These "senior officials" in the FBI are the Clinton holdovers who thwarted any investigation of actual ME terrorists in the US since '94. Bush's executive branch is loaded with Clinton holdovers. Every single one of them could have been forced into early retirement by now, or reassigned to other departments to get them out of the loop.
This maintenance of the status quo in the DoJ and other federal departments has been every bit as disappointing as Bush's cabinet choices.