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Inspector General's Issues Report on FBI's Handling of McVeigh Case

Aired March 19, 2002 - 10:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Late last hour, the inspector general's office issued its report on the FBI's handling of the Timothy McVeigh case. Now at issue there is whether long-missing documents affected the fate of the long condemned mastermind of the Oklahoma City bombing.

And our Jonathan Aiken now has a copy of that report. He joins us now with the headlines from it.

Jon, what have you learned?

JONATHAN AIKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Leon, we've learned this report from the Justice Department's inspector general says the basically the FBI did not intentionally plan to withhold over 700 pages of documents, FBI documents, from lawyers representing Timothy McVeigh. But the office of the inspector general says a slew of human errors is blamed for the problem. And the report also recommends some disciplinary action against two FBI supervisors for waiting months, four months actually, before letting their superiors know that those documents never reached McVeigh's lawyers.

Now the delays in getting the documents to McVeigh's legal team forced one-month postponement, this was last spring, of McVeigh's execution for his role in the Oklahoma City bombings. The report backs up the FBI's contention at the time that the withholding of information was not intentional and none of the papers accidentally withheld from lawyers would have exonerated McVeigh in my case.

Among the human errors cited by the report from the inspector general, they include a report that two FBI offices started destroying offices in the McVeigh case before having permission to do so, and also the FBI Oklahoma City task force, the agent specifically directed to investigate the bombing, lost some documents, so they misplaced some evidence during the five years of their investigation, along with the subsequent trials and McVeigh's later appeals.

In addition, the report finds nine FBI field offices actually destroyed documents that should have, or at the very least, could have gone to McVeigh's team for review.

Now Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement this morning. I would like to quote from part of it. He said, "The inspector general's report determined that human error, compounded by antiquated and cumbersome information technology systems and procedures contributed to the belated delivery of documents related to the McVeigh case, and he went on to say, the FBI has already begun to update technology systems, improve information management and provide more effective and timely accountability."

Well, the inspector general's report sort of dismisses the idea that antiquated computers alone were to blame, but changing the computers systems, that's a process already underway. There is a nearly $400,000 system called "Trilogy," a part of which was brought online recently at FBI headquarters. It's a system that's going to allow different departments within the FBI to share information, Leon, and that's something that wasn't always happening before. And it was also the start of what the FBI director Robert Mueller is hoping will be an agency-wide upgrade of computer technology.

And I should remind viewers who may have seen some of this about two weeks ago, when Mueller appeared before the House Appropriations Committee. He was pretty forceful on the point that the Bureau needed money to upgrade -- Leon.

HARRIS: All right, good deal. Thanks, Jonathan. Jonathan Aiken reporting live from Washington.

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