FEDS MOVE TERRORIST NEXT TO
KEY WITNESS IN FBI MURDER TRIAL
Murad Scarpa Jr.
EXCLIUSIVE © 2007 By Peter Lance
March 9th, 2007. Abdul Hakim Murad, a top al Qaeda terrorist sentenced to life for the 1995 Bojinka plot to smuggle bombs onto U.S. airliners, was recently moved by The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, to a jail cell in Lower Manhattan next to Gregory Scarpa Jr., an ex-Mafia member who is scheduled to be the star witness in the upcoming murder trial of former FBI Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio.
Family members and lawyers close to the case fear that the move may have endangered the former wiseguy who gave the FBI a treasure trove of evidence in 1996 on Murad and convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.
All three prisoners had been inmates at the ADX Florence, the notorious Supermax prison in Florence Colorado but had been separated for years since Scarpa Jr. informed on Murad and Yousef during an 11 month FBI sting that began in 1996.
On December 6th, 2006 Scarpa Jr. was moved from the Supermax to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan (M.C.C.) where he is expected to be the linchpin witness in DeVecchio’s upcoming trial on four counts of second degree murder.
Sources close to Scarpa Jr. reported last week that Murad had been flown across country from the ADX Florence by BOP officials and installed in a cell at the M.C.C. immediately adjacent to the ex-Colombo Family wiseguy.
The BOP Inmate Locator below shows both Scarpa Jr. 55 and Murad, 38, in residence at the M.C.C. as of, Thursday March 8th, 2007. Scarpa Jr.’s file also references his father Gregory Sr. who died of AIDS in prison in 1994.
THE G-MAN AND THE HIT MAN
Known as “The Grim Reaper” and “The Killing Machine” Scarpa Senior had been a notorious hit man for the Colombo crime family. Brooklyn D.A. investigators believe that he was the primary shooter in the early 1990’s “Colombo War;” a bloody battle for control of the family that left at least 12 dead. The indictment charging DeVecchio in four of those homicides, alleges that that the 33 year FBI veteran, who was Scarpa Sr.’s control agent, passed on key FBI intelligence including the location of mob rivals allowing Scarpa Sr. to wipe them out..
In May, 1995, in the middle of a two year FBI OPR (internal affairs) investigation prompted by three agents who served under DeVecchio, Ellen Corcella, a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) sent A LETTER to a series of mob defense lawyers admitting to up to 8 separate instances where DeVecchio may have disclosed information to Scarpa on his rivals.
DeVecchio has steadfastly maintained his innocence, claiming that in his dealings with Scarpa Sr. he was acting under “express authority” conferred on him in his capacity as an FBI SSA.
THE FEDS PAY PART OF DEVECCHIO’S LEGAL FEES
On March 6th, following my discovery of a fund raising e-mail from “The Friends of Lin DeVecchio Trust,” The New York Daily News broke a story in which FBI spokesman John Miller admitted that the Justice Dept. was paying some of the legal fees for DeVecchio’s defense.
According to an aide to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) investigating the payments, the Justice Department has cited two sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (28 C.F.R. 50.15(a) and 50.16) which provide for the payment of legal fees for accused government employees whose actions on the job fall within the “scope” of their employment and the U.S. Attorney General determines that the legal representation paid for is “in the interest of the United States.”
Last year DeVecchio attempted to have his case removed from State Court in Brooklyn to Federal Court arguing that in his capacity as the SSA running the Colombo Task Force, his “clandestine relationship” with Scarpa Sr. was effectively sanctioned and that he was immune from prosecution.
But on January 9th, a Federal judge rejected those arguments and the case is moving forward in Brooklyn. DECISION.
“MR. ORGANIZED CRIME.”
Back in 1996, the alleged “unholy alliance” between the hit man and the G-Man resulted in the dismissal of 14 of the 75 cases brought by Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) following the “Colombo War.”
The ensuing scandal threatened, in the words of Federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein, to “unravel” the remaining 60 “War” cases.
