U.S. Kept Unauthorized Terrorist Ties

Certain U.S. officials maintained connections with a Muslim terrorist group without proper authorization or oversight. Thomas McHale, a decorated detective for Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, kept up ties with the Jundallah terrorist group, which is based in Iran. He was a point person with a Jundallah informant, who had been on FBI payrolls since 1996, but he did not have CIA authorization for all of his interactions. While the Feds work with terrorist informants, this interaction with Jundallah was different because “the objective was to obtain information, former officials said, not to combat the group or stop its attacks,” as the New York Times reported. For example, it appears McHale had some knowledge of a 2007 suicide bombing in Iran that killed 11 Iran Revolution Guard members before it occurred. U.S. officials deny they ever had enough information to properly thwart these attacks, but the unusually close ties with their Jundallah source indicate that such a situation was a potential risk of their arrangement. “I'm not sure what to say about this case,” said New Jersey Representative Rush Holt. “Everything is plausible in the freewheeling intelligence world.”