FBI Finds Own Faults in Sniper Inquiry

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said Friday that the agency has begun a preliminary assessment of its investigation into the Washington-area sniper shootings and already believes some of its operations need improvement.

Mueller stopped well short of saying he was satisfied with how quickly police were able to solve the killings that gripped the nation during October. But he lauded the federal, state and local police agencies for their cooperation, which ultimately led to two arrests in the case.

“We wish we could have solved it earlier,” Mueller said.

Mueller said the agency is exploring ways that it can enhance the system it uses in major investigations to collect large volumes of tips from the public.

But once physical evidence was obtained that linked the D.C.-area shootings to one in Montgomery, Ala., federal agents were able to move quickly and within hours identified a suspect from a ballistic match and a fingerprint, Mueller added.

In the process of investigating the shootings, the FBI has received more than 107,000 telephone tips. That has strained the ability of the FBI and other agencies to collect, record and sift through the massive volume of information, he said.

The FBI’s tip system, known as Operation Rapid Start, requires telephone operators to write out information in long hand on forms with carbon paper. The forms are then either distributed to investigators or typed into computers.

“What the public doesn’t understand is that we have to write every one of these tips down and analyze them,” Mueller said.

Not all of the telephone calls are recorded. The problem of unrecorded telephone tips may have robbed investigators of alleged threats phoned in by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the two men linked to the shootings around Washington and in Alabama and Louisiana.

Still, a local police agency may have captured Malvo or Muhammad on tape. A recording made by the Rockville, Md., police has a male voice telling the police operator that he is responsible for the shootings and then giving key evidence that would identify him.

But the Rockville telephone operator said he had reached the wrong agency and that he needed to contact the police hotline set up by the Montgomery County Police Department that served as the headquarters for the joint task force investigating the shootings.

Mueller, speaking to reporters Friday at FBI headquarters in Washington, noted that personnel to staff the phones had to be hired locally, trained and equipped in a short amount of time.

Moreover, the sniper shootings involved a complex police organization with multiple federal, state and local agencies across state lines and multiple command posts.

The 107,000 tips recorded in the sniper case represent a large response, but it still pales in comparison with the more than 300,000 tips law enforcement agencies received after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A broad range of other evaluations about the effectiveness of FBI and other federal agency efforts in the sniper attacks will be undertaken in the future. A number of questions remain, including why it took so long to link the ballistic evidence from shootings that occurred in Louisiana and Alabama to the later shootings in the Washington area.

Separately, Mueller said a string of international terrorist attacks demonstrates that Al Qaeda remains a potent threat to the United States, despite damage to its leadership, fund-raising and communications.

Mueller cited the recent bombings of a French tanker and a nightclub in Bali, an attack on Marines in Kuwait, the shooting of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and attacks in the Philippines as demonstrations of the still considerable threat of terrorism.

Meanwhile, authorities linked yet another shooting to the sniper suspects -- the wounding of a Maryland store clerk more than two weeks before the Washington-area attacks began. The suspects are now tied to 16 shootings, in which 12 were killed and five wounded, around the capital and in Alabama and Louisiana.