From the article below, I find it telling that Ashcroft had moved to decrease the intelligence budget last Sept 10th.
Leahy’s intelligence assessment: Mistakes were made
September 9, 2002
By BRUCE EDWARDS Herald Staff
Last year’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have been called the greatest intelligence failure since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago.
The CIA has come in for its share of blame, but increasingly the focus has shifted to the role of the FBI and its counter-terrorism unit to move on information prior to 9/11 provided by its agents in the field.
The House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating shortcomings at the CIA and other intelligence services, while the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is conducting its own investigation. Leahy’s committee recently sent to the full Senate the FBI Reform Act, which attempts to address a number of shortcomings within the bureau, including those the committee identified as contributing to the failure to uncover last year’s attacks.
In a recent interview, Leahy discussed the country’s intelligence failure and efforts to reform the FBI to prevent a recurrence of last year’s tragedy. The following is the interview.
Question: Immediately following the attacks on 9/11, it was assumed that there must have been an intelligence failure of some kind. From what we now know, those shortcomings were far more serious than what anyone could have imagined. How bad was it?
Sen. Patrick Leahy: The Department of Justice made some major mistakes. They did not pay attention to the so-called Phoenix memo, which told them that some of these people wanted were on the terrorist lookout (list) were out trying to take flying lessons. Then (FBI Agent) Coleen Rowley in Minneapolis testified before my committee that information that they developed was not being used. That was a problem at the Department of Justice. Ironically, a lot of that was coming in the weeks before Sept. 11 being shunted aside, not being followed-up on. then it turned out on Sept. 10, that Attorney General Ashcroft was recommending that they cut very substantially the courterterrorism budget that had been put in place by the Clinton administration. All that has been in the press and all that is accurate.
I can’t speak to the CIA. That’s a different committee. But what I’ve been trying to do with the Judiciary Committee is to make major, much-needed changes, changes that the former director (Louis Freeh) did not want to make, Attorney General Ashcroft had not been interested in making. Now I think they’ve changed their minds.
For example, agents coming in the FBI school are given computers that are so old that they were outdated when they were kids. One example, after Sept. 11 when they finally got the pictures of some of the hijackers they had no way of sending these pictures by computer to their various field offices. My kids send pictures from their home computers.
They couldn’t get into data banks. They were doing things by telephone where people would write things down by hand and pass them to someone else who would rewrite then in hand into another form. These are the things that we’re trying to improve. (FBI) Director Mueller is doing a lot of those things, partly because of the bipartisan support for my FBI Reform Act. And that’s giving him the ability to move on some of these things that need to be done. He’s brought in the CIA for internal security experts.
Q: Do we really need a new law to reform the FBI or can’t the changes be done administratively?
Leahy: I think the law protects the director now, because of bureaucratic sniping there’s so much inertia in the bureau. It also creates a different position and more importantly eliminates some positions and you have to do that legislatively.
Q: How does the FBI Reform Act improve the agency’s counterterrorism efforts?
Leahy: It would put people truly in charge. It is a kind of unwanted visitor in a whole lot of parts of the FBI. It will also bring in outside experts in the area where needed and it dramatically improves the coordination between the FBI and the CIA.
Q: There was the failure of the FBI to seize the computer and computer records of Zacarias Moussaoui (the alleged 20th hijacker), who was already in custody prior to Sept. 11. What was going through the minds of the FBI supervisors in Washington not to move on the recommendations of their field agent to seize that information?
Leahy: We’re still asking that question. The attorney general has been resisting answering those questions. And I think because the courts themselves understood the questions are legitimate, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court did an unprecedented thing (recently). They released to me, and allowed us to release it publicly, their memos and directives to the Department of Justice. That was because the attorney general had not wanted the questions to be asked. And the reason he didn’t want the questions to be asked, I’m convinced, is that there were all kinds of mistakes made. It appears that there were mistakes in applying the law. There appears there were mistakes in giving facts to the courts in the past that hurt the credibility of the agents. But that is also why you have to have real oversight. One of the frustrating things is the attorney general doesn’t like to answer questions. The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is threatening to subpoena him for answers.
Q: Could there have been a belief on the part of the FBI supervisors to err on the side of caution to protect Moussaoui’s rights in not seeking a court order to seize his computer? Perhaps the agents failed to make a persuasive case?