DeVecchio, known as “Mr. Organized Crime” in the Bureau had also supervised “The Commission Case,” the historic 1986 mob-busting trial that resulted in the jailing of New York’s top Mafia bosses and helped make the career of Rudy Giuliani, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).
Almost a decade later at one “Colombo War” hearing, DeVecchio testified that he’d been sanctioned in his dealings with Scarpa Sr. at the highest levels of the FBI.
But he also invoked the Fifth Amendment and answered “I don’t recall” more than 40 times after a grand of immunity, tactics virtually unheard of from an active duty FBI agent.
Nonetheless, by September of 1996, the two year OPR was closed and DeVecchio was allowed to retire with a full pension.
FOUR COUNTS OF MURDER
But in 2005 Brooklyn D.A. Charles “Joe” Hynes impaneled a grand jury and on March 30th, 2006, DeVecchio was indicted on four homicide counts relating to his relationship with Scarpa Sr., an FBI Top Echelon (T.E.) informant who only served 30 days in a 30 year career of racketing, drug dealing and murder.
Scarpa’s son Greg Jr. later gave details of his father’s alleged corrupt relationship with DeVecchio, whom the Colombo killer nicknamed his “girlfriend.” The younger Scarpa claimed that in return for intelligence that helped him wipe out his rivals, Greg Senior had paid thousands of dollars to DeVecchio, flown him on trips to places like Aspen, Colorado and even entertained him with call girls at a Staten Island hotel.
“With Agent DeVecchio’s knowledge and consent,” he wrote in a sworn affidavit, “my father murdered or attempted to murder the individuals who were dangerous to him. My father would then report the successful killings back to the FBI, attributing to others responsibility for his murders. Committing murders and blaming others, always with the knowledge of Agent DeVecchio, became the ‘M.O. adopted by my father.”
SUPPORT FROM GIULIANI
In an April 15th, 2006 piece, Alan Feuer reported in The New York Times, that in 1976 Rudy Giuliani, then a Deputy Attorney General in Washington, quashed a possible federal prosecution of DeVecchio who was caught selling antique handguns worth $60,000.00 to undercover ATF agents. Against the wishes of a Maryland federal prosecutor who wanted to go forward, Giuliani reportedly terminated the case.
Giuliani, a recently announced Presidential candidate, isn’t the only prominent ex-Fed whose reputation could be tarnished if DeVecchio is convicted.
Also in positions to lose are former FBI Assistant Director In Charge James Kallstrom who ran the FBI’s New York office, former FBI Director Louis Freeh who prosecuted The SDNY’s Pizza Connection case, Patrick Fitzgerald, the former head of Organized Crime & Terrorism in the SDNY, Dietrich Snell, a former SDNY prosecutor, now a senior attorney in the office of New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer and Valerie Caproni, former EDNY criminal division chief who is now General Counsel to the FBI.
Back in 1996, Each of them signed off on the closure of the DeVecchio OPR.
THREATENING THE STAR WITNESS
In the upcoming murder trial, prosecutors in D.A. Hynes’ office are expected to call Greg Jr. as their lead witness.
“There is only one possible reason that the Feds would move a convicted terrorist like Abdul Hakim Murad, whom Greg Jr. had informed on, to a cell that close to him,” says veteran criminal lawyer Flora Edwards, “and that’s to intimidate Greg in the DeVecchio case.”
The trial of the former Supervisory Special agent is now set to begin October 15th, in a Kings County (Brooklyn) courtroom.
Abdul Hakim Murad
MURAD WAS THE ORIGINAL “ATTA”
Abdul Hakim Murad, who grew up in Kuwait with Ramzi Yousef, is one of the highest ranking al Qaeda operatives ever convicted in the SDNY.
A pilot trained in four U.S. flight schools between 1991 & ‘92, Murad was to have been the lead pilot in Yousef’s original “planes as missiles plot” that culminated on 9/11. After a fire destroyed their bomb factory in Manila, Yousef fled to Pakistan where he was arrested in February 1995. Murad was captured the night of the fire and interrogated over 67 days by the Philippines National Police (PNP).
