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by The Wall Street
Journal
Review & Outlook, May 31, 2001
In the wake of September 11, the
public can be forgiven for thinking that America's intelligence agencies
are more Maxwell Smart than James Bond. The issue now is whether, and how,
the CIA and FBI can regain public confidence and deter future attacks.
FBI Director Robert Mueller made
his pitch this week, announcing the second stage of a post-September 11
restructuring. The aim is to shift the bureau's priorities away from
chasing kidnappers and drug kingpins toward finding and thwarting
terrorists. "We need a different approach that puts prevention above all
others," Mr. Mueller said in announcing the reforms. "We need to change
and we indeed are changing."
This certainly sounds good, though
we're always skeptical about proposals that rearrange the bureaucratic
furniture. It's undoubtedly good to let agents in the field start
investigations--until now they've often had to wait weeks for approval
from Washington--but that won't matter much if headquarters ignores them.
And we have some concern about the new "flying squads" of
counter-terrorism investigators, who will be based in risk-averse
Washington rather than out in the field. The last thing the bureau needs
is another layer of bureaucracy.
The essential question is how far
these reforms will go toward changing the institutional mindset of the
FBI, which suffers from a dangerous lack of accountability. No extra
agents or new computer system can make that happen. After Waco, Ruby
Ridge, the Hanssen spy case, and now September 11, the lesson is that
mistakes will go unpunished or be covered up, especially if they're
committed close to the top. Specifically, this goes to the heart of the
credibility of Mr. Mueller.
The highly publicized letter from
veteran agent Coleen Rowley is devastating on this score. Mr. Mueller
can't be blamed for September 11--he took office only on September 4. Yet
his statements since that date have been, to say the least, embarrassing.
First he proclaimed that the FBI had no information on possible terrorist
attacks prior to September 11. This was the line he kept up for
months--"circling the wagons," as Agent Rowley put it.
Then, as information dribbled
out--the Phoenix agent's memo on Arabs enrolling at flight schools, the
Minneapolis agents who had identified Zacarias Moussaoui as a terrorist
threat--he amended it to say that despite the information nothing the FBI
might have done would have changed anything. Agent Rowley puts it
succinctly: "I think your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to
protect the FBI at all costs." Specifically, she accuses Mr. Mueller and
senior FBI officials as having "omitted, downplayed, glossed over and or
mischaracterized" her office's probe of Moussaoui.
The Rowley letter surfaced last
weekend and was immediately seen for what it was--a precision-guided
missile aimed at the director. So now that his job is on the line, Mr.
Mueller has apologized more or less. He concedes that the 9/11 attacks
might have been detectable, even going so far as to thank Agent Rowley for
her memo. This is a step forward, but the question for his future
leadership is whether everyone in the FBI will see this for the
self-protection it is.
If Mr. Mueller had wanted to send a
message to change the FBI mindset, he would have fired the supervisory
special agent who ignored the Minneapolis warnings on Moussaoui. Instead,
Ms. Rowley says, that agent was promoted. All of this suggests that Mr.
Mueller isn't willing or able to change the FBI culture.
Prior to his appointment, we raised
questions about his handling of the BCCI scandal while he was head of the
Criminal Division in the early 1990s. In his attempts to prosecute the
case, the Manhattan District Attorney felt the same kind of frustration
with main Justice that Agent Rowley now feels about FBI headquarters. His
appointment, we wrote, put the Bureau "in the hands of someone who will
turn over no rocks and rock no boats."
Problems at FBI headquarters long
predated Mr. Mueller, admittedly, and have resisted reform efforts by many
directors. Agent Rowley says it well: "I'm hard pressed to think of any
case which has been solved by FBIHQ personnel and I can name several that
have been screwed up!" It's no surprise that President Bush and Attorney
General Ashcroft are standing by their man; Mr. Ashcroft this week praised
him as a "battle-tested leader" and the "right man for the job." The
director could relieve their embarrassment by completing this week's mea
culpa with an honorable resignation.
Mr. Mueller has served his country
honorably, as a Marine, a federal prosecutor and now FBI director. But
what's at stake here isn't one man's career, distinguished as it has been.
Nor, though agents and directors should be held accountable for
performance, is this about assigning political blame. It's about
rebuilding the FBI into an agency that can detect and prevent future
terrorist attacks. Without leadership and credibility at the top, no
amount of bureaucratic reshuffling will make a difference.
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