Article after article today in the LAtimes.....all stating a VERY POOR record by W & co.
FBI Falls Short in Assessing Threats to U.S., Report
Finds
Security: Bureau failed to follow through on its promise to gauge terrorist risks, putting the nation in greater
jeopardy, an audit says.
By JOSH MEYER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The FBI has never done a comprehensive written
assessment of the terrorist threats facing the United States, even though it
promised to do so in 1999 and suffered significant criticism for intelligence
failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, a Justice Department audit released
Tuesday said.
The department's Office of the Inspector General, an independent
watchdog agency, was sharply critical of the FBI's counter-terrorism
program for what it described as a broad array of shortcomings.
It found, for instance,
that even though the
FBI has undergone
wholesale
restructuring since the
attacks, including a
massive management
shake-up, the bureau
has not followed
through on promises
made three years ago
to create an overall
assessment of terrorist
risks--including
possible attacks with
chemical and
biological materials or with other weapons of mass destruction.
That failure, the report suggested, has put the U.S. at increased risk of
future terrorist attacks because the FBI--the lead U.S. counter-terrorism
agency--hasn't done enough to determine where future attacks might
originate and in what form. That is particularly the case when it comes to the
kinds of nonconventional terrorist attacks that could cause mass casualties
on a scale far greater than the suicide hijackings a year ago, the report said.
Although the FBI drafted a terrorist threat report after the Sept. 11 attacks
that described terrorist organizations and state sponsors, the document did
not assess the likelihood of future attacks, potential targets or possible
methods that terrorists might use, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine wrote.
"Because the FBI has not completed a systematic written assessment of the
most likely terrorism scenarios--taking into account terrorist methods,
capabilities and intent--it may not have fully identified the specific nature of
the threat so that it could focus its attention and resources to prepare
adequately and respond effectively," the audit said.
An FBI spokesman did not dispute the overall findings, and he referred to
the response of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and other top officials,
which was included in the audit.
"The director welcomes the comments as being constructive," said FBI
spokesman Steven Berry.
In the response, Mueller said the bureau has drafted a comprehensive
assessment that is under review by senior officials within the FBI's
counter-terrorism division.
Mueller noted that he moved quickly after Sept. 11 to devote significantly more resources to the
counter-terrorism effort, including appointing a senior deputy to oversee both intelligence and
counter-terrorism matters--just one of the bureau's recent improvements as it moves from a reactive
law-enforcement stance into an intelligence-gathering agency that tracks terrorists and disrupts them
before they strike.
But the inspector general's office said key problems remain.
Above all, it questioned why a comprehensive audit hadn't been completed when the FBI promised to
do one in 1999 after a highly critical audit of the bureau by the General Accounting Office.
Bipartisan members of Congress reacted swiftly, calling for increased oversight of the FBI, which has
suffered a series of embarrassments during recent congressional hearings into intelligence failures before
Sept. 11.
"This glaring omission demonstrates clearly that better oversight of the FBI is needed," said House
Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.).
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) agreed. FBI headquarters "handled the issues of foreign terrorism
by the seat of their pants, always looking backwards instead of seriously thinking about attacks on our
soil," he said. "At the same time, Congress kept pouring more money into the FBI to use against
terrorism and did little, if anything, to make sure it was used in an effective way."
Most of the audit remained classified and available only to certain members of Congress and the Justice
Department. A redacted summary was made available to the public. Even the summary, however,
contained a litany of failures on the part of the FBI in assessing the terrorist threat.
In March 2001, the FBI said it was developing an assessment that would address "emerging trends, the
current threat, the projected threat, FBI initiatives and future focus," based on ongoing bureau
investigations and information from other intelligence agencies. But by September 2001, Justice
Department auditors concluded that a draft of the report failed to address the risk of an attack on the
United States.
"In fact, the terrorist threat project had such a low profile within the FBI that it took the FBI nearly a
month to identify to us anyone who was familiar with the project and the draft report," the inspector
general said. Auditors ultimately concluded that no single individual was accountable for managing the
assessment.
That draft copy, the inspector general said, had many omissions, including an assessment of the training,
skill level, resources, sophistication, specific capabilities, intent, likelihood of attack and potential targets
of terrorist groups.
"Further, the draft report does not discuss the methods that terrorists might use," the report said. "For
example, there is no analysis of terrorists' progress toward developing or acquiring chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear weapons or any discussion of what the FBI has learned from its past terrorist
investigations."
Auditors suggested that little progress has been made on those fronts since September 2001 and that
the FBI has not established a core training curriculum and proficiency standards for the hundreds of
agents it has deployed in the war on terrorism. But Dale Watson, whom Mueller promoted to head all
counter-terrorism and intelligence operations, disputed some of those findings.
Watson--who retired last month--told auditors that despite the lack of a comprehensive report, he
believed that he was "fully aware of the threats, both before and after Sept. 11, 2001, based on the
breadth of the FBI's counter-terrorism cases and his frequent discussions with FBI employees."
Robert Blitzer, who headed the FBI's counter-terrorism unit until 1998, said in an interview Tuesday
that the bureau spent significant time and resources developing a strategy, even if it wasn't detailed in
one comprehensive report.
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