- A former White House aide with a Secret clearance warned
US Attorney General, John Ashcroft a week after the attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon, that a Federal Judge with connections to Islamic
fundamentalists, refused to authorize over 20 FBI wiretaps on Al Qaeda
suspects before 9/11.
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- Barbara Honegger, now a Senior Military Affairs Research
Journalist in the Department of Defense, named the judge as Royce Lamberth.
He is the chief judge in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
It meets once a week in the Justice Department to consider wiretap requests.
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- Senator Arlen Specter, a member of the Congressional
Intelligence Committee sitting in Washington to investigate the intelligence
background to 9/11, has said he will call Judge Lamberth to testify.
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- In the Reagan Administration Honegger served as a high-level
appointee in the Justice Department, heading a task force for the Attorney
General.
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- Her bombshell claim is contained in documents Globe-Intel
has seen. They confirm that her memo to Ashcroft is now under investigation
by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees sitting in Washington.
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- Given her seniority, her claim will almost certainly
fuel the controversy about the US intelligence community failure.
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- Judge Royce Lamberth presides over a court of seven judges
set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Since then
it has authorized 7,500 wiretap requests. The majority have been to tap
foreign embassies in the US and abroad.
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- Her revelations came hours after President Bush had announced
(Thursday) that he was setting up a new Homeland Defense Ministry.
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- Washington sources have told Globe-Intel that among the
first tasks the Ministry will face is to investigate Honegger's claims.
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- Globe-Intel has also learned that FBI Director, Robert
Mueller, personally authorized that Honegger should be questioned.
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- That happened on April 4 when San Diego FBI Field Agent,
Sean Moore, interviewed her.
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- Her allegations move the story of who-knew-what- and
when beyond the now celebrated thirteen-page memo veteran FBI agent, Coleen
Rowley sent to Mueller.
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- In her lengthy memo to Attorney General Ashcroft, Honegger
states:
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- "It is absolutely critical that Congress obtain
the list of the names of the up to 20 suspected Al Qaeda and other Islamic
extremist operatives whose wiretaps were shut down or refused by Judge
Royce Lambert and the FISA Court and match them with the names of the 20
9/11 hijackers, as well as with the names of all post 9/11 detainees held
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere,"
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- Honegger held sensitive posts in the White House during
the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush snr. She is the author
of a highly-acclaimed book dealing with the Iran-Contra affair.
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- Honegger has confirmed to Globe-Intel why she has demanded
Judge Lamberth be investigated for possible complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
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- "On Sept. 19, 2001, a week after the attacks, I
sent an "Extreme Alert" to Attorney General Ashcroft and Thomas
Picard, the FBI investigator in charge of the New York based 9-11 investigation,
by e-mail, alerting them to evidence that the Chief Judge of this very
FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, Royce C. Lamberth,
may have himself been acting with and on behalf of Islamic extremists.
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- "In the mid 1980s, an Iranian fluent in Farsi, Arabic,
Urdu, Russian, and a number of other languages was in frequent contact
by telephone with someone he described as `my good buddy Royce, an important
judge in Washington, who got me into this country.' Further questioning
of this individual, who also claimed to be a mullah able to perform Islamic
marriages and funerals, led to me being told that the last name of the
Washington judge was Lamberth.
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- "My 9/19/01 Lamberth Alert e-mail was received by
Attorney General Ashcroft and/or FBI Headquarters, as I was interviewed
by an FBI agent from a local field office regarding this communication,
at which time the agent showed me the headquarters case number for my memo
and its follow up. At my request and with his agreement, a colleague from
a federal personnel security agency sat in on that meeting as a witness.
The Congressional House and Senate Intelligence Committees have also been
made aware of these facts.
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- "Given this context, it is critical to the 9-11
Congressional investigation that, prior to 9-11, this same Chief FISA Court
Judge Royce Lamberth shut down "up to 20" FISA wiretaps of Al
Qaeda-related suspects linked to the near-simultaneous -- "twin"
-- 1998 Africa U.S. embassy bombings. These 20 may well be, or significantly
overlap with, the 20 9-11 hijackers -- 19 plus suspected "20th
hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui.
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- "It is therefore absolutely critical that Congress
obtain the list of names of all of the "up to 20" suspected Al
Qaeda and other Islamic extremist operatives whose wiretaps were shut down
or refused by Judge Lamberth and the FISA Court, and match them with the
names of the 20 9-11 hijackers, as well as with the names of all post
9-11 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere."
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- "For the 9-11 investigation to have integrity, Congress
must have the courage to aggressively pursue these facts and leads, and
be sure not to prematurely close the door to any hypothesis - no matter
how "unthinkable." 9-11 was also unthinkable -- before it happened."
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- Martin Dillon is a world-ranking authority on Eastern
European intelligence. He is also the author of the global bestsellers:
The Shankill Butchers (Random House), The Dirty War (Random House) and
God and the Gun (Routledge, New York).
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