Don't Blame Me, FBI Failure Freeh Whines
Back to the Clinton Criminals Page
NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002
Disastrous former Clinton FBI Director Louis Freeh denied today before a congressional panel that the bureau was lax in fighting terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Tuesday's hearing marked the first time Freeh has spoken at length publicly about the FBI's performance before Sept. 11. But his firm defense of the agency contradicted many of the findings presented Tuesday by lead congressional investigator Eleanor Hill, and the complaints of a one-time terrorism analyst who testified alongside him," United Press International reported.
Does Not Share With Others
"Not to contradict what's been said up here, but the FBI's never shared s--t with anyone, and they still don't," said Kie C. Fallis, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, as he prepared to testify before the committee.
Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., asked Freeh: "How do you explain the idea that there was information out there that never reached the highest levels of our government? How do you explain that other people weren't communicating with one another?"
Freeh, who quit in June 2001 after eight years as director, denied the well-documented fact that the FBI and CIA failed to cooperate in fighting terrorism.
"What I am telling you is that there is an absolute misperception if there is a notion that we have a culture where information is not shared," he claimed.
He told the House and Senate intelligence committees that he had seen no evidence that the FBI and intelligence agencies could have prevented 9/11.
"Analyzing intelligence information can be like trying to take a sip of water coming out of a fire hydrant," he complained. "The reality is that these unquestionably important bits have been plucked from a sea of thousands and thousands of such bits at the time.
"The FBI was focused on preventing domestic and foreign terrorist attacks, and I take exception to the finding that we were not sufficiently paying attention to terrorism at home," he huffed.
'Beyond the Competence'
"Al-Qaeda type organizations, state sponsors of terrorism like Iran and the threats they pose to America are beyond the competence of the FBI and the CIA to address," Freeh said.
The FBI didn't have enough people or money to fight terrorism, he insisted. "To win a war, it takes soldiers."
He cited laws handcuffing the FBI's ability to stop terrorists. "Many of those restrictions were changed after the attacks," the Associated Press reported.
"I repeatedly testified before Congress that FBI agents were statutorily barred from obtaining portions of credit reports on certain national security subjects which used car dealers could order and read," Freeh said.
No Lessons Learned From '93 WTC Bombing
However, Hill, staff director of the joint congressional investigation, noted that intelligence agencies "did not fully learn the lessons of past attacks," dating back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Although the FBI focused more on terrorism starting in the 1990s, it did not make the changes necessary to adequately fight terrorism in the United States, she charged.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda was able to exploit the gaps in the U.S. counterterrorism structure to carry out its devastating attacks," she said.
Fallis, a former liaison officer to the FBI, told lawmakers that the FBI had repeatedly failed to share its criminal investigative information with him and other analysts, seriously hurting their ability to predict terrorist attacks.
For more than two years after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the FBI refused to release details of their investigation, leading many analysts to incorrectly assume that al-Qaeda, and not Saudi Hezbollah, had been behind the attacks, he said. Nor were analysts told of investigations into an al-Qaeda cell leader in Nairobi until after the 1998 embassy bombing there, Fallis said.
The lack of information meant analysts could not paint an accurate picture of al-Qaeda's methods of operation. It also led analysts to underestimate the importance of a critical January 2000 Malaysia meeting of al-Qaeda operatives attended by two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Fallis told lawmakers.
'Treasure Trove'
"We have literally a treasure trove of intelligence information, spanning back decades. The problem is how to use that information and build databases to access it. Solving that problem won't solve everything, but it would take us a lot further along than we are now," Fallis said.
The former analyst's testimony echoed some of the findings presented by Hill. Among other things, the Sept. 11 investigation has found, according to UPI:
Though the FBI had set up a special Osama bin Laden Unit in 1999, only one FBI analyst worked exclusively on al-Qaeda before Sept. 11.
The leading National Security Council-level U.S. policy-maker with counterterrorism responsibilities told investigators that most FBI field offices around the country were "clueless" with regard to counterterrorism and al-Qaeda and did not make them priorities. The FBI was not able to gather intelligence from disparate cases nationwide to produce an overall assessment of al-Qaeda's presence in the United States. FBI officers told investigators that training on counterterrorism was extremely limited. The FBI did not inform policy-makers of the extent of terrorist activity in the United States. Former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger testified that the FBI told him that there was little radical activity in the United States and that it was "fully covered," Hill said. Though Freeh was instrumental in creating interagency Joint Terrorism Task Forces, not all of them included CIA officers. Of the 35 task forces operating on Sept. 11, only six had CIA officers on them, Hill said. 'Evasion of Responsibility'
Also today, Judicial Watch predicted that Freeh's attempt to duck responsibility would fail.
"This evasion of responsibility may work with Congress, but it has not thus far worked with the courts," said the organization, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption.
