Joanna ____________________________________
FBI chiefs so lax agents felt they were spies
FBI chiefs so lax agents felt they were spies By Josh Meyer in Washington May 28 2002
FBI officials in Washington not only stymied an investigation into flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui before September 11, but also tried to stop field agents linking the suspected 20th hijacker to the terrorist attacks after they occurred, an agent claims in a 13-page "whistle-blower" letter.
Agent Coleen Rowley, the chief lawyer in the Minneapolis field office, alleges that intelligence on Moussaoui provided by the French Government, which included information on his "activities connected with Osama bin Laden", was more than enough to obtain a warrant to search his laptop computer in the weeks before the terrorist attacks.
But requests for a warrant were thwarted by FBI supervisors in Washington, who seemed so intent on ignoring the threat Moussaoui posed that some field agents speculated that key officials at FBI headquarters "had to be spies or moles ... working for Osama bin Laden".
In her letter, Ms Rowley accuses the FBI director, Robert Mueller, of making it appear the FBI had no concrete evidence that Moussaoui was involved in planning the terrorist attacks until after the September 11 strikes took place.
"To get to the point, I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading /skewing of facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring," Ms Rowley said. Parts of her letter have been leaked, and Time magazine has posted them on its Web site. But the FBI refused to comment on the letter, which it considers classified.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, a Democrat, said: "The only way, I believe, that we're going to get to the bottom of this thing is if we have a broad investigation with a blue-ribbon panel, but also if we release the documents now and hold people accountable."
The Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, also a Democrat, said the letter was proof that an independent commission was needed to investigate the FBI, despite vigorous opposition from the White House.
Senator Daschle said President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney lobbied him in January "not to investigate the events of September 11".
The full disclosure of Ms Rowley's letter came as a US official confirmed that the Federal Aviation Administration had told airlines more than three years ago to be on a "high degree of alertness" against hijackings by bin Laden followers.
Ms Rowley said that within days of Moussaoui's arrest, FBI agents in Minneapolis were convinced he was a dangerous Islamic militant who had sought aviation training to carry out acts of terrorism.
"Even after the attacks had begun," she said, a supervising agent in Washington "was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer, characterising the World Trade Centre attacks as a mere coincidence with Minneapolis's prior suspicions about Moussaoui."
Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post
This story was found at: {http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/28/1022243318700.html}