ARCHIVED FORUM: Gurdwara Tapoban Sahib
'FBI terror expert at Air India trial'
Posted by : jagroop singh
Date: 7/16/2004 6:47 am
FBI terror expert at Air India trial
By AMY CARMICHAEL
VANCOUVER (CP) - An FBI terrorism expert who supports left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore's conspiracy theories in Fahrenheit 9-11 brought some star power to the Air India trial Thursday.
Jack Cloonan, who also pontificates on ABC News offering commentary on the U.S. war on terror, was playing his usual role of Monday-morning quarterback in testifying for the defence. He was called to criticize the handling of an alleged confession by an accused bomber.
Cloonan worked a few desks over from agent Ron Parrish when he was working with a mole who was giving him tips on Sikh militants.
The source, who was paid $500,000 to testify at the Air India trial, told him that Ajaib Singh Bagri confessed he plotted the attack that killed 331 people during a meeting at a New Jersey gas station.
Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik are charged with conspiracy and murder in two bombings June 23, 1985, that downed an Air India plane.
Parrish kept details of the confession to himself, saying he wanted to protect the identity of his informant who can't be named under a court order.
"I cannot imagine a circumstance in which that would happen," Cloonan said. "The reputation of the agent, of the office, of the FBI would in my judgment be at stake.
"There are three words that are very important at the FBI, a sort of motto. They are fidelity, bravery and integrity. That last one goes to the heart of this. Integrity in the process, you need to honour that."
Prosecutor Richard Cairns said Cloonan had no business criticizing his colleague for contravening FBI policy. Cairns accused Cloonan of doing the same by speaking publicly about internal bureau matters.
Cairns read him FBI rules that bar agents from "discussing any information acquired by the virtue of their official employment."
"Did you seek permission?" Cairns asked.
"No, I didn't think it was required," said Cloonan, who has been reprimanded in the past for disclosing improper information.
Still, he said he felt his experience in the field gave him leave to critique Parrish's conduct, which he suggested was dangerous.
The telex Parrish sent to headquarters was so vague that Cloonan said supervisors would have had a hard time deciphering its significance.
After reaming off miscellaneous information about a New York Sikh organization, Parrish named a number of militants, including Bagri, as having claimed responsibility for the Air India bombing. Parrish wrote nothing about the alleged face-to-face meeting his source had with Bagri in which he clearly confesses.
Such potentially case-cracking information about the murder of 331 people should have been the subject of a separate and urgent report to headquarters, Cloonan said, not tacked on as "an afterthought."
Instead, Parrish waited two years before fully disclosing what he had learned from his source about Bagri's alleged involvement.
Parrish paid the source $250 for the tip, which Cloonan said is an oddly low figure for such important information. But to get clearance to pay the mole more, Parrish would have had to make a request to headquarters and provide thorough documentation on the source.
Parrish said he kept the information to himself because he wanted to protect the informant's identity.
Cloonan seemed almost as disturbed at such conduct by a fellow agent as he was in Fahrenheit 9-11. In the film, Moore asked him why U.S. authorities let Osama bin Laden's family leave the country days after the attacks on New York and Washington.
The Saudi family was on some of the first planes out of the United States when the airspace was reopened, Moore says in his film.
"An investigator would not want these people to have left . . . I think in the case of the bin Laden family I think it would have been prudent," said the retired agent who, before 9-11, worked as a senior investigator on the joint FBI-CIA Al-Qaeda task force.
"Hand the subpoenas out, have them come in, get it on the record. Get it on the record."
