DIRECTOR ADMITS FLAWS IN FBI

Sept. 11 Attacks Might Have Been Prevented, He Says

WASHINGTON - The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, acknowledged
Wednesday for the first time that the attacks of Sept. 11 might have been
prevented if officials in his agency had responded differently to all the
pieces of information that were available.

As a result, Mueller said he was beginning an overhaul of the FBI to aim
more resources toward what he asserted is now its fundamental mission: the
prevention of new terrorist operations. The changes, he said, are designed
to bolster the bureau's capability to analyze information about terrorist
threats and anticipate possible attacks.

"I cannot say for sure that there wasn't a possibility we could have come
across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers,'' Mueller told
reporters after listing several missed opportunities by officials to
discern a pattern of terrorist planning before Sept. 11.

He also said that although there was no specific warning, "that doesn't
mean that there weren't red flags out there, that there weren't dots that
should have been connected to the extent possible.''

He said the changes he is putting into place, including reassigning
hundreds of agents from the war on drugs to the war on terrorism, are
designed to produce "a redesigned and refocused FBI.''

At the heart of the changes, he said, is an effort to strengthen the
bureau's analytic capability by creating an Office of Intelligence to
coordinate information. More than 400 analysts will be added to the bureau,
both in the field offices and the Washington headquarters, including 25
officers on loan from the CIA.

"In essence, we need a different approach that puts prevention above all
else,'' he said. "We have to develop the ability to look around the corner.''

Mueller's statements about the flaws in how the FBI dealt with intelligence
reports before Sept. 11 was a sharp turnabout from both the substance and
tone of remarks he and other administration officials made in the weeks
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As recently
as May 8, Mueller told a Senate hearing there was nothing the agency could
have done to anticipate and prevent the attacks.

In the latest clue to emerge, a memo dated May 18, 1998, outlines how the
chief pilot in the FBI's Oklahoma City division observed large numbers of
Middle Eastern men receiving flight training at the state's airports.

The agent, who was not identified, said, ``This is a recent phenomenon and
may be related to planned terrorist activity,'' according to the memo
titled, ``Weapons of Mass Destruction.'' The agent speculated that light
planes ``would be an ideal means of spreading chemical or biological
agents,'' the memo said.

Agent Kenneth Williams of the Phoenix office sent a memo July 10 warning
that Osama bin Laden might be sending operatives to U.S. aviation schools
to prepare for terrorist operations.

Another piece of intelligence involved Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old
flight student who was arrested in Minneapolis in August on immigration
charges after FBI agents were told by a manager at the Pan Am International
Flight Academy that he had been acting suspiciously. Agents in the field
office wanted headquarters to press for a warrant to allow them to search
the computer owned by Moussaoui, who officials now believe was meant to be
the 20th hijacker.

A letter sent to Mueller on May 21 by Coleen Rowley, a veteran agent and
general counsel in the Minneapolis office, seemed to put an end to the
bureau's posture that no information was available that could have led to
thwarting the terrorist plot.

Rowley, in an anguished 13-page letter, complained that officials in
Washington blocked the field office's request to investigate Moussaoui
further. She charged that an FBI supervisor had downplayed information
obtained from French intelligence authorities that would have helped obtain
the needed authorization for the warrant from a special national-security
court.

More darkly, she said officials at the bureau were "circling the wagons''
and she warned Mueller he should stop saying no information existed that
could have prevented the Sept. 11 tragedies.

Wednesday, Mueller lauded Rowley.

"Let me take a moment to thank Ms. Rowley for her letter,'' he said. "It is
critically important that I hear criticisms of the organization, including
criticisms of me, in order to improve the organization.''

Mueller bluntly acknowledged that the Minneapolis and Phoenix situations
should have been handled differently.

As to the memo from agent Williams, Mueller said it should have been shared
with the CIA. In addition, "We should have had mechanisms in place so that
something like that goes up to the top, goes up through the organization so
that it is evaluated.''

As part of the sweeping effort to transform the FBI into a domestic
terrorism-prevention agency, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to
relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying in
counterterrorism operations, senior government officials said Wednesday.

Ashcroft and Mueller plan to announce today a broad loosening of the
guidelines that restrict the FBI's surveillance of religious and political
organizations, the officials said. The attorney general's guidelines were
adopted after the revelations of domestic FBI spying under a program known
as Cointelpro, and for 25 years, they have served as one of the most
fundamental restrictions on the bureau's conduct.

The revised domestic-spying guidelines that Ashcroft and Mueller plan to
announce today will shift the power to initiate counterterrorism inquiries
from FBI headquarters to the special agents in charge of the bureau's 56
field offices, the officials said. Such a shift, they added, would allow
FBI officials to be much more proactive in their efforts to prevent
terrorist acts.