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Agent Complains FBI Covered Up Moussaoui Case
By Reuters | New York Times
May 24, 2002
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Thursday he asked the Justice Department inspector general to investigate complaints by a Minneapolis agent that FBI headquarters mishandled the case of Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
Agent Coleen Rowley complained in a recent 13-page letter to Mueller and lawmakers that FBI headquarters should have approved a request from the Minneapolis office for a search warrant involving Moussaoui, who was being held in August after arousing suspicions at a Minnesota flight school.
"I immediately referred this matter out of the FBI to the (Justice Department's) inspector general for investigation," Mueller said in a statement.
The classified letter surfaced a day after the Senate Intelligence Committee questioned Mueller about it in a closed session. It was the first known time that any of the FBI's own agents have formally complained about the bureau's failure to pursue aggressively potential warnings before Sept. 11.
Moussaoui was in custody in Minnesota when the September attacks occurred but was charged in December with conspiring to carry out the attacks. Authorities suspect he intended to join the 19 men who hijacked four passenger planes that day.
The FBI already is under fire from lawmakers for failing to properly piece together information available before Sept. 11, including a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix expressing concern that Middle Eastern extremists who might be tied to Osama bin Laden were attending U.S. flight schools.
The memo, written in July, was never acted on and no one at the FBI linked the memo to Moussaoui at the time of his arrest on immigration violations in mid-August, or shared it with agents in Minneapolis.
Lawmakers said the Moussaoui warrant would have been obtained if the FBI officials making that decision had known about the Phoenix memo.
Mueller said in the statement he could not comment on the specifics of Rowley's letter, but added, "I am convinced that a different approach is required."
CIRCLING THE WAGONS
In the letter, Rowley said she and her Minneapolis
colleagues came to the "sad realization that someone, possibly with your approval, had decided to circle the wagons at FBI Headquarters in an apparent attempt to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny," ABC television reported.
"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," she said.
Officials familiar with the letter said Rowley had complained about a lack of coordination, some mix-ups and that agents in Minneapolis were hampered by the way the case was handled by headquarters.
According to the letter, the Minneapolis field office felt the case should have been treated more seriously by headquarters and there was a last-minute effort to circumvent FBI headquarters and go to the CIA to get approval for the warrant.
"There is no room after the (Sept. 11) attacks for the types of problems and attitudes that could inhibit our efforts," Mueller said, adding that the FBI was being "open and candid" with the investigations under way in Congress.
"This letter has me very alarmed about the nation's security," Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who was briefed about the letter with other Senate Judiciary Committee members, said in a statement.
"If FBI headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we're in grave danger. This was worse than dropping the ball. This was bureaucrats at headquarters actively interfering with an investigation that had a terrorist in hand."
A Justice Department official said the issues raised in the Rowley letter were "being addressed" at both the Justice Department and FBI.
In early October Mueller told reporters the FBI had turned down a request from its agents in Minneapolis for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to review Moussaoui's computer hard drive because there was "insufficient probable cause".
Law enforcement officials said in October the FBI later conducted the search after Sept. 11, but did not find anything related to the hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed 3,000 people.
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