Posted on 05/26/2002 1:02:57 AM PDT by Spar
F.B.I. Agent Says Superior Altered Report, Foiling Inquiry
Sat May 25, 8:53 AM ET
By JAMES RISEN The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 24 A senior F.B.I. agent in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today.
Coleen Rowley, an agent and counsel in the F.B.I.'s Minneapolis field office, wrote in a 13-page letter received this week by the joint Congressional committee investigating the terrorist attacks that changes in the search warrant application made it all but impossible to convince the F.B.I.'s national security lawyers to pursue court authorization for the search. The identity of the supervisor at F.B.I. headquarters mentioned in Ms. Rowley's letter could not be determined.
Officials who have seen Ms. Rowley's letter say it accuses the supervisor of altering the application to play down the significance of information provided by French intelligence officials about Mr. Moussaoui's links to Islamic extremists.
Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested in Minnesota on Aug. 16 on immigration-related charges after an employee of a local flight school notified the F.B.I. that he was acting suspiciously while taking flight lessons. F.B.I. agents in Minneapolis repeatedly questioned Mr. Moussaoui in late August, and one F.B.I. agent accused him of being a terrorist. But the F.B.I. did not obtain a search warrant to examine his computer and other belongings until after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites).
Mr. Moussaoui has since been indicted on charges connected with the attacks.
Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, the co-chairmen of the joint committee investigating the terrorist attacks, said today that they were planning to closely examine Ms. Rowley's accusations that officials at F.B.I. headquarters obstructed efforts to aggressively investigate the Moussaoui case.
Central to the dispute between Minneapolis and F.B.I. headquarters over the Moussaoui search warrant application was the quality of intelligence the bureau had received from the French intelligence service about Mr. Moussaoui.
According to Ms. Rowley's letter and other bureau officials, the Minneapolis field office believed that the French report on Mr. Moussaoui provided enough troubling information about his ties to Islamic extremism to go to court to obtain a search warrant under the federal law that allows the government to carry out searches and surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases. Under the statute, investigators do not have to show that a subject committed a crime, only that they have reason to believe the suspect is engaged in terrorist activity or espionage on behalf of a foreign power or a terrorist organization.
But headquarters officials did not believe the French report was sufficient to justify a search warrant. F.B.I. officials said today that the French report showed that Mr. Moussaoui was an Islamic extremist, but did not reveal any direct links to specific terrorist groups. The French report revealed that Mr. Moussaoui had a close friend who had fought and died with Islamic separatist fighters battling the Russians in Chechnya (news - web sites), but F.B.I. headquarters believed that connection was too indirect to link Mr. Moussaoui to terrorism.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) have also played down the significance of the French information, saying that it did not provide conclusive proof of Mr. Moussaoui's terrorist ties.
In her letter, Ms. Rowley states that F.B.I. headquarters did not take the Minneapolis agents seriously when they made their search warrant request, and that headquarters officials were too dismissive of the quality of the French information. Out of frustration, officials in the Minneapolis field office called directly to the F.B.I.'s legal attaché in Paris in an effort to obtain more French information on Mr. Moussaoui. The agents in Minneapolis also went around F.B.I. headquarters and contacted counterterrorism experts at the C.I.A. to further build their case, an action that prompted a reprimand from F.B.I. headquarters.
In her letter, Ms. Rowley was especially critical of the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, whom she wrote had made "misleading" public statements on how the F.B.I. handled the Moussaoui case both before and after Sept. 11, according to officials who have read her letter. She asserted that Mr. Mueller had been covering up for the bureau on the Moussaoui case since the attacks.
"Certain facts have been omitted, downplayed, glossed over, or mischaracterized," Ms. Rowley said, referring to Mr. Mueller's public statements since the hijackings, said officials who have copies of the letter.
The Rowley letter has sent shock waves through the F.B.I. and has seriously damaged Mr. Mueller's standing with the Congressional committee just as it is preparing for it first hearings.
Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss announced today that the joint panel would hold its first closed hearing on June 4, and that it planned public hearings in late June, and Mr. Mueller and the C.I.A.'s director, George J. Tenet, would be asked to testify in those open hearings.
Officials said that particularly damaging for the F.B.I. director was Ms. Rowley's assertion that either intentionally or unintentionally, Mr. Mueller has since Sept. 11 directed people at the bureau to muddy the waters in their public statements about the Moussaoui case.
In her letter, Ms. Rowley criticizes assertions by F.B.I. leaders that the bureau's failure to act on the Moussaoui case and other clues last summer did not make a difference in preventing the attacks. She said that if the same officials at F.B.I. headquarters who handled the search warrant request from the Minneapolis office had been aware of a July memo from an agent in the F.B.I.'s Phoenix office warning that terrorists connected with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) might be trying to go to American flight schools, the Moussaoui case would have been handled differently.
Most likely nothing will be done. At the very most, one scapegoat or fallguy will be offered up, but I doubt that very much.
I find this statement unacceptable in a free society where accountability is the only weapon to prevent a drift into totalitarianism.
Specially now, when there are a series of critical decisions that must be made in the near future both domestically and internationally.
My solution as C.E.O. would be if the individual cannot be identified, the whole department must be replaced.
Think... immigration, security, terrorism, budget deficits... bloated-bureaucracy-business-as-usual is not an option.
We need a new party which can clearly articulate and express willingness to attack all these immediate clear-and-present-danger problems.
So far, the CIA is winning ------
From the L.A. Times ---- "America's long-troubled spy service is ramping up at its fastest rate since the Vietnam War era. Money is pouring in--$1 billion so far, with more expected. So are bugged conversations, satellite photos and other raw intelligence about Al Qaeda cells and operations around the world.
"Today, the year 2002, I have more spies stealing more secrets than at any time in the history of the CIA," Jim Pavitt, head of the agency's clandestine service, told a Duke University Law School conference last month. Among the CIA spies: an Afghan aide to Osama bin Laden who says he was paid nearly $50,000 to report on the Saudi dissident's terrorism organization, Al Qaeda, and recently was asked to pose as a prisoner and go as an informant to the U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
<<<<<< snip...>>>>>> And after the attacks last fall, Bush quickly authorized the use of targeted killings and other no-holds-barred tactics that had long been restricted.
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, the CIA's executive director, told a group of Washington investment advisors in October that the Bush administration had "showered" the CIA with cash and power. "Today, there is only one rule, and that is, there are no rules," he said."
We posted numerous articles about Mueller's history on this forum when he was nominated and with only the exceptions of the rah rah pom poms it was a strong consensus that Mueller was going to be "a bad thing" for us all.
The legacy of Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller.
I'm wondering what rock that cockroach Louis Freeh is hiding under, haven't heard a single peep out of him in a long time.
Unbelievable! Apparently the FBI doesn't just rewrite 302s. (remember Patrick Knowlton in the Vince Foster case)
Hmmm... It wouldn't be all agent-attorneys, because apparently Crowley herself was/is an agent and a staff attorney:
[from section 3:] The problem with chalking this all up to the "20-20 hindsight is perfect" problem, (which I, as all attorneys who have been involved in deadly force training or the defense of various lawsuits are fully appreciative of), is that this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences. ...[from section 4:] Leaked news accounts which said the Minneapolis Legal Counsel (referring to me) ...
[from the last paragraph:] I have been an FBI agent for over 21 years and, for what it's worth, have never received any form of disciplinary action throughout my career. ...
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