FBI placed mole in al Qaeda before 9/11

The FBI placed a mole inside al Qaeda who met with Osama bin Laden eight years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court records obtained by The Washington Times.

The report says the FBI didn’t inform the 9/11 Commission and members of Congress about the mole.

The man was a “driver and confidante” of Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheikh,” reports NBC News, whose sources confirmed the mole’s existence. Rahman is now in prison for his role in planning the 1993 attack on New York’s World Trade Center. 

“If you need any money, you go to Osama directly and tell him I sent you,” Rahman once told the mole, sources told NBC News.

{mosads}The mole, whose name was not identified, met with bin Laden as far back as 1993.

Based in Los Angeles, the mole once thwarted a bin Laden plot to blow up the Masonic Lodge in the city in the mid-1990s.

Court records from that time, obtained by The Washington Times, show a former top FBI official revealed in 2010 he knew of the mole.

“It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al Qaeda, directly involved,” said Ed Curran, who was assistant special agent in charge of FBI’s L.A. office.

Curran’s disclosure was delivered in testimony to a mostly empty courtroom in support of a lawsuit a former agent launched against the bureau, the report says. 

The former agent, Bassem Youssef, filed the lawsuit against the FBI and accused officials of discriminating against him, and passing him over for promotions.

According to the reports, Youssef had developed and run the mole, whom Curran said was “tight, close” with al Qaeda leadership.