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Intelligence Agencies Under Scrutiny as Pre-9/11 Furor Continues

Aired May 21, 2002 - 14:03   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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Fist up this hour, though, the heads-up that went largely overlooked in the days and weeks before 9/11, getting plenty of attention now as we look back through the prism on the Phoenix memo -- the prism of hindsight. Kelli Arena, our Justice correspondent, once again in D.C. with more. Hey, Kelli, good afternoon again.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon. Kenneth Williams -- that is, the FBI agent who wrote the now-famous Phoenix memo, will meet with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee later this afternoon. FBI director Robert Mueller will also be there.

The lawmakers want the memo made public in redacted form, and they want to know what information was shared about the memo, with whom and when. The memo, sent back in July, raised questions about Middle Eastern men who were training at U.S. flight schools in a possible terrorism connection.

Much has been made today about the fact that the president did not receive a copy of that memo until early April, but the White House says that the focus should remain on what happened before 9/11, not after.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I don't think anybody needed a memo after September 11 to know that there were general suspicions that people were in flight schools. Everyone knew it as a result of September 11.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARENA: Officials are hoping that once the Phoenix agent gives members of Congress some context that this controversy will die down some. But given the political tone at the moment, Bill, that doesn't seem likely.

HEMMER: More today. Kelli, thanks. Kelli Arena in Washington.

Now to the White House, and the Bush Administration reaction to the latest developments. Kathleen Koch back with us again on the front line -- Kathleen. KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, the mantra from the White House today is that this is a president who is looking forward, that in light of these continuing potential terrorist threats, terrorist warnings, that this administration is best served to working hard doing whatever it can to try to prevent them and not looking in the rearview mirror.

That, of course, is not stopping anyone in Congress, anyone on Capitol Hill, from asking for answers about what the president, what the administration, what the intelligence agencies knew before 9/11 and what did they do with that information?

Many of them would especially like to see copy of the presidential daily briefing that the president got back on August 6, in which he was warned that some al Qaeda operatives might try to hijack U.S. aircraft. Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, today said that the White House will not turn over a copy of that briefing to Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FLEISCHER: If the presidential daily brief, which is highly sensitized -- the most highly sensitized classified document in the government, if that document were to be at risk of public reporting, public release, the people who prepare it will hold back and not give the president of the United States, the person who needs the most information, they will be inclined to give him less rather than more because they fear it will get made public and that could compromise sources or methods.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Ari reiterated the point, the White House point, that they believe that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are the best bodies to look into what happened before 9/11. What information got to who and when and what, if anything, fell through the cracks. He says that those bodies are used to handling confidential intelligence information, not letting it leak out.

But still, there are plenty of people on Capitol Hill, one of them House minority leader Dick Gephardt, who believe especially this example of the Phoenix memo, the fact that the president only found out about it, means that a broader public inquiry, a wide-reaching inquiry needs to be held.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D), MINORITY LEADER: That is why we need the inquiry. That is what the intelligence committee is trying to do. That is why we need a commission.

We need to know what information was available, who it was available to, exactly what it was, so again we can improve our performance. It is obvious that we did not have the best coordination of information before September 11.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Bill, again this White House very much on the defensive as the president prepares in the morning to leave for a week-long trip to Europe. Back to you.

HEMMER: Thank you, Kathleen. More on the Phoenix memo and the role the FBI had in investigating terror threats. Ron Kessler, a former investigative reporter whose latest book is "The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI" is our guest today from Washington.

Ron, good to see you again and good afternoon.

RON KESSLER, AUTHOR, "THE BUREAU: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE FBI": Thank you for having me.

HEMMER: I do not want to be here to make excuses. In fact I want to pick your brain on this, but I want to know why this memo that some people have characterized as a hunch or a theory, why would it stall at any level in the FBI, given what was happening back in July of last summer?

