Will David Frasca be the FBI fall guy for 9/11?

Director Mueller mostly won over Congress this week. But in mapping the missed signals before the terror attacks, most roads lead to counterterror chief Frasca -- and at least one senator is miffed.

By Anthony York

Jun 8, 2002 | FBI director Robert Mueller's appearance before a Senate committee Thursday helped solidify his support among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, despite calls from the Wall Street Journal and a slew of conservative talk show hosts for his resignation. But the search for a fall guy at the FBI continues, and FBI counterterrorism chief David Frasca has come under increased congressional and media scrutiny as probes into the Sept. 11 attacks get underway.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., raised concerns that Frasca, head of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, intentionally misled Senate Judiciary Committee staff in a January briefing about the case of Zacharias Moussaoui.

Frasca and Spike Bowman, the bureau's associate general counsel for national security affairs, met with Judiciary Committee staff in January to brief them about the Moussaoui case. "Based upon that briefing, I actually felt reassured about the vigor with which the Moussaoui investigation had been conducted," Edwards said. But he added, "There are some things that have come to light since that time that I was not told about."

Moussaoui is the French citizen who has been dubbed the "20th hijacker," was arrested on an immigration charge after the INS discovered his visa had expired, shortly before Sept. 11. But FBI headquarters blocked local agents' efforts to pursue their investigation of Moussaoui.

Edwards told FBI director Mueller Thursday, during Mueller's appearance before the Judiciary Committee, that Frasca and Bowman failed to mention the existence of the Phoenix memo -- in which Phoenix agent Kenneth Williams urged headquarters to search the nation's flight schools for possible terrorists -- and "did not mention that the Minneapolis office had some serious concerns about the handling of the Moussaoui matter by FBI headquarters," during that January briefing.

Those "serious concerns" came to the forefront last month when FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley penned an angry letter to Mueller that has since sent shockwaves through Congress' investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. Though Rowley's memo was not written until May, Minneapolis agents had expressed their dissatisfaction with headquarters before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The agents in Minneapolis who were closest to the action and in the best position to gauge the situation locally did fully appreciate the terrorist risk/danger posed by Moussaoui," Rowley wrote. She said the FBI supervisory special agent in Washington involved in the Moussaoui case "seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts."

Without naming names, Rowley was clearly pointing toward Frasca, and other media accounts named Frasca as the agent who interfered with Rowley's efforts.

Next Page: Although the Williams memo was addressed to him, Frasca said he got it after 9/11

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