Mueller details FBI overhaul

The Washington Post And The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The FBI’s embattled director acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that investigators might have been able to uncover part of the Sept. 11 plot if the FBI had properly put together all the clues in the possession of the bureau and other agencies.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who took the reins at FBI a week before the attacks of Sept. 11, outlined his efforts Wednesday to bring new aggressiveness and organization to the fight on terror. He admitted FBI missteps and even said he agreed with a Minnesota agent’s recently publicized scathing assessment of inertia at FBI headquarters.

Mueller told reporters that the Minnesota arrest of alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and warnings from a Phoenix FBI agent about terrorists at aviation schools would not, on their own, have led investigators to the Sept. 11 plot.

But if the FBI had connected those two cases with other evidence that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network was keenly interested in aviation, Mueller said, "who is to say" what could have been discovered.

"I can’t say for sure that there wasn’t the possibility that we would have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers," he said.

In one new example of missed clues, the FBI released a memo Wednesday in which one of its own pilots warned in 1998 about Middle Eastern males receiving flight training in Oklahoma that "may be related to planned terrorist activity."

Mueller made clear that he still believed the chances of uncovering the Sept. 11 plot were exceedingly slim, even with the available clues.

Mueller was joined Wednesday by Attorney General John Ashcroft in formally announcing a radical restructuring of the FBI, which plans to double the number of agents devoted to counterterrorism and to hire hundreds of linguists, scientists and other specialists focused on preventing terrorist attacks.

The plans, some of which require congressional approval, also would create "flying squads" at FBI headquarters to assist in terrorism investigations in field offices around the nation and abroad.

As a result, the FBI will investigate fewer cases involving narcotics, white-collar crime and violent crimes, although Mueller stressed that the bureau will remain involved in complex and multijurisdictional cases that require its expertise.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is lifting restrictions on the FBI to make it easier for agents to begin and pursue terrorism investigations without approval from FBI headquarters. The changes, to be announced today, also lift restrictions on the FBI’s use of the Internet and public libraries to give agents more freedom to investigate terrorism even when they are not pursuing a particular case.