t r u t h o u t | Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece 7/29/10 2:02 PM

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Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter

Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece

Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Book Review

Peter Lance is one of the last in a dying breed. An investigative reporter

who is disciplined enough to devote half a decade in pursuit of the truth. A
newsman cut from the same cloth as the legendary journalist I.F. "Izzy"
Stone. A gumshoe reporter who still pounds the pavement and relies heavily
on public documents to present the facts - no matter where they lead or
whom they implicate.

In his forthcoming book, Triple Cross, Lance, a bestselling author of two

previous insider accounts on the so-called war on terror, the FBI's handling
of 9/11, and Islamic terrorists, has crafted yet another masterful narrative,
this time turning a critical eye on the FBI and the wide-ranging intelligence
failures within the agency that led up to the tragic day that has been seared
into our memories for five long years.

Triple Cross adds a new wrinkle to the 9/11 debates and calls into question
the veracity of the historical record the public has been forced to accept.
Lance's reporting is bound to stir up debate about the integrity of the 9/11
Commission's investigation and the panel's lengthy final report on the
terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,973 Americans. Be forewarned,
Triple Cross presents no conspiracy theory. It's a 489-page thriller. And it's
all true. Lance, a five-time Emmy award-winning reporter and former ABC
News correspondent, sticks closely to the facts. He provides readers with
exhaustive footnotes and copies of some of the more crucial government
documents he obtained to build a compelling case of the FBI's incompetence
in reining in one of the most dangerous terrorists next to Osama bin Laden,
who ended up playing a crucial role in 9/11. It should be noted as well that
Lance steers clear of partisan politics: his book - unlike so many others that

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t r u t h o u t | Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece 7/29/10 2:02 PM

came before it - leans neither "right" nor "left."

Lance's dogged pursuit of uncovering the truth behind 9/11 began on a

personal 0anote. His son's high school was located just a few blocks away
from Ground 0aZero, and when the Twin Towers crumbled, Lance feared the
worst. Spending 0ahours trying to make his way through clogged telephone
lines to track down his 0ason, he found out from a relative that the boy was
safe. But a close friend of 0aLance's, a New York City firefighter who also had
Top Secret clearance in the 0aarmy reserve intelligence unit he served with,
wasn't as lucky. In the midst 0aof all the carnage, the obvious question arose
and gnawed at Lance: How could 0athis have happened? How could
intelligence agencies have missed the warning 0asigns?

Having spent a decade writing fiction, Lance returned to the trenches and
0astarted digging. He began a tedious search for public documents. He read
0athrough 40,000 pages of trial transcripts from al-Qaeda cases in the
Southern 0aDistrict of New York. He used his close connections in the
Manhattan District 0aAttorney's office to help him track down additional
information.

"All I did was apply data-mining techniques to the story retrospectively,

using Google - anybody could have done this," Lance said in an interview
describing one aspect of his reporting technique.

Two years later, he produced 1000 Years for Revenge, a meticulously

detailed volume of 9/11 reportage and international terrorism, which caught
the attention of 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean, who asked Lance
to testify before the commission. But the commission opted to take Lance's
testimony in secret, "in a windowless conference room at 26 Federal Plaza on
March 15, 2004," Lance wrote in the preface to Triple Cross. Lance has
misgivings about the 9/11 Commission and believes its final report "has
proven vastly incomplete."

Triple Cross covers 1981 through 2001 and tracks the rise of al-Qaeda,
0afocusing heavily on former Egyptian army major and al-Qaeda operative
Ali 0aMohamed, who successfully infiltrated the FBI. Perhaps the most
intriguing 0apart of Triple Cross is the appearance of Patrick Fitzgerald, the
0aspecial prosecutor investigating the CIA leak case, who plays a leading role
0ain Lance's book and is featured prominently on the dust jacket and in the
0asubtitle: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green
Berets, and 0athe FBI - And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him. In

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t r u t h o u t | Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece 7/29/10 2:02 PM

the 1990s, 0aFitzgerald was the Assistant United States Attorney for the
Southern District 0aof New York directing the FBI's elite bin Laden squad.

