Author: Fitzgerald libel threat aimed at censoring key 9/11 tale
Published: June 12, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
Powerful prosecutor’s efforts to suppress book virtually guarantees elevated sales
Peter Lance should be thanking Patrick Fitzgerald right now, even as the attorney’s checks are being signed.
If it were not for the U.S. Attorney who famously prosecuted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former Vice President’s Chief of Staff, the re-release of Lance’s stunning tale of mishandled espionage leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, might be overlooked.
The former ABC News investigative reporter’s book Triple Cross hit relatively few shelves in 2006 as a hardcover and left retail quietly, almost completely ignored. Now, with its paperback release looming, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is threatening to sue over material which he calls “defamatory” and “easily proven to be objectively false,” some of which touches on little known information relating to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Because of the threat, the reissue of Triple Cross received attention from The Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, among others.
“That’s the lesson of censorship,” chided Lance, speaking to RAW STORY.
The dark plots of Ali Mohamed
Ali Mohamed, according to Lance, was something of an al Qaeda super-spy who managed to work with terrorists, the Green Berets, the CIA and become an FBI informant, even while ensuring Osama bin Laden’s safe passage around the middle east. For years, Triple Cross alleges, the FBI and specifically Fitzgerald, knew about him but allowed Mohamed’s activities to continue unchecked.
Mohamed, Lance wrote, was actually responsible for writing portions of the terror network’s training manual and played a key role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa which left over 200 dead.
“While some contend that Mohamed’s intimate relations with the FBI and CIA are proof of government involvement in a 9/11 plot, Lance says that it was instead embarrassment and ass-covering on the part of Justice and Pentagon officials over the mishandling of Ali Mohammed that led first to a conspiracy of silence and then to a conspiracy to cover up their incompetence and deception,” noted author Rory O’Connor in November, 2006. “He believes that chagrin over the fact that bin Laden’s spy stole top-secret intelligence (including, for example, the positions of all Green Beret and SEAL units worldwide) led to a decision on high to bury the entire Able Danger intelligence program, which identified the Al Qaeda cell active in Brooklyn months before the 9/11 attacks, and also identified Ali Mohamed as a member of bin Laden’s inner circle as early as March 2000.”
“In 1996, Fitzgerald and other top officials discredited a treasure trove of al Qaeda-related evidence, including evidence of an active al Qaeda cell operating in NYC five years before 9/11 and of a bin Laden plot to hijack a plane to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman—intelligence considered so important that it was later cited in the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing given to George W. Bush just weeks before 9/11,” noted HarperCollins in a press release.
Mohamed is allegedly still alive today, though his whereabouts is unknown.
‘Defamatory’
Fitzgerald, in one of several letters (PDF link) to the book’s publisher, argued that a number of the allegations are “defamatory.”
“Allegations that a government attorney lied and concealed evidence are defamatory per se because such allegations: impute that I have engaged in criminal activity (making false statements, which is an offense in itself and which constitutes perjury when contained in a sworn affidavit; and obstruction of justice); impute that I lack integrity in performing employment duties; and otherwise prejudices me in my profession,” he wrote.
He further alleges that Lance’s statements are “actionable” in that they were “published with actual malice.”
“It is outrageous to falsely accuse me of causing those deaths [on 9/11] corruptly,” Fitzgerald said. He has called on the publisher to withdraw the book from stores and refrain from publishing the paperback.
“Patrick Fitzgerald accuses me of making charges in the book that I never made,” Lance told the Associated Press. “At the same time, he continually fails to respond to the substantive allegations documented in 604 pages, 1,425 end notes and 32 pages of documentary appendices.”
After the publisher’s attorneys vetted Lance’s text, which ultimately suffered only incidental modification, Triple Cross ended up 26 pages longer; the new material apparently detailing Fitzgerald’s attempt to censor it and Lance’s specific rebuttals.
“What Patrick Fitzgerald tried to do is almost unprecedented,” Lance told RAW STORY. “It’s amazing, really. Arguably the most powerful prosecutor in America is trying to kill my book.”
“Triple Cross has become Patrick Fitzgerald’s obsession,” he commented to Geoff Metcalf, writing for Accuracy in Media.
While declaring the book to be Fitzgerald’s “obsession” may be presumptuous, it is certainly safe to predict that the paperback release of Triple Cross will become the obsession of many more readers than it would have if the U.S. Attorney had never attempted to censor it.
The paperback is due in bookstores everywhere on June 16.
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Perhaps this is going to be another means of distraction from the 911 Truth Movement’s contention that 911 was likely an inside job. I wonder how many folk will be gullible enough to fall for this one.
Nothing to see here folks, move along….
The 9/11 Commission of bipartisan hacks including the WAR CRIMINAL H. Kissinger absolved all guilty parties of any responsibility for allowing us to be attacked thru conspiracy or incompetence.
Maybe the SEAL Teams should read this and find out who the REAL ENEMY is. It is the first rule of war.
