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FBI tracked Al-Awlaki in DC

The FBI’s elite surveillance unit tracked the radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to the Pentagon entrance for his controversial luncheon speech to senior Defense Department officials on February 5, 2002, according to newly declassified documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The more than 250 pages of FBI surveillance logs, marked “secret” and obtained by Judicial Watch and reviewed by Fox News, show the FBI’s Special Surveillance Group or SSG, which is reserved for tracking suspected terrorists and espionage cases, trailed the cleric for six hours before watching him enter the Pentagon from the subway with two unidentified woman who escorted him into the building.

Al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011, addressed the luncheon on “Islam and Middle Eastern Politics and Culture.”

According to the FBI log, at 11:30 am “Aulaqi boarded the Metro train, blue line, north for the Pentagon.”   At 11:32, “Aulaqi exited the Metro train, walked through the turnstyle (sic) and greeted two unidentified white females.”   At 11:40 am, “Aulaqi and the two unidentified females walked through the train station, onto the escalator, walked southwest and west adjacent to the Pentagon, up to the steps and walked northeast toward the entrance to the Pentagon.”  And at 12:00pm “Surveillance discontinued at the Pentagon.”

As part of a section also dated February 5 and titled “Analysis/Administrative Data,”  the FBI surveillance logs state that the agent in charge of the Awlaki case was apparently aware of the cleric’s planned luncheon, though it is unknown whether this information was picked up through the monitoring of the cleric’s phone and email, or whether the case agent had learned the information directly from the cleric.

Read more at Fox News