Mark Rossini

The PBS show Nova included segments from interviews Rossini, who described his experience serving as one of the two FBI liaisons to an interagency team assigned to track Osama bin Laden, and his contacts. Rossini described being aware that two dangerous associates of bin Laden, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, had valid US visas, but that his CIA manager stopped him from passing the information to the FBI headquarters.[3] He was advised that if he informed his FBI colleagues he would be breaking the law. The two men turned out to be hijackers of American Airlines flight 77 on 9/11.

Mark Rossini, was then an FBI counter-terrorism agent detailed to the CIA. He was assigned the task of evaluating a Czech intelligence report that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attack on the World Trade Towers.

Cheney repeatedly invoked the report as evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11. “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia  last April,” Cheney said on Meet the Press on Dec. 9, 2001.

But the evidence used to support the claim–a supposed photograph of Atta in Prague the day of the alleged meeting—had already been debunked by Rossini. He analyzed the photo and immediately saw it was bogus: the picture of the Czech “Atta” looked nothing like the real terrorist. It was a conclusion he relayed up the chain, assuming he had put the matter to rest.

Feds busted the FBI-agent boyfriend of actress Linda Fiorentino after he stuck his nose into sensitive files about disgraced private eye Anthony Pellicano - the subject of a screenplay being penned by the "Last Seduction" beauty.

Veteran agent Mark Rossini, 47, was charged with five misdemeanor counts of illegally accessing FBI com puters between January and July 2007.