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Hatch ignored warning about 9-11 attack
Sat May 17 17:21:32 2003
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US Senator Orrin Hatch
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Hatch ignored warning about 9-11 attack
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_2228.shtml
 
May 16, 2003, 07:12

Nearly six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Senate Judiciary
Committee chairman was told by his senior staff that the FBI and other
government agencies had missed warning signs about the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing and were ill-prepared to prevent future domestic terrorist
attacks, memos show.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, whose committee oversees federal law
enforcement, approved holding investigative hearings about the information,
but they never took place, the memos show.

"The sharing of intelligence is lacking among federal law enforcement
agencies," the December 1995 memo to Hatch stated, citing intelligence
failures eerily similar to those exposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide
hijackings by al-Qaida terrorists.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, also told Hatch that committee
investigators had uncovered evidence that federal law enforcement had prior
hints about the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York City
but failed to piece them together.

"We have information that some instances, like the World Trade Center, could
have been prevented if the relevant agencies had worked in concert with each
other," the investigators wrote. "Simply stated, several different agencies
had a small piece of the puzzle.

"If they had shared with each other, there is at least a strong possibility
that they would have identified the World Trade Center as a target before
the bombing."

The memo described the need for a congressional investigation as
"appropriate and imperative." Hatch approved the plan for hearings
recommended by his chief investigator and senior investigative counsel,
signing the memo "OK" and initialing it with his trademark "O".

Hatch's office said while the memo's plan for hearings never materialized,
the chairman did hold about a dozen hearings in 1995 and 1996 dealing with
terrorism issues and sponsored legislation to give the FBI more powers to
catch terrorists, some of which passed in 1996 within months of the memo.

"The legislation was the most significant piece of anti-terrorism
legislation passed in two decades and Senator Hatch constantly fought to
give the FBI and the Department of Justice more tools to share information
and prevent terrorist attacks," said Makan Delrahim, Hatch's staff director
on the Judiciary Committee.

The investigators wrote at least two other memos to Hatch's chief of staff
recommending continued investigation of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts.
"We need to continue our oversight in these areas," a memo urged one month
before the 1996 presidential election.

Senators and Senate Judiciary Committee aides in both parties said Thursday
they were unaware of the 1995 memo's information and said it shows that
Congress, which heaped criticism on the executive branch over the Sept. 11
failures, must share in the blame.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a fellow Republican on the Judiciary
Committee, said he had never seen the memo before and wanted to discuss it
with Hatch.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the memo's
contents mirrored the problems unearthed by House and Senate intelligence
committee investigators who reviewed the Sept. 11 attacks.

"There were egregious errors, in hindsight," Roberts said. Asked if those
errors included Congress' failure to provide oversight and follow
information like that in the 1995 memo, Roberts added: "Big time in
Congress."

Hatch's office said he was recognized on Capitol Hill long before Sept. 11
as a leading voice on terrorism who led hearings on issues like his
legislation to increase FBI power, the dangers of explosives information on
the Internet and preventing terror attacks at the Olympics.

The office also said Hatch led efforts in the mid-1990s to improve the FBI's
ability to share and receive intelligence. Some of those measures were
stripped by Congress before his legislation became law in 1996.

"Had these measures been in place prior to 9/11, law enforcement agencies
may well have been able to catch some or all of the terrorists," Hatch wrote
earlier this week in an opinion piece published in USA Today.

But a former Republican investigator on Hatch's committee, who worked on the
investigation that prompted the 1995 memo, accused the chairman of
"frustrating our attempts to oversee the FBI."

Kris Kolesnik, who worked on the committee for Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, said Hatch preferred not to air the FBI's problems in public. "His
solution to problems within the FBI is to send more money, create more
bureaucracy and give them more authority to trample our civil liberties," he
said. "That is not oversight. That is a knee-jerk reaction that has never
worked."

Delrahim, Hatch's staff director, strongly disagreed. "The memorandum makes
it clear that Senator Hatch supported investigations and oversight of this
matter. To suggest in any manner that Orrin Hatch does not care about
stopping terrorism or performing oversight is laughable," he said.

The FBI said most of the concerns cited in the 1995 memo have been addressed
by Director Robert Mueller since Sept. 11 with the creation of 66
counterterrorism task forces, new computer systems, an improved language
interpreters program, improved intelligence analysis, and improved sharing
of threat information between federal and local police.

"In two years we have made significant strides," the FBI said. "The director
recognized we did have deficiencies and the fact is we are addressing them.
The bureau has changed its mission."

The public airing of confidential memos between senior Senate staff and a
committee chairman is rare. Congress is exempt from disclosure under the
Freedom of Information Act, and political decorum on Capitol Hill often
keeps internal disagreements from becoming public.

But the 1995 and 1996 memos emerge as Hatch has endured recent criticisms
from some colleagues for declining to investigate the FBI's handling of
Chinese intelligence assets in the aftermath of California case in which a
former FBI agent was charged with allowing his lover to pass secrets along
to China.

The December 1995 memo specifically warned the FBI was ill-prepared to deal
with terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

"The major problem in this arena appears to be the lack of training and
equipment in situations that involve nuclear, biological and chemical
substances," the memo said.

The memo also said investigators had gathered evidence that a Florida
company specializing in preventing corporate espionage had offered to train
the FBI in technology that could be used to detect terrorists, but the
bureau declined.

"The FBI's response is that the technique used by this company is too
difficult to learn and therefore the FBI is not interested," the memo told
Hatch.
===============================

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1995 Memo Warned of Terror Vulnerability
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... Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, whose committee oversees federal law enforcement, approved
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Memos detailed terror fight woes
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