He confessed the full blown “planes operation” to PNP Col. Rodolfo B. Mendoza who passed the details of the plot to the FBI’s Legal Attaché in Manila. The LEGAT, in turn, sent the intelligence to the SDNY where prosecutors in 1996 where preparing to try Yousef, Murad (later rendered back to the U.S.) and a third co-conspirator Wali Khan Amin Shah.
Murad’s role as lead hijacker/pilot was ultimately assumed on 9/11 by Mohammed Atta.
The fourth member of the Manila cell, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef’s uncle, escaped twice from the FBI (in Pakistan in 1995 and Doha, Qatar in 1996) only to go on to perfect his nephew’s suicide-hijacking plot on September 11th, 2001.
I reported the details of that story in 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE, the first of my three investigative books on the FBI’s intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. It was published by Harper Collins in September, 2003.
COVER UP EXPOSES THE TREASURE TROVE OF FBI #302s.
A year later, my second Harper Collins book COVER UP, presented for the first time, detailed evidence of Scarpa Jr.’s 11th month treasure trove of al Qaeda related intelligence gathered as he sat in a cell on the 9th floor tier of the M.C.C. in 1996 between Yousef and Murad.
By intercepting notes or “kites” from Yousef and passing them onto the Feds, Greg Jr. uncovered the following stunning evidence:
• proof of an active al Qaeda cell then operating in NYC;
• proof of an al Qaeda connection to the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen;
• proof of a bin Laden plan to hijack a plane to free blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual icon of the original WTC bombing cell and the “Day of Terror” plot to blow up the U.N. and the bridge & tunnels into Manhattan;
The threat involving the so-called “blind Sheikh” was considered so important by the FBI that it later showed up in a Presidential Daily Briefing to President Clinton in 1998 and the infamous Crawford, Texas PDB to President Bush on August 6th, 2001 – just weeks before 9/11.
• proof of a further effort by al Qaeda to execute the Bojinka plot with improvised explosive devices (IED’s) using Acetone Peroxide; the same base chemical uncovered by MI-5 investigators in the U.K. last August when they exposed the “trans-Atlantic” airliner bombing plot – a mirror image of Bojinka.
Casio schematic from Yousef to Scarpa Jr. Casio seized at Manila bomb factory
Much of the 1996 intelligence known by the Feds as “The Scarpa Material,” is documented in a series of FBI #302 memos that can be found at http://www.peterlance.com/PLfbi.htm including a drawing of the Casio watch powered “bomb trigger” IED.
The C 106D Capacitor which the Feds called Yousef’s signature months later at the Bojinka trial, could only have come from the terrorist. Scarpa, with a limited education, could never have drawn the detailed schematics on his own.
One “kite” from Yousef labeled “How to Smuggle Explosives Into An Airplane” cites the “acetone peroxide” formula.
THE ENDS-MEANS DECISION
But, as detailed in COVER UP and my new book TRIPLE CROSS, a series of top FBI and Justice Department officials made an ends/means decision in 1996 to preserve the remaining Colombo War cases and bury the DeVecchio scandal.
More than a year after the Corcella letter cited 8 possible leaks to Scarpa Sr. from DeVecchio, former FBI ADIC James Kallstrom pushed to have the OPR closed, warning FBI Director Louis Freeh, that the two year investigation was negatively impacting the remaining 60 EDNY Colombo War prosecutions in the EDNY and casting “a cloud” over the Bureau’s New York Office.
The internal affairs investigation was closed and DeVecchio was allowed to retire in September, 1996 with a full pension.
Then, in 1998 when Greg Scarpa Jr. moved for downward release time in return for his cooperation with the Feds in informing on Yousef & Murad, his eleven-month treasure trove of evidence was branded a “hoax” and a “scam” by prosecutors like Fitzgerald.
