By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a world ``blinking red'' with terrorist threats
against the United States, the FBI missed a last-minute chance to detect a
key al-Qaida cell and possibly disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks, the
commission investigating the 2001 hijackings said Tuesday.
Delays and missteps in linking terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui to
al-Qaida in the weeks before the attacks were emblematic of chronic
problems within the FBI, including limited intelligence and analysis
capabilities, outdated technology, poor information-sharing and
floundering attempts at reorganization, the commission said.
In a day of finger-pointing, the panel chairman, former New Jersey Gov.
Thomas Kean, said two scathing reports compiled by the commission's
investigators amounted to ``an indictment of the FBI,'' while Attorney
General John Ashcroft took a veiled swipe at the Clinton administration.
Louis J. Freeh, who headed the bureau from 1993 to mid-2001, bristled
at Kean's words.
``I would ask that you balance what you call an indictment, and which I
don't agree with at all, with the two primary findings of your staff,'' he
said. ``One is that there was a lack of resources. And two, there were
legal impediments'' that made it difficult for agents to pursue terrorism
investigations.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno also spoke of a lack of resources
but said the FBI under Freeh did a poor job keeping track of the
information its agents gathered.
``The FBI didn't know what it had,'' she said. ``The right hand didn't
know what the left hand was doing.''
Ashcroft, her successor and the last witness at Tuesday's hearing, said
a key reason for the failures was a legal restriction, known as ``the
wall,'' that prevented sharing of FBI intelligence information with
criminal investigators. Ashcroft blamed Reno for issuing ``draconian''
guidelines in 1995 that made such sharing even more difficult.
``The simple fact of Sept. 11 is this: We did not know an attack was
coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to
its enemies,'' Ashcroft said. ``Our agents were isolated by
government-imposed walls, handcuffed by government-imposed restrictions
and starved for basic information technology.''
Ashcroft buttressed his contentions by releasing a declassified memo
from former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick - now a member of the
Sept. 11 commission - containing instructions that ``more clearly
separate'' counterintelligence from criminal investigations.
Former acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard, who headed the bureau just
before the attacks, told the panel Ashcroft did not seem to consider
terrorism a priority. He said that after he began briefing Ashcroft twice
a week on the threats, Ashcroft told Pickard ``he did not want to hear
this information any more.''
Ashcroft denied saying that and added that he had ``interrogated''
Pickard in their meetings about any possible terror threats facing the
United States.
``I did never say to him that I did not want to hear about terrorism,''
Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft also told the panel that on May 7, 2001, he advised National
security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the Bush administration should
abandon its previous policy of trying to capture Osama bin Laden. ``We
should find and kill bin Laden,'' Ashcroft said he told her.
The hearing was in the same Senate hearing room where Rice testified
last week and former counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke a few weeks
before that. This time there were empty seats and not nearly as much
electricity as those appearances.
The commission reports issued at the start of the two-day hearing noted
some FBI successes in cracking earlier terrorist cases. But the FBI was
unable to stop the 19 hijackers from using commercial airliners as
weapons, killing some 3,000 people in New York, Washington and
Pennsylvania.
``All our systems failed,'' said commission member Fred Fielding. ``We
were totally beaten on Sept. 11.''
The inability of the FBI to link Moussaoui to al-Qaida was a prime
example, the commission concluded in revealing previously unreported
details about the investigation of the terrorism suspect.
Moussaoui was taken into custody Aug. 16, 2001, on immigration charges
while trying to learn to fly a Boeing 747 at a flight school in Minnesota.
A dispute between FBI agents in the field and supervisors meant no warrant
was quickly obtained to search his computer, the commission said.
It wasn't until after the attacks that the FBI learned that an
imprisoned terrorist - convicted Los Angeles airport bomb plotter Ahmed
Ressam - had told agents he recognized Moussaoui from Afghan training
camps run by al-Qaida.
Also, the commission said the FBI asked the British for help in
identifying Moussaoui in late August, but the British did not handle the
request as a priority. It wasn't until Sept. 13 that London provided
intelligence about Moussaoui's attendance at the Afghan camps.
``A maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui could conceivably have
unearthed his connections'' to the hijackers and their financiers through
an al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, the commission statement said.
``The publicity about the threat also might have disrupted the plot,''
it concluded. ``But this would have been a race against time.''
Moussaoui is awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy related to the
Sept. 11 plot. A federal appeals court is mulling whether Moussaoui should
have access to terrorist confederates in U.S. custody that he says can
vouch for his innocence.
Another missed opportunity occurred because of a dispute over sharing
of intelligence information with FBI criminal investigators regarding
Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the 19 hijackers, the commission said. The
search finally was assigned in August to an FBI agent working his first
counterterrorism lead, who on Sept. 11 sent a memo to the FBI office in
Los Angeles about Mihdar.
The missed chances came at the end of a summer of heightened
intelligence reports about bin Laden's determination to strike the United
States. These intelligence reports carried such headlines as ``Bin Laden
planning multiple operations'' and ``Bin Laden threats are real.''
CIA Director George Tenet, who is to testify before the commission
Wednesday, told the panel in private that in July 2001 ``the system was
blinking red'' and that ``it could not get any worse,'' according to the
commission statement.
``None of this, unfortunately, specified method, time or place,'' J.
Cofer Black, former director of the CIA counterterrorism center, testified
Tuesday. ``Where we had clues, it looked like planning was under way for
an attack in the Middle East or Europe.''
Still, FBI offices on April 13, 2001, were sent an alert from
headquarters urging stepped-up surveillance and use of informants to
uncover ``current operational activities related to Sunni (Islamic)
extremism.''
There were similar alerts to the FBI's 56 field offices in June and
July, and Pickard told the commission he conducted July 19 conference
calls with top officials in the field offices about the heightened
threats.
Despite that, the commission found many FBI agents in field offices
could not recall any such increased threat and some, including the
Washington office, took no special steps or actions in response.
``I don't understand why they didn't hear it,'' Pickard testified.
A recently declassified Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence memo given to
President Bush summarized the al-Qaida threat and cited 70 FBI field
investigations under way. Pickard testified that the number was ``somewhat
inaccurate'' - he said the actual number was classified - and that the
cases involved individuals linked to al-Qaida around the country. It
turned out none was involved in the Sept. 11 plot.
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On the Net:
A transcript of the hearing, including the two statements issued by the
commission and witness testimonies, are available through this link:
http://wid.ap.org/transcripts/statement.html