“Know your enemy!”
if the 9/11 truth movement were really interested in truth, then it wouldn’t have a preconceived notion of what happened (ie, that it was an ‘inside job’). instead they would simply be going after all the facts they possibly could, collecting them, and analyzing them objectively, and seeing where they led.
it is ironic that so man 9/11 truthers seem to be against ‘government incompetence’, but when it comes to actually being objective and scientific themselves, the 9/11 truthers just assume something to be true at first, instead of trying to actually dig into what happened.
I always thought he was a rat Bastard !
~
A nation turned to you for hope in an hour of need, Patrick, and you sold out. Looks like a few clues were left out of the Plame Investigation after all.
I don’t agree with Rory’s statement that we think “that Mohamed’s intimate relations with the FBI and CIA are proof of government involvement in a 9/11 plot.” I see it more as a history lesson of the kind of practices the U.S. Government takes part in. As Peter Dale Scott says, “one of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes was an operative for FBI, CIA, and the Army.”
Just how long and how wide is this “bed” that all these rat bastards sleep together in? Follow the time-lines, follow the money, blah,blah,blah. The only voices that ring true are the ones in your head.
Remember: the nazis never lost, they just moved….
Huge long and wide,,
The 9/11 truth must be close.
We have this clown trying to cover-up and explain it away as incompetence,,we have Glen Beck calling the truth movement crazy,,
Along with the publisher timing the release of this book for the criminal element..
There all in bed together…
Who’s next?
I expect will see more government clowns and there excuses of the 9/11 fairytale…
Keep the pressure on them. Truth will out.
Don’t let up.
SIGN THE PETITION
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Join them and call yourself a Patriot
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I read the first edition and the scope of the book went far beyond Fitzgerald (in spite of his huge ego) so I am hopeful the new edition, thanks to Fitzgerald’s publicity, will reopen many unanswered questions. Also, Lance and a woman private investigator are trying to free Gregory Scarpa Jr., a minor criminal who thought he was helping his country, but was buried deep in a maximum security prison for his efforts. Scarpa Jr. has received punishment far beyond what he ever merited so you might call it cruel and unusual.
“Ali Mohamed, according to Lance, was something of an al Qaeda super-spy who managed to work with terrorists, the Green Berets, the CIA and become an FBI informant, even while ensuring Osama bin Laden’s safe passage around the middle east.”
Remove the word “Al Qaeda” to read just ’super-spy’ and then correct the term ‘work’ to read ‘deceive’ and then, you have a glimpse of how the inside job was pulled off as well as the endless propaganda cycle.
There always a obvious hole in these types of analysis; they never throw out the original thesis.
It’s like the Harari Bombing investigation; the most plausible is the one hotly denied, even though there is a certain country that publicly brags about how it will move every stone to find it’s enemies, it will strike at it’s enemies no matter where they are and openly boasts of using car bombs as tools for assassination. All things being equal; the most plausible should be the most likely.
That same country also brags a lot about it’s spying capabilities as well.
I don’t think it is a ‘triple cross’ if the spy is simply playing one side off against another, actually.
A case in the Second Circuit, involving Sotomayer and involving Fitzgerald is also defamatory.
It involves a military coup dialogue about NYC by a film artist which the F.B.I. and DOJ, Fitzgerald tried to suppress.
Fitzgerald specifically tried to also get a film suppressed:
“On November 8, 1999, the New York Police Department (“NYPD”) faxed information about the film to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Patrick Fitzgerald, then-Co-Chief of the Organized Crime and Terrorism Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, watched the film with Pasquale D’Amuro, then-FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Counterterrorism Branch of the New York Office, and concluded that the video was a work of fiction. He also determined that they could ask that it be removed from the internet, although they could not order its removal. Fitzgerald explained this to D’Amuro, who told defendant Joseph Metzinger, one of the FBI agents assigned to work on the case, that he should try to have it removed, but that all that he could do was make a request.”
The link to the case and the story is in my previous post above.
Thanks for the link, dredd. That is one concern I have about Sotomayor which seems to bother no one else. She will most likely be replacing Souter for the new session of the court in the fall when all these cases related to war crimes and civil liberties will be pushed to the Supreme Court by the Obama administration. We could have counted on Souter to side with the Constitution but cannot be sure if Sotomayor will not be doing Obama’s will.
Fitzgerald. What a piece of shit. The man who had the power to take down the Bush administration pissed it all away with a perjury conviction against a peripheral douchebag. Yeah, what a stunning victory, one more notch for your prosecutorial belt.
Fuck you, Fitzgerald. Fuck you, your parents, and any of your progeny.
please explain to me why is family members should be liable for his behavior. what century do we live in again?
It’s about TIME somebody lifted the rock covering some of the deeds done by this little traitorous monkey, Fitzgerald. What about that hot piece of evidence he had way back with the first WT bombing, written in arabic that he FAILED to have translated and brought forth in court? It’s said Cheney later blackmailed him with it to prevent him from doing anything right with the Plame case. What about the 2 sealed indictments Fitzgerald has on Rove that Wayne Madsen brought to light, that Fitzgerald keeps sealed and not allowing justice to go on? What about that grand jury hearing on Cheney that never made the media? Just asking.
If Fitzgerald can prove malice and neglect with this author then he might have something….but if he doesnt then it just shows he’s trying to shut the guy up.