Leahy: That I would leave to them to answer. As the case is before the courts, I’m a little bit reluctant to answer except that there have been a number of cases where they very easily and under the Constitution could have gotten the information. But they screwed up. Now, Sen. Spector has argued that they could have very easily had that information based on what was there if they had done it the right way.
I think of the mistakes in the past like Wen Ho Lee. They finally to go after his computer, the FBI and the Department of Justice went back and sometime they figured out they didn’t have enough to ask for it. By then, he had downloaded it and took it away. What they didn’t do … is they didn’t do the thing that anybody would have done in any company in the country. They didn’t go to the system’s administrator and say, ‘by the way has Dr. Lee given you a blanket permission to search his company computer?’ And of course he had. They didn’t have to get a search warrant. They didn’t have to get anything. None of them even thought of that until after he downloaded everything and left.
Unfortunately, in the past what’s happened when mistakes are made nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to admit them, nobody wants to correct them. The attorney general himself said after Sept. 11 that people asking these questions are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Well, then the press found out that on Sept. 10, the attorney general was recommending you cut the Clinton budget for counter-terrorism. And secondly, they had screwed up on Moussaoui, and they had screwed up on the Phoenix memo, and they had screwed up on the Minneapolis memo.
Q: Related to all this are the anthrax attacks. You were one of the targets. Is the FBI moving too slowly on that front?
Leahy: Not necessarily for my safety, but for the safety of the country it would be a good thing to know who did this and why. Because if they can do it with anthrax, they could do it with other things.
Q: Do you think the anthrax attacks are a case of domestic rather than foreign terrorism?
Leahy: I think it is. But I think if we can’t solve this we are very susceptible. I mean this may be testing our defenses, who knows? I’d like to know the motive. Was it to get me and Daschle and Brokaw? Was it to wreak economic havoc? Was it to test our defenses? Depending on the motive, you’ve got a different problem.
Q: The government has singled out Dr. Steven Hatfill as a prime suspect in the anthrax attacks. That’s a similar tactic the government used when it wrongly fingered a security guard as responsible for the bombing at the Atlanta Olympic games. Is the government justified in singling out Hatfill?
Leahy: I’ve stayed away from that one just because I was one of the targets. After they told me several hundred thousand people could have died from the contents of my envelope, I figured I’d let you guys worry about it.
Q: If we put all the dots together, knowing what we know now, could we have prevented the attacks?
Leahy: Well, several Republican senators that served both on judiciary and intelligence think yes. And I quote them only because I don’t want to appear to be partisan. My guess is yes, we could have. I would say this, certainly that if President Bush or the attorney general or anybody else and knew this was going to happen, of course they would have stopped it. What bothers me is that they were so focused on other things in the administration, they didn’t give priority to the people who had the information that this might happen.
Q: There is a UN report on al-Qaida that concludes that despite the success the U.S. has had in disrupting al-Qaida and its network, they have the ability to carry out another attack any time and anywhere they want. That’s a rather chilling conclusion.
Leahy: I’ve seen the draft report. I believe it is accurate. The fact is even though we’ve disrupted tens of millions of dollars, there’s tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars more in the pipeline, some of it coming from Saudi Arabia, some of it coming from other parts of the world. And we have not been able to disrupt that. Again, I think the president took very good steps after Sept. 11 to disrupt financing. But that requires an ongoing effort, both diplomatic and legal.
Q: At one time, CIA Director George Tenet was a member of your staff. He continues to have your support. But earlier this year Tenant told Congress he didn’t believe Sept. 11 was an intelligence failure. Given the evidence to date, how can the American people have confidence in someone who believes there wasn’t an intelligence failure?
Leahy: I’ve seen a lot of CIA directors in both Democratic and Republican administrations. I think George is the best. And I think the proof is in a number of matters that have stopped before they could happen, which is always easier to say if you don’t want to point to what they are. Because of the highly classified nature of them, I can’t and won’t. But I think he has brought about a lot of reforms. One of the reforms he’s brought about is to bring closer coordination between the CIA and the FBI.
Q: How confident are you we can prevent another 9/11?
Leahy: I think the possibility of another 9/11 is there. I think that we have already prevented several. Over the past 10 years, we’ve prevented a number of 9/11s. Some through very good intelligence, some through luck.
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