IGNORE MY INTELLIGENCE AT YOUR PERIL (I AM NOT AS STUPID AS I LOOK) 265reduce his sentence. My argument was, “Who cares? If gaining access to
intel on UBL means a white-collar criminal might get a reduced sentence,
so be it!” To me it was a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, the agent stubbornly blocked this effort, and the US
intelligence community never exploited this very unique opportunity to
gather intelligence on the Taliban and possibly UBL and al-Qaeda just
prior to 9/11.
Rarely is a single source of intelligence responsible for a monumental
military or intelligence success, such as the killing of bin Laden in Paki-
stan. The ultimately successful post-9/11 hunt for bin Laden was built on
a giant tapestry of intelligence bits and pieces, meticulously collected, col-
lated, and analyzed over many years. Remove one thread, one source or
report, and the entire effort could unravel.
Had the government put national security interests ahead of one
agent’s personal obsession with sticking it to my client, would it have
yielded a piece of the intelligence puzzle that could have led to the preven-
tion of the 9/11 attacks? We will never know. But as I watched the news
coverage of al-Qaeda-hijacked American commercial jet airplanes slam-
ming into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, I could
not help but wonder.
I am not first to butt heads with law enforcement officials who put crim-
inal justice objectives ahead of intelligence, counterintelligence, or national
security interests. Having worked with passion for two different prosecutors’
offices, I fully support prosecuting criminals. I get it. But sometimes we need
to look at the bigger picture and put longer-term intelligence needs ahead
of short-term law enforcement objectives. Even mobsters get it. To quote
Donald Trump associate Felix Sater, an alleged mobster who several years
before 9/11 was providing information about al-Qaeda to the CIA, “So I’m
giving the CIA bin Laden’s sat phone numbers, and this guy [Assistant US
Attorney Sack] is more concerned with going after ‘Vinny Boom Botz.’”^3
After the 9/11 attacks, the FBI requested the public’s assistance in iden-
tifying dozens of suspected al-Qaeda support assets in the United States,
some of whom they believed may have fled to Mexico. The number of al-