Without FBI Reform, Plenty of Restless Nights

Re “Moussaoui Memo Says FBI Stalled Probe After Attacks,” May 27: I have just read the redacted letter sent by Coleen Rowley to FBI Director Robert Mueller.

While we were told by Mueller and the White House that 9/11 came as such a surprise, and yet not told that a supervising special agent at FBI headquarters had almost single-handedly thwarted any possibility of preventing the tragedy, it strains credulity for the FBI to have actually promoted the same supervisor after 9/11. Who was he protecting? The next man up the chain? Or the next?

One hates to use the term “cover-up” when this term has been so abused, but I can think of no other term to adequately describe post-9/11 actions, statements and reactions by the Bush spokesmen, top FBI officials and particularly the Justice Department under Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. That Rowley even relayed jokes that a mole or double agent could have done no more damage than this single supervising special agent is telling.

Prior to this disclosure, I was sleeping pretty well at night, thinking our administration officials were on top of things. It seems all they were on top of was political damage control. I’m sleeping with one eye open tonight.

Michael Sadler

Studio City

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I hereby nominate Rowley for director of the FBI. Why? She will have the backing of the field agents and the American public.

Peter Heiman

Malibu

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I can’t wait to hear the Republicans in Congress and in the Bush administration question the motives and patriotism of the FBI agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis, as they have every other person who has dared to criticize or to question anything the administration has done.

Maybe they will simply release another spate of terror alerts to distract us from their mistakes.

Thomas Pat Joy

San Diego

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When outgoing Clinton White House staffer Sandy Berger was filling in incoming Bush staffer Condoleezza Rice on the intricacies of his job, he showed her a huge pile of Al Qaeda documentation and told her that she would be spending more time on this issue than any other. But, alas, such was not to be, as the new Bush administration scaled back Bill Clinton’s emphasis on counter-terrorism.

Now comes Rowley with her explosive memo to Mueller, wherein she states that interference from above, perhaps politically motivated, led to a watering-down of warnings concerning terrorist attacks involving flight school students. This is an astonishing charge, if true, because it would indicate that under Mueller, the FBI has become even more politicized than it was when Louis Freeh, whom Clinton had appointed as a peace offering to the GOP, repaid Clinton’s generosity by spending more time aiding and abetting Ken Starr’s multimillion-dollar anti-Clinton witch hunts than he did on rooting out domestic terrorism.

Thank you, Coleen Rowley, for daring to come forward with your story. America needs more people like you.

Karen Morin

Studio City