Federal Judge Reena Raggi, presiding at Greg Jr.’s racketeering trial accepted that story and sentenced Scarpa Jr. to 40 years in the Supermax.
Along with Scarpa Jr. the FBI and DOJ buried that treasure trove of al Qaeda evidence, which prevented other U.S. intelligence agencies from fully appreciating the growing terror threat.
In TRIPLE CROSS I present probative new evidence in the form of a seven page June 25th, 1999 Affirmation from Patrick Fitzgerald. In the document, which had been sealed for years, Fitzgerald admitted that an initial 1996 investigation appeared to “corroborate” Scarpa Jr.’s information from Yousef.
However, Fitzgerald then claimed that a Mafia-related inmate named John Napoli later branded the material “fraudulent.” In effect, the Feds were claiming that Yousef and Scarpa Jr. had somehow fabricated the 11th month intelligence treasure trove.
But Napoli didn’t reach the 9th floor tier next to Greg Jr. until December, 1996 -- nine months after Scarpa Jr. first started informing on Yousef.
Further, I recorded an interview with Napoli on February 11th, 2006 after he called me from a Federal prison in Texas. During the interview Napoli made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he never told the Feds the “Scarpa Material” was a hoax and that, in fact, it was genuine. ”
AL QAEDA DEATH THREATS TO SCARPA’S FAMILY
On November 3rd, 2005, a close member of Greg Scarpa Jr.’s immediate family received a letter from the Supermax prison mailed on October 31st.
“It was a very specific threat to Greg’s family members from al Qaeda-related inmates at the ADX Florence,” says Angela Clemente, the forensic investigator who uncovered most of the documentary evidence and key witnesses for the upcoming King’s County murder prosecution.
ANGELA CLEMENTE
“Incredibly, the Bureau of Prisons had somehow switched Greg Jr.’s mail with the mail of Eric Rudolph” (the convicted Olympic Park Bomber) she says.This allowed Rudolph to obtain the return addresses of Scarpa;s family members.
“Rudolph was in a cell at the Supermax right next to Ramzi and right after that, Yousef began screaming at Greg Jr and threatening him,” says Clemente.
Rudolph Yousef
Clemente says that she herself received a similar threat letter from the Supermax sent to her home in Bayonne, New Jersey.
In an exclusive interview she told me that the letter warned: “If you are not Muslim, you must die.”
Clemente says she immediately alerted the office of Congressman Dana Rhorabacher (R-CA) whose International Relations Subcommittee was then investigating a possible Philippines connection between Ramzi Yousef and convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
SCARPA’S NEW EVIDENCE ON THE O.K. CITY BOMBING
In February, 2005, Greg Scarpa Jr. had again risked his life by telling Clemente and her partner Dr. Stephen Dresch (a Yale Ph.D.; now deceased) that Nichols had alerted him to a cash of explosives buried in a crawl space below the OKC bomber’s former home in Herrington, Kansas.
Scarpa Jr. Nichols
Scarpa Jr. had told Clemente and Dresch that Nichols, wanted the boxes of blasting caps and explosives tested for the fingerprints; alleging that “others unknown” may have been involved in the Murrah Building bombing.
In March of 2005, acting on information from Clemente and Dresch, passed on to aides to Rhorabacher and Cong. William Delahunt (D-MA), the FBI searched the now empty Herrington, Kansas house.
In an April 2nd, 2005 national wire story, story A.P. Washington Deputy Bureau Chief John Solomon wrote::
“FBI agents searched the former home” and “found blasting caps and
other explosive materials apparently related to the 1995 attack.”
“FBI officials said the material was found buried in a crawl space of the
Herrington, Kan. home that apparently wasn’t checked by agents during
the numerous searches of the property during the original investigation.
“’The information so far indicates the items have been there since prior
to the Oklahoma City bombing,’ FBI Agent Gary Johnson said in a
telephone interview from Oklahoma City.”
