FBI, CIA back under microscope

WASHINGTON - It's been a wild roller-coaster ride for the FBI and CIA since Sept. 11.

Accused of massive intelligence failures immediately after the terrorist attacks, the agencies largely silenced critics with effective performances overseas and at home hunting down al-Qaeda cells, thwarting new attacks and helping topple the Taliban government that shielded Osama bin Laden.

Congressional anger is back with a vengeance, stoked by the revelation that President Bush was advised in August that al-Qaeda terrorists might seek to hijack airplanes.

That advisory coupled with the government's failure to share or consider several bits of information that some contend could have led U.S. authorities to connect the dots before Sept. 11 has members of Congress in a lather.

"There was a lot of information. I believe and others believe, if it had been acted on properly, we may have had a different situation on Sept. 11," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Though the House and Senate intelligence committees have for months been jointly investigating the events leading up to Sept. 11, many congressional Democrats are demanding broader hearings to look at actions taken by the FBI, the CIA and now the White House.

"We need to know what the White House knew, when they knew it, what they did about it, and why this didn't come to light till now," House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said Friday.

Democrats on the Senate and House judiciary committees are demanding that their panels conduct hearings. And a bipartisan group of senators that long ago introduced legislation that would set up a Pearl Harbor-type commission to investigate the Sept. 11 tragedy last week renewed its call for an independent inquiry.

"The questions about what was known prior to Sept. 11 continue to grow and multiply each day. We cannot leave an investigation of this matter to a behind-closed-doors review by the intelligence community and intelligence committees," House Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote to the committee's chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.

White House and GOP officials contend that Democrats have latched onto the issue in an election-year bid to dent Mr. Bush's high popularity ratings. In a speech Thursday in New York, Vice President Dick Cheney warned Democrats "to not seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions ... that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9-11."

"Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war," he said.

"Cooler heads have to prevail here. It's not about assigning blame," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and the second-ranking Democrat in the House. "What we want to do is prevent it [a terrorist attack] from happening again."

Partisan wrangling aside, the CIA and particularly the FBI are in for far sharper scrutiny than was the case even a few days ago. For the FBI, it could mark a return to the dark days of 2001, when the bureau was under fire for a series of missteps the embarrassing Robert Hanssen spy scandal, the mishandling of documents in the Timothy McVeigh case, the troubled Wen Ho Lee investigation, lost guns and laptop computers, and more.

Rusty Capps, a retired FBI counterterrorism expert, is skeptical that a congressional investigation will be thoughtful and comprehensive.

"They haven't done it in the past," he said. Congress is "first and foremost a political vehicle that's going to take and make political hay when and where it can."

Rather than investigating what the president knew and when he knew it, Mr. Capps said, Congress should ask why the U.S. government still lacks a centralized operation to take in the intelligence collected by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and other government agencies and analyze it for the president and other top leaders.

Failure to share information and get it to the proper sources is at the center of much of the ire toward the FBI.

The bureau did not act on or share with the CIA a July 2001 classified memo in which a Phoenix FBI agent warned that al-Qaeda might be using U.S. flight schools as training grounds for terrorists. The agent suggested that the FBI canvass the nation's 2,000-plus flight schools to learn more about Middle Eastern students.

Appearing May 8 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Robert Mueller faced a barrage of questions about the memo, which has only been shared with the CIA in recent weeks.

"I believe the Phoenix memo is going to come to be one of the most important documents in our national debate about whether we did enough to protect America from the attack of Sept. 11," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told the director.

Mr. Mueller acknowledged that headquarters should have paid more attention to the memo. "Do I wish that we had more aggressively followed up on that suggestion at the time? Yes. Are we taking steps to address what the failings or weaknesses were prior to Sept. 11? Absolutely," he said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats appeared particularly perplexed that the Phoenix memo wasn't shared widely with FBI field offices particularly in Minneapolis, where agents arrested flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui in August.

Despite a furious investigation into Mr. Moussauoi's background, Minneapolis agents couldn't tie him to terrorism before Sept. 11. Officials call the Frenchman the would-be 20th hijacker and have charged him with conspiracy in the attacks. His trial is scheduled to begin this fall.

Mr. Mueller revealed to the committee that a Minneapolis FBI agent speculated in a memo before Sept. 11 that Mr. Moussaoui could be the type to crash a plane into the World Trade Center information also not shared with the intelligence community.

There is widespread agreement that the FBI and CIA, which historically have had strained relations, have worked much more closely particularly since Sept. 11.

While acknowledging that the relationship "has never been better," a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The problem is not so much the inability of the FBI to share information with the CIA. The problem is the inability of the FBI to share information with the FBI."

FBI officials didn't return calls seeking comment. But Mr. Mueller has said that the fundamental reorganization he is implementing to shift the FBI away from a traditional reactive law enforcement posture to one of prevention and disruption is designed in part to improve information sharing within the FBI. The effort has strengthened the counterterrorism and counterintelligence division at headquarters.

Meanwhile, the FBI is facing increasing demands from Capitol Hill to declassify and release the Phoenix memo. Mr. Shelby said the document would show that the FBI was "either asleep or inept or both."

The sharp language is a key departure from recent months, when lawmakers from both parties kept criticism of the FBI to a minimum and lavished praise on Mr. Mueller, especially for his reorganization efforts.

Mr. Mueller, who took the reins of the FBI a week before the terrorist attacks, has moved rapidly to beef up the bureau's antiquated technology, hire agents fluent in Arabic and other languages, and bring in analysts capable of sifting through the reams of intelligence acquired in Afghanistan and around the world.

"I think when [lawmakers] look into things, they will find Mueller is doing exactly what anybody would want him to do," said Mr. Kessler, author of the newly released The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI .

...that's just the way of it, I'm afraid.

That's why my panties are in a bunch over the RATS trying to burn Bush with this issue. If they are trying to say they don't understand how this system works, they are disingenuous at best--and flat out freaking LIARS at worst.

"...and flat out freaking LIARS at worst."

They're the worst.

...trust me. ;^)

I'm sure it'll be posted here by one of FR's gadflys soon; however, until it does?
At The Sludge Report the twerp has a New York Slimes headline attempting to DESPERATELY drag JAshcroft into their psuedo-scandal!!

Yup.
I couldn't make the up; however, how come *I* didn't see this coming is what I'm left wondering. :o)

Miss the POTUS??
~Go after his AG.
Miss the AG?
~Go after the POTUS' SoS!
Miss the POTUS' SoS?
~Go after the POTUS' Chief of Staff...& so on.

Eventually?
They'll be after Congressional Pages working for various & assorted conservatives.
HA!!!

...& so goes life for the poor, pathetic Liberal-Socialists slimin' 'round at The New York Slimes sewer.

"I don't see this as a glitch in our intelligence services but rather as a deliberate dismantling of their effectiveness."

Exactly. The Clintons destroyed our national security because America is something they hate.

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