Feds cagey on early Awlaki ties
Josh Gerstein, Politico, Oct 4 2013
Lawyers for a Virginia man serving a life sentence for supporting Jihad against the US pushed Friday to pry more information out of the federal government about the possibility that Anwar al-Awlaki may have been recruited as a government informant a decade ago. During a federal court hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema didn’t sound inclined to grant motions by former cancer researcher and Muslim scholar Ali al-Timimi seeking more details on the government’s relationship with Awlaki, as well as other facts Timimi’s lawyers say were withheld prior to and during his 2005 trial on charges such as aiding the Taliban and soliciting treason. Timimi lawyer Jonathan Turley said al-Awlaki visited Timimi at his home in Oct 2002 and “encouraged him to recruit and actually raised issues of possible terrorist acts.” The defense lawyer said that recently-released FBI files suggest that Awlaki may have been acting as an asset for some government agency when he returned to the US from abroad just prior to his meeting with Timimi. There was an outstanding warrant for Awlaki’s arrest on a fraud charge when he flew back into the US in 2002, but he was admitted at JFK airport in New York after only a short delay. Prosecutor Gordon Kromberg insisted that the government turned over all information it was obligated to prior to Timimi’s trial and had no duty to detail its dealings with Awlaki. Kromberg told Brinkema:
Turley has no right to know if Awlaki was an asset at that time.
He said the government had no recording of the meeting, and that Timimi’s defense was told that prior to his trial. He didn’t deny a meeting between the two had occurred, however, merely saying:
I don’t know what happened at that meeting.
Timimi was in court for the hearing and passed a series of notes to Turley as he made his points to the judge. Timimi’s motion seeking evidence about Awlaki was made public for the first time on Friday and is posted here. The government’s response was released in July and is posted here. Brinkema did not rule immediately on Timimi’s motions, but she sounded skeptical about all of them. She initially said she wanted to hear more from the government about the Awlaki issue, but later in the 40-minute session she suggested that if Awlaki wasn’t wearing a wire when he met with Timimi in 2002 then it wouldn’t have helped the defense to know that Awlaki might have been an informant. In the days after 9/11, Awlaki, then the head imam at a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, was regarded by many in the government and the media as a voice for moderate Islam. He made a presentation at the Pentagon and did interviews with news outlets like NPR. However, he was also under intense surveillance by the FBI, apparently because of indications he had ties to the 9/11 hijackers. Awlaki left the US for London in 2002 and eventually made his way to Yemen, emerging as one of the most strident English-language voices for AQ. Some of Timimi’s motions seek information on whether he was subject to surveillance by the NSA prior to his 2005 trial. Brinkema suggested Friday that part of the answer to those concerns is so highly classified that she is the only person at the court who is allowed to see it, even though a number of other personnel are cleared to see top secret information.
Niqnaq 