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Guest Commentary May 16, 2002
You Cannot Plan for the Future Without Knowing What Went Wrong in the Past
The Honorable Patrick Leahy
The risk of catastrophic terrorism -- as we know so vividly from the 9/11 and anthrax attacks -- has made amply clear that nothing is more critical to the safety of the American people than a well-organized and skillfully managed FBI that uses its power and resources effectively while adhering to the Constitution and the rule of law. The FBI has two key and overlapping missions: protecting our national security by rooting out spies and terrorists, and protecting our public safety by investigating criminal activity.
In my view, you cannot plan for the future effectively without knowing what went wrong in the past. Before we can learn any lessons from recent experience, we need to develop the lesson plan by examining what happened. In devising a new counterterrorism strategy for the FBI to prevent future terrorist attacks, we need to determine whether any institutional flaws in the FBI impaired the government's ability to prevent the 9/11 attacks. ...
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The American people are being told that the conspirators were too clever to have been caught. We are being told that the hijackers avoided detection because they combined meticulous planning and extraordinary secrecy with discipline, fanaticism and extensive knowledge of how America works. We hear that nothing short of a member of the inner circle turning himself in would have provided sufficient foresight to have prevented the attacks.
Continuing press reports allege the FBI failed to pursue pre-9/11 leads effectively, including warnings about two hijackers and a report of concerns of the FBI's Phoenix office about the possibility of terrorists at U.S. flight schools a few months before the 9/11 attacks. The FBI provided to the Committee a single paragraph from the otherwise classified Phoenix report that states:
"Phoenix believes that the FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities/colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBIHQ should discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix's suspicions. FBIHQ should consider seeking the necessary authority to obtain visa information from the USDOS on individuals obtaining visas to attend these types of schools and notify the appropriate FBI field office when these individuals are scheduled to arrive in their area of responsibility." ...
Other provocative questions also need to be pursued. ...
Here are some things we already know about FBI operations that potentially limited out nation's defenses against terrorism before 9/11:
The Bureau's information management and computer systems were so flawed that the FBI had no real way to know what information it had in its possession.
Some FBI field offices operated so independently that their information was not shared with other parts of the Bureau that needed it, let alone with other agencies.
In 1999 the leadership of the FBI's counterterrorism program had been split between two divisions, with terrorism analysts placed under an Investigative Services Division manager with little national security or intelligence community experience.
The FBI lacked the strategic analysis capability to gather information from current and past cases, reach out for information from other agencies, look for patterns, analyze risks, plan strategy for its own operations, and meet the needs of organizations responsible for security measures.
The FBI had no comprehensive terrorism watch list to bring together the names of all suspected foreign terrorists known to the FBI and other federal agencies.
The FBI did not put any names of terrorist group members in the National Crime Information Center file that was designed years earlier to provide information about suspected terrorists to other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
The FBI lacked the translators and the Agents with foreign language skills necessary to develop sources, conduct effective interviews, read foreign documents, and monitor electronic surveillance in international terrorism cases.
The American people and the U.S. Congress should not be hearing about information such as the Phoenix memorandum as it is periodically leaked to or uncovered by the media. The American people deserve a full accounting of this matter.
Senator Hatch and I have made a joint request for additional funding to examine the events leading up to the September 11 attacks and what steps are needed to make sure that our law enforcement is in a position not to let history repeat itself. That request has been blocked by Minority Leader Lott. An examination of FBI operations before 9/11 are essential, not to lay blame, but to learn lessons and to be in a position to evaluate the FBI reorganization plans. ...
Our nation's counterterrorism and homeland security efforts are too important to allow these organizational issues to remain unresolved.
Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from Vermont. The above commentary has been adapted from remarks Sen. Leahy made at hearing of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, May 8, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
