The various commissions and internal agency reviews that examined the "intelligence failure" of 9/11 blamed institutional habits and personal rivalries among CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) officials for preventing them from sharing information. "I feel like I failed, even though I know it was the system and the intelligence community on the whole that failed." "This is the pain that never escapes me, that haunts me each and every day of my life," he wrote in the draft of a book he shared with me.
If he had disobeyed the gag order, the nearly 3,000 Americans slaughtered on 9/11 would probably still be alive. FBIĪll these years later, Rossini still regrets complying with that command. Khalid Almihdhar was one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. The station's rules prohibited them from talking to anyone outside their top-secret group. Incredulous, Miller and Rossini had to back down. When Miller drafted a report for FBI headquarters, a CIA manager in the top-secret unit told him to hold off. That the CIA did block him and Doug Miller, a fellow FBI agent assigned to the "Alec Station," the cover name for CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, from notifying bureau headquarters about the terrorists has been told before, most notably in a 2009 Nova documentary on PBS, " The Spy Factory." Rossini and Miller related how they learned earlier from the CIA that one of the terrorists (and future hijacker), Khalid al-Mihdhar, had multi-entry visas on a Saudi passport to enter the United States. He's been at the center of one of the enduring mysteries of 9/11: Why the CIA refused to share information with the FBI (or any other agency) about the arrival of at least two well-known Al-Qaeda operatives in the United States in 2000, even though the spy agency had been tracking them closely for years. "Mark," she told him, "you've got to get to the bottom of this." He'd run into a close family friend who'd lost relatives at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He quickly told me of an encounter the day before on a street in Yonkers, where he keeps an apartment. wiretapper extraordinaire Anthony Pellicano-cost him his career in 2008 and nearly landed him in jail. A boneheaded move-showing confidential FBI documents to his actress-flame Linda Fiorentino, who said she was researching a script about L.A. "Well, you know, I still miss the job," he said, shaking his head.
"Feeling good."īut when I ask him how he's really doing, the light in his eyes dims. Rossini was drinking club soda instead of the expensive cabernets he quaffed when I first knew him as a high-flying FBI official in Washington a decade ago, when he was a special assistant to the bureau's chief spokesman, John Miller (now with the New York City Police Department). He's spending most of his time in Switzerland, where he works for a private global corporate-security firm. He told me his life had finally taken a turn for the better. It does not store any personal data.Just before Christmas, former FBI special agent Mark Rossini greeted me with his usual good cheer when we met for drinks in a midtown Manhattan restaurant. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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