The FBI, for the first time, has admitted publicly that it knew the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was returning to the U.S. in October 2002 and that an FBI agent discussed the American's return with a U.S. attorney before he was detained and then abruptly released from federal custody.

Al-Awlaki, who would become the first American targeted for death by the CIA, eventually was killed last September in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike. Since September 2009, 26 terrorism cases have been tied to him and his digital jihad, according to the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

“I really want to get to the bottom (of this),” said Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, chairman of the committee that has oversight of the FBI. The committee was holding a hearing Wednesday on the Webster report on the FBI’s intelligence failures leading up to the Fort Hood massacre. Al-Awlaki exchanged 19 emails with Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of murdering 13 in the shooting.

Wolf noted Wednesday that the Webster report makes no mention of the 2002 incident and the FBI’s role in the cleric’s release...

Mark Giuliano, the FBI's assistant director for national security, testified Wednesday that the FBI knew in advance that he was making his way back to the United States, though he didn't explain how.

Al-Awlaki was detained at New York City's JFK airport because a customs database flagged him based on an outstanding arrest warrant. Giuliano, under intense questioning by Wolf, also admitted Wednesday there were discussions between an FBI agent and the U.S. attorney in Colorado about the U.S.-born cleric’s re-entry and the warrant...

Former FBI agents say there are only likely two explanations: The bureau let the cleric into the country to track him for intelligence, or the bureau wanted to work with him as a friendly contact.

During Wednesday's hearing, Giuliano could not explain a significant time discrepancy. Al-Awlaki was being held in the early-morning hours of Oct. 10, 2002, when FBI agent Wade Ammerman told customs agents that "the warrant...had been pulled back." But that couldn't have happened while al-Awlaki was in custody, since it was only 5:40am in Colorado where the arrest warrant originated and where the courts had yet to open for the day.

In fact, documents show the warrant was still active at that time and was only vacated later that day.

The FBI has consistently maintained that the arrest warrant was pulled because the case against the cleric was weak, and it has suggested the timing, coming on the same day the cleric re-entered the U.S. at New York City's JFK airport, was coincidental.

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Editor's Note: It would be interesting to identify the specific individual that directed the release of al-Awlaki. This wouldn't be the first time the FBI had been infiltrated by foreign agents. If, in fact, there is a foreign agent embedded at the FBI, for, if nothing else, national security, that agent must be sought out and rendered ineffective. It would also mean a thorough investigation of all intelligence and law enforcement agencies is warranted; an investigation devoid of the idiocy that is political correctness.


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