HOMELAND INSECURITY

FBI informant revealed

9-11 plot in April 2001

2 D.C. agents filed report that al-Qaida planned suicide attacks involving planes

Posted: March 28, 2004

1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Paul Sperry

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- A former FBI employee recently briefed the 9-11 Commission about a tip he says he and two agents got from an intelligence asset outlining the 9-11 attacks -- four months before they happened -- WorldNetDaily has learned.

In April 2001, the long-time FBI source is said to have told two counterterrorism agents from the Washington field office that al-Qaida planned to carry out terrorist attacks in major U.S. cities, including New York, using planes and suicide operatives. The other cities named were Chicago and Los Angeles. The tip apparently got lost in the FBI bureaucracy.

The asset, a veteran Iranian intelligence officer stationed in Afghanistan under the shah, did not know details of how or when the attacks would be carried out, sources familiar with the briefings say. At no time did he intimate that planes would be used as missiles.

However, he did relay that the al-Qaida terrorists were already in place in the U.S., and that they would strike very soon, possibly within the next few months.

The two agents took the tip seriously because the asset, who has lived in the U.S. since fleeing Iran in the early '80s, was considered very reliable and had been on the FBI payroll for a decade, working in the Washington area. Also, he had Afghan contacts close to al-Qaida's inner circle. Sources say the case agent filed a report with his squad supervisor, Thomas Frields, but it's not clear if the information was sent by teletype to headquarters, the standard operating procedure.

The intelligence asset is said to have pressed his FBI handlers to follow-up on his tip in the months leading up to 9-11.

"He told them, 'Did you pass the information on? Have you done anything about this information?'" said a source familiar with the briefings.

Attempts to reach Frields, now retired, were unsuccessful. A spokeswoman for the Washington field office did not return phone calls.

The commission is scheduled to hold hearings next month on the FBI's efforts to counter the al-Qaida threat before 9-11.

The bureau failed to act on other clues that al-Qaida was planning aviation-related terrorism inside America. In July 2001, for example, an FBI agent in Phoenix warned headquarters that an "inordinate number" of Middle Eastern men under surveillance in the area were taking flying lessons.

And in August, a Minneapolis supervising agent told headquarters that he worried a flight student they had in custody on visa violations, Zacarias Moussaoui, might be part of a plot to "take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center."

Last month, the former FBI employee, who acted as the Iranian asset's interpreter and had Top Secret clearance, also gave a classified briefing to the Justice Department's inspector general, as well as an unclassified briefing to Senate Judiciary Committee staffers and a senior aide to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley, a Judiciary member, has long been a critic of FBI management.

The former FBI employee -- Behrooz Sarshar, a Farsi linguist -- met Feb. 13 with John Drake, the Grassley aide, and Tara Magner, a Judiciary lawyer for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking committee member, among others.

"There was a meeting with him," confirmed a Judiciary committee aide.

Earlier that week, several sources say, Sarshar had briefed three investigators with the bipartisan 9-11 Commission in a so-called SCIF, or secure room, at offices here on K Street.

A commission spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the briefing. "It's our policy that we cannot talk about people we interview," Al Felzenberg said.

But the Judiciary aide, who asked not to be identified, says the committee followed up to be sure the commission heard the classified details of Sarshar's account.

"We were able to confirm that he met with the commission," the aide said.

Sarshar, who left the FBI in 2002 as a level GS-12 employee after eight years of service, is an Iranian immigrant.

An FBI insider cautions that the 66-year-old Sarshar may be a disgruntled former employee. He was placed on administrative leave for undisclosed reasons before he resigned. It's not clear if he was allowed to keep his Top Secret security clearance.

Sarshar, contacted at his northern Virginia home, declined comment.