In January 2006, we wrote in the Trumpet that America’s strategy to defeat Islamist terrorism was destined to fail, as it strove “not to eliminate but to ‘understand’ and appease the enemy.”

The current administration, however, has taken America’s foreign policy to a whole new level of appeasement. Read Ron Fraser’s February 2 column, “Obama’s Radical Foreign Policy,” for more on the most dangerous aspects of that foreign policy.