GOP Senator Criticizes FBI for Response After Warning

A key Republican senator said Saturday that the FBI was “either asleep or inept or both” when it failed to act more aggressively on a warning last July about an unusual number of Middle Eastern students enrolled in U.S. flight schools.

The accusation by Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, stoked a growing political furor over whether the government should have done more to anticipate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

While assailing the FBI’s actions in response to the flight school information, Shelby defended President Bush’s handling of a warning he received in August about possible hijacking of U.S. aircraft.

“I believe President Bush, if he had had information to act on, he would have acted on it,” Shelby said in an interview broadcast by CNN. Administration officials have said the information was not specific and provided no warning that hijackers would crash planes into buildings.

Shelby was highly critical of the FBI, however, for its response to a July memo from an agent in Phoenix urging a full-scale investigation of whether followers of Osama bin Laden were taking flight training. He said the information was never passed on to the CIA or the White House.

“The FBI was either asleep or inept or both,” Shelby said.

Mueller: Response Could Have Been Stronger

In an appearance before a congressional committee this month, FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that the bureau could have responded more aggressively to the memo. But he also noted that, “even if we had followed those suggestions at that time, it would not, given what we know since Sept. 11, have enabled us to prevent the attacks.”

Responding to Shelby’s comments, FBI Assistant Director John E. Collingwood said the agency was “working diligently with the joint congressional committees to ensure a full understanding by the American public of what the FBI did and did not know prior to Sept. 11.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), another member of the Intelligence Committee, brushed aside Republican criticism that Democrats were playing politics by seeking to investigate what the administration knew before the attacks.

It is wrong, Wyden said on CNN’s “Saturday Edition” program, “to call anybody irresponsible who asks tough questions about what sure looks like an intelligence failure.”

Wyden said he plans to grill officials at a Senate aviation security hearing Tuesday on what warnings were given to airlines and when. Associated Press reported Saturday that the Federal Aviation Administration on April 18, 2001, warned airlines that Middle Eastern terrorists might try to hijack or blow up a U.S. plane and that carriers should “demonstrate a high degree of alertness.”

Republicans, meanwhile, were stepping up their counteroffensive.

“Americans know that President Bush, when faced with credible information about a threat, would act swiftly and strongly,” the Republican National Committee said in a message posted on its Web site.

Suggestions to the contrary, the statement said, are “irresponsible and politically motivated.”

Bush was told during an Aug. 6 briefing about possible hijackings, but the discussion did not address the possibility that aircraft could be used as missiles to destroy buildings, the committee said.

Shelby said the Aug. 6 briefing dealt with general information, nothing specific. “There was not anything in there that most of us on the committee didn’t already know,” he said.

A Newsweek poll conducted Thursday and Friday found that opinion is split on whether the president did all he should have with the information he received prior to Sept. 11, with 48% saying he did and 39% saying he didn’t. But Bush’s approval rating remains a strong 73%, according to the telephone poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates.

Majorities of poll respondents said they thought top FBI and CIA officials did not do all they should have with the information they received. Still, most participants retained a favorable, though “significantly reduced,” opinion of the agencies, according to the survey.