Whistle blower: FBI bureacuracy frustrating Director insists
agency is now more flexible By DAVID ESPO,
Associated Press writer
JOE MARQUETTE/The
Associated Press FBI Agent Coleen Rowley from the
Minneapolis FBI field office testifies before the Senate Judiciary
Committee yesterday at the Capitol in Washington. In a 13-page memo,
Rowley last month accused bureau headquarters of putting roadblocks
in the way of Minneapolis field agents trying to investigate the
foreign-born ZacariasMoussaoui, who is charged with conspiring with
the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks.
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is plagued by an "ever-growing bureaucracy" that
stifles individual initiative, an agency whistle-blower told Congress
yesterday, laying bare her frustration with an organization she said could
have done more to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Seven to
nine levels (of bureaucracy) is really ridiculous," Coleen Rowley told a
crowded Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and a nationwide television
audience. Rowley
appeared after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller suggested that Congress
expand surveillance powers that were put into law only seven months ago,
and said his storied agency needs to be "more flexible, agile and mobile"
if it is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Mueller
also disclosed it could take two or three years -- far longer than the one
year he originally hoped -- to bring FBI computer systems up to standards
needed to deal with information efficiently. The panel
met as President Bush prepared for a prime time address to review his
latest plans to strengthen America's defenses against terrorism. Officials
said the president would propose creation of a new Department of Homeland
Security, combining responsibilities now scattered in several federal
agencies -- including customs, immigration, the Secret Service and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the
same time, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees met in
a guarded room in the Capitol to continue their own review of the events
of Sept. 11. While
Mueller has appeared in public several times since the worst terrorist
attacks in the nation's history, Rowley was making her debut, a veteran
FBI attorney so unaccustomed to publicity that her prepared public
testimony contained lawyerly footnotes. Praised
by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, as a patriot for stepping forward,
Rowley told lawmakers she would not talk about the details of the case of
Zacarias Moussaoui that prompted her explosive letter last month. In a
13-page memo, the FBI agent accused bureau headquarters of putting
roadblocks in the way of Minneapolis field agents trying to investigate
the foreign-born Moussaoui, who is charged with conspiring with the
hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead,
she focused her remarks on the frustrations of working in an "ever-growing
bureaucracy." "We have
a culture in the FBI that there's a certain pecking order and it's pretty
strong, and it's very rare that somebody picks up the phone and calls a
rank or two above themselves," Rowley said. Last
August, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested Moussaoui, a French citizen of
Moroccan descent, on an immigration violation after a flight school
instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to fly a commercial
jet. FBI
headquarters turned down the Minneapolis' office request to seek a search
warrant to examine Moussaoui's computer. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the
FBI got the warrant and found information related to jetliners and
crop-dusters on the computer hard drive, officials said. The government
grounded crop-dusting planes temporarily because of what it found.
In his turn in the witness chair, Mueller won praise from several senators
for his efforts to reform an agency that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.,
described as hidebound. "You inherited a great organization but also a
great bureaucracy," added Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. At the
same time, Mueller faced sharp questioning about the FBI's failure to
alert the committee earlier this year about the so-called Phoenix
memorandum, a document sent to agency headquarters last summer noting that
several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in
Arizona. Sen. John
Edwards, D-N.C., asked Mueller why the headquarters agent to whom the memo
was addressed, David Frasca, had not told the Judiciary Committee about it
in January when Frasca met with the panel's staff. Mueller said he did not
know.
This story appeared on Page A2 of The
Standard-Times on June 7, 2002.
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is plagued by an "ever-growing bureaucracy" that
stifles individual initiative, an agency whistle-blower told Congress
yesterday, laying bare her frustration with an organization she said could
have done more to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 
