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Interview With Elaine Shannon of 'TIME' Magazine

Aired May 24, 2002 - 14:11   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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Elaine Shannon now covers the FBI for "TIME" magazine, and she joins us now with her take on the bureau's latest whistle-blower.

Thanks for joining us.

ELAINE SHANNON, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Good to see you, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Well, Coleen Rowley characterized it this way. She says that Mueller's office downplayed, glossed over and mischaracterized her office's investigation.

You've read the 13-page report, correct?

SHANNON: We have had access to parts of it. We've reviewed parts of it.

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, what was most alarming to you about the knowledge that the field agents had that apparently were, as Rowley says, mischaracterized or glossed over?

SHANNON: Well, FBI headquarters has said all along, since the word of this arrest came out right after 9/11, that they didn't know what Moussaoui was. They were working on trying to get enough probable cause, as they call it, to get a warrant into his computer.

We now know a lot more about what French intelligence told the FBI. They thought he was a radical extremist, which doesn't give you the hard terrorist nexus.

But she is saying that a supervisor at headquarters had even more intelligence information about this man and didn't kick it into the mix so that they could get a warrant.

WHITFIELD: Such as what? What is she saying that they had that really raised a red flag about Moussaoui?

SHANNON: Well, she doesn't say what she thinks the supervisor at headquarters had that would have bumped him over the top and given them the evidence for the warrant.

But they think that he was certainly very sinister-acting. He wouldn't let them go into the laptop. They had an interview with a guy who had driven him around who talked about his antagonism toward America. Certainly, the people at the flight school had a lot of suspicions about him, because he came down, plunked all this cash money, wanted to fly a 747. He was incompetent.

So they think that all of that put together was enough for probable cause for the warrant, particularly when French intelligence reports came in on him.

WHITFIELD: Now, Rowley also charges that the headquarters supervisor knew an awful lot more than what is being admitted to at this juncture. What exactly is Rowley alleging?

SHANNON: Just what you said, that he knows more. We don't know exactly what, if anything, he did in fact have. There is a lot of animus toward him in this memo.

But the more important political point for Bob Mueller is that she's attacking what he has been saying is spin. And that's not a crime. Plenty of people in Washington spin, but you don't want an FBI director whose credibility is under attack by a reputable agents within his own ranks.

WHITFIELD: She's getting an awful lot of attention now, attention that she admits she was not getting beforehand, with valid information at the time. What have you all uncovered as you've been covering this 13-page report, Rowley's part that she's been playing, and the other field agents?

SHANNON: Well, I think she has a very legitimate point here, that information that this field office had, that they felt very strongly about prior to 9/11, they were told to go slower and that they didn't have enough.

But after 9/11, suddenly this guy jumped to the top of the list, and he was indicted last December, and she says, using the same information they had prior to 9/11. It just grew more important after we knew what was going on.

WHITFIELD: It's likely that she's going to be called again, or at least called for the first time, with the Intelligence Committee. Our Jonathan Karl had revealed that earlier, that a number of the intelligence committee members are likely to be asking for input when they have those private hearings.

Do you see that it's likely that if indeed it becomes a public hearing later on in the summer, that she will be playing a significant role in that?

SHANNON: Oh, I would think so.

One of the points that she makes is that if the Minneapolis office had been given access to the now-famous Phoenix memo, about flight schools, that would really have raised a lot more alarms. Because here -- they had a guy who described himself as a Middle Easterner that had some hostility toward America, who didn't have any good reason to be flying 747's. And then you know that other people are suspected of using flight schools for bad things. Put it all together and it is a lot of dots.

WHITFIELD: All right. Elaine Shannon with "TIME" magazine -- thanks so much for joining us.

SHANNON: Thank you.

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