Notra Trulock, the former head of intelligence for the Energy Department, alleges that his First Amendment rights were violated by Freeh and other FBI officials when, after Trulock wrote an article critical of the FBI, they ordered agents to seize his personal computer files. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld key aspects of Trulock's claim against Freeh, who has appealed to the Supreme Court. JW is representing Trulock.
"Whether it be the Ruby Ridge cover-up, the FBI files scandal, or his vendetta against Notra Trulock, Louis Freeh has acted as if he were immune from the law. And now he seeks to avoid responsibility for any failures of the FBI in preventing the Sept. 11 attacks, despite his heading the FBI for nearly seven years in the run-up to the attacks," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
"If anyone wonders what Louis Freeh was doing while terrorists were planning their attack on America, see our case for Notra Trulock. Freeh has played both Republicans and Democrats like fiddles over the years. We are confident that the Supreme Court will not be played, nor, in the end, will a jury."
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Clinton Scandals
War on Terrorism
Editor's note:
Trooper reveals Hillary’s secrets!Where Is J. Edgar Hoover?
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Christopher Ruddy
Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2002Where is J. Egar Hoover?
I didn't see him testifying before Congress Tuesday.
Instead, there was a man who pales in comparison to Hoover. His name is Louis Freeh.
Like Clinton, the man who appointed him to head the FBI in 1993, Freeh bears incredible responsibility for the worst catastrophe ever to strike the American homeland.
Now, you won't hear that from the major media.
But Freeh handled the FBI for eight years before 9/11, and it was his primary duty to protect America from such terrorists, especially ones who spent years within our borders preparing their dastardly deeds.
But Freeh boldly said he bore no responsibility, blaming everyone but himself. Freeh claimed he didn't have enough agents, Congress didn't give him enough money, no one listened to him, and so on.
Such lame excuses are meekly accepted by the liberal media. Freeh has gotten an even easier ride since 9/11 than Bill Clinton. It took more than a year for Congress to even summon Freeh for public testimony.
Freeh's excuses don't work, because we know that there was more than enough evidence provided to the FBI, with the manpower it had, that something was seriously amiss.
There were the Minnesota agents who were worried about Zacarias Moussaoui. There was the Phoenix memo about the flight schools. There was the New York agent sending e-mails warning that Americans would die. There was Agent Wright, who was told he couldn't investigate suspected Muslim terrorists.
This anecdotal evidence, I am told, is just the tip of the iceberg of evidence pointing to FBI negligence.
Freeh would have you believe that FBI negligence could be blamed simply on a manpower shortage.
Even if that was the case, Freeh still bears culpability. He could have easily redirected FBI agents to handle terrorism. It was he, not Congress, who decided that terrorism was not the highest priority.
In fact, Freeh, upon arriving at the FBI, transferred hundreds of senior and veteran FBI officials from headquarters and the bureau's training center at Quantico out to field offices.
Some agents believed this action by Freeh, more than anything else, caused the bureau irreparable harm.
Freeh, a former FBI agent, had disdain for the bureau's hierarchy, so he took his revenge when he became director.
In doing so, he took some of the bureau's most experienced and veteran investigators and sent them off to field offices in Paducah. The bureau's institutional ability to deal with criminals was crippled.
Freeh also sent agents on politically correct missions. For example, agents were assigned to places like Washington, D.C., to help the police solve local murder cases.
Others were assigned to help in carjackings or to locate missing kids in divorce cases. No doubt worthy causes, but completely outside the jurisdiction of the FBI.
Apparently, Freeh's FBI made assisting the Clintons a high priority. We know that nearly 1,000 confidential FBI files on Republicans were illegally turned over to the White House.
As I watched Freeh today I couldn't help but juxtapose Mr. Freeh with J. Edgar Hoover.
I know it is politically incorrect to defend Hoover or to talk of his accomplishments.
But the comparison was just too good to ignore after watching the Freeh hearing this week.
Hoover created and built the FBI. For more than half a century he directed the FBI until his death in 1972. During that time, he was able to keep America safe and secure.
Let's not forget that Hoover kept America free and secure during a global depression, a world war on two fronts against the fascist powers, a bitter Cold War with hot wars flaring in Korea and Vietnam – and constant turmoil throughout the world. At the same time, he drew to the FBI some of the nation's most talented, brightest and patriotic individuals.
Can you imagine any disaster like 9/11 happening under J. Edgar Hoover’s watch?
International terrorists, who have been legion for decades, knew that the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover was not to be tangled with.
Since Hoover's death there has been much revisionism about him and his record.
If we believe the media reports, Hoover was a cross-dressing homosexual who had been blackmailed by the mob, a man who had turned the FBI into his personal valet service.
Let me say that I have no doubt that Hoover had eccentricities (what great men do not?). But most of the charges against him were false or completely unsubstantiated.
There is not one shred of evidence that Hoover was gay. Rumor and innuendo, yes, but evidence, no.
Charges that Hoover was blackmailed by the mob are obviously not true. When the evidence showed that La Cosa Nostra was indeed a national organization, Hoover and his G-men went after them with abandon.
