Book Review | Triple Cross: How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI--and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him

CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
Studies in Intelligence, 2007

Triple Cross: How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI--and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him

Peter Lance, (New York: Regan Books, 2006), 604 pp., endnotes, appendices, photos, index.

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

In his first book, 1000 Years For Revenge, Peter Lance presented documentary evidence available to the FBI that he judged might have prevented the 9/11 tragedy had it not been ignored. One item concerned a source recruited by the Bureau as an al Qa'ida penetration: an ex-Egyptian army officer and member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad named Ali Mohammed. Lance reported that Ali had become an American citizen, a member of the US Army Special Forces, and a contract agent of the CIA before his dismissal for having unauthorized contacts with Hizballah. He had trained al Qa'ida terrorists in Khost, Afghanistan, and served as bin Laden's bodyguard in Sudan. When bin Laden moved to Afghanistan, Al Mohammed helped with the arrangements. In between, he was a weapons trainer for an Al Qa'ida cell in New York City headed by Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Sheikh. His final contribution was to help plan the embassy bombing in Nairobi. He was arrested after the Nairobi bombing and confessed his al Qa'ida links. Case closed.

Left unexplained in that first book were the reasons for his arrest and his punishment. At the invitation of the 9/11 Commission Chairman, Thomas Kean, Lance told the Ali story and others to a staff investigator in secret session. When the final report was published, Lance's testimony was not included and Ali Mohammed was not mentioned. Triple Cross is Lance's attempt to explain the reasons.

Lance tries to make Ali Mohammad the central thread in Triple Cross, but he is only partially successful. It is a complicated book with many new names--a graphic in the center helps sort them out. Lance marshals new data to argue that if only Ali Mohammed had been better handled and debriefed, 9/11 might not have happened and bin Laden would have been caught or neutralized. For example the FBI eventually learned that Ali Mohammed's 1998 confession and detailed debriefings produced only lies--nothing checked out. Indeed, Ali has never been sentenced and remains in witness protection. These facts tends to weaken the argument that he was central to the counterterrorism program.

Lance does present a new analysis of what happened in the ABLE DANGER data mining operation, and he tables indications that the destruction of TWA Flight 800 east of New York City in July 1996 was a terrorist act, not the result of the internal fuel tank explosion the National Transportation Safety Board concluded was the most probable cause.

In the midst of all this Lance tells of an FBI sting against Ramsi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, that involved a mafia inmate who helped the FBI monitor Yousef's telephone calls--calls that he was not supposed to have been making--to his fellow terrorists overseas. Lance leaves the significance of this operation dangling.

In the end, Lance asks if we will "ever know the truth?" (468) Of course, the answer is "maybe." He is satisfied with knowing more now and Triple Cross does provide new dots, but unfortunately it is by no means clear how they connect.