Robert Wright Jr. Last Updated: December 17, 2008
Robert Wright, Jr.Standing with relatives of 9/11 victims at a May 2, 2002 press conference, FBI Special Agent Robert Wright wept, and blamed himself for what happened.
Wright became head of the Bureau's terror-finance unit, code-named "Vulgar Betrayal" in 1996, and two years later had the evidence to seize Al Qaeda’s US funding sources. Wright had traced $millions funneled to Hamas and Al Qaeda back to business and charity fronts headed by a Saudi banker named Yassin Al-Qadi.
Wright had also tracked funding for the 1997 US’ African Embassies bombings back to Al-Qadi. When he presented the evidence to criminally charge the terror-banker and seize his assets, the FBI top brass stopped him cold. Without explanation they ordered Wright to drop the case.
Wright refused, and used a civil forfeiture law to get his own court order, freezing $1.4 miilion Al-Qadi had arranged for transfer to Hamas. The FBI retaliated, and Wright endured six years of harassment, demotion and invented administrative charges.
He filed his own lawsuits in response, and after 9/11, publicly charged that FBI dereliction had allowed the attacks. When he broke down and blamed himself at the May ’02 press conference, Wright said it was because he should have fought back harder when his work was blocked from 1998 on. He was briefly dismissed from the Bureau in 2005, before the Justice Department reinstated him, and he’s reportedly remained in limbo status, facing indictment if he further reveals details of the global terorists he wasn’t allowed to arrest.
Special Agent Wright’s main target remained the banker Yassin Al-Qadi, who operated in Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia and D.C.
Three weeks after 9/11, Al-Qadi was finally declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), based mostly on Wright’s original evidence. By then, however, the Saudi banker had left the country.
Al-Qadi had been the principal funder of a 1995 software start-up company called Ptech, set up outside of Boston. With fewer than 30 employees, Ptech was then inexplicably PLACED IN CHARGE OF THE US GOVERNMENT’S MOST VITAL SECURITY COMPUTER SYSTEMS.
This tiny firm, owned by Al Qadi and other identified terror bankers actually managed the Top Secret Information Technology for the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Justice and Transportation, among others.
Ptech created and installed the FAA’s National Airspace System, in operation on September 11. 2001. The Ptech computer scientist in charge of that two-year, FAA Headquarters’ installation was Felix Rausch. He was formerly the White House Deputy IT Chief, as well as Sr Technology Chief of INTERPOL
Ptech software was so-called “enterprise architecture”, widely reported as descendant of PROMIS software, the precursor of “Artificial Intelligence” developed in the early ‘80s. Federal courts and Congress later declared that PROMIS had been stolen from its rightful owners, by then Attorney General Edwin Meese and his business associates.
A hidden “back door” feature was then created, enabling those controlling the PROMIS program codes to secretly remove, or even replace information in any system where it’s installed. John Zachman, considered the father of “enterprise architecture”, stated that with Ptech software in control “You would know where the access points are, you’d know how to get in, you would know where the weaknesses are, you’d know how to destroy it.”
Al-Qadi, the terror financier who Wright was stopped from arresting, was also among a group of Arabian bankers operating a New Jersey finance firm named BMI, which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clark belatedly described as a “who’s who” list of terror financiers. Ptech and BMI shared numerous other investors, officers and directors later officially described, designated, or convicted as terror-financiers. They included:
• Abdurahan Alamoudi – Frequent White House guest of George W., and co-founder of the Islamic Institute, with GOP favorite lobbyist, and even more frequent White House guest Grover Norquist. The high-flying US friendships ended when Alamoudi was convicted of planning to kill Saudi royalty and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
• Soliman (Solomon) Biheiri - BMI President and Ptech Board member. Biheiri has been accused by federal authorities of running the international financing front for Hamas and was seized by the Justice Department in 2003 as a material witness in a terrorism trial. Though he never testified, Biheiri was convicted of illegally procuring citizenship. He was also convicted of fraud in 2004.
• Musa Abu Marzook - SDGT leader of Hamas, laundered millions through both companies.
• Hussein Ibrahim - VP of both companies, and a director of the SAAR Foundation, umbrella group for more than a dozen terror-linked charities in Herndon, Virginia. They were raided by the Treasury Department in March 2002.
• Yaqub Mirza - Executive of the SAAR Foundation charities, Board member of Ptech, Board Director of Amana. Al-Qadi was Director of Blessed Relief, one of the largest charities funded by Mirza, who is suspected of raising money on behalf of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• Khalid Mahfouz –billionaire partner of Bill Clinton’s top 2002 election financier, Jackson Stephens. Also bailout provider for George W Bush’s failing oil company in the ‘80s. He was the largest shareholder of global outlaw bank BCCI, Bush Sr’s Iran-Contra conduit, and after its $20 billion collapse, described by prosecutors as the “greatest financial fraud in world history.”
• Two of Osama BinLaden’s nephews.
