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FBI Agent Rowley Interviewed Under Oath by Committee Staff

Aired June 05, 2002 - 12:12   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: And now on to the probe in Washington. Today, an FBI whistle-blower is being questioned under oath, and members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are being brought up to speed on where the probe now stands.

CNN's Kate Snow picks it up from there. She's on Capitol Hill today -- good afternoon, Kate.

KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Carol.

Those are the two tracks that are happening this afternoon. While one group of staff will be briefing the Congress men and women about what they've learned so far, another group of staff from this joint intelligence committee is going to be sitting down, as you mentioned, with Coleen Rowley. She is a Minneapolis FBI field agent. She's going to be interviewed, as you said, under oath.

Investigators looking to her to provide some clues about how things work between FBI headquarters here in Washington and the field offices out there in the field. Particularly, she, you will remember, had some big complaints about what happened in Minneapolis. She said that her people in Minneapolis had sent word to the FBI headquarters that they needed to look very closely at Zacarias Moussaoui. They wanted search warrants to be able to go through his computer files. Now he, of course, is now accused of helping to plot and plan September 11.

Rowley wrote a scathing just recently last month to Director of the FBI Robert Mueller saying that the headquarters here in Washington had stymied the investigation. And then she said that they had circled the wagon. She accused Director Mueller of misleading Congress; she accused other top officials of bungling work that she said may have saved lives, as a matter of fact.

She's had a long career with the FBI. She's just a couple of years, two and a half years away from retirement.

Now I spoke just a short time ago with Senator Bob Graham, who is one of the people leading this investigative committee, this intelligence joint committee. And I talked to him about the fact that there are 37 law-makers on the committee and 24 staff members. That's a lot of people. How, I said, would he stop that committee from leaking out information from these behind closed-door sessions?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: We have made a very strong point. As members of the intelligence committee, we are under a legal requirement not to release classified information, as are the staff of the committee, that this is very important. Washington is a town that's got lots of holes in it. Information tends to leak out. We just don't want us to be identified as one of those holes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Now Graham's committee is not the only one investigating up here. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings tomorrow. Those are going to be interesting, Carol, because those will be open to the public and to our cameras.

At that hearing tomorrow, expect Coleen Rowley to show up. Also expect FBI Director Robert Mueller. And then someone whose name you may not know, Glenn Fine, who is the Inspector General of the Justice Department. We're told that he's going to be questioned at length about why it took an investigation internally by his group, the inspector general's office, to bring out that memo, that Phoenix memo that was sent, about people attending flight schools. To make that memo available to the head of the unit that should have gotten the memo in the first place.

A lot of questions, Carol, about cross signals here, coming up tomorrow.

LIN: And this is only the beginning. Kate Snow, on Capitol Hill, thank you.

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