Who did it at the FBI? Dilbert done it. A new report from Newsweek that names some more names.
Who Let the Terrorists Succeed?
The real culprit is someone very familiar
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
May 28 Who was asleep at the switch before September 11? We now have the answer.
IT WAS NOT JUST THE FBI, nor the CIA or INS, though those agencies and several others must be remade if we/re to have real security. It was not just senior administration officials, though I wish they'd quit dodging the much-needed and highly patriotic accountability that the nation deserves.
It turns out the main culprit was someone else, someone much more familiar. It was that guy on the 17th floor, or downtown, or back in the home office? you know, one of the "suits." It was every foot-dragging, fanny-covering bureaucrat in every company or government home office, each just "doing my job" by-the-book. It was Mr. Mooney from ?The Lucy Show? or Dabney Coleman from ?9 to 5.? Who let the terrorists get away with it? Ask Dilbert. Better yet, subpoena him. The greatest crime in our history is also the story of a bureaucratic SNAFU ("Situation Normal, All F?ked Up,"), a word, and experience, that dates at least to World War II. The SNAFU must be unraveled and inspected. Careers will be ruined. Some people will be unfairly scapegoated. But it must be done, no matter what Dick Cheney says in that sonorous I-know-best tone. The fact is, the authorities didn't know best. If they did, we wouldn't be in this pickle.
At least that's what I took from the now-famous memo Minneapolis agent Coleen Rowley sent to Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, now widely known as the Federal Bureau of Incompetence. The May 21, 2002 memo, obtained by Time, is one scary document. It suggests that we have a bunch of time-servers protecting our security, that no one is in charge of anything. If any of this changed after September 11, Rowley, a highly regarded veteran of the bureau, does not say so.
Without mentioning names, Rowley basically fingers a mid-level FBI supervisory agent in the Hoover Building (in Washington) named Dave Frasca, who was supposed to be running the task force on religious fanatics. After the Minneapolis office took flight-student and hijacker-wannabe Zacarias Moussaoui into custody and obtained intelligence from the French indicating that he had terrorist ties, alert Minnesota agents didn't just passively push the case up the chain of command. They became, in Rowley's words, "desperate to search his computer laptop." So desperate that they risked the wrath of higher ups by committing a real pre-9-11 no-no: contacting the CIA.
Headquarters personnel didn't just deny the request to probe Moussaoui further. Even though they were "privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field agents," as Rowley plaintively put it, they "continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis, by-now desperate attempts to obtain a search warrant."
Because Frasca's not commenting publicly, we haven?t heard the other side of the story. But as anyone who has ever worked in an office knows, HQ always has its own take on events, and sometimes it's even right. In this case a federal judge in Washington, Royce C. Lambreth, grew annoyed at the poor documentation involved in requests from federal prosecutors for search warrants and wiretaps. One prosecutor so angered Lambreth that he was actually barred from seeking any more approvals from judges, a move that sent a chilling career message down through the ranks of the Justice Department. So Frasca, knowing which way the wind was blowing in Washington, wasn't just going to rubber stamp the Minneapolis request.
Moreover, the very fact that HQ is, in Rowley's words, "privy to many more sources of intelligence" is actually a hindrance, not necessarily a sign of negligence. The more intelligence chaff that comes in, the harder it is to find the wheat. Frasca should have the chance to explain that, and Judge Lambreth should explain why he thought the warrant process was being abused.
But Rowley's certainly correct when she tells Mueller that "the problem with chalking this all up to the "20/20 hindsight is perfect" problem, is that this is not a case of everyone in the FBI failing to appreciate the potential consequences. It is obvious that 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.
Doesn't that sound familiar in your company? The branch offices never think headquarters knows what's really going on, while the home office VPs think the branch guys are a bunch of whiners without the chops to make it in the big time at HQ.
But in this evergreen of bureaucratic in-fighting, one of HQ's best arguments is usually that unlike the branch offices, it sees the "big picture." This time, as Rowley notes, Frasca and company not only failed to see the big picture, they worked actively to keep others from trying to see it. That's quite an indictment.
And only part of her bombshell. Rowley, who is, fortunately for her, close to retirement, also goes after Mueller himself. "I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewering of facts by you and others at the highest levels of the FBI has occurred and is occurring." She argues that Mueller's reorganization, which would further empower the FBI?s Washington headquarters, is exactly the wrong approach to preventing terrorism.
As if to confirm Rowley's harsh judgment, Mueller last week classified her memo, though we learned after it was leaked that there is nothing even vaguely compromising about FBI sources and methods contained in it. He classified it for the same reason Bush and Cheney don't want an independent commission to investigate what happened: It's embarrassing.
Now it's up to the rest of us to decide. Is embarrassment a proper standard for classifying documents and sweeping poor performance under the carpet? Or is it perhaps more patriotic, and better for preventing a future attack to get to the bottom of what happened in order to make the necessary bureaucratic changes?
This is a deep question for American democracy. The issue is not accountability versus security; it's accountability versus embarrassment and political discomfort.
Mueller argues that the reform of the FBI is already underway, and need not be disrupted by a lot of finger-pointing. Let him do it in private, the administration asks. Let "the company" handle its own affairs. But that assumes a universe where Mr. Mooney doesn't need Lucy's suggestions, and Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin should just shut up. It assumes a world where Dilbert has no cause for complaint.
That wasn't life before September 11, or after. Bureaucracies ossify. Office politics grows more bitter with time. Sometimes the only answer is the kind of wholesale reorganization we don't seem to be getting so far.
At a minimum, it's time to investigate, ventilate and rejuvenate. The bureaucrats will be back to their old tricks soon enough, but maybe we can buy a few years or security before we need gutsy whistleblowers like Coleen Rowley once more.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc. |