Hoover's senior FBI agent in Chicago, the late William Roemer, was my friend. You can read his books to find out that Hoover never handcuffed his agents as they nabbed mobster after mobster.
Hoover was not perfect.
He wouldn't have survived in Washington so long had he been just a Boy Scout. He was tough. He had shortcomings. For example, he clearly had racist views about African-Americans. But we should remember that those views were not atypical for most of the establishment at the time, Democrats and Republicans.
The nitpicking about Hoover seems to ignore the fact that he created the best crime-fighting organization in the world. He was one of the key players who helped us win the Cold War. Since his death, the FBI has been living on his fumes. On 9/11 we discovered the tank was empty.
Today, there is a movement afoot to have Hoover’s name stripped from the FBI headquarters building.
What's the plan? Name it after Louis Freeh?
The major media have it all wrong. J. Edgar Hoover, warts and all, was a great American who served American people well.
It is people like Louis Freeh who have brought us great harm.
Editor's note:
"CATASTROPHE" Reveals Bill Clinton`s Role in 9/11 – Click Here to find out more.
Ex-FBI Head Rejects 9/11 Criticism
washingtonpost.com
By Ken Guggenheim
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 8, 2002; 12:24 PMWASHINGTON –– Rejecting accusations that the FBI was lax in fighting terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks, former director Louis Freeh told a congressional panel Tuesday that it did the best it could given legal limitations and insufficient resources provided by Congress.
Freeh told the House and Senate intelligence committees that he has seen no evidence that the FBI and intelligence agencies could have prevented the attacks. The committees are conducting a joint inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the attacks.
Freeh, who stepped down in June 2001 after eight years heading the FBI, rejected some of the key points made by inquiry staff: that the bureau was more focused on prosecuting terrorists than preventing attacks and that the CIA and FBI have not cooperated in fighting terrorists.
"I take exception to the finding that we were not sufficiently paying attention to terrorism at home," he said.
He said that with terrorists taking haven in foreign countries, the FBI and CIA's ability to stop them will inevitably be limited.
"Al-Qaida type organizations, state sponsors of terrorism like Iran and the threats they pose to America are beyond the competence of the FBI and the CIA to address," he said.
He said the FBI was denied the staff and money it needed to fight terrorism. In 2000, for example, he said he requested 864 additional people for counterterrorism at a cost of $380.8 million. He said he received five people and $7.4 million.
"To win a war, it takes soldiers," he said.
Similarly, Congress was slow to provide funding for improving the FBI's antiquated computer systems, Freeh said. Lawmakers have identified the FBI's technological problems as a major hindrance to the sharing of information.
The FBI's ability to stop terrorists was also set back by laws restricting its investigations, Freeh said. Many of those restrictions were changed after the attacks.
"I repeatedly testified before Congress that FBI agents were statutorily barred from obtaining portions of credit reports on certain national security subjects which used car dealers could order and read," he said.
Speaking before Freeh, inquiry staff director Eleanor Hill said Tuesday that intelligence agencies had made "several impressive advances" in fighting terrorism since the end of the Cold War. In many cases, agencies could do little about factors beyond their control, such as al-Qaida finding sanctuary in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, she said.
But Hill said intelligence agencies "did not fully learn the lessons of past attacks," dating back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida was able to exploit the gaps in the U.S. counterterrorism structure to carry out its devastating attacks," she said.
The inquiry has not found any single piece of evidence in the hands of intelligence agencies that, by itself, would have prevented the attacks. But it has identified a series of clues that, if pieced together, might have led to the hijacking plot.
Two of the biggest clues involved the FBI in the months between Freeh's departure and the attacks. One was a July 2001 memo by a Phoenix FBI agent warning that al-Qaida might be training terrorist pilots at U.S. flight schools. The other was the August 2001 arrest of a suspicious student pilot, Zacarias Moussaoui, who has since been charged with conspiring in the attacks.
As the committees wind down their inquiry, they're looking to set up an independent commission to conduct a broader investigation, looking at issues such as airline security and immigration in addition to intelligence.
The commission could be included in legislation 2003 intelligence activities, expected to be considered by the committees late Tuesday.
But a leader of a group of victims' relatives, Stephen Push of Families of Sept. 11, said talks between lawmakers and the Bush administration about the commission have been slowed by new White House demands. He said they included differences about the commission's membership, the length of the investigation, and the administration's control over the final report.
The White House had initially opposed an independent commission because of concerns about possible leaks and distractions for agencies involved in fighting terrorism. But with backing for the commission building in Congress, it announced last month it would support it.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration was working closely with congressional leaders "to get the commission up and running as quickly as possible and to do so in a way that accommodates the concerns we have heard in meetings with families of the victims."
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The authorization bills are H.R. 4628 and S. 2506
On the Net:
House Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.house.gov/
Senate Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.senate.gov/
© 2002 The Associated Press