FBI Agents Blamed for Delayed Files on McVeigh

The Justice Department’s inspector general has concluded that FBI incompetence--and not computer problems, as the bureau maintains--caused the mishandling of documents that led to the delay in Timothy J. McVeigh’s execution, officials close to the case said Monday.

The inspector general’s report, which is to be released today, recommends that two high-level FBI supervisors be disciplined and that the bureau--which in the last several years has been hit hard by internal problems--improve its management control over the various field offices around the country.

The lengthy investigation found that field agents and FBI headquarters were slow in forwarding the thousands of pages of new material to prosecutors and McVeigh’s defense team last year, the sources said.

Even officials at FBI headquarters took two days before alerting prosecutors and defense lawyers that, even as the execution date approached, new documents had been discovered. The investigation found no deliberate attempt to conceal the documents from the defense.

The report is yet another blow to the FBI and will likely lead to changes in how the bureau handles high-profile criminal cases such as the Oklahoma City bombing. The furor over the McVeigh documents prompted the agency to seek more than $140 million for computer upgrades, an increase of more than 40% over the previous year. Some members of Congress, however, said stronger measures were necessary to fix an agency they characterized as “out of control.”

“When you look at the culture of the whole FBI, you sometimes see an expression of arrogance,” said one official who has reviewed the report and said he was surprised to learn that the FBI is still claiming computer problems caused the mix-up.

“Indeed,” he said, “the facts here are pretty arrogant.”

McVeigh was arrested, tried and convicted in the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In 1997, he was sentenced to death.

In January 2001, he suddenly dropped all legal appeals and convinced a federal judge that he was ready to die. At that time, the federal Bureau of Prisons set his execution by lethal injection for May 16.

But just six days before he was to die, the FBI revealed that it had found bureau files that had not been disclosed to the defense. Ultimately, more than 4,000 pages of files were found that had never been turned over. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft postponed the execution until June 11.

The courts later ruled that the material was not relevant to McVeigh’s guilt or innocence, although U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch in Denver was angry over the FBI debacle.

“I would expect there would be consequences upon finding . . . an undisciplined organization or organization that is not adequately controlled, or that can’t keep track of its information,” he said.

The aim of the inspector general’s probe was to answer three central questions: Was the delay due to computer problems? Did the FBI act quickly when it realized the problem? And did the FBI hide evidence that would have helped McVeigh win a new trial?

According to sources, the inspector general determined that computers were not at fault. “It was an agent problem and not a computer problem,” one source said. “Agents made mistakes about what documents they had and what documents they had to cough up. Not everybody in the field even knew what to do.”

The investigation also found that the bureau did not act swiftly in turning over the material, even though FBI officials realized that McVeigh’s death was imminent.

“Two supervisors learned in January of 2001 but sat on the news for five months,” said one official. “They failed to manage the review of the documents and failed to notify FBI headquarters or the Justice Department or defense attorneys what was going on.

“They never took responsibility or were held accountable. But two of them got promotions anyway.”

Officials said the report adds that FBI headquarters also took two extra days before alerting McVeigh’s defense lawyers--”because of a communications problems with the prosecution.”

On the third question, the sources said, the inspector general did not find that the FBI hid documents from lawyers in the case out of concern that the material might help McVeigh--who at that time was considered the worst terrorist in U.S. history.

But the sources added that the report faults FBI headquarters for allowing field offices to become individual fiefdoms over the last half-dozen years and not exerting more control over those field offices.