Yousef Wanted to Cooperate, New York Times Reports
In today's New York Times is this article by Ben Weiser about some information that has come to light in a memorandum written by District Court Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy this week.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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In today's New York Times is this article by Ben Weiser about some information that has come to light in a memorandum written by District Court Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy this week. Weiser writes:
Federal officials had to be intrigued a few years ago when they learned that the terrorist Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who is serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Colorado for orchestrating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other crimes, wanted to cooperate with the authorities. ... David N. Kelley, the lead prosecutor in Mr. Yousef’s 1997 trial in the trade center attack, said he had no knowledge of what Mr. Yousef might have wanted to tell the government, nor did he believe Mr. Yousef knew about the Sept. 11 plot in advance. But, he said, Mr. Yousef could be in a position to provide new details about [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed’s early associations with terrorists, “schemes he was cooking up at the time, including flying planes into tall buildings” and early discussions about ways “to exploit perceived security vulnerabilities in the U.S.” Mr. Kelley added that Mr. Yousef also had a history of misleading the authorities while in custody, and of “trying to fool them” about different plots. The recent intrigue spilled into public view after Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy of Federal District Court, who handled both Yousef terrorism trials in the 1990s, made a disclosure in a brief memorandum about a dispute over legal fees being paid to Mr. Yousef’s lawyer.Yousef ultimately reneged on his offer.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
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