Freeh: Fighting terror a priority before Sept. 11

WASHINGTON -- Responding to criticism of the FBI under his leadership, former director Louis Freeh told lawmakers Tuesday that preventing terror was a top priority for the bureau before the Sept. 11 attacks but that it was hamstrung by lack of money and personnel.

With a firm but measured voice, Freeh offered a point-by-point rebuttal to issues raised by staff and witnesses in previous hearings on the attacks. They included criticism that the FBI failed to recognize the threat that international terrorists might strike domestic targets, shared insufficient information with intelligence agencies and local authorities and focused more on arresting and prosecuting criminals than on preventing attacks.

"I take exception to the finding that we were not sufficiently paying attention to terrorism at home," Freeh told the House and Senate intelligence committees, conducting a joint inquiry into the attacks.

His defense of federal efforts to fight terrorism in the 1990s was echoed by Mary Jo White, former U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York in Manhattan, who prosecuted terrorism cases including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"Everyone's goal was to thwart plots before they occurred and to neutralize dangerous terrorists so that they could not attack in the future," she said.

Freeh resigned from the FBI less than three months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks after serving eight years as director. He said he has seen no evidence that FBI and intelligence agencies by themselves could have prevented the attacks.

With terrorists taking haven in foreign countries, the FBI and CIA's ability to stop them inevitably will be limited, he said. "Al-Qaida-type organizations, state sponsors of terrorism like Iran and the threats they pose to America are beyond the competence of the FBI and the CIA to address," Freeh said.

He said the FBI was denied the resources it needed to fight terrorism. In 2000, for example, he said he requested 864 additional people for counterterrorism at a cost of $380.8-million. He said he received five people and $7.4-million.

"To win a war, it takes soldiers," he said.

Similarly, Congress was slow to provide money for replacing the FBI's antiquated computer systems, Freeh said. The FBI's technological problems were a major hindrance to the sharing of information.

Former Sen. Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican who led commissions that studied intelligence, agreed the FBI didn't get as much money as it needed.

"For reasons that we all understand, the Congress can't always do what agencies think are vital," he told the committees.

Freeh rejected as "an absolute misperception" complaints by local law officials and past witnesses that the FBI's culture discourages sharing of information.

But Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., said everything the committees have heard points to a problem. "When it comes to terrorism and fighting terrorism, with all due respect, I think there is a disconnect, and there was a disconnect," he said.

Speaking before Freeh, inquiry staff director Eleanor Hill said intelligence agencies made "several impressive advances" toward fighting terrorism since the Cold War. In many cases, she said, agencies could do little about factors beyond their control, such as al-Qaida finding sanctuary in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

But Hill said intelligence agencies "did not fully learn the lessons of past attacks" dating from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said he is uneasy about "an alarming lack of information" by intelligence agencies on foreign terrorists now in the United States. He said he asked the FBI and CIA to provide information about one organization's number of "sleeper cells," or terrorist cadres in place to act at an unspecified later time, and was given widely different estimates.

"There was a chasm between them. An unacceptable chasm in my opinion," he said.

Also Tuesday, the two intelligence committees had been expected to meet to agree on a final version of a bill authorizing intelligence activities for 2003. But the meeting was postponed while the White House and lawmakers work out details of a part of the bill creating an independent commission to look into the Sept. 11 attacks. Lawmakers hope to reschedule for this week.

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