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>From http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/4/190547.shtml
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Reprinted from NewsMax.com
On 9-11, It Was Still Freeh�s FBI
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
No matter what their politics, many will agree that on Sept. 11, it was still
essentially
Louis Freeh�s FBI.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Freeh has been almost an anonymous figure, as far as
the media are concerned.
Still, Freeh, a former bureau agent, prosecutor and federal judge, has been the most
influential FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover.
And it was Freeh who had been at the helm of the nation�s premier law enforcement
agency for more than eight years, compared to the mere days of tenure for
newcomer Robert Mueller.
But what kind of FBI was Louis Freeh�s?
What might surprise some is that � remember, this was after the first bombing of the
World Trade Center � it was well-funded and clearly understood terror pre-emption
as job one.
Bill Clinton's 'Best Possible Person'
Freeh had been launched as director in 1993 as Bill Clinton�s golden boy, "the best
possible person to head the FBI as it faces new challenges and a new century.�
Clinton critics noted at the time of Freeh�s appointment that former U.S. attorney
Robert Fiske had put forth Freeh�s name to Clinton legal counsel Bernard
Nussbaum.
Janet Reno Again
That Fiske was later appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno as the special
counsel to investigate Clinton, Nussbaum and the Clinton�s Whitewater dealings
made some Republicans jittery about Fiske�s and Freeh�s impartiality. At the time of
Freeh�s 1993 installation, Clinton emphasized that the FBI "operates in a new and
challenging world. Terrorism once seemed far from our shores, an atrocity visited on
people in other lands. Now, after the attack on the World Trade Center, we know that
we, too, are vulnerable.�
Brave new beginnings for a brave new FBI, but a refrain that is now all too similar to
the latest promised renaissance of the bureau.
Today, Freeh heads personnel and security for the Delaware credit card company
MBNA Corp., a prosaic position for the former top G-man.
Spurned by New Jersey
Surprisingly, Freeh missed the cut to be head of New Jersey�s homeland security
task force, a post made all the more sensitive because of the unhappy fact that some
of the 9-11 plotting and recruiting went on in the Garden State.
Despite Freeh�s infamous computer illiteracy (he never used e-mail) and the
introduction of an expensive but faulty computer system on his watch that contributed
to the Timothy McVeigh file debacle and a one-year backup at the FBI�s crime lab,
the bank security executive now sings the praises of those same magic computer
boxes as the key tools of the anti-terror trade.
Last month at a speech in Cleveland, for instance, Freeh chortled over the digital
age, as if enthralled with a new toy. He noted with wonder that the Internet was an
amazing resource for bomb recipes, some made with easily obtained ingredients.
"We know that the potential for use of these weapons is enormous,� he confided.
The Patriot Act is a "mild� response to the terrorist threat, considering the country�s
mood, he added.
Just a month after the Sept. 11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, Freeh
lamented in a speech to security industry executives that investigators lacked the
ability to decipher encrypted messages on the Internet and needed legislation to
compel software companies that manufactured encryption programs to unlock the
messages� secrets.
Freeh and Zacarias Moussaoui
In a choice of anecdotes now sublimely ironic because of the recent Zacarias
Moussaoui laptop tale of bungled opportunities, Freeh described how Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef, convicted in the 1993 bombing of the WTC, disclosed to the FBI a plot to
place bombs aboard 11 U.S. air carriers flying over the Pacific Ocean, plans to
assassinate the pope, and a terror attack scenario featuring poison-laced explosives
planted in the WTC.
Yousef�s maniacal blueprints for the attacks were on an encrypted file left behind in a
computer found in a Manila apartment, the director noted, decrying the fact that it
had taken agents weeks to decrypt the plan.
"We don�t have a computer, nobody has a computer, that will break it down in real
time,� he complained.
Yet just months later, it was Freeh�s FBI that balked at examining the contents of
Moussaoui�s laptop, that magic black box coveted by a guy whose keen interest was
in learning to fly planes without the benefit of instruction in taking off and landing.
Plenty of Money
And if there was a dearth of hardware and software to swiftly crack the nettlesome
Yousef code, was it for lack of funds or resources flowing to Freeh�s FBI?
No, according to the agency�s hefty receipt books. From 1994 to 2001, Congress
increased the FBI�s counterterrorism budget from $79 million to $372 million � a
nearly 500 percent windfall.
And Freeh effectively lobbied for the largesse by consistently preaching about the
rigors of fighting the nation�s first undeclared war on terror.
"In the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing,� he testified in 1994, "the U.S.
must maintain credible defenses and constant vigilance against those groups who
would terrorize the citizenry of this country.�
But on his watch, in 1995, a laboratory built with counterterrorism funds was being
used to augment the standard forensics operation.
Funds Diverted
That same year, many of the 1,000-plus agents that the FBI hired via $83 million in
counterterrorism funds were trained and put on duty as regular street agents.
Also in 1995, about half of a $5 million pot for counterterrorism intelligence analysts
was moved over to a computer crime center.
Through it all, Freeh oversaw his bureau as legislation and executive proclamations
moved it ostensibly to center stage, where it was to serve as the salient tool to foil
domestic terrorist attacks.
And to some extent that evolution brought forth worthy developments, perhaps the
most noteworthy being the establishment of legal-attache offices in 44 countries.
To this day these well-conceived mini-bureaus garner valuable intelligence for FBI
analysts and maintain liaisons with foreign law enforcement agencies.
Glorified Secretaries
Unfortunately, in Freeh�s FBI too many of those analysts were glorified secretaries,
according to former FBI agent and 30-year veteran I.C. Smith.
"They were paid as intelligence analysts,� he notes, "but many times their actual
function was more clerical in nature.�
Also on the good side, Freeh established "joint terrorism task forces� designed to
bond the famously insular FBI with state and local police and local prosecutors.
But Freeh critics are quick to point out that old bureau habits died hard. While
laboring with the Department of Justice to frame a five-year national counterterrorism
plan, drafters managed to exclude any role for state and local governments.
By the beginning of the end of the Freeh directorship, despite all the money and good
intentions, the bureau�s inertia as a Hooveresque cops-and-robbers institution
prevailed.
In 1999, Freeh gamely admitted that his intelligence analysis capabilities were
"deficient.�
And the rest is history.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
Homeland/Civil Defense
Janet Reno
War on Terrorism
A product that might interest you:
FBI whistle-blower tells how the Clintons helped cause 9-11
End<{{{
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