Panel maligns FBI, Ashcroft for decisions before 9/11
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI failed miserably over several years to reorganize and respond to a steadily growing threat of terrorism, and Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected an agency appeal for more funding on the day before al-Qaeda struck, the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks said Tuesday.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh prepares to testify Tuesday.
By Tim Sloan, AFP
"On Sept. 11, the FBI was limited in several areas," the commission said in a staff report. It cited "limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, an overly complex legal regime and inadequate resources."
On the day of the attacks, "about 1,300 agents, or 6% of the FBI's total personnel, worked on counterterrorism," reported the commission investigating the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers at the tip of Manhattan.
The commission released its unflinchingly critical report — which chairman Thomas Kean described as an "indictment' — at the outset of two days of hearings from several current and former officials at the Justice Department and FBI.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, the first to take the witness chair, politely and firmly took issue with the findings. (Related : Freeh video | Freeh testimony)
"We had a very effective program with respect to counterterrorism prior to Sept. 11 given the resources that we had," Freeh said, noting that the report found that inadequate resources and legal restrictions were key ingredients in the agency's failings. That seemed a reference to Congress, which approves funding, and former Attorney General Janet Reno, who issued guidelines meant to strengthen American civil liberties protections by keeping the fruits of intelligence separate from criminal prosecution.
But Reno was quoted in the report as saying that while the FBI never seemed to have sufficient resources, "Director Freeh seemed unwilling to shift resources to terrorism from other areas such as violent crime." Freeh said he shifted resources to meet specific emergency needs, but congressional limits prevented permanent shifts.
Testifying, Reno had a different recollection, saying she had told Freeh "if we need to reprogram, let's do it."
More broadly, Reno said the FBI faced huge challenges in learning how to use all the information it collected on intelligence and criminal matters. "The FBI didn't know what it had. The right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing," she said.
The hearing unfolded in the same Senate hearing room where national security adviser Condoleezza Rice testified last week and former counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke a few weeks before that. But there were empty seats this time, and the event lacked the electricity of those appearances, both of which were devoted largely to the question of what President Bush had been told about the terrorist threat and what he did about it.
Cofer Black, the former head of CIA counterterrorism center, former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard and Ashcroft also were on the witness list for the day.
Asked whether the government had ever contemplated the use of planes as weapons, Freeh said the subject "was part of the planning" for the summer Olympic Games at Atlanta and other special events.
But he said, "I'm not aware of any such plan"being incorporated into routine air defense plan in Washington or elsewhere.
The report said the FBI had an information system that was outdated before it was installed, further hampering efforts to battle terrorism. The report also cited legal impediments underscored by the guidelines Reno issued.
Freeh said they were "completely appropriate with respect to counterintelligence cases." But counterterrorism cases are different because of the need to "use intelligence to prevent acts from taking place," he said.
Creation of a new Investigative Services Division in 1999 was a failure, the commission said, adding that 66% of the FBI's analysts were "not qualified to perform analytical duties."
A new counterterrorism strategy a year later again fell woefully short, and a review in 2001 showed that "almost every FBI field office's counterterrorism program was assessed to be operating at far below 'maximum capacity.'"
"The FBI's counterterrorism strategy was not a focus of the Justice Department in 2001," the first year of the Bush administration, it said.
Ashcroft has testified previously that the Justice Department had "no higher priority" than protecting Americans from terrorism at home and abroad.
Yet the commission staff statement quotes a former FBI counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he "almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10 budget memo from Ashcroft listing seven priorities, including illegal drugs and gun violence, but not terrorism.
Additionally, on Sept. 10, Ashcroft rejected an appeal from Pickard for additional funding, the commission said.
According to a commission document obtained by the Associated Press, Pickard also raised questions about the presence of former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick on the panel. The document said Pickard found her membership "surprising" because she and Reno had developed the policy to counter international terrorism primarily through the use of law enforcement techniques.
The commission staff statement discussed a long list of FBI shortcomings on terrorism, including a culture in which agents got credit and promotions for making cases and arrests but not for intelligence work that resulted in fewer prosecutions. Counterintelligence and counterterrorism, the report said, "were viewed as backwaters" within the FBI.
Other problems included outmoded computer systems that prevented proper information sharing, lack of strategic analysis, a legal barrier called "the wall" that barred most contact between criminal and intelligence investigators, and a decentralized structure that kept terrorism cases in the 56 field offices instead of FBI headquarters.
"It was almost impossible to develop an understanding of the threat from a particular terrorist group," the staff statement said.
usatoday.com |