Still in his early 30s, Fitzgerald made some costly blunders early on that
might have changed the course of history if more attention had been paid to
detail. Indeed, in 1991, the FBI discovered that a mailbox store in New Jersey
had direct ties to al-Qaeda but failed to monitor the location. Yet four years
later, Fitzgerald named the owner of the store as an unindicted co-
conspirator in the Day of Terror case he was prosecuting. However, since no
charges were filed against the owner, the store continued to stay in business
and once again fell beneath the Justice Department's radar. Six years later,
two of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their phony identification cards from that
very store.

Lance presents convincing evidence in the form of court records,

transcripts, and interviews with key players that casts Fitzgerald, along with
numerous other Justice Department and CIA officials, as terribly negligent in
allowing the agencies to be hoodwinked by Mohamed, who succeeded in
penetrating the CIA's Europe division and the FBI in California, all while
Mohamed was secretly helping bin Laden orchestrate the African Embassy
bombings. The story of Mohamed, a man Fitzgerald called the "most
dangerous man I have ever met," is groundbreaking and has never been fully
fleshed out before.

Lance begins telling Mohamed's story - one that has all the makings of a
Hollywood thriller - in the first passage of his opening chapter of Triple
Cross.

"On October 20, 2000, after tricking the U.S. intelligence establishment for
years, Ali Mohamed stood in handcuffs, leg irons, and a blue prison jumpsuit
before Judge Leonard B. Sand in a Federal District Courtroom in Lower
Manhattan," Lance writes. "Over the next thirty minutes he pleaded guilty
five times, admitting to his involvement in plots to kill U.S. soldiers in
Somalia, and Saudi Arabia, U.S. ambassadors in Africa, and American
civilians anywhere in the world ... In short but deliberate sentences,
Mohamed peeled back the top layer of the secret life he'd led since 1981 ..."

During that plea session, Lance writes, Mohamed kept quiet about "his
most stunning achievements," including how he avoided being caught in a
State Department Watch List, enlisted in the US Army and was stationed at
the same base where the Green Berets and Delta Force undergo training, and

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t r u t h o u t | Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece 7/29/10 2:02 PM

wooed a Silicon Valley medical technician, whom he married. In the

courtroom, Mohamed, fluent in four languages, "didn't say a word about how
he'd moved in and out of contract spy work for the CIA and fooled FBI agents
for six years as he smuggled terrorists across US borders, and guarded the
tall Saudi billionaire who had personally declared war on Americans: Osama
bin Laden," Lance writes.

While Mohamed vacationed from the US Army in 1988, he tracked down

an elite group of Soviet commandos in Afghanistan, while later cozying up to
Special Agents in New York and San Francisco, and found out everything the
FBI knew about al-Qaeda, learning it firsthand from the agency's top agents.
He guarded Osama bin Laden during the same time he enjoyed the luxuries
of being one of the FBI's top informants. There are so many threads to this
story, dating back more than two decades, that one cannot help but feel utter
contempt for the intelligence agencies who were entrusted with weeding out
threats like Mohamed but instead fiddled with the internal bureaucratic red
tape at federal agencies so that by the time any action was taken, it was too
late: 9/11 had arrived.

Triple Cross would end up being a highly entertaining Tom Clancy-esque

thriller, in other words, pure fiction, if Lance didn't have tens of thousands of
pages of documents locked up in a safe-house to back up this explosive
account. Remarkably, Mohamed was never sentenced for the crimes he
pleaded guilty to. He is in the witness protection program, his existence
shrouded under a veil of secrecy.

-------

Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter. He holds

a Masters Degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law. Lance spent the first 15
years of his career as a print reporter and network correspondent. He
began his career as a reporter for his hometown paper, The Newport,
Rhode Island Daily News. In 1981, Lance became an investigative
correspondent for ABC News, covering hundreds of stories worldwide for
ABC News, 20/20, Nightline, and World News Tonight.

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t r u t h o u t | Jason Leopold | Reviewed: Peter Lance's 9/11 Masterpiece 7/29/10 2:02 PM

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