Posted on 06/06/2002 8:14:02 AM PDT by browardchad
WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress on Thursday his agency needs to devote additional agents, money and time as it works to meet its "paramount mission of prevention" in an age of terrorism.
"The need for change was apparent even before Sept. 11. It has become more urgent since then," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a nationally televised hearing. "I believe our culture must change as well."
The FBI chief spoke as President Bush readied a prime time speech to announce changes in the system he establish last fall in response to the attacks that killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Bowing to persistent calls from Congress, officials said Bush would propose creation of a new Cabinet agency to act as a clearinghouse for terrorism intelligence.
These officials described the proposal as one of the biggest restructuring efforts since World War II.
In addition, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were meeting behind closed doors to continue their own review of the unprecedented Sept. 11 attacks that shattered the nation's complacency about terrorism, as well as thousands of lives.
Sen. Patrick Leahy gavelled the Senate committee hearing to order in a cavernous committee room. The Vermont Democrat complimented Mueller for his candor in the months since the terrorist attacks, particularly for conceding that it is impossible to say if the Sept. 11 attacks might have been prevented if "all the dots had been connected and all the leads had been followed."
At the same time, Leahy expressed unhappiness that Congress had not been informed about the existence of a memo alerting FBI officials that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in Arizona.
Mueller had previously announced plans to reorganize the FBI to devote greater resources to anti-terrorism, including the need to improve its ability to analyze available intelligence. "This Congress is all too familiar with the FBI's analytical shortcomings," he said. "...Building subject area expertise or developing an awareness of the potential value of an isolated piece of information does not occur overnight," he said. "It is developed over time."
Mueller said the need for FBI reform is urgent because "those who want to hurt us remain highly motivated, well-funded and spread throughout the world."
Apart from Mueller and Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, the panel was hearing from Coleen Rowley, an FBI lawyer in Minneapolis who sent the FBI director a scathing letter on May 21 saying he and other senior FBI officials had skewed facts in their post-Sept. 11 accounts of what they had known before the attacks and were trying to "circle the wagons."
Rowley also claimed FBI headquarters shelved her requests in the weeks before the attacks to aggressively investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, who was being held in Minnesota and now is charged as an accomplice in the hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people.
"The people (in the FBI) that knew what was going on or had suspicions what was going on did not brief him properly and their heads ought to roll," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Thursday on CBS' "The Early Show."
Congressional aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Judiciary Committee Democrats planned to press Fine on when he knew about the so-called Phoenix memo.
The aides say Fine knew about that memo on Sept. 29, days after the attacks. Congress found out about the memo, called an electronic communication, or EC, last month.
The Justice Department's inspector general's office "conducted a preliminary inquiry in the fall of 2001 into the handling of the Phoenix EC at FBI headquarters," Fine confirmed in prepared testimony provided to The Associated Press.
Paul Martin, spokesman for the inspector general, said seven interviews on the Phoenix memo were conducted with FBI headquarters officials in November and December. In his prepared testimony, Fine said the IG then referred the matter to the congressional intelligence committees.
The Washington headquarters agent to whom the memo was addressed, David Frasca, says he didn't see the document until after Sept. 11, when shown it by Justice Department investigators.
The Senate committee also was focusing on the reorganization plan announced by Mueller last week that would turn the agency more toward terrorism prevention and on new rules issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft giving the FBI more leeway to monitor public places.
The bureau plans to move a number of key decision-making powers away from headquarters to the field offices and wants to hire some 900 new agents by September, mostly specialists in computers, foreign languages and sciences. Hundreds of agents will be reassigned to counterterrorism.
Thursday's hearing follows recent news reports that the FBI and CIA failed to respond adequately to warning signs of possible terrorist activity before Sept. 11, including the Moussaoui arrest and information developed by the CIA in early 2000 about two of the hijackers.
FBI headquarters, before Sept. 11, rejected field agents' request to seek a search warrant for Moussaoui's computer. A search done after the Sept. 11 attacks found information on jetliners and crop-dusters. The government grounded crop-dusting planes temporarily because of what it found.
This is SOP for gummint agencies when challenged to produce - more resources. I have another plan: Clean out the dead wood and use the savings for new-hires. Why don't they ever go that route?
Only in American government. If I tried this tactic on my boss I'd find a box on my desk.
<insert government agency name here> Tells Congress His Agency Needs Fewer Agents, Less Money and Less Time
Bush also needs to kick some serious butt to get the CIA, FBI, NSA, INS and other agencies with intelligence or law enforcement duties to cooperate fully with each other, and to do so in a timely manner. One of my greatest fears is that this will not happen, and that we'll wake up one day to find that an American city has been nuked by al-Quaeda. I sincerely hope that it doesn't take a nuclear Pearl Harbor to wake us up.
Did I get that quote right?
While Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida minions were diligently preparing for their murderous mission, the FBI was looking the other way with equal determination. More than twice as many FBI agents were assigned to fighting drugs (2,500) than fighting terrorism (1,151). And a far greater amount of the FBI's financial resources was dedicated to the war on drugs.
Yeah, you got it right. That is the way I read it too.
10-4 on the empire-building mentality. Perhaps in his second term, George W. can get some serious agency eliminations going. Downsizing of the federal monster has to happen if there is to be any chance of significant tax reduction, not to mention preservation of the private sector. At the rate we're going everyone will end up working for the feds. Isn't that a disgusting thought?
I've got a really bad feeling that nothing, short of annihilating the rest of the world, is going to keep anyone from committing acts of terror in our country, with or without the New and Improved agencies. There's just no way, without putting an electronic tether on every single individual who is already here and putting up 20 ft. electrified, barbed wire, monitored fences on all the borders and shorelines. No way. I used to have more confidence in our government, but after all that's been revealed these last few weeks, WE look like an Abbott and Costello movie. Who's on first.... God help us.
Not to mention he was left with a bunch of people that were clintonites many of whom have since retired or quit to "spend more time with their families!" You don't clean up an agency that has been on a downhill slope overnight! He is right -- they need more agents -- anything to put the clintonite holdovers on notice that their time is up! Why don't they go back and call in Freeh to find out what went wrong -- he was there since 1993 until July of 2001? Would be interesting to hear his take on additional agents!
Just my two cents worth!
Where have I heard this before?
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