If Fitzgerald had turned out to be the man we’d hoped when first named to prosecute the Plame affair, Rove, Darth, and many other high level Bushies would already have been convicted of a multitude of very serious crimes, and in all likelyhood the real and horrific truth concerning the events of 9-11 would’ve been blown wide open.
No surprises here — Aschcroft didn’t just draw Fitzgerald’s name from out of a hat. It would now seem the most salient and thorougly disappointing fact revealed by Fitzgerald’s lengthy faux investigation/prosecution of BushCo is simply that he is really nothing more than a judicial footman for the PTB.
I don’t know much about Fitzgerald–maybe he’s the ba****d this book says he is, but then again, maybe he’s just had a career in high-level intel-related prosecutions and been stained by contact with a large number of ‘players’ in that arena–but whatever his personal character, and whatever his culpability, he’s being attacked–in this book and here in the movie ‘Nothing But The Truth’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1073241/ ).
Could be the right people are going after him for the right reasons, but in that movie he’s set up as ‘EVIL’ and the story–so thinly veiled a version of the Plame outing as to not even be veiled–is so twisted that the original source that outs Plame (spoiler alert!) is entirely/completely innocent.
The thing reeks of propaganda.
So if a movie of that ’scale’–high quality production values, A-list (okay, A-?) stars, is deployed to discredit Fitzgerald, I’d approach with caution other similarly critical works–got ask, who produced this item? who does it serve to tell this story?
I don’t know the answers–but I won’t be surprised if they’re somehow connected, give the following:
Cheney’s getting hit fairly hard lately, re
a) his having originated/pushed the pro-torture policies of the Bush era
b) his having used torture-produced ‘intel’ to justify invading Iraq
Fiztgerald was a key player in linking Cheney to outing Plame, via Scooter Libby, etc. So making Fitzgerald look like another corrupt insider with his own secrets to hide, cast that earlier attack on Cheney look less about revealing truth (that Cheney is EVIL) and more like a he said/he said, with neither side clearly just and ‘pure’ enough to throw the first stone.
So–maybe the shoe Fitz, (sorry, couldn’t resist)
but maybe this is a deeper push against the push against Cheney’s push for war and torture, etc. etc.
Fitz succumbed to pressure to drop the investigation, so we ended up with a bullshit perjury conviction for a third string cockblocker, which was eventually overturned via veto from the guy that Fitzy should’ve gone after.
So fuck him.
FAIL.
vetopardonI’d love to see Fitzweiner hall the author into court. The publicity would vault the whole “9-11 was an inside job” scenario onto the front page of the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc. That would be wonderful. Maybe we’d finally get some action on the bastards who allowed 9-11 to happen and then finished the job themselves with thermite just to make a bigger impression on the public.
I don’t know where Lance is coming from but his theory that Mohamed was an al Qaeda mole is absurd. One need only read Lance’s book to come to this conclusion as he references examples that demonstrate that Mohamed fooled no one.
I would strongly urge Raw Story to follow up and ask Lance why he concludes that Ali Mohamed fooled the CIA, FBI, SDNY and US special forces. For sure, possible alternative explanations are unsettling but that is not a good reason to pretend that baseless theories have merit.
If Fitzgerald wants not part in blame for al Qaeda related terrorist attacks then he should be willing to explain exactly what Ali Mohamed was employed to do for US government agencies. Hiding behind national security classification is cowardly.
Good analysis, schneb!
Lance writes fiction for the freepers.
It just goes to show that US intelligence will use moles and or double agents in cat and mouse operations. The foreign assets most often end up being patsies or dupes for the greater agenda.
Bin Laden my ass, that boy had Mossad written all over him. Hence the case being dropped against the two duel Israel and American citizen AIPAC spy’s.
THERE it is. i was beginning to think raw story had lost the attention of the anti-semitic neo nazi left,,, but i knew you guys would come back. yes… of course! its all AIPACs fault. just like how i banged my knee on my desk this morning… also AIPACs fault. those darn AIPACS are everywhere… polluting our precious bodily fluids.
In my mind, I always felt Fitzgerald was dirty because he let Cheney off the hook. I’m sure there is more dirt on this would-be censor and I hope it all comes out. Freaking fraud…
“Allegations that a government attorney lied and concealed evidence are defamatory per se because such allegations: impute that I have engaged in criminal activity”
__________________________
Well! As a previous poster stated, Fitzgerald!! If the shoe fitz!!!
What Kurt said. What dustyrusty said. He let an awful lot of hopeful, if gullible, Americans down.
When I look at Patrick, I see a long-tailed cheese eater.
Thanks for the link, dredd
This a a big distraction from the truth. More smoke and mirrors. First and foremost people must realize that alqueda is CIA. A bogus entity that is blamed for all the problems in the middle east. Alqueda is the bogus excuse that the Zionist neo-cons use to wage war on Israels enemies. Israel/mossad and the U.S. Zionists and neo-cons planned and carried out 9-11. Good luck to those who do have the balls and the courage to do a real investigation. Until then, America is allowing that abomination to go unpunished.