-Caveat Lector- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2572-2002Jun5.html
FBI Chief: 9/11 Surveillance Taxing Bureau By a Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 6, 2002; Page A01 The FBI has placed a "substantial" number of people suspected of ties to terror under constant surveillance, sending out special teams of agents to various parts of the United States roughly every two weeks in a mission that is seriously taxing the agency's resources, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday. Mueller would not specify how many possible terrorists the agency is tracking, but he said the bureau has been "pushed, really pushed" to keep up with them. And he acknowledged that agents have no choice but to monitor those people around the clock when they cannot be detained for immigration or other violations. "Our biggest problem is we have people we think are terrorists. They are supporters of al Qaeda. . . . They may have sworn jihad, they may be here in the United States legitimately and they have committed no crime," Mueller said in a 90-minute lunch with Washington Post reporters and editors. "And what do we do for the next five years? Do we surveil them? Some action has to be taken." Mueller's remarks are among the strongest government assertions that people with suspected connections to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network remain in the United States, and they reflect the FBI's consuming race to thwart another attack. They come a little more than two weeks after a succession of Bush administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mueller warned the public that another strike against the United States is likely. Even as Mueller moves to reorganize the FBI and substantially beef up its counterterrorism forces, the current solution to tracking possible terrorists is special squads -- surveillance teams that the FBI has been dispatching about every other week since Sept. 11, particularly to locations where its field offices lack agents or translators to do the tedious work. The surveillance can be done on the ground, by air or, in some cases, with court-approved wiretaps, he said. "There are gradations of persons who we might look at and their affiliation with a terrorist," Mueller said, explaining they could range from someone "who has called a number of a prominent terrorist overseas" to a person distributing literature supporting bin Laden. "There are all gradations along that spectrum," he said. Mueller declined to say what kinds of leads have been developed as a result of the surveillance work. In the months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, authorities moved against possible terror suspects by detaining more than 1,200 people on minor immigration charges, such as overstaying their visas, and hundreds of others on state and local criminal charges. In some cases, federal prosecutors obtained material witness warrants to hold people suspected of having information related to the hijackings. Mueller said officials were looking at other options to root out terror suspects, including the Alien Terrorist Removal Act, a 1996 law that permits the deportation of suspected alien terrorists by a special court, based on classified information submitted in secret. No one has been deported under the law since its enactment. The FBI has come under intense criticism in recent weeks for mishandling clues to the attacks, including a July memo from a Phoenix agent that terrorists might be training at U.S. flight schools and the arrest in August of Zacarias Moussaoui, who aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. Moussaoui was subsequently indicted as a conspirator in the attacks. Mueller, who took office Sept. 4, is scheduled to address those issues in testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate panel also is scheduled to hear today from Coleen Rowley, the chief legal counsel of the Minneapolis FBI office, who wrote a blistering memo to Mueller last month complaining that the Moussaoui investigation was stalled last summer by FBI headquarters. Mueller yesterday declined to provide details about the Moussaoui investigation, saying that to comment would be inappropriate because the criminal case is pending. A week after announcing plans to broadly reorganize the FBI to improve its ability to thwart terrorism, Mueller said yesterday that he would do whatever it takes to keep up surveillance and other efforts aimed at preventing another attack. Roughly one-fourth of the FBI's 11,500 agents will be devoted to counterterrorism work under reorganization plans, but Mueller said that many more will be added as the need arises. Mueller said the FBI will be better equipped to track terrorist activity because of changes made last week to guidelines governing the conduct of FBI investigations. For example, agents now will be able to observe activities in public places, including houses of worship, to develop leads even when they have no evidence of criminal activity. And they will be able to more freely surf the Internet in search of clues to terror plans. Despite the enhanced authority, Mueller said yesterday that the FBI has no plans to conduct widespread surveillance of mosques, a concern raised by Arab American leaders and civil liberties groups. "We don't have a plan to go into mosques," Mueller said. "We take each investigation on its own and look at it and then do what's appropriate for the investigation." Mueller said the new guidelines do not infringe upon personal freedom and "allow us to go where the public can go" in an attempt to generate anti-terrorist leads. In particular, he said, agents intend to surf the Internet, for clues on bin Laden's network and other groups. In the past, the guidelines did not permit such work without evidence indicating criminal activity was taking place. "Not just al Qaeda but you look at neo-Nazis, you look at other groups that have either chat rooms or spew their language on the Internet," Mueller said. "This will specifically allow agents to go out and look at that, without any initial lead from a source . . . and then use that as a predicate for doing something else." The FBI director also repeated his long-held position that authorities have not settled on a single theory about last fall's anthrax mailings, which killed five people and made 13 others ill. He said that investigators are awaiting the results of numerous scientific tests. A profile previously released by the FBI and other comments by officials indicate that the bureau suspects the attack was most likely the work of a lone, domestic scientist -- possibly someone formerly associated with the U.S. biological defense program or one of its contractors. But Mueller, who said the investigation has been more difficult than anticipated, said a range of possibilities remains open. © 2002 The Washington Post Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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