THE FBI'S DANGEROUS DRUG-WAR OBSESSION

Before Sept. 11, the FBI was too focused on busting pot smokers to see the
warning signs of a looming terrorist attack.

The Phoenix memo. The Rowley letter. The Oklahoma red flag. All elements in
this true and tragic story of fumbling feds that has more smoking guns than
a Quentin Tarantino movie.

So why did the FBI, whose job it is find smoking guns, fail to see the
smoking guns popping up all around it?

In announcing his big reorganization plans, FBI director Robert Mueller
seemed to consider the bureau's tragedy of errors a question of flawed
management flow charts, nothing that a rejiggered PowerPoint presentation
couldn't fix. But there was a much more fundamental problem plaguing the
bureau before Sept. 11, and it wasn't one of office politics. It was a
problem of officewide priorities, namely, the agency's crippling addiction
to America's war on drugs.

While Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida minions were diligently preparing
for their murderous mission, the FBI was looking the other way with equal
determination. More than twice as many FBI agents were assigned to fighting
drugs (2,500) than fighting terrorism (1,151). And a far greater amount of
the FBI's financial resources was dedicated to the war on drugs.

This pathological prioritization of the drug war extended well beyond the
allocation of money and manpower. It was ingrained in the culture.
Counterterrorism units were treated like the bureau's ugly stepchildren,
looked down upon by FBI management because they weren't making the kind of
high-profile arrests that spruce up a supervisor's resume and make the
evening news. Let's face it, canvassing flight schools in search of
suspicious students is nowhere near as sexy as one of those big drug busts
with the bags of coke or bales of pot piled high for the cameras.

It's now clear that there were terror warning signs aplenty, but that they
were disregarded by FBI officials who had their eyes on a different prize.

In Phoenix, where the now famous Ken Williams memo originated,
counterterrorism agents complained bitterly about their efforts being given
"the lowest investigative priority" by a supervisor who preferred glamorous
drug-fighting investigations. Even though the anti-terror squad was
understaffed, having been assigned only eight of the division's 200 agents,
it had managed to infiltrate groups of terror suspects.

So what was their reward? Regular head-butting sessions with higher- ups
who balked at having to allocate resources for information that didn't lead
to immediate, camera-worthy arrests.

Meanwhile, across the country in Boston, Raed Hijazi, an admitted al- Qaida
member who had become an informant to avoid jail, warned FBI agents about
Arab terrorists and sympathizers. But the FBI wasn't interested in Hijazi's
terror leads - they only wanted to hear what he knew about the heroin trade.

And it wasn't just the FBI. This mind-set infected the entire law
enforcement community, starting at the top. "I want to escalate the war on
drugs," said Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after being nominated
for the post. "I want to renew it. I want to refresh it." And he was true
to his word. Witness the $43 million the Bush administration gave to the
Taliban just four months before Sept. 11. Sure, there was the small detail
of harboring a guy named bin Laden, but the Taliban had agreed to ban the
production of opium poppies. And so the drug war trumped the terror war again.

So is this kind of thinking finally a thing of the past? I'm not so sure.
Even after last week's highly touted reorganization, which included the
reassignment of 400 narcotics agents to counterterrorism, there are still
2,100 agents spending invaluable time and energy fighting a fruitless drug
war. This despite the fact that combating drugs didn't make Director
Mueller's official Top Ten list of priorities.

We should demand that the White House follow through on Mueller's instinct
and go all the way with the shift, choosing the war against terror over the
war against drugs.

As the soaring budget deficit reminds us, federal coffers are not a
bottomless well.

Everything comes with a price. Sadly, it looks like the price of the drug
war may have included the 3,056 lives lost on Sept. 11.