Mob slips terror net?

The mob can breathe easier... maybe. Organized crime links to terrorism showed up in a Homeland Security data mining operation, but the program, developed by national weapon lab scientists, was killed because other programs are commercially available cheaper, an HS spokesman said.

The pattern recognition program had been criticized for failing to meet privacy concerns, though the reputed misuse of data appears to have been a trivial technical foul. The data had already been vetted for privacy concerns, but just not for this specific program.

Whether we are witnessing the emergence of a row between feds and mobsters over 9/11 complicity is still a matter of conjecture. Certainly the mob's help was required in making World Trade Center steel disappear so quickly, and in quite a few other areas of the coverup.

In the JFK assassination aftermath, such a feud did break out. The mob backed New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's campaign to nail the CIA in the murder. The mob felt that the CIA, which did indeed carry out the assassination, had been trying to steer attention away from the agency by inferentially suggesting that the Mafia was behind the slaying. (Certainly organized crime at least agreed to the hit and had a major hand in the coverup.) Eventually mob boss Carlos Marcello, who had been named as an assassination suspect by a congressional inquiry, was sent to prison on federal bribery charges in what seemed to be an attempt to placate Warren commission doubters with the notion that the real killer had been locked up.

It's my thinking that Marcello was forced by mob families around the nation to take the dive in order to get the heat off the mob in general following publication of the congressional report.

So even though the mob, the CIA and top oligarchs eventually came to terms, the disagreement lasted for years and was extremely dangerous. Not only did many witnesses die but the feud could have exploded into a gigantic political firestorm at any moment.

Are we witnessing such a situation now? I'd say there's a good chance. Increasingly, serious professionals are publicly voicing severe doubts about official 9/11 claims. If you were a mobster involved -- or even not involved -- in the 9/11 coverup, wouldn't you be jittery? Wouldn't you be likely to protect your interests? Even if you believe in omerta, many of those involved aren't "stand-up guys" in that respect.