A former FBI special agent said he had information that could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but he said the CIA prevented him from taking the evidence to FBI headquarters, Newsweek reports.
Mark Rossini, who lost his job in 2008 for showing confidential FBI documents to actress Linda Fiorentino to help her research a script about a wiretapper, said he was barred from going to FBI headquarters with information that two known terrorists had entered the U.S. Those terrorists later helped carry out the 9/11 attacks.
While government reports have vaguely blamed “intelligence failures” for the terrorist attacks, no details were ever provided about why the CIA didn’t pass on information earlier to the FBI that the terrorists were in the country.
During questioning by the congressional investigators, Rossini said and another FBI agent were told by the CIA to stay quiet.
“It was just understood in the office that they were not to be trusted, that [the congressional investigators] were trying to pin this on someone, that they were trying to put someone in jail,” Rossini told Newsweek. “They said [the investigators] weren’t authorized to know what was going on operationally. … When we were interviewed, the CIA had a person in the room, monitoring us.”
