An Interview With Ken Williams (FBI) (Phoenix Memo)

Kenneth Williams is a retired 35 year veteran from the Federal Bureau of Investigation out of Phoenix who worked in counter-terrorism on foreign and domestic issues that included being involved with two major terrorist attacks on the United States, The Oklahoma City Alfred Murrah bombing and the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks. Williams conducted a covert operation involving an informant who went by the name Henry Ellen, a Phoenix based businessman who was also a Muslim convert and later went by the name, Abu Yousef. He was able to obtain information about suspicious activities by individuals who had contacts with known terrorist cells operating inside the United States, specifically involving Omar Abdel Rahman a radical Egyptian cleric based out of Brooklyn and New Jersey. This information was used to construct a memorandum which would be released to the FBI nationwide, known as the Phoenix Memo.

The memo focused on Zakaria Soubra, a Lebanese flight student in Prescott, Arizona, and his connection with a terror group in Chechnya that had ties to al-Qaeda. Williams alerted his suspicions about radical militants training at flight schools in Arizona and elsewhere in the United States in the memorandum which was sent to numerous cities nationwide. However the report was not read by his superiors until after the September 11th terrorist attacks. He would later testify before the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate regarding terrorism matters and cooperated with the 9/11 Commission. He is also currently assisting the 9/11 victims families in their civil suit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, even after defying the order of the FBI not to for fear of compromising US-Saudi relations.