"If you got up from your lunch
table right now, walked into the lobby and asked hotel guests to
use one word to describe the news out of Washington these days,
I bet you'd get the same answer from quite a few. Some might say
the news is frightening, or depressing. But I think most folks would
call all the breaking stories about intelligence failures before
September 11 just plain old frustrating.
"Every day it seems there are new revelations
about crucial information known by one Federal agency before the
attacks – but not shared in time with other Federal intelligence
teams. As a member of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence,
I had the chance to read the memo from the so-called FBI 'whistleblower,'
Coleen Rowley. Let me tell you – what she has to say is more than
frustrating. It makes you a little queasy to see how the pieces
might have fallen into place had anyone at FBI headquarters been
listening to field agents before September 11.
"As a United States Senator and a member
of the Intelligence Committee, I am committed to getting this country's
intelligence and law enforcement agencies up to speed in the fight
against terrorism. Too often, folks on the front lines are being
asked to save the world with one hand tied behind their backs. I
want every person who has a hand in this war on terror to have the
tools and the support they need – right down to the state and local
levels.
"U.S. attorneys in Oregon know something
about having your hands tied in tough fights. Last year the Gatti
decision placed unreasonable contstraints on your offices when it
came to undercover investigations. A State Bar Association disciplinary
rule made it unethical for attorneys to take part in any practice
involving quote, 'deceit or misrepresentation.' The Federal McDade-Murtha
law mandated compliance with state ethics rules. Important undercover
investigations in this state just stopped.
"The Portland Innocent Images undercover
program targeting child pornography was even shut down. The U.S.
Attorney's Office had to tell the FBI: they could no longer participate
in any operations that could be deemed deceptive by the State Bar.
"Talk about frustrating: no matter how
vital the investigation, no matter how great the need, no matter
how dangerous the criminals, federal, state and local prosecutors
could not even give advice to help an undercover investigation.
"Child pornographers, drug pushers,
and eco-terrorists were breathing easy in our state. They knew that
law enforcement had lost its best weapon against them.
"Criminals – and not particularly sophisticated
ones, who were caught without covert investigations – admitted they
set up shop in Oregon because of the McDade situation. Then after
September 11, the realization hit hard. Oregon's Gatti-McDade loophole
gave dangerous criminals, including terrorists, practically an engraved
invitation to set up shop here. By leaving one state vulnerable,
the Gatti-McDade loophole made every state vulnerable.
"I worked hard to explain the situation
to my colleagues in the Congress. The Association of U.S. Attorneys
did a great job pressing our case, and I was grateful for your assistance.
"I explained to my colleagues that without
advice of counsel, law enforcement operatives in Oregon could not
conduct wiretaps, sting operations, or infiltrate dangerous criminal
operations. And I made it clear that if the anti-terrorism legislation
we were considering only worked in 49 states, it didn't work at
all.
"I appreciate the Oregon State Bar Association
for seeing the Gatti-McDade loophole for what it really was. It
was an issue of state and national security, not the political football
some folks in Washington made it out to be. By amending ethics rules
to allow supervision of covert investigations, the Bar Association
paved the way for cooperation between prosecutors and law enforcement
– and untied the hands of attorneys and police on the front lines.
"The McDade-Murtha law succeeded, for
a time, in thwarting your efforts to make this state a safer place.
Unfortunately, the Coleen Rowley letter makes it look a lot like
Washington is doing the same thing to its FBI field offices. It
sure looks like FBI officials in the capital didn't take their field
agents in Arizona and Minnesota very seriously. The potential consequences
of that are almost too much to bear. I'm a member of bipartisan,
bicameral Intelligence commission looking into events before 9-11.
You can bet I'll be investigating Washington's role in throwing
away the clues uncovered by agents on the ground.
"This week Director Mueller came out
with a plan to reorganize the FBI. But reorganizing will do no good
if we don't ferret out faults in the existing system. There's no
guarantee that better information sharing would have prevented the
terrorist attacks. But I can promise you our chances of stopping
future ones will only improve when intelligence agencies start working
together.
"Folks in Washington have been awfully
busy asking who knew what, and when did they know it. What I want
to find out is what has been done to guarantee that America won't
be tripped up again by colossal intelligence failures.
"Intelligence information is only as
good as the use to which it is put. What might be a meaningless
scrap of paper to one agency could be an important clue for another.
Communication failures within and between agencies put Americans
at risk. The government must get its act together.
"Trickle-down economics didn't work
and trickle-down intelligence won't work either. I want the information
disseminated, as it should be. Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence
Committee approved an intelligence authorization bill that included
my provision to create a 'Terrorist Identification Classification
System.'"
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