LAT/AP: FBI Worries About an Osama-Sopranos Link

FBI Worries About an Osama-Sopranos Link
By PAT MILTON, Associated Press Writer
October 1, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The FBI's top counterterrorism official harbors lots of concerns: weapons of mass destruction, undetected homegrown terrorists and the possibility that old-fashioned mobsters will team up with al-Qaida for the right price.

Though there is no direct evidence yet of organized crime collaborating with terrorists, the first hints of a connection surfaced in a recent undercover FBI operation. Agents stopped a man with alleged mob ties from selling missiles to an informant posing as a terrorist middleman.

That case and other factors are heightening concerns about a real-life episode of the Sopranos teaming with Osama bin Laden's followers....

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Organized crime syndicates could facilitate money transfers or laundering, human smuggling, identification fraud or explosives and weapons acquisitions, officials said....

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A contract study produced recently for the Pentagon and obtained by the AP warned that the potential for organized crime assisting terrorists is growing.

"Although terrorism and organized crime are different phenomena, the important fact is that terrorist and criminal networks overlap and cooperate in some enterprises," the study said....The mob's potential interest in helping a terrorist has nothing to do with ideology or sympathy but with greed, said Matt Heron, head of New York FBI's organized crime unit....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top14oct01,0,7723232.story

at airports and questioned. This has been going on for a few years - I am sure it will only get worse.

It's all about greed, power and money.

The Bush family/Osama gang. But would the Tone go so low?

This is just like those horseshit stories about a supposed link between the MS-13 gang having Al Qaeda ties. No such evidence has ever surfaced.

You could say that about Dick Cheney & Halliburton, you could say that about Prescott Bush, you could say that about the Iran-Contra WH gang...

Hell, I bet the Mafia would think twice about horning in on Carlyle Group turf. Even they're not THAT connected.

What idiocy.

So the mob is going to assist the terrorists in bombing their own town?

They must get better shit in DC than I used to get in college.

This is just another excuse to tear away at domestic civil liberties.

Fuck these crooks.

This is lockstep with the recent torture habeas corpus legislation. The administration is trying to broaden the definition of "enemy combatant" to apply to US citizens on US soil. So martial law will apply to the accused with no judicial review and no habeas corpus rights along with the ability to torture US citizens.

We will start to hear more about such "links" to terror, the more the administration can link to terror, the more it can clamp down on civil liberties and we all know that they have no qualms about abusing such powers.


"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
- James Madison

So they found the situation that they created? Wow. If I were to talk to a repug candidate such as Mark "Screetch" Kennedy and posed as a mobster, would that warrant headlines saying that Kennedy has ties to the mob?

are proudly American and incensed as anyone over 9/11. In the spirit of art imitating life, I'm sure their real life counterparts are no less patriotic.

I have an idea. Let's impeach the Bush administration, throw the book at them and imprison them for life. Then let's get out of the Middle East and make war reparations for our crimes there. This will go further in stopping Al Queda than any other half assed cloak and dagger scheme ever will.

Why? Because once the rank and file people of the Middle East realize we are no longer a threat to them and their culture, they themselves will put those Jihadist gangs out of business.

Then it all rolls downhill from there.

Edited to add:

Of course, I was being sarcastic above, but I just realized, the whole mobster/terrorist thing will work very well for them in order to lock up the mob without habeas corpus. Very convenient. So, maybe, I wasn't being so sarcastic after all. But, who cares for a gangster, right? Unless he's not really a gangster... We're in for a hell of a ride.

Coincidence?

http://www.madcowprod.com/

at a nuclear plant or something?

the mob doing business with al qaeda? what'll they come up with next? 'the shriners and hezbollah'? lord, these clowns can't do decent propaganda at all anymore.

so now they've passed the legislation allowed the king - er I mean president unchecked power over anyone connected with terrorism and now they start drawing the lines to all crimes so they can use those powers.

It may indeed be possible that some criminals will take any opportunity to make money and thus either knowingly or not (by not asking questions) play a role in terrorist logistics but the bigger threat to our way of life is this unchecked power the executive branch is wielding.