FBI Discriminates against Arab agent.

[Limelight]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A high-ranking Arab-American FBI agent has filed a suit against the bureau, the Department of Justice, and two top officials, alleging discrimination and reprisal based on his national origin.

The suit was filed Friday in a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Bassem Youssef, an FBI agent for 15 years. A U.S. citizen born in Cairo, Egypt, Youssef seeks compensatory damages as well as other relief.

Youssef's suit gives evidence of a highly respectable career as an FBI agent who, familiar with the culture and customs of the Arab world, helped bridge the gap between U.S. intelligence and its Middle Eastern counterparts, establishing important relationships in the years leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

But in 2000, when Youssef returned from several years as the FBI's legal attaché in Saudi Arabia, Youssef said he hit a "glass ceiling." FBI officials excluded him from counterterrorism work and limited his work assignments, despite his experience and expertise, because of discrimination, he says, based on his national origin.

~~Snip~~

Youssef said he worked extensively in counterterrorism and counterintelligence prior to the September 11 attacks, and played major roles in high-profile terrorism investigations like the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing; the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya; the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and the Osama bin Laden investigation.

In 1993, he received praise for his "professionalism" during a meeting with Egyptian officials which led to better relations between the FBI and Egyptian police in investigating Egyptian terrorists in the United States, he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/20/fbi.bias.suit/

Nice to see the folks who claim to want to keep us safe aren't afraid to let their own bigotry get in the way of protecting us from the other guys who want to protect us, but obviously should cuz they're name sounds too funny for them to be on our side.:sarcasm:

[Duer 157099]

1. If I had to hazard a guess...

it would be that this somehow has something to do with the content of Peter Lance's book, Triple Cross in which he slams our intelligence agencies for not having effectively used the spies they already had on board. And it had nothing to do with discrimination, imho. This suit, however, might seek to make it seem so.