• Saleh Kamel (whose Saudi company provided a no-show job in San Diego for the man who housed two 9/11 hijackers. Kamel’s bank in the Sudan held millions in Osama Bin Laden’s accounts. Both Kamel and Mahfouz are on the “Golden Chain” list of Al Qaeda’s top 20 financiers, seized during a Bosnian anti-terror raid in 2002
Soon after Wright’s “Vulgar Betrayal” unit was formed in 1996, a Federal Grand Jury was empaneled to further develop the criminal evidence he presented. Mark Flessner, the Assistant US Attorney assigned, later confirmed that top Justice officials increasingly hindered the probe after Al-Qadi and other Saudi bankers’ names surfaced as targets. In particular, Flessner charged that Francis Townsend, head of the Department’s Office of Intelligence, actually obstructed the criminal investigation. Townsend. he said, refused to allow even basic criminal case procedures, such as collecting addresses of targets’ incoming mail, or phone numbers of incoming calls.
Instead, the Grand Jury investigation was shut down, and Flessner quit the U.S.Attorney’s office. Frances Townsend became the Coast Guard’s Intelligence Chief, and was later appointed President Bush’s chief counterterrorism advisor.
IN FROM THE NEWS.........
(In Newsweek's Dec 22, 2008 Townsend lashed out against another Justice Dept. whistleblower, Thomas M. Tamm. A high level Federal Attorney, Tamm revealed the government's secret wiretapping of U.S. citizens without Court orders, and is now facing severe consequences. Though claiming no knowledge of the case, Townsend said "You can't have runoffs deciding they're going to be the white knight and go running to the press. It offends me.")
When the criminal case against Al-Qadi and the others was officially terminated by Townsend in 2000, Agent Wright had also gone on record, calling the Bureau’s terrorism division “a complete joke” and said that senior FBI officials hindered his investigations “in order to protect their subjects.” He charged that FBI supervisors were only covering their bureaucratic positions and collecting intelligence “so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.” In an official Mission Statement on June 9 2001,(made public more than a year later) Wright stated “There is virtually no effort to neutralize known suspect terrorists residing in the United States” and pleaded that urgent attention was needed to prevent loss of American lives.
Wright received no response to his dire warning three months before 9/11. However, by July 1st, Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airplanes.
In October 2001,following Al-Qadi’s new SDGT status, several Ptech employee whistleblowers contacted the FBI but were ignored. Five months later, Indira Singh, a top JP Morgan IT consultant, met with Ptech representatives, and was alarmed by their immediate attempt to access the bank’s operating system. After learning about Al-Qadi and his role in Ptech, she too contacted the FBI, but once again no action was taken. Finally, after Singh was aided by Boston TV reporter Joe Bergantno, in December 2002, federal authorities raided Ptech’s headquarters. Within 24 hours, White House officials assured the public that nothing suspicious had been found. In its report more than a year later, the 911commission never even mentioned many obvious “subjects of interest” including Ptech…Al-Qadi…Mahfouz…Special Agent Wright… nor any other one of those here noted.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Wright wrote a book called Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, which chronicles the FBI’s past counterterrorism intelligence failures. He added the book’s final three pages after the attacks and submitted the manuscript to FBI officials in October 2001 to review its content. The FBI continues to refuse to allow its publication, claiming the book contains classified information. Wright maintains he’s repeatedly asked the Bureau to specifically identify anything deemed to be “classified”, but has received no response.
Wright warns that, “Americans have unknowingly been exposed to potential terrorist attacks for years” because “of the incompetence and, at times, intentional obstruction of justice by FBI management to prevent me from bringing the terrorists to justice.” He adds that, “I would be derelict in my duty as an American if I did not do my best to bring the FBI’s dereliction of duty to the attention of others.”
Categories
International Finance | Injured Parties | Government Officials | Information Technology | Good Guys | Terror Funding | 9/11 | Homeland Security
Sources
- Crogan, Jim. “Another FBI Agent Blows the Whistle.” LA Weekly, July 31, 2002, www.laweekly.com.
- Farah, Douglas. “U.S. Links Islamic Charities, Terrorist Funding.” Washington Post, August 20, 2003, A02.
- “FBI Agent Robert Wright Says FBI Agents Assigned to Intelligence Operations Continue to Protect Terrorists from Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions.” JudicialWatch.org, September 11, 2002, www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml.
- Grassley, Chuck. “Grassley Again Concerned About FBI Investigation Against Whistleblower.” United States Senator Chuck Grassley Press Release, June 12, 2003, grassley.senate.gov/releases/2003/p03r06-12d.htm.
- Jackson, David, Laurie Cohen and Robert Manor. “Money Trail Leads to Saudi.” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 2001, www.chicagotribune.com.
- Johnson, Jeff. “Tearful FBI Agent Apologizes To Sept. 11 Families and Victims.” CNSNews.com, May 30, 2002.
- McCaleb, Ian. “Whistleblower Complains of FBI Obstruction,” Fox News, May 30, 2002.
- Novak, Robert. “Muzzling FBI Whistle.” CNN.com, June 19, 2003, www.cnn.com.
- Pope, Justin. “Software Company Tries to Survive Terrorism Investigation.” Boston Globe, January 3, 2003, www.boston.com/news/daily/03/ptech.htm.
- Scheuer, Michael. “Tenet Tries to Shift the Blame. Don’t Buy It.” Washington Post, April 29, 2007, B01.
- Verton, Dan. “Terrorist Probe Hobbles Ptech.” Computerworld, January 17, 2003, www.computerworld.com.
- Mintz, John. “FBI to Fire Dissident Agent.” Washington Post April 23, 2005, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10381-2005Apr22.html.