FBI faces greatest test after attacks

Agency chasing thousands of tips around the globe

09/30/2001

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT and LEE HANCOCK
The Dallas Morning News

The sheer magnitude of the investigation into the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon can be precisely measured: More than 200,000 leads, nearly 500 arrests and global manhunts for hundreds more.

Millions of pounds of debris and wreckage from crime scenes in Manhattan, suburban Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania are being scoured by evidence technicians. And forensic investigators are engaged in the unprecedented task of identifying nearly 6,000 victims from the twin towers devastation.

Less calculable is the challenge that the biggest criminal investigation in U.S. history poses for the FBI. The agency has 7,000 agents and support staffers trying to unravel the sophisticated plot behind the hijackings of four jetliners on Sept. 11.

Countless other law-enforcement and intelligence authorities from the United States and around the world are working facets of the operation or are sharing information generated from their own inquiries.

The investigation is moving further into an international operation, covering several European nations and the Middle East. For instance, British authorities have accused an Algerian pilot of providing flight training to four of the hijackers.

Just a few days after the horrific attacks, President Bush and other administration officials fingered Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network as prime suspects. Nearly three weeks into the sweeping investigation, however, federal authorities have yet to report the pivotal arrest or discovery of evidence that could help crack the case. They also acknowledge that they have not identified any U.S.-based accomplices.

While the FBI swiftly assembled a working knowledge of the 19 Middle Eastern hijackers and their travels in the United States, it has yet to file criminal charges against anyone for direct involvement in the attacks. Nor has it developed the information that would lead to the dismantling of the shadowy foreign networks responsible for the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

Several federal law-enforcement officials involved in the investigation described it as "frustrating," citing not only the massive scope but also the slow progress. Adding new layers of difficulty to the investigation is that the hijackers apparently worked hard to confuse law enforcement by using fraudulent documents or by assuming the identities of innocent people abroad.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI officials have publicly expressed satisfaction at the pace of the investigation.

"We are well on our way to solving this," FBI Assistant Director Barry Mawn told The Associated Press during a tour of the FBI's makeshift operations center in New York.

Officials acknowledge, however, that an incredibly complex investigation being waged on the ground, on the Internet, through financial channels and via electronic surveillance is further complicated by additional missions. Authorities are doing more than trying to solve the case; they're attempting to thwart future terrorist attacks and develop information that could lead to military strikes.

'New challenge'

Multiple missions aside, the investigation also may be hampered by the massive flow of information and intelligence pouring in day after day, current and former FBI officials said.

"You've got to be careful in a case like this that you don't get overwhelmed," said former senior FBI official Danny Coulson. "The big problem here is not getting information. It's knowing what to do with it. Because sometimes you get too much."

Already, some are expressing concern about management of an information flood that's predicted to well outpace the estimated 1 billion pages of documents and evidence compiled during the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

In a letter Thursday to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Sen. Charles Grassley cited communications breakdowns that occurred during investigations of the Branch Davidian siege, the TWA Flight 800 crash and Oklahoma City bombing.

"I know we both want to ensure the FBI is not hobbled by an ineffective system for managing key investigative information," said Mr. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been a sharp critic of the bureau.

The most visible failure occurred earlier this year when Mr. Ashcroft delayed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution after the discovery that the FBI failed to share several thousand pages of investigative notes with the McVeigh legal team.

To tame the information flow in the hijacking investigation and ensure it is shared with all relevant parties, the FBI has a number of systems in place. One is a national conference call held daily by all FBI field office chiefs. And at every field office, briefings occur at each shift change to update agents.

As in all major investigations, the FBI is using its Rapid Start automated case management system, which assigns a control number for every lead from the public or generated by a field agent. Interviews and case notes are logged into the system, which can be examined by analysts throughout the FBI and allow them to cross-reference leads.

The process of tracking 19 suspects across state and international boundaries poses "a monumental task," said Weldon Kennedy, who headed the FBI's Oklahoma City bombing investigation. "They may have had bank accounts. They rented cars. They had driver's licenses. Every one of those things generates investigative activity."

The need to sift through an avalanche of tips is vital to detecting patterns, Mr. Kennedy said.

The problem, some say, is that the FBI's computerized systems are antiquated and that the ability to search Rapid Start is inadequate.

"That area is a huge problem for the FBI," said Mr. Coulson, the former FBI official. "One of the things they're doing now is mining their own files: 'What did we know – what things that were not significant before Sept. 11 are now significant?' "

Law-enforcement officials said the hijackers maintained a remarkable degree of discipline and security, keeping to themselves and avoiding missteps such as excessive credit card purchases or significant interactions with outsiders.

People questioned so far about their interactions with the hijackers appear to have been ignorant of the plot, law-enforcement sources say. Investigators now suspect that associates who had significant knowledge left the country before Sept. 11, officials said.

That tactic was detected in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, also believed to have been carried out by al-Qaeda. A surviving suicide bomber told the FBI that "anyone even remotely associated with the bombings had to leave ... before the explosion took place."

Extensive planning

Although the Justice Department has acknowledged that box cutters similar to those used by the hijackers were found aboard other planes, authorities have refused to publicly discuss whether they believe other hijackings were planned or thwarted.

One federal law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least four men suspected of involvement in the plot are believed to have been aboard a Sept. 11 flight leaving Newark that returned to the gate after news broke of the World Trade Center attacks.

Those four passengers disembarked and vanished, and authorities believe they were traveling under stolen or false identification. "We don't know where they are. We don't know who they are," the official said.

"This was an exceptionally tight operation. The bad guys were exceptionally tight. We have been really, really looking for some associate out there who was some peripheral player, a cash drop or a weapon provider or a food-and-shelter person. We can't find any based on what we know about the dead guys."