WASHINGTON, April 13: The commission on the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday broadly criticized the US Justice Department and the FBI for failing to meet the threat from Al Qaeda and said Attorney General John Ashcroft did not see counter-terrorism as a top priority before it was too late.
In its latest report detailing security breakdowns throughout the government, the commission issued two lengthy staff reports analysing the failure to prevent the hijacked airliner attacks in New York and Washington.
One report drew attention to a May 10 Justice Department document that set out priorities for 2001. The top priorities cited were reducing gun violence and combating drug trafficking. There was no mention of counter-terrorism.
When Dale Watson, the head of the counter-terrorism division, saw the report, he "almost fell out of his chair", the report said. "The FBI's new counter-terrorism strategy was not a focus of the Justice Department in 2001."
Then-acting FBI director Thomas Pickard said he appealed to Mr Ashcroft for more money for counter-terrorism but on Sept 10, 2001, one day before the attacks, Mr Ashcroft rejected the appeal.
A second staff report issued before the afternoon session said Mr Ashcroft was briefed on terrorist threats by Mr Pickard in late June and July 2001. "After two such briefings, the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore," the report quoted Mr Pickard as saying.
It added that Ashcroft and two top aides denied the attorney general made any such statement to Packard. Ashcroft told the panel in a previous private session that he had assumed the FBI was doing what it needed to do to avert any threats. "He (Ashcroft) acknowledged that, in retrospect, this was a dangerous assumption," the report said.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno, who served for eight years under former president Bill Clinton, said she had tried to direct more FBI efforts toward counter-terrorism. She said the Clinton administration succeeded in preventing attacks around the time of the 2000 Millennium, partly by focusing top-level attention on the matter.
The commission reports analysed a wide range of FBI problems including the shortage of qualified analysts and translators. It said the agency was hampered by a culture resistant to change, inadequate resources and legal barriers.
"On Sept 11, 2001, the FBI was limited in several areas critical to an effective, preventive counter-terrorism strategy," the report said. Although the FBI's counter terrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, its counter terrorism spending stayed fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001, it added. On Sept. 11, 2001, only about 1,300 agents, or 6 percent of the FBI's total personnel, worked on counter terrorism.
TRANSLATORS: The FBI sought permission to hire almost 1,900 counter-terror linguists, analysts and agents before the attacks to combat a growing threat but was allowed to add just 76, former FBI chief Louis Freeh said.
Mr Freeh told the commission that the US government failed to put up the funds needed to provide expertise in the languages of the Muslim world, citing a particular shortage of Arabic and Persian speakers.
"In the budget years 2000/2001/2002, we asked for 1,895 people - agents, linguists, analysts. We got a total of 76 people during that period," Mr Freeh testified. "That's not to criticize the US Congress. It's not to criticize the Department of Justice. It is to focus on the fact that that was not a national priority."
Mr Freeh said the counter terror effort particularly needed linguists, which were requested "year after year". "We asked for the authority to hire Arabic and Farsi (Persian) speakers at a higher rate than the GS scale provided for in New York City," he said. "You can't hire an Arabic or Farsi speaker for a GS-6 salary, which is what we were relegated to."
GS-6 refers to low to mid-entry level, clerical or administrative positions, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management said. Currently, GS-6 salaries for the New York area range from about 32,000 dollars to 41,600 dollars.
Salary restrictions compounded staffing problems stemming from a 22-month congressionally mandated hiring freeze in the first half of the 1990s, Freeh said. Recruiters and senior officials say they are fully aware of the need for such specialists with "exotic" language skills, but say rigorous security screening in a limited pool of qualified candidates complicates the task.
Many applicants are also put off by the slow process that can take more than a year, especially when the private sector is offering more lucrative jobs sooner. -Reuters
