Ex-FBI Informant Charged With El Paso Cop’s Assault

A former FBI informant who was a key witness in a 2007 terrorism trial is jailed in West Texas for allegedly hitting a police officer with his car during a chase.

Elie Assaad, who does not have an attorney, has been detained at the El Paso County Jail since the March 4 chase. He was awaiting a trial on a drunken driving charge when he fled police during a traffic stop and crashed his vehicle into a patrol car and hit an El Paso Police officer.

Assaad is charged with assaulting a public servant.

He was a prosecution witness in the terrorism trial involving a plot to destroy the former Sears Tower. In 2009 he criticized the FBI on national television for supposedly not following his advice on investigating one of the Sept. 11 hijackers before the attack.

Assaad is the same man who was the focus of an ABC News investigative report that aired on Sept. 10, 2009. In the report, Assaad told Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross that he worked as an FBI informant for 13 years. The Lebanon native claims he infiltrated terrorist cells in Miami and had multiple conversations with Mohamed Atta, one of the masterminds of the 9-11 attacks.

Ross asked Assaad, “You could have stopped the attacks?” “Yes,” replied Assaad.

Assaad claimed in the interview that his FBI handlers told him to leave Atta alone and to instead follow two other men Assaad called “wannabe terrorists.”

As for the incident that led to Assaad’s arrest, El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry told ABC-7 at the time of the incident that it started when an officer tried pulling him over as he exited I-10 west at Porfirio Diaz St. The officer said Assaad refused to stop, continuing on until he reached the UTEP campus. Assaad allegedly drove over a curb on the roundabout at Sun Bowl Dr. and University Ave. and hit a light pole before eventually stopping in the parking lot west of that intersection.

Petry told ABC-7 when the officer, Jorge Gonzalez, got out of his patrol car and approached the SUV, the Assaad allegedly backed his SUV up and hit the police unit and the officer. The officer fired two rounds before the driver took off east on University.

The officer followed the SUV down University. Petry told ABC-7 a female passenger got out of the vehicle when it got stuck on a traffic island on Randolph. Officers detained the passenger and continued pursuing Assaad, who ended up flipping his vehicle over on Rim Rd. and University.

Gonzalez, a six-year veteran of the force, is the same officer who last April, while off-duty, shot a man who allegedly ignored commands to stop his car and nearly hit a second off-duty officer with the car after the two vehicles were involved in a fender bender. The 20-year-old driver was left paralyzed from the shooting.

At the time, the ABC-7 I-Team found that Gonzalez had 18 commendations, but he’d been suspended from the police department three times in his career. He’d also been ordered to take anger management classes.

A preliminary investigation by police said Gonzalez was justified to fire his weapon in the shooting near the East Side McDonald’s. The final report on that incident has not been released.

Gonzalez is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the Assaad incident.