FBI was in direct contact with Bin Laden

The FBI placed a source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and ascertained that the al-Qaeda leader was looking to finance terror attacks in the US, according to a media report.

The information the FBI gleaned back then was so specific that it helped thwart a terrorist plot against a Masonic lodge in Los Angeles, according to a court testimony in a little - noticed employment dispute case cited by The Washington Times.

"It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al-Qaeda, directly involved," Edward J Curran, a former top official in the FBI's Los Angeles office, told the court in support of a discrimination lawsuit filed against the bureau by his former agent Bassem Youssef.

This information is missing from the official investigations of the September 11, 2001, the report in the Times said.

Curran gave the testimony in 2010 to an essentially empty courtroom, and thus it escaped notice from the media or terrorism specialists.

The Times was recently alerted to the existence of the testimony while working on a broader report about al-Qaeda's origins.