The tapes became public knowledge when they were ordered released by a federal judge presiding over the case of the indicted suspects. The Justice Department fought hard to prevent their release. The terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center left six dead and over a thousand people injured. The tapes which have been published by the New York Times reveal that Salem warned his FBI bosses that the World Trade center was soon to be bombed and urged them to prevent it.

Speculation is now rampant in political circles that certain factions within the government may have desired the bombing in order to speed passage of new "anti-crime legislation." This suspicion was further fueled by the startling revelation that the FBI denied Salem's request to use phony explosives in the bomb he was helping to build under FBI supervision -- the bomb ultimately used in the World Trade Center explosion.

Former Watergate associate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste warned that these tapes pose "an absolute night-mare for federal prosecutors." One high-ranking law enforcement officer who insisted on secrecy said that in less than a years time the FBI has been linked to criminal abuse of power and the mishandling of cases in three different instances. "First we had Weaver, where an HRT member shot a mother with a baby in her arms, then Waco, where mishandling led to the deaths of a hundred people, and now the World Trade Center, where it appears the bombing could not have happened unless the agency let it."

All of this comes on the heals of a internal affairs report by the Justice Departments Office of Professional Responsibility, linking FBI agents to everything from drug abuse to shoplifting. OPR's annual report provided further startling proof that the agency formally most respected for it's law enforcement skills - has gone bad. The report compiled by Michael Shaheen, the only person ever to hold the position of counsel to the Office of Professional Responsibility, cites drug use, bribery, brutality, and other crimes as "representative examples of misconduct investigated by the office." Shaheen dutifully noted that his office also monitored several hundred misconduct cases being handled by the internal investigative unit of the FBI. The FBI is facing wide spread criticism that the bureau has become a police state agency enforcing political programs considered unpopular by the American people.