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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (12699)	5/27/2002 8:53:46 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

'Racial profiling' question to enter terror, FBI probe By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press WASHINGTON -- A congressman said Sunday he will examine whether racial profiling concerns played a role in the rejection of a search warrant request on a pre-Sept. 11 terrorism suspect. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss also said that at this point he doesn't think the FBI is capable of the intelligence work needed to combat domestic terrorism and needs to reorganize. Goss' comments came as the Senate's leader disclosed that President Bush asked him not to seek an outside commission to investigate pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures. Goss, whose committee has an investigation under way, said on CBS' Face the Nation that the handling of the Minneapolis FBI office's application for a warrant to search terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui's computer troubled him. "Because that basically is hampering an investigative tool which we need very badly right now," said Goss, R-Fla. The Minneapolis office, after arresting Moussaoui at a Minnesota flight school last August, was concerned that he was seeking to hurt Americans and wanted to gather more information. Goss, whose committee is joining with its Senate counterpart to investigate what the government knew and did to fight terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, referred to a letter that Minneapolis FBI counsel Coleen Rowley wrote May 21 to FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Moussaoui case. The letter alleged that terrorism supervisors at FBI headquarters rewrote the Minnesota office's warrant applications and affidavit and removed key information about Moussaoui before sending them to a legal office that then rejected the paperwork as insufficient. Rowley wrote that some of the revisions "downplayed" the significance of intelligence linking Moussaoui to Islamic extremists and blamed the changes on a flawed communication process. Goss said problems with the warrant application worried him most, adding that if the letter is accurate, "people were reluctant -- there was a culture in Washington that said, `No, we don't want to rock the boat. We want to -- we're too worried about profiling, those kind of things.' We've got to know about that and figure out as a society how we are going to react." Asked whether he meant one reason the FBI may have rejected a warrant request was concern about racial profiling, Goss replied: "I don't know the answer to that. But I'm surely going to ask the question, because it has been suggested." The FBI declined to comment. Also Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle continued to press for an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures leading up to the September attacks. Daschle, D-S.D., said Bush asked him on Jan. 28 not to seek an outside commission. He said previously that Vice President Dick Cheney made a similar request Jan. 24. The first House-Senate intelligence committee hearing into the attacks will take place June 4. chron.com