FBI Helping to Find Stolen Iraq Treasures
Apr 17, 5:06 PM (ET)
By CURT ANDERSON
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is on the hunt for antiquities looted from Iraqi museums and poring over seized documents to identify potential terror threats, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Thursday.
Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft also said the FBI had completed the questioning of nearly 10,000 Iraqis living in the United States. The interviews sparked fear among some Muslims and Arabs, but Ashcroft said they proved useful to U.S. troops in Iraq.
"Cooperation of the Iraqi-American people was essential to secure and safeguard our nation during this critical time," Ashcroft said at a news conference.
Mueller said FBI agents in Iraq are assisting in criminal investigations and in finding items stolen when the Baghdad museums were looted. The FBI is also putting alerts on the international police network about the stolen pieces and scanning the Internet to see if any are advertised for sale.
"We are firmly committed to doing whatever we can to secure these treasures to the people of Iraq," said Mueller.
In addition, Mueller said that 25 FBI agents were among the U.S. officials who are carefully examining Iraqi documents found by U.S. forces to look for links to terrorists, potential terror plots, evidence of weapons of mass destruction and activities of Iraqi intelligence agents.
"We are going through all Iraq documents as soon as we receive them, with CIA and others, that may help us to prevent another attack," Mueller said.
Ashcroft said the Justice Department and FBI also would help train Iraqi police in what he called "rule of law" enforcement techniques that stress respect for individual rights and privacy.
The interviews with Iraqis living in the United States produced 250 reports with pertinent information that assisted U.S. forces on the battlefield, Mueller said.
The Iraqis, many of whom opposed the rule of Saddam Hussein, helped U.S. officials plug gaps in other intelligence reports and locate weapons production and storage facilities, underground bunkers and tunnel systems, fiber optic networks and detention and interrogation rooms.
Mueller said only two complaints had been brought to his attention about the FBI interviews, a figure Muslim advocates say distorts the widespread fear felt by many Iraqi-Americans. The advocates also said that for every engineer or scientist interviewed by the FBI, there was a student or housewife with scant knowledge of the Iraqi regime.
"This community was not happy about a surprise visit from the FBI," said Dalia Hashad, the Arab, Muslim and South Asia advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union. "They answer the questions because they don't feel they have a choice."
Only a few dozen Iraqis were charged with immigration violations and none were arrested on other charges as part of the interviews, officials said.
Ashcroft said that five known Iraqi intelligence agents were expelled from the United States and the sixth, the son of a former diplomat, was arrested.
Neither man mentioned any credible terrorist plots during the Iraqi war, something that had been a major concern before the conflict. Still, Ashcroft said, "We know that a significant terrorist threat persists, and we will persist in our efforts" to thwart it.
Also among the concerns are anti-government and right-wing extremists who could commit their own acts of terror, Justice Department officials said.
In its latest bulletin to state and local law enforcement officials Thursday, the FBI noted that April 19 marks the 10th anniversary of the government raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which nearly 80 people died as the compound burned to the ground.
The FBI bulletin, which goes to 18,000 law enforcement and government agencies, contains no specific threat because of the anniversary. But it does note that U.S. extremist groups have in the past used anniversaries such as Waco to stage terrorist attacks.
Timothy McVeigh chose the Waco anniversary to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
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