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by CNN.com
Thursday, June 19, 2003 Posted: 1:10
PM EDT (1710 GMT)
WASHINGTON -- Special Agent
Robert Wright of the FBI's Chicago Division could not have been surprised
by the bureau's reflexive reaction when he called a press conference June
2 at the National Press Club.
He laid out an indictment of the
FBI's "pathetic anti-terrorism efforts." One week later, the bureau
responded like Pavlov's dog, secretly launching its fourth investigation
of Wright.
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley,
as top congressional protector of whistle-blowers, learned of this and did
not conceal his rage in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller June 12.
He noted the bureau's Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) had initiated its fourth investigation
of Agent Wright after the first three inquiries found no wrongdoing.
Grassley, second-ranking
Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was joined by the panel's
top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy. "We are troubled," said their letter,
"by the FBI's apparent haste to launch an OPR investigation every time an
agent speaks publicly about problems within the FBI." The senators
demanded a briefing on what is happening.
The FBI's public affairs office
was not aware of the letter until I inquired about it. Although Grassley
and Leahy only requested a telephone call to set a date for a briefing,
the bureau's spokesman told me it could not comment until a letter to the
senators was prepared. It was not yet ready Wednesday, seven days after
the Grassley-Leahy letter was received.
Minneapolis Agent Coleen Rowley's
whistle-blowing about the FBI ignoring warnings of the September 11
terrorist attacks made her Time magazine's co-person of the year and won
commendation from Mueller.
In contrast, Wright has faced
only trouble for raising questions deeper and broader than anything Rowley
suggested. Wright's accusations go to the overriding question of whether
the FBI can ever be reformed as an effective instrument in the war against
terrorism no matter how hard Mueller tries.
Grassley does not blame Mueller
for failing to transform the FBI's inbred, secretive culture in nearly two
years as its director. Suggesting the persecution of Agent Wright came
without Mueller's knowledge, the senator told me: "He can't keep his eyes
on everything."
Apart from giving Mueller leeway,
Grassley is unforgiving about the Wright affair and draws broad
conclusions from this incident. "The problem with the FBI," he told me,
"is that it can't tolerate dissent."
To effectively combat terrorism,
he said, "it's going to take a new FBI from the top to the bottom."
As for his request for a briefing
on the treatment of Wright, he answered with the understatement of the
Iowa farmer that he is: "Sometimes it takes a long time to get an answer
from them."
In contrast, the FBI hierarchy
acts quickly when it hears whistles blowing, as when Agent Wright met with
the Chicago special agent-in-charge in March 2001 and told him "the
international terrorism unit of the FBI is a complete joke."
Within three weeks, the OPR
opened an inquiry into charges that Wright had supplied classified
information to an assistant U.S. attorney. "This was a pathetic attempt,"
Wright declared in his June 2 press conference, " . . . before the Sept.
11th attacks, to further silence me from going public about the FBI's
negligence and incompetence."
The FBI would soon find out that
Bob Wright is not easily silenced. In September 1999, he had hired Chicago
lawyer David Schippers, famed as House investigative counsel in the
Clinton impeachment.
When the FBI retaliated against
Wright, Schippers contacted Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog
organization. The FBI has had to face Judicial Watch's redoubtable Larry
Klayman ever since.
The 2001 investigation and two
subsequent internal probes all cleared Wright, who passed a polygraph
test, of charges he leaked classified information. Nevertheless, the FBI
hierarchy has been implacable in its attitude toward Wright. It has banned
publication of his manuscript which Wright calls "a blueprint of how the
events of September the eleventh were inevitable." He describes himself as
the only FBI agent "banned from working in the investigation" of 9-11.
The fourth internal investigation
of Wright was originally based on claims he was insubordinate (" . . . the
FBI allowed known terrorists, their co-conspirators and financiers, to
operate and roam freely throughout the United States."), then tacked on
charges that he embarrassed the FBI and acted unprofessionally.
Last week, OPR agents
interrogated Wright. Clearly, Director Mueller has not changed the culture
of the FBI that considers whistle-blowing the supreme sin for its agents.
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