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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
A bipartisan report says the agency is still too cautious in dealing with terror suspects -- and has promoted the agents who bungled the Moussaoui case.
Mar 3, 2003 | Whether we're talking about a nightclub sound manager warning that pyrotechnic displays might cause a concert to turn into a disaster, a NASA safety engineer expressing concern that the Space Shuttle Columbia might break apart two days before it blew up, or two former senators trying to get the president to pay attention to their January 2001 report on a pending terrorist attack, you might think by now we would pay a little more heed to alarms sounded by expert sources.
But a recent warning alarm about the continued ineptitude of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sounded by a bipartisan group of senators last week, went almost entirely unheard. The questions raised were grave, focusing not only on what the FBI did wrong before 9/11, but also on the fact that those same mistakes, systemic problems and incompetent FBI executives continue to plague the bureau, leaving the country vulnerable to another terrorist attack.
"There is a real question as to whether the FBI is capable of carrying out counterintelligence to protect the citizens of the United States," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., said, acknowledging "anger and frustration" in his tone. "Sept. 11 might well have been prevented" had the FBI done its job properly, he said. "What are they doing now to prevent another 9/11?"
Specter was one of three senators on the Judiciary Committee who, on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at the Senate Radio/TV Gallery, said that the FBI still didn't have its house in order, almost a year and a half after Sept. 11. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Specter -- the No. 2 and No. 3 ranking Republicans on the Judiciary Committee -- and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat, issued an interim report.
Its chief criticism: that FBI officials as high-ranking as the director were ignorant of the surveillance law, and were still applying a too-stringent standard for those FBI agents seeking warrants to watch individuals under suspicion.
They also proposed legislation to ensure greater congressional oversight of the FBI's surveillance powers.
Disconcertingly, FBI sources contacted by Salon backed the report. "It's an important report," the FBI's Minneapolis bureau chief, whistleblower Coleen Rowley, told Salon. "Unfortunately, it's not getting as much attention as it deserves." The FBI still needs "to address its inherent endemic problems," says Time Magazine's 2002 Person of the Year. And as the Senate report indicates, much of that improvement has yet to take place.
"They're right on point," seconds former FBI special agent John Vincent, who retired last December after 27 years in the bureau and who reviewed the interim report for Salon. "Everything they said was correct."
A very early draft of the report was leaked to the New York Times last August, at a time when only Specter was involved. A less comprehensive version, the report didn't directly criticize FBI director Robert Mueller III, name specific FBI brass allegedly at fault, or specifically address how the FBI was misunderstanding the applicable surveillance law. This report does. Though all members of the Judiciary Committee were invited to participate in the drafting the report, only Grassley and Leahy did so. The committee chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, issued a letter protesting the report's findings.
Referring to an FBI field report from Phoenix about suspicious individuals taking flight training courses, and the stymied Minneapolis investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, Specter said that "it was evident that had this trail been followed, along with other evidence, that the tragedy of Sept. 11 might well have been avoided." After all, Specter said, the warrant that Rowley sought to search Moussaoui's computer -- which was not granted until after the terrorist attacks -- would have revealed "a veritable blueprint" for the events of that horrible Tuesday morning.
The three senators charged key members of the law enforcement organization with negligence, incompetence and ignorance. "I hate to say this," Leahy said, "but we found that the FBI is ill-equipped" to conduct surveillance on those in the United States possibly plotting terrorist acts on behalf of foreign powers. The senators' complaints focused around implementation of warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Passed in 1978 to prevent Communist espionage, and expanded in the USA PATRIOT Act to prevent further terrorist attacks, FISA allows the government to conduct surveillance on foreign nationals and U.S. citizens acting as foreign agents.
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