From: "LPDC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 14:10:21 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Peltier update #2: Senate Hearings June 21, 2001 Broad Review of F.B.I. Is Set as Senate Begins Hearings By DAVID JOHNSTON http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/21/politics/21BURE.html WASHINGTON, June 20 - The Senate Judiciary Committee today held the first in a series of hearings into managerial and investigative lapses at the F.B.I., as Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a wide-ranging review of the troubled law enforcement agency. Mr. Ashcroft's announcement of a Strategic Management Council for the Federal Bureau of Investigation came as senators on the judiciary panel offered proposals to tighten supervision of the agency. Among their suggestions was an inspector general for the F.B.I. who would be separate from the Justice Department's inspector general and an independent commission to investigate the bureau's operations. At the hearing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the committee's chairman, said the F.B.I. had lost its elite image among law enforcement agencies. "Unfortunately the image of the F.B.I. in the minds of many Americans is that this agency has become unmanageable, unaccountable and unreliable," Mr. Leahy said. "Its much-vaunted independence has transformed for some into an image of insular arrogance." Louis J. Freeh, the departing F.B.I. director, declined an invitation to appear at the hearing. Instead, Mr. Freeh attended the funeral of a Washington, D.C., transit police officer killed in the line of duty and delivered a farewell speech to employees at bureau headquarters. After his speech, F.B.I. workers lined up to be photographed with Mr. Freeh, who is resigning this week after eight years as director. The Bush administration has yet to name Mr. Freeh's successor. Justice Department officials have said Robert S. Muller 3rd, the United States attorney in San Francisco, who was Mr. Ashcroft's temporary deputy attorney general, is the leading candidate. But White House officials have said Mr. Bush has not decided on the F.B.I. post, a difficult job to fill with the bureau under fire for several problems. Those include the arrest in February of Robert P. Hanssen, a senior F.B.I. agent, charged with espionage, and the belated disclosure in May of thousands of pages of bureau documents that should have been turned over to lawyers for Timothy J. McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing case. At the Judiciary Committee hearing, a panel of senior current and former government officials testified about their frustrations investigating F.B.I. activities. Several said they had encountered resistance from agents and supervisors in response to legitimate requests. John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, who investigated the bureau's conduct in the 1993 standoff with the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Tex., spoke of what he said was a lack of cooperation from the agency. "I didn't think there was a cover- up of a bad act, I think there was a cover-up of an embarrassment," said Mr. Danforth who was named by former Attorney General Janet Reno as a special counsel to investigate the F.B.I.'s belated disclosure that agents had fired incendiary devices during the standoff. Mr. Danforth concluded that while agents had fired the flammable devices, the F.B.I. was not responsible for the fire or the deaths of about 80 Davidians. He said that if the problem was the existence of an "old boys network," then "it is important to replace these people." "Otherwise, any reform would be sure to founder on everyday resistance from within," he said. Others who testified at the hearing were William H. Webster, a former director of the F.B.I. and of central intelligence, who is conducting an internal review of the F.B.I.'s counterespionage efforts; Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general; Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general; and Norman Rabkin, managing director of the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigating arm. [If you got here from frontpage Native News Online, click here to return: http://216.97.43.231/ ] Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. Full copyright retained by the original publication. Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044 785-842-5774 www.freepeltier.org _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
