DID THE DRUG WAR ELUDE SEPT. 11 THREATS?

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 fail to see them?

In announcing his big reorganization plans, Director Robert Mueller seemed
to consider the FBI'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 -- one of deeply flawed 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.

And 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.

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

In Phoenix, where the now infamous 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 suspected terrorists through the use
of paid informants including a man who was being trained to be a suicide
bomber.

So what was their reward for this? 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 in exchange for avoiding jail, tried to
warn 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 heroin being smuggled into America from Afghanistan.

And it wasn't just the FBI. This Drug War Uber-Alles mindset 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 once 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 will still
be 2,100 agents spending their invaluable time and energy fighting a
fruitless drug war. This despite the fact that combating drugs didn't even
make Director Mueller's official Top Ten list of priorities.

According to high-ranking FBI officials, Mueller originally intended to
pull the plug on his agency's involvement in the drug war but was talked
out of it by drug war generals who can't admit defeat. He should have
listened to his gut. Since he didn't, 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's looking more and more like the
price of the drug war may have included the 3,056 lives lost on Sept. 11.