F.B.I. Chief Admits 9/11 Might Have Been Headed Off

WASHINGTON, May 29 - The director of the F.B.I., Robert S. Mueller III,
acknowledged today for the first time that the attacks of Sept. 11 might
have been preventable if officials in his agency had responded differently
to all the pieces of information that were available.

As a result, Mr. Mueller said he was beginning an overhaul of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation 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," Mr. Mueller told
reporters after listing several missed opportunities by officials to
discern a pattern of terrorist planning before Sept. 11.

He also said that while 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 that the changes he was putting into place, including reassigning
hundreds of agents from the war on drugs to the war on terrorism, were
designed to produce "a redesigned and refocused F.B.I."

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 new analysts would be added to the
bureau, both in the field offices and the Washington headquarters,
including 25 officers on loan from the Central Intelligence Agency.

"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."
[Excerpts, Page A20.]

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

But that stance became increasingly untenable in recent weeks after news
reports that two F.B.I. field offices might have had important pieces of
information that were never connected by officials at headquarters. Agent
Kenneth Williams of the Phoenix office sent a memo on July 10 warning that
Osama bin Laden might be sending operatives to American aviation schools to
prepare for terrorist operations.

The second piece of intelligence involved Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old
flight student who was arrested in Minneapolis in August on immigration
charges after F.B.I. 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 Mr. Moussaoui, who officials now
believe was meant to be the 20th hijacker.

A letter sent to Mr. 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.

Ms. Rowley, in an anguished 15-page letter, complained that officials in
Washington blocked the field office's request to investigate Mr. Moussaoui
further. She charged that an F.B.I. supervisor had played down 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 that officials at the bureau were "circling the
wagons" and she warned Mr. Mueller he should stop saying no information
existed that could have prevented the Sept. 11 tragedies.

Today, Mr. Mueller lauded Ms. 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."

Mr. Mueller said the Minneapolis and Phoenix situations should have been
handled differently.

The memorandum from Agent Williams, Mr. Mueller said, should have been
shared with the C.I.A. 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."

Most important, he said the bureau "should have analytical capabilities to
put that piece together, with say, Moussaoui." He said that the Moussaoui
information and the Phoenix memo went to the same unit at headquarters but
no connection was made.

Regarding Mr. Moussaoui, Mr. Mueller complimented the agents in Minneapolis
for their work and said that officials at headquarters should have been
more supportive of their efforts to obtain search warrants from the special
security court.

Mr. Mueller said he had referred the actions of the supervisors to the
Justice Department's inspector general.

He disclosed there was another piece of information that was never analyzed
in conjunction with the Minneapolis or Phoenix memorandums. In 1998, a
bureau pilot taking off from a commercial field in Oklahoma City recorded
his suspicions about the behavior of a group of flight students from Middle
Eastern nations he encountered there. Mr. Moussaoui had taken flight
lessons in nearby Norman, Okla., before he traveled to Minnesota last
August. F.B.I. agents learned of that shortly after arresting him on Aug. 15.

In the future, Mr. Mueller said, people will be looking at such memorandums
and determining whether they "should be put in a larger matrix from which
the intentions of terrorists can be discerned."

He added, "It is critically important that we have that connection of dots
that will enable us to prevent the next attack."

After Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft said repeatedly that he
would shift the mission of the Justice Department to preventing another
terrorist attack. Mr. Mueller's reorganization plan, some of which has to
be approved by Congress, is the first tangible result of that approach.

As he sets about reassigning 400 of the bureau's 11,500 field agents from
narcotics investigations to counterterrorism, Mr. Mueller said he was
confident that the Drug Enforcement Administration would be able to pick up
the slack. The move would reduce agents assigned to narcotics from 2,500 to
2,100, he said.

He said the bureau needed to shift to its new priorities of protecting the
United States from terrorist attacks and grapple better with foreign
intelligence operations.

Another 59 agents would be reassigned to counterterrorism from white-collar
crime investigations and an additional 59 from the violent crimes unit.