Tom Ridge's challenge
WASHINGTON -- The monumental
challenge facing Tom Ridge in battling
terrorism on the home front is emphasized
by a slowly emerging scandal. The FBI
had advance indications of plans to hijack
U.S. airliners and use them as weapons,
but neither acted on them nor distributed
the intelligence to local police agencies.
From the moment of the Sept. 11 attacks,
high-ranking federal officials insisted that
the terrorists' method of operation
surprised them. Many stick to that story.
Actually, elements of the hijacking plan
were known to the FBI as early as 1995
and, if coupled with current information,
might have uncovered the plot.
This looks less like an intelligence failure
than a law enforcement fiasco. While the
CIA missed the conspiracy's overseas
roots, the FBI did not share or interpret
available information. Can former
Pennsylvania Gov. Ridge, operating from a
White House office, get this most famous
and haughty of American police agencies
to share what it knows with local officers in
the interest of the public's safety? A critical
question about the new kind of war
declared by President Bush is whether he
conveys undisputed authority for Ridge to
change the FBI's ways.
The shape of what happened Sept. 11
dates back to 1995, when chemicals
intended to destroy U.S. commercial flights
in mid-air exploded in a Manila apartment
used by convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef
(now serving a life sentence for the 1993
World Trade Center bombing). Chief
Superintendent Avelino Razon of the
Philippine police revealed shortly after the
attacks that the terrorist cell discovered in 1995 had drawn
up plans for using suicide pilots.
On Sept. 19, CNN's Eileen O'Connor reported that the
Philippine police in 1995 had learned of the plan to turn
passenger airliners into flying bombs. The targets she listed:
the Pentagon, CIA headquarters outside Washington, the
TransAmerica building in San Francisco, the Sears tower in
Chicago and New York's World Trade Center. More details
were revealed last Sunday in The Washington Post.
This background would have been critical had it been
connected on Aug. 13 with a flight school in Eagan, Minn.,
telling the FBI of peculiar behavior by one of its students,
Zacarias Moussaoui. He wanted to take 747 simulator
training but only to learn how to steer, not to land or take off.
Moussaoui was arrested for lack of a valid visa and held for
deportation. But no connection was made with the 1995
revelations.
Indeed, senior government officials are still in denial. Federal
Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey, at her New York JFK
Airport press conference Monday, said: "No one could
imagine someone being willing to commit suicide, being
willing to use an airplane as a lethal weapon." The FBI could,
but apparently never alerted the FAA.
A week after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller said:
"The fact that there were a number of individuals that
happened to receive training at flight schools here is news,
quite obviously. If we had understood that to be the case, ...
perhaps one could have averted this." But the FBI could have
linked the Philippine revelations with information about
Moussaoui.
"It's the same old FBI," said a law enforcement expert who
did not want his name used, complaining that the bureau
always has kept state and local police in the dark. That view
was expressed this week in Charleston, S.C., during a
private conference of police officials.
They see protection of citizens a responsibility more of
650,000 state and local officers than of the 11,500 FBI
agents. "This is not a federal problem," Johnny Mack Brown
of Greenville, S.C., former head of the National Sheriffs'
Association, told me. "This is an American law enforcement
problem. The FBI certainly has to get this information to the
local authorities."
That defines Tom Ridge's daunting mission. Some senators,
though they like and respect Ridge, would have preferred
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a tough former federal
prosecutor not awed by the bureau. But anybody, working as
terrorism czar from the White House with no line authority,
might suffer the fate of ineffective federal drug czars. The
president must make sure his fellow former governor can
open to the nation's police vital intelligence hoarded by the
FBI.
Contact Robert Novak
townhall.com |
