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-Qaida struck, the commission investigating
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks said Tuesday.
"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 percent 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 J. Freeh, the first
to take the witness chair, politely and firmly
took issue with the findings.
"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 percent 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.
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