Seattle Times: More About London Bomber Investigation the U.S. Blocked

This is truly heinous. If not for the U.S. and the Dept of (In)Justice under John Ashcroft, London might have been able to prevent the bombings in London 2.5 weeks ago.

Again and again, we are presented with information that shows the Bushies actually blunder and block efforts to really cut down on terror acts, use the Patriot Act for truly stupid purposes, defeat the efforts of many operatives like Valerie Plame.

A few of these, you understand. But after years of watching these mount higher and higher, you start to wonder if the terror is rooted in the Bushies themselves and that's why they have to screw up all attempts to get to the bottom of what is really happening. After all, they don't want the rest of the world to realize they ARE the Terror.

Please, tell me I'm paranoid. Err... that I'm wrong. I hope I am. But...

The Justice Department blocked efforts by its prosecutors in Seattle in 2002 to bring criminal charges against Haroon Aswat, according to federal law-enforcement officials who were involved in the case.

British authorities suspect Aswat of taking part in the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 and prompted an intense worldwide manhunt for him.

But long before he surfaced as a suspect there, federal prosecutors in Seattle wanted to seek a grand-jury indictment for his involvement in a failed attempt to set up a terrorist-training camp in Bly, Ore., in late 1999. In early 2000, Aswat lived for a couple of months in central Seattle at the Dar-us-Salaam mosque.

A federal indictment of Aswat in 2002 would have resulted in an arrest warrant and his possible detention in Britain for extradition to the United States.

"It was really frustrating," said a former Justice Department official involved in the case. "Guys like that, you just want to sweep them up off the street."

British intelligence officials now think that in the days and hours before the July 7 bombings, Aswat was in cellphone contact with at least two of the four suicide bombers, according to The Times of London.

Aswat was a highly public aide to Abu Hamza al Masri, the militant cleric whose North London mosque was a hotbed of radical Islamist preaching. In 1999, Aswat came to the attention of the FBI and federal prosecutors here as part of the investigation into the Bly camp and its founder, former Seattle entrepreneur James Ujaama.

As law-enforcement officials in Seattle prepared to take that case to a federal grand jury here, they had hoped to indict Aswat, Ujaama, Abu Hamza and another associate, according to former and current law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the case.

But that plan was rejected by higher-level officials at Justice Department headquarters, who wanted most of the case to be handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City, according to sources involved with the case.