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Two senators escorted
her to the witness table, where only an hour before, FBI
Director Robert Mueller was grilled for more than four hours
about her critique of the way FBI headquarters handled the
investigation of suspected terrorist Zaccarias Moussaoui in
August.
In a letter to Mueller on May 21, Rowley
had charged that officials at FBI headquarters had thwarted
the efforts of agents in the field and that he and other
senior FBI officials had "circled the wagons" and skewed facts
in their post-Sept. 11 accounts of what they had known before
the attacks.
Rowley claimed that FBI headquarters
shelved requests from the Minneapolis office in the weeks
before the attacks to aggressively investigate Moussaoui, who
was being held in Minnesota on immigration violations and now
is charged with conspiring with al-Qaeda operatives in the
Sept. 11 attacks.
Mueller told the committee that he plans
to change the culture of the FBI from an agency that reacts to
events to one that can meet the dangers posed by "terrorist
groups that are as determined as ever" to destroy the USA.
Rowley said she was "encouraged" by
Mueller's ideas for reforming the FBI. "He really has an
extremely difficult job, and that's an understatement," she
said.
But Rowley also showed flashes of the
feistiness that led her to jeopardize a 21-year career and
write a scathing letter to the FBI director.
She told one senator, Charles Schumer,
D-N.Y., she had already answered the question he posed — while
he was out of the room. And she stuck to her view that the FBI
has too many layers of supervision — a position at odds with
Mueller's plans to reform the FBI by shifting hundreds of
agents and creating new offices to gather and analyze
intelligence.
"Seven to nine layers (of supervision) is
ridiculous," Rowley said.
She said one impetus for her letter was a
report that Mueller intended to form "super squads" of
managers who she thought — erroneously, she now admits — would
come into field offices and "micro-manage" cases.
Such a plan, she said, would "fly in the
face of what we should have learned from Sept. 11." Mueller's
plan, however, would send agents, not managers, to help field
offices when needed.
"Mistakes are inevitable," Rowley said
during the hearing. "But a distinction can and should be drawn
between those mistakes made when trying to do the right thing
and those mistakes (made) due to selfish motives."
Too often, she said, agents who rise
through the ranks of the FBI worry about preserving the
agency's "pecking order" and advancing their own careers.
"I've heard there is a saying at FBI
headquarters," Rowley said in a nine-page statement to the
committee. "Big cases, big problems; little cases, little
problems; no cases, no problems.' "
In her written statement, Rowley
exhibited a biting sense of humor: "The resulting
cumbersomeness of getting approval for even the smallest
decision is obvious. ... Like the plant in the Little Shop
of Horrors movie, the bureaucracy just keeps saying 'feed
me, feed me.' "
Mueller renewed his pledge that no one
will retaliate against Rowley. She said she was "pleasantly
surprised" by the way Mueller handled the furor over her
memo.
Meanwhile, members of the joint
House-Senate Intelligence Committee held a third day of
closed-door briefings. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said the
first week of the inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks amounted
to a "Terrorism 101" course.
Lawmakers denied that they have been
engaging in behind-the-scenes partisan bickering. "There is an
intense interest in this being conducted in a bipartisan way"
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said. "People expect Congress to act
like grownups."
Contributing: Kathy Kiely | 
