March 31, 2002
Wyden Addresses U.S. Attorneys' Conference on Terrorism
"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.'"Next Article
