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DOJ "Keystone Kops" Demonstrate They Haven't a Clue
Newsweek, March 10, 2004
In the frantic months after September 11, Justice Department prosecutors arranged to release an indicted Detroit crack dealer after the man claimed he could help the FBI locate a higher priority target: Osama bin Laden. But once the accused trafficker, Nageeb Al-Haidari, was free, he allegedly continued to deal drugs—and then fled the country without providing any useful information about the Al Qaeda leader, federal law-enforcement sources tell NEWSWEEK. “He’s a fugitive,” says Michael Liebson, the assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit who had originally overseen Al-Haidari’s case when asked this week about the accused crack dealer’s status. “I have no idea of his whereabouts.” On Oct. 16, 2001, while Haidari was residing in a Detroit jail and about to be sentenced on the state charges, the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit sent a letter to Paul Bernier, the assistant Wayne County prosecutor who was handling his case, urging that the defendant be freed. The letter said that Al Haidari “has recently provided valuable information to federal law enforcement” and that the “level and extent of his cooperation would be greatly enhanced if he were to be released on bond, pending sentencing” on the state charges. The letter is signed by the U.S. attorney Alan Gershel and Eric M. Straus, a top prosecutor in the office. It appears to have done the trick: Court records show that Al-Haidari was soon released. Convicted on two of the three counts he was facing (fleeing a police officer and possessing a loaded firearm in a car), he was sentenced to three years probation. Gershel and Straus did not return phone calls from NEWSWEEK seeking comment. Robert Pertuso, the FBI agent in charge of Al-Haidari, was warned by another informant that Al-Haidari was about to flee to Yemen. Pertuso is a key figure in the ongoing inquiry into the handling of informants by federal law-enforcement in Detroit—one aspect of the internal Justice Department probe. A flamboyant 26-year veteran agent who prided himself on his ability to recruit valuable informants, Pertuso recently retired amid a barrage of embarrassing disclosures that rocked the Detroit FBI office. In one case, the Detroit News reported that another of Pertuso’s informants—Marwan Farhat, Al-Haidari’s co-defendant in the crack dealing case—had written a letter claiming that he had spied on 242 Muslims, stole mail and broke the law at Pertuso’s direction.

******Our Law Enforcement at work - Don't you feel SAFER now?*********

posted by A Curmudgeon 6:40 AM