Minneapolis FBI agents investigating terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui in August were severely hampered by officials at the bureau’s headquarters, who resisted seeking search warrants and admonished agents for seeking help from the CIA, according to a letter from the general counsel for the FBI’s Minneapolis field office.
Coleen Rowley also wrote Tuesday in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller that evidence gathered in the Moussaoui case, combined with a July 10 agency warning that Al Qaeda operatives might be taking flight training in Arizona, should have prompted stronger suspicion at headquarters that a terrorist attack was planned, according to officials familiar with Rowley’s letter.
“There was a great deal of frustration expressed on the part of the Minneapolis office toward what they viewed as a less-than-aggressive attitude from headquarters,” said one official familiar with the letter.
Mueller said Thursday night that he has referred Rowley’s complaints to the Justice Department’s inspector general for investigation.
“While I cannot comment on the specifics of the letter, I am convinced that a different approach is required,” Mueller said. “New strategies, new analytical capacities and a different culture makes us an agency that is changing post-9/11. There is no room after the attacks for the types of problems and attitudes that could inhibit our efforts.”
In her classified 13-page letter, Rowley said Minneapolis investigators had significant evidence of Moussaoui’s possible ties to terrorists, including corroboration from a foreign source that Moussaoui posed a major threat, sources said.
But agent Dave Rapp and his colleagues in Minnesota faced resistance from headquarters staff that Rowley considered unnecessary and counterproductive, according to officials who have seen the letter.
FBI attorneys in Washington determined that there was not enough evidence to ask a judge for warrants to search Moussaoui’s computer.
At one point, according to accounts of Rowley’s letter, agents in Minnesota went to the CIA for help, only to be admonished by headquarters.
Moussaoui was detained Aug. 16 after arousing suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. He has been charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks.
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In congressional testimony this month, Mueller acknowledged that the FBI should have responded more aggressively to a memorandum from the Phoenix office warning that Al Qaeda operatives might be taking flight training. But he argued that the bureau did all it could in pursuing Moussaoui.