Missed Memo Stirs More Trouble at FBI

A Phoenix FBI agent’s memo warning about terrorists at flight schools last summer was sent to the same FBI counter-terrorism supervisor in Washington who dealt with suspicions in Minnesota surrounding flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui, government officials said Friday.

But, for unknown reasons, the supervisor apparently never saw agent Kenneth Williams’ memo, officials said.

The disclosures raise new questions about whether FBI officials should have been able to piece together parallel suspicions last summer in Arizona and Minnesota concerning flight schools to detect the possibility of an imminent attack.

Questions about the FBI’s performance leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon erupted anew this week after the disclosure of a letter from the chief lawyer in the Minneapolis FBI office chastising the bureau for its handling of the Moussaoui case.

Sources said Friday that one criticism levied by Coleen Rowley’s letter is that Minneapolis agents had corroborated from French intelligence sources their suspicions that Moussaoui was a suspected terrorist--not merely a radical Islamic fundamentalist. But FBI officials in Washington deleted that information in considering a request for a special surveillance search warrant against Moussaoui, the sources said.

Reached at her office Friday, Rowley told The Times she was “extremely concerned” about the issues raised in her letter. “I can’t comment. I’m in a position where I can’t comment at all to the media. I’m, of course, very concerned. I’d be crazy if I wasn’t concerned. But I’m not going to explain” the allegations raised in the letter.

Defending their handling of the Minnesota and Arizona cases from critics inside and outside the bureau, FBI officials have maintained for weeks that the two investigations operated largely on separate tracks, with different people responsible for each case.

But government officials familiar with the investigations said Friday that Williams sent his July 10 memo directly to the attention of David Frasca, who heads the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit in Washington.

Frasca’s role is significant because he also was the key liaison in Washington for the Minnesota FBI field office in its failed efforts to get permission to do a secret search of Moussaoui’s belongings.

A search approved immediately after Sept. 11 revealed a flight training simulator program on Moussaoui’s computer and other possible terrorist tools. Authorities now believe that he may have been the “20th hijacker” had he not been taken into custody. He has been indicted on terrorism charges that could bring the death penalty.

Why didn’t Frasca and his special counter-terrorism unit in Washington draw a connection between suspicious flight school activities in Arizona and Minnesota?

A government official who asked not to be identified said Frasca “did not see [the Phoenix memo] until after 9/11.”

The official was unwilling to say why that happened--a question that could be key in congressional reviews into the FBI’s conduct.

Indeed, three senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee--Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)--asked FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in a letter Friday to explain Frasca’s role in the probes. The letter sought information on “what connection, if any, [Frasca] or others drew between the two ongoing investigations, and whether he or others brought such a connection to the attention of higher level FBI officials.”

In a separate statement, Grassley said that “if FBI headquarters is still handling terrorism information like it handled the Moussaoui case, we’re in grave danger.”

A congressional official who asked not to be identified said lawmakers will seek to determine whether Frasca did in fact see Williams’ memo and why his unit never adequately linked Williams’ suspicions to the Moussaoui case.

The two cases were “at the same desk. You’d think they could have put it together,” a congressional source said. “The only explanation can be that either [Frasca] did not make the mental connection or he did not read a memo that was addressed to him.”

Agents in Minneapolis were apparently made aware of Williams’ concerns in late August or early September, but were not sent his memo, the official said.

Nor did officials in Washington take Williams up on his recommendation to canvass flight schools around the country for Middle Eastern terrorist suspects, a recommendation that some FBI officials now say would have been impractical because of the numbers of students at such schools. Such an undertaking also would have raised serious civil rights concerns, some officials said.

“The guy in Phoenix did a really good job, but he didn’t have a smoking gun,” one federal law enforcement official close to the case said. “If we went out and started canvassing, we’d get in trouble for targeting Arab Americans.”

Several law enforcement officials said a culture of fear had pervaded FBI counter-terrorism agents, particularly before Sept. 11.

Agents in the field, said one Justice Department official, “are afraid of being accused of profiling in some cases, or of discrimination, basing their request solely on the race of the individual rather than on evidence.”

Nevertheless, agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis pursued the cases aggressively, officials said.

But fresh questions are being raised about whether their superiors then failed to follow through.

As the FBI and the Justice Department gear up for congressional hearings, they are reviewing the matter internally and focusing on how the Phoenix memo and the Minneapolis office’s request for a special warrant were handled at the field office level and, more important, once they reached Washington.

Among the points of contention: whether a supervisor in Minneapolis also changed the wording of the warrant request to make it harder for it to be approved. The request was made under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which lets the government monitor suspected foreign agents or terrorists with the approval of a secret court in Washington.

“The [special agent in charge] in Minneapolis looked at it and made substantive changes that made it harder for the lawyers [in Washington] to say yes,” the Justice Department official said.

Several government officials who defend the FBI’s handling of the Moussaoui matter said the case simply wasn’t strong enough to bring to the FISA court, particularly after a judge on the panel criticized the FBI for abusing its authority in past requests.

“Everyone knew [the case] stunk, but we couldn’t put our finger on it,” the official said.

In the charged political atmosphere of Washington, FBI and Justice Department officials spent Friday quietly trying to find answers--and political cover.

“It is hard sorting it out. You don’t know what the truth is,” one law enforcement official said. “Everyone is trying to cover their behinds, and this is what you get when everyone is running for cover.”

Outside Washington, the week’s controversy has deepened a rift between agents in the 56 field offices and officials at FBI headquarters.

Many field agents echoed Rowley’s complaints about how things don’t get taken seriously at headquarters unless they are developed there. Even special Al Qaeda trackers in a New York-based unit complained that their efforts weren’t given proper respect at headquarters, even before Mueller moved earlier this month to consolidate almost all counter-terrorism activities at headquarters.

“It just shows the dissatisfaction with Mueller among street agents,” one official said. “He is not perceived as defending the people in the field. There are two FBIs: headquarters and people in the field. And the feeling is that they are circling the wagons only at headquarters. There are some really bright investigators in the field, and they sometimes feel like they are not taken seriously enough.”