Clarke and Cressey: How the FBI failed us -- and how we can fix it

[Eugene]

Source: Boston Globe Op-Ed

RICHARD A. CLARKE AND ROGER W. CRESSEY

How the FBI failed us -- and how we can fix it

By Richard A. Clarke and Roger W. Cressey | April 4, 2007

NOW WE KNOW why the government failed to stop 9/11. Embattled
FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee last week that
what prevented his agency from halting the attack was its inability
to issue warrant-less search orders with the profligacy of a parking
ticket officer.

If only it had the currently available unfettered "national security
letter" authority to run through personal information data bases
without judicial oversight, Mueller suggested, the FBI would have
found 9/11 terrorist Khalid al Midhar and through him the other Al
Qaeda conspirators. Really?

-snip-

Mueller's "blame the Fourth Amendment" excuse cannot hide the
consistent record of colossal mismanagement under the current FBI
director and his predecessor. Republican senators Arlen Specter and
Charles Grassley have detailed the long list of the bureau's failures --
from the thousands of errors in warrant-less search orders, to the
millions of dollars wasted in botched computer system contracts, to
the failure to provide adequate training in radical Islam to new recruits.

-snip-

Specter was right to suggest it is time to take away national security
investigations from the FBI and let it concentrate on fewer, easier
things so that it might do a better job. We and other counter terrorism
specialists have struggled with the decision to call for a separate
national security protective investigatory agency. Creating a new
agency is always fraught with challenges. One can only look at the
disastrous start to the Department of Homeland Security. But it is also
difficult to re invent an existing bureaucracy with a deeply engrained
culture like the FBI's.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/04/how_the_fbi_failed_us____and_how_we_can_fix_it

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Kicking and recommending - a must-read!

:kick: