Jun 7, 2002 5 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – FBI Director Robert S. Mueller suggested on Thursday that Congress expand surveillance powers put into law only seven months ago, and said his storied agency needs to be “more flexible, agile and mobile” if it is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller disclosed it could take two or three years – far longer than the one year he originally hoped – to bring FBI computer systems up to standards needed to deal with information efficiently.

Mueller fielded questions for nearly four hours under the glare of television lights, to be followed by Coleen Rowley, the FBI lawyer who wrote a memo complaining about missed investigative opportunities in the weeks before the Sept. 11 terror attacks that killed thousands.

The panel met as President Bush disclosed plans for a prime time address to review his latest plans to strengthen America’s defenses against terrorism.

Officials said the president would propose creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, combining responsibilities now scattered in several federal agencies – including customs, immigration, the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

At the same time, members of the House and Senate intelligence committees were meeting in a guarded room in the Capitol to continue their own review of the events of Sept. 11.

While Mueller has appeared in public several times since the worst terrorist attacks in the nation’s history, Rowley was making her debut.

In a letter to Mueller on May 21, she accused bureau headquarters in Washington of putting roadblocks in the way of Minneapolis field agents trying to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui in the weeks before Sept. 11.

Last August, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, on an immigration violation after a flight school instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to fly a commercial jet. Moussaoui is accused of conspiring with the hijackers and Osama bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans.

FBI headquarters turned down the Minneapolis’ office request to seek a search warrant to examine Moussaoui’s computer.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI got the warrant and found information related to jetliners and crop-dusters on the computer hard drive, officials said. The government grounded crop-dusting planes temporarily because of what it found.

Mueller won praise from several senators for his efforts to reform an agency that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., described as hidebound. “You inherited a great organization but also a great bureaucracy,” added Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio.

Even senators who were critical of Mueller at various points joined in the praise.

At the same time, he faced sharp questioning about the FBI’s failure to alert the committee earlier this year about the so-called Phoenix memorandum, a document sent to agency headquarters last summer noting that several Arabs were suspiciously training at a U.S. aviation school in Arizona.

Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., asked Mueller why the headquarters agent to whom the memo was addressed, David Frasca, had not told the Judiciary Committee about it in January when Frasca met with the panel’s staff. Mueller said he did not know.

Prodded by another member, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Mueller defended his own decision not to alert the panel last fall about the memorandum. The FBI chief said he thought the information about the memo should go to the intelligence committees, but Specter replied, “That’s not true. That’s not true.”

Mueller offered no specifics about the changes he would like to see in the legislation Congress approved last year to strengthen law enforcement powers in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Sens. John Kyl, R-Ariz., and Schumer introduced a measure on Wednesday to make it easier for agents to obtain wiretaps and conduct searches in foreign intelligence cases, saying that if the FBI had been able to listen in on Moussaoui it might have been able to prevent the attacks.

“This is a problem, and we’re looking for solutions to address this problem,” Mueller replied, adding that the Justice Department would be issuing a formal opinion on the legislation in the future.

“We are looking at ways to tweak” the legislation passed by Congress late last year, he added.

Mueller had previously outlined plans to reorganize the FBI to devote greater resources to anti-terrorism, including its ability to analyze available intelligence. “This Congress is all too familiar with the FBI’s analytical shortcomings,” he said. “Building subject area expertise or developing an awareness of the potential value of an isolated piece of information does not occur overnight,” he said. “It is developed over time.”

He told one senator the agency had begun hiring additional translators skilled in Farsi, Pashto and other languages, and said the FBI now has the ability to translate intercepts “in real time” in terrorism cases.

At the same time, he told seemingly incredulous senators that computer technology at the agency didn’t allow an agent to search all existing electronic reports for a key phrase – the term “flight school,” for example.

Asked time after time whether Rowley’s memo or the Phoenix memo could have prevented the disastrous attacks, he sidestepped.

“I’m hesitant to speculate as to what would have happened if, …” he said at one point.