Thursday, July 29, 2004
The Secrets in Berger's Pants
Sandy gradually debriefedJuly 29, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Urgent complaints that the FBI could not decipher bugged conversations between members of a Brooklyn mosque and Afghan terrorists because it lacked translators were included in the documents former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger removed from the National Archives, The Post has learned. In the latest twist to the document scandal, investigators said the revelation about translators was among several criticisms of America’s ability to deal with the looming al Qaeda threat contained in the “after action” memo on the millennium terror plot that is at the center of the Berger probe. ...Government officials said the FBI had been conducting electronic surveillance of a mosque in Brooklyn frequented by Afghans in 1999 after developing information from the investigation of the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa. Sources said the FBI had “hours” of taped conversations between people associated with the unidentified mosque and suspected terrorist leaders. But despite the potential intelligence value of the intercepted communications, stacks of tapes languished on the shelves at the FBI counter- terrorism center in downtown Manhattan because there were not enough translators. ...The report written by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke also warned of the presence of al Qaeda cells inside the United States. It urged increased surveillance of Arab students coming into the United States and called for increased security at U.S. ports and other points of entry, investigators said.
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