In a follow-up story on April 14th, A.P. reporter Mark Sherman cited my investigation of the Yousef-Scarpa Jr. 302’s in COVER UP, noting that:
“The FBI initially dismissed a tip that convicted bomber Terry Nichols had hidden explosives and they might be used for an attack this month coinciding with the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
FBI DROPS THE BALL ON SCARPA DEATH THREAT PROBE
After Clemente and the Scarpa family members received the threatening letters in late 2005, Cong. Rhorabacher contacted the Capitol Police in Washington who reportedly then turned the investigation over to the FBI.
Rhorabacher
“I had agents come to my home and I gave them the letter I’d received, says Clemente, a 41 year old mother of three. “I took great care to make sure that the letter had been processed as evidence and handled it with surgical gloves so that any prints might be detected. They took it and I’ve never heard from the FBI since. “
Worse, says Clemente, the FBI never even questioned the member of Scarpa’s family who was reportedly threatened.
“The fact that Greg Scarpa is the star witness in the D.A.’s murder case and that his family had been earlier threatened by purported al Qaeda related inmates of the Supermax, makes the BOP’s movement of Murad to a cell next to Greg Jr. even more outrageous,” says defense attorney Flora Edwards
“It’s Standard Operational Procedure in the BOP system,” says Clemente who has worked with dozens of federal inmates. “You just don’t put a prisoner who has informed on another inmate in close proximity. That’s an open invitation to violence or death. I am extremely concerned right now for Gregory Scarpa Jr.’s safety.”
According to Clemente, last week, after she notified Rhorabacher’s office of Murad’s presence at the MCC, “steps were taken” to remove Murad from Greg’s “immediate proximity.”
But as of noon on Thursday, March 8th both Scarpa Jr. and Murad were listed in the BOP inmate located as being in residence at the M.C.C.
I contacted Scott Sussman, a spokesman for the M.C.C. to ask about Murad & Scarpa Jr. He called back today with this statement
“Unfortunately I would not be able to comment on the housing assignments of any two inmates, regardless of the ones that you had mentioned, as that information would be considered detrimental to the security of the institution.”
SUPERMAX WARDEN DENIES SCARPA JR. INTERVIEW
This wouldn’t be the first time that the BOP raised security concerns when it comes to Greg Scarpa Jr. In 2004 when I was researching COVER UP, Greg Jr. agreed to an interview. After I contacted the Supermax to set it up, I got the letter below from Warden Robert A. Hood denying me access on the grounds that my entry into the prison:
“Could pose a risk to the internal security of this institution and to the safety of staff, inmates and members of the public.”
THE YOUSEF-NICHOLS CONNECTION
There’s a second, ironic connection between Ramzi Yousef and convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
Yousef Nichols
In late December, Cong. Rhorabacher’s subcommittee issued a report on its two year Oklahoma City investigation, disclosing evidence that as far back as 1992 when he was in New York City plotting the first WTC attack, Yousef had contacted a Filipina living in the same Queens apartment building as Terry Nichols’ wife’s family. Marife Nichols was a mail-order bride whom Nichols had met on his numerous trips to the Philippines.
In “John Doe No. 2,” a chapter I wrote in 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE I detailed the extraordinary number of circumstantial but probative links between Yousef and Nichols who was in Cebu, the same obscure southern Philippines city as Yousef on December 11th, 1994 four months prior to the O.K. City bombing.
For an analysis of Cong. Rhorabacher’s report CLICK:
On January 12th, 2007 Rhorabacher wrote a letter to Angela Clemente describing her assistance to his subcommittee’s investigation as “invaluable.”
“What’s important about Greg Scarpa Jr.” says his former attorney Larry Silverman, “is that he provided key evidence to the FBI on two separate convicted terrorists: Ramzi Yousef in New York in 1996 and Terry Nichols in the Supermax in 2005. This is an astonishing track record. Whatever Greg Jr. may have done as a wiseguy has to be measured against his amazing cooperation with the Government to thwart terrorism. He deserves protection.”