Bill Murray

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Bill Murray served for thirty years in the CIA including postings as station chief in the Lebanon, Pakistan and Paris.[1]

Al Qaeda warning

Murray allegedly received a French intelligence warning about Al Qaeda activities in 2001.

FRENCH intelligence services warned their US counterparts, eight months before the attacks of September 11, 2001, that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack a US-bound plane, a media report said today.
The information that Osama bin Laden's group, working with Taliban militants and Chechen rebels, had been plotting the move was passed on to Bill Murray, head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Paris bureau, Le Monde daily said.
The paper published a copy of the first page of a five-page document which it said had been handed over to the CIA in January 2001 by the French foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE.[2]

Department of Homeland Security

In 2007, Murray was part of a team of ex-CIA consultants led by Charles Allen which examined the intelligence wing of the Department of Homeland Security.[3]

Niger Uranium

Murray resigned in 2005 after his repeated memos challenging the veracity of informants who were saying Saddam Hussein got uranium from Niger went ignored.[4]

Fereidoun Mahdavi

Murray has identified 'Ali', an Iranian source supported by former Congressman Curt Weldon as Fereidoun Mahdavi, associate of Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Bill Murray, the former CIA station chief in Paris, said that, after interviewing Mahdavi on several occasions and investigating his claims, the CIA determined he was lying. Mahdavi never gave the CIA anything specific about Iran's weapons capability, terrorist activities or any of the other charges.
"He peddled the same stories to several other governments," Murray said. "He is a fabricator."
The CIA set up a clandestine channel of communications for Mahdavi, which he was supposed to use for talking with the agency and for sending information, said several former intelligence officials. He used it only twice, once to repeat vague information he had already supplied, and a second time to try to persuade the CIA to participate in his plot to overthrow the Iranian government.[5]

Right-wing journalist Kenneth Timmerman accused CIA official Stephen Kappes of encouraging Murray to name Mahdavi.[6]

External Resources

References

  1. DHS Intelligence Chief Reaches Out to CIA Friends, by Jeff Stein, CQ Homeland Security, 9 March 2007.
  2. CIA told of al-Qaeda hijack plot before 9/11, news.com.au, 16 April 2007.
  3. DHS Intelligence Chief Reaches Out to CIA Friends, by Jeff Stein, CQ Homeland Security, 9 March 2007.
  4. DHS Intelligence Chief Reaches Out to CIA Friends, by Jeff Stein, CQ Homeland Security, 9 March 2007.
  5. Lawmaker's Book Warns of Iran, by Dana Priest, Washington Post, 9 June 2005.
  6. Kappes clearly wrong man to put at CIA, by Kenneth Timmerman, Human Events,5 June 2006.