KESSLER: The FBI was not in a position to really have the luxury of analyzing everything and keeping it stored on its computers. Louis Freeh, the director for eight years, had this aversion to computers. He did not look ahead.

He tended to just focus on a few cases that he micro managed, and the rest of the bureau just sort of disintegrated. That is why you had the Wen Ho Lee case, the Richard Jewell case, and all these other fiascoes.

So unless it were something that was really quite definite, and that did happen with the plot to blow up the tunnels around Manhattan, and FBI did foil that...

HEMMER: Ron, are you hanging this up...

KESSLER: The FBI was not going to have the analysis and the computers to deal with putting all this information together.

HEMMER: Are you hanging this on Louis Freeh or are you saying it is bad management? You said he was an incredibly bad manager. Why?

KESSLER: Well, it is quite a long story. Mainly, Freeh did not want to listen to the veterans, the seasoned people who knew how to run cases. He actually discouraged people from telling him about problems in cases or disagreeing with him. Roger Nizely (ph), the head of the hostage rescue team, every now and then would try to venture a candid opinion, but he would preface it by saying, "Permission requested to be candid, sir."

That just tells you a lot about the way the FBI was run under Louis Freeh.

HEMMER: Ron, I want to talk about -- I heard a woman who also studies the FBI, and she had a different analysis for what happened last July. I just want to share a couple of the points that she made. I want to know if you agree or disagree with them. The agents were chasing thousands of leads last summer. They were working heavily, still, on the Cole investigation.

And also she made the point about racial profiling. There is a lot of sensitivity given to that last summer, especially when the memo describes looking for Middle Eastern men. Does any of that fly with you?

KESSLER: I think that is all correct. The FBI was totally inundated, working on all these other cases, and no question about political correctness.

Imagine what the reaction would have been before September 11 if the FBI started interviewing Middle Easterners going to flight schools, when even after September 11, when Ashcroft wanted to interview 5,000 Middle Easterners there were a lot of outcries over that as well.

So we are talking about a whole different world now. None of us understood the threat. We all knew that we had been attacked by bin Laden and yet none of us took it seriously. That does not mean that this criticism is unproductive. I think it is good to keep the pressure on. I think there should be more resources devoted to the FBI.

It is certainly better for Tom Daschle to be questioning what Bush knew or didn't know than questioning whether we should continue in Afghanistan, which he did.

HEMMER: What explains, then, why Robert Mueller would keep this from the president until about a month ago, as we now understand?

KESSLER: Well, first of all, Mueller and the president were really trying to save the country when this happened and didn't -- Mueller didn't have a chance to go to the bathroom, and this Phoenix memo was, in fact, a hunch.

It was a great hunch but it was nothing that was relevant after September 11. We knew that we had been attacked. It was not a smoking gun. It was not that we had information about this plot and didn't do anything about it. Even in the Moussaoui case, where in Minneapolis it turned out that this person was not interested in landing or taking off, the FBI actually did investigate vigorously and did put him in jail and was denied permission to intercept his communications by the lawyers.

Now today even more focus would have been put on him. Half the FBI would have come down on this person, but it is not that the FBI was asleep as it was under Louis Freeh with some of these other cases I mentioned.

HEMMER: Two points and about 30 seconds to wrap up here. Do you think it is fair or not fair to do the second guessing that we are all doing right now? (UNINTELLIGIBLE) some people point out that they were awful darn close to figuring this out before it happened. Do you buy that?

KESSLER: No, not at all. They did not know -- unless you know about the plot, you don't know. And, you know, all the hunches are wonderful and it is great that we have agents like that who come up with these hunches, but in terms of any information we had nothing, and these hijackers are very good. They were very compartmented.

Does not mean it is impossible to penetrate them, but it is unfair to use hindsight to go back, even though it is good to question everything. I think Mueller is going in the right direction.

HEMMER: Thank you, Ron. Ron Kessler wrote the book "The Bureau: An Inside Look at the FBI." Thank you, sir.

KESSLER: Thank you.

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