FBI'S FOUL-UP

Thank you for your excellent editorial, "FBI remodeling job too
little, too late" (May 31), but there's actually another area that was
never addressed in the media.

Just one week prior to Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft's FBI
deployed more than 50 agents and snipers to participate in a local
asset-forfeiture situation in Cass County, Mich. Apparently, pot
smokers deserve more attention than terrorists in the Bush
administration.

Two of America's sons lay dead, one shot through the forehead by an
FBI sharpshooter, while the FBI's Minneapolis and Phoenix offices
begged for someone at headquarters to listen concerning an imminent
terrorist threat that ultimately resulted in more than 3,000 deaths.

Desperate to prevent a Waco-like media circus, Ashcroft and his
Justice Department focused on two rural Americans while the World
Trade Center was about to burn. Now we all pay the price of their negligence.

Protest marijuana prohibition, you die. Plot the deadliest attack on
American soil and you're largely ignored. While terrorists were
preparing to attack our freedoms, the FBI was laying a deadly siege at
the Rainbow Farm outside Vandalia, Mich. Go figure.

As the FBI focused on two Americans for liking pot, our enemies were
taking aim at thousands of our fellow citizens, right under the FBI's
noses.

MIKE PLYLAR
Kremmling, Colo.