|
Lawyers faulted { September 25 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62612-2002Sep24.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62612-2002Sep24.html
Lawyers For FBI Faulted In Search
Panel Told Legal Staff Misunderstood FISA
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 25, 2002; Page A12
The frantic efforts of Minnesota FBI agents to search the computer and belongings of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 were thwarted by lawyers at FBI headquarters who misunderstood the law on foreign intelligence surveillance warrants, a congressional committee was told yesterday.
Had the agents succeeded in obtaining a special intelligence warrant in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, they would have found materials that could have led them to al Qaeda members -- including hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi -- who had gathered for a key meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a member of the panel, said yesterday.
In the third of a series of critical reports, staff members of the House-Senate committee probing the performance of intelligence agencies reported that Minneapolis FBI agents spent three weeks trying to meet a legal standard that was not required. The agents, fearful that Moussaoui was somehow part of a U.S. plot, desperately tried to prove that Chechen rebels to whom Moussaoui was linked were in turn agents of Osama bin Laden's terror network.
It was a "wild goose chase," Edwards said.
The revelations came during the second week of the joint committee's public hearings, sessions that have focused on the repeated failure of the FBI and the CIA to examine and understand the full range of clues that pointed to the possibility of a major terror attack on American soil.
Yesterday, the panel heard about an offhand comment by a Minneapolis FBI supervisor, who told an agent at FBI headquarters that he hoped to raise interest in Moussaoui to make sure that Moussaoui "did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center."
The report also covered the previously disclosed "Phoenix memo," the prescient suggestion by Arizona FBI agent Kenneth Williams in July 2001 that Middle Eastern terrorists might be training at U.S. flight schools. FBI headquarters rejected the agent's request to canvass the flight schools for possible terror suspects.
Yesterday, testifying behind a screen, Williams told the panel that his memo grew out of his own investigation of an al Qaeda network in Arizona that is still in place, one he said was established by Wadih Hage, an Osama bin Laden follower convicted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Williams said that one of the men he was investigating was an associate of Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour, and may have helped to train Hanjour and screen other potential al Qaeda pilots.
The suggestions contained in the Phoenix memo -- that the FBI establish contact with flight schools, identify Middle Eastern students and obtain visa information on them -- would have taken at least 17 months, FBI counterterrorism official Michael Rolince told the panel.
Williams complained bitterly yesterday that Congress had failed to shield his identity, putting him, his family and his confidential sources in jeopardy of attacks by terrorists.
The intransigence of counterterrorism officials in Washington regarding a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant in the Moussaoui case was described to the committee in June, when Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley aired the complaint. Yesterday's testimony focused anew on the role of lawyers in the FBI's National Security Law Center.
The lawyers advised FBI counterterrorism officials that agents did not have enough evidence to seek an FISA warrant. One of the lawyers said that Moussaoui would have to be linked to a "recognized" foreign power, which the committee staff's report called "a misunderstanding of FISA."
The FBI had no immediate comment on the report, but acknowledged the misinterpretation of the law in discussions with the committee staff. "The FBI's deputy general counsel told the Joint Inquiry Staff that the term 'recognized foreign power' has no meaning under FISA and that the FBI can obtain a search warrant under FISA for an agent of any international terrorist group, including the Chechen rebels. But because of the misunderstanding, Minneapolis spent the better part of three weeks trying to connect the Chechen group to al Qaeda."
A supervisory agent who testified yesterday said that the FISA court's past criticism of some FBI warrant applications as inaccurate has had a "chilling effect," discouraging others from seeking warrants.
Last week, committee members learned that a National Security Law Center lawyer turned down a separate plea in August 2001 from a New York FBI agent who warned that "someday someone will die" if FBI agents were not allowed to launch a criminal investigation and an aggressive manhunt for one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit also failed to take any action on the Phoenix memo, which described the activities of 10 suspected Islamic militants involved in aviation.
Eleanor Hill, director of the joint inquiry staff, told the panel that the FBI believes that Hanjour and an unnamed Islamic extremist cited in the Phoenix memo trained together at an Arizona flight school in the late 1990s. In 2001, as warnings about an impending terror attack circulated in the intelligence community, the FBI in Phoenix believed the unnamed extremist had left the United States, but in fact he had returned and may have resumed his association with Hanjour.
"These associations continue to raise questions about the FBI's knowledge and understanding of the radical fundamentalist network in the United States," Hill said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
|
|
