Mark Rossini is a former agent with the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

who played a major role in trying to track

al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

before its attacks on the United States on

September 11, 2001 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

Role in tracking al-Qaeda operatives in the US

''The Spy Factory'', an episode of the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of ed ...

series

Nova A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...

, included segments of interviews with Rossini, who described his experience serving as one of the two FBI liaisons to the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

Bin Laden Issue Station The Bin Laden Issue Station, also known as Alec Station, was a standalone unit of the Central Intelligence Agency in operation from 1996 to 2005 dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden and his associates, both before and after the 9/11 attacks. It ...

, an inter-agency team assigned to track Osama bin Laden and his associates. Rossini described being aware in January 2000 that two

members, Nawaf al-Hazmi and

Khalid al-Mihdhar Khalid al-Mihdar ( ar, خالد المحضار, translit=Khālid al-Miḥḍār was a Saudi terrorist hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the September 11 attac ...

, had valid US visas. However, a CIA employee, Michael Anne Casey, stopped him from passing the information to FBI headquarters. Rossini knew that if he reported this information to his FBI colleagues he would be breaking the law. The two men turned out to be hijackers of

American Airlines flight 77 American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled American Airlines domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California. The Bo ...

on 9/11. Rossini also claims

Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency but was deduced by independent inve ...

, a manager at the Bin Laden Issue Station, covered for Casey by telling congressional investigators that she walked from her office to FBI Headquarters to deliver the information about al-Mihdhar having a US visa. FBI log books proved Bikowsky's claim false.

Criminal conviction and resignation from FBI

In late 2008 Rossini pled guilty to five felony counts for criminally accessing records in an FBI database more than 40 times in 2007. Many of the records were related to a federal investigation of

Anthony Pellicano Anthony Pellicano (born March 22, 1944) is a former high-profile Los Angeles private investigator and convicted criminal known as a Hollywood fixer. He served a term of thirty months in a federal prison for illegal possession of explosives, fire ...

, a former high-profile private investigator. At least one of the records was provided by Rossini to associates of Pellicano and was subsequently used in a court filing by Pellicano's attorneys, leading to the discovery of Rossini's involvement. Rossini resigned from the FBI and was sentenced to probation, community service, and a fine by U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola on May 14, 2009.

References

External links

* Chapter Five of this report, pages 223-362, covers information about the Malaysia al-Qaeda meeting and al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar's travel to the US in January 2000. Rossini is called "Malcolm" in the report and his performance is evaluated on pages 356-7. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rossini, Mark Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Year of birth missing (living people) Living people