Editorial: Dramatic changes needed at the FBI

Wednesday, May 29, 2002 | 9:19 a.m.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said there was nothing the government could have done to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Coleen Rowley, the FBI's chief lawyer in Minneapolis, thinks otherwise. In a critical letter sent to Mueller last week, Rowley said that the FBI might have been able to stop at least some of the hijackers if FBI headquarters hadn't stymied the Minnesota agents' investigation last summer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who the government now believes was supposed to have been involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings. FBI headquarters, before Sept. 11, also failed to let agents in Minnesota know about a memo from an agent in Arizona that warned about terrorists training at U.S. flight schools, something that would have set off alarm bells in Minnesota since Moussaoui had received flight training.

Rowley also wrote that after Sept. 11 the FBI, including Mueller, misled the public about how much the bureau had known in advance of the attacks. It's her candor that is missing in the FBI's headquarters, which is all the more reason why Rowley should not face any recriminations. Today Mueller, an outsider who hadn't worked at the FBI until he was appointed director last year, announced his plans to make wholesale changes to the bureau in order to prevent a reoccurrence of the intelligence failures that preceded Sept. 11. While structural reforms are necessary, Mueller also will have to change the culture at the FBI, so that it will value people like Rowley instead of the yes-men bureaucrats who rule the roost in Washington.