Kevin Fenton at HCGroups: “Dina Corsi Tried to Sabotage Moussaoui Trial”
“Disconnecting the Dots” author Kevin Fenton has recently been contributing again to the History Commons HCGroups blog. Among other posts is “Dina Corsi Tried to Sabotage Moussaoui Trial”, which gives important context for a significant passage from Minneapolis FBI Agent Harry Samit’s 2025 book, “The Zacarias Moussaoui Matter”.
Dina Corsi’s series of pre-9/11 failures were largely ignored by the 9/11 Commission. Corsi started at FBI as a clerical assistant, and in 2001, she was a protege of Tom Wilshire (Wilshere); Rich Blee’s deputy at the CIA Bin Laden Issue Unit aka Alec Station who was detailed to the FBI International Terrorism Operations Section (ITOS) as a senior officer, allegedly to help FBI counter-terrorism efforts, i.e. prevent terrorist attacks such as 9/11. After 9/11, Dina Corsi was rewarded for her ‘failures’, and rose through FBI ranks; in 2017 she’d been promoted to Deputy Intelligence Analyst.
Fenton recalls her centrality in the pre-9/11 “shouting match” incident, in which Corsi and a CIA officer showed FBI agents photos from the January 5–8, 2000 Kuala Lumpur Al Qaeda summit, but wouldn’t tell them why, or who any of the people were, or that attendees Khalid Al-Mihdar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi had been in the US since January 15, 2000.
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Fenton quotes Samit recounting how, right after Moussaoui ruined his own defense at trial by proclaiming himself to be an Al Qaeda operative involved in the 9/11 plot, Corsi and colleagues drafted and delivered a document to FBI senior management, “refuting his testimony about his membership in Al Qaeda and his participation in the plot and calling him a liar.”
Samit writes this was CYA, a selfish career-saving act in which they speculatively and falsely portrayed Moussoui as NOT an Al Qaeda terrorist involved in 9/11, because this would be evidence of their own incompetence.
Per Samit, prosecutors were “outraged”, as this document needed to be turned over to the defense, potentially undermining the prosecution’s case; the DoJ was trying to prove at trial that Moussaoui was guilty of terrorism and related crimes, and now FBI agents were claiming he wasn’t.
Samit doesn’t say how he learned of the document, but notes it’s not among the defense’s trial exhibits, and that he doesn’t know why they didn’t make issue of it at trial.
Read Fenton’s full quote from Samit’s book, and his own analysis of this incident’s likely links to Wilshire: “Dina Corsi Tried to Sabotage Moussaoui Trial”
