June 5, 2002
Rifts Plentiful as 9/11 Inquiry Begins
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, June 3 — Early on Sept. 11, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter J. Goss were having a quiet breakfast meeting in the Capitol with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mehmood Ahmed. Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss, the chairmen of the two Congressional intelligence committees, were quizzing their guest about Osama bin Laden and other issues when an aide to Mr. Goss rushed in with a note.
A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Mr. Goss furiously scribbled a reply, asking his aide to find out more. A few moments later, the aide came back with another note — a second plane had crashed into the trade center. "We're out of here," Mr. Goss announced.
Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat, and Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, have been immersed in the attacks ever since. On Tuesday, they begin joint oversight hearings to examine the painful subject of a colossal intelligence failure and who in the government knew what before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Fingerpointing, some of it pitting the F.B.I. against the C.I.A., already threatens to overshadow the joint committee's actual hearings. Today, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency moved quickly to counter new accusations that it had identified two Sept. 11 hijackers as Al Qaeda operatives months earlier than previously believed but had not shared the information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A C.I.A. official said today that the agency had found proof — e-mail messages from January 2000 — that at least some F.B.I. officials had been told what the agency knew at the time about the two men.
But other officials said the agency failed to share with the bureau more significant information it learned later, including that the two men had visited the United States, one of them showing multiple entry stamps on his Saudi passport. Moreover, the C.I.A. did not tell the F.B.I. in December 2000 or January 2001 that the two men were linked to suspects in the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole.
In addition to the intelligence hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony on Thursday from the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, as well as from Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis agent who protested the refusal by F.B.I. headquarters to seek a search warrant to examine a laptop computer belonging to Zacarias Moussaoui, who the authorities say was to have been the "20th hijacker."
Ms. Rowley, whose impassioned 13-page letter accused Mr. Mueller of failing to candidly acknowledge the mistakes by F.B.I. officials in the Moussaoui case, is to arrive in Washington on Tuesday and is expected to meet privately with lawmakers on the intelligence committees before her appearance at Thursday's hearing, officials said.
President Bush, responding to new disclosures that his administration missed crucial clues to the attacks, today said that the F.B.I. was doing a better job of sharing intelligence findings with the C.I.A.
"When you read about the F.B.I., I want you to know that the F.B.I. is changing its culture," Mr. Bush said during a political appearance in Arkansas. "The F.B.I. prior to Sept. 11 was running down white-collar criminals — and that's good — was worrying about spies — that's good. But now they've got a more important task, and that is to prevent further attack."
The unusually close friendship between Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss across party lines, meanwhile, is sure to be tested by the growing rift between the parties over whether the signals the administration missed before Sept. 11 should become an election-year issue. Both men must also deal with criticism that they are too close to the intelligence community, and will not hold the C.I.A. and F.B.I. fully accountable.
Congressional critics of the two agencies — most notably Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who is the party's ranking member on the Senate intelligence panel — chafe at the Graham-Goss alliance and yearn for a more freewheeling and aggressive investigation than the two Florida lawmakers seem likely to conduct.
Mr. Goss, a former C.I.A. case officer, and Mr. Graham, a former governor of Florida, both disdain the highly confrontational style that has become the hallmark of other recent Congressional investigations, and both prefer to conduct Congressional oversight of the intelligence community the old-fashioned way: behind closed doors. Tuesday's hearing, for example, during which their newly hired 24-member staff will brief members on the progress of their investigation, will be closed, as will sessions on both Wednesday and Thursday, when one witness might be called. The first public hearings will not be held until late June, when both Mr. Mueller and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, are expected to testify.
"There are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who know that the American people want us to do a responsible, adult job in looking into this," Mr. Goss said in a recent interview. "I think that is the mood that has prevailed now. We have members from both sides thanking us for avoiding the partisan mines."
But their reticence has left a political vacuum, one others are stepping into. The staff of the joint committee has, for example, already conducted private interviews with Ms. Rowley.
Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, and other Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are still pushing for an independent commission to conduct a separate investigation of Sept. 11, apparently out of a fear that the joint committee will not be aggressive enough.
Mr. Goss's background as a C.I.A. officer and his longtime public support for Mr. Tenet fuel many of the doubts about the joint committee. Mr. Goss played a quiet but influential role in persuading the Bush administration to keep Mr. Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He has also emphasized that he wants the joint committee to focus on looking forward at needed reforms, not back on missed clues.
Of course, Mr. Goss's belief in the gravity of the Sept. 11 review has not halted the typical Washington cycle of leak and counterleak. Today, the C.I.A. responded to the charges that it had waited too long to notify the F.B.I. about the two hijackers by disclosing that it had found e-mail traffic between C.I.A. and F.B.I. employees showing that the bureau was notified that a man named Khalid al-Midhar was about to attend a meeting in Malaysia.
The C.I.A. passed along Mr. Midhar's name and Saudi passport number to an F.B.I. official, according to agency records. In a Jan. 6, 2000, e-mail message between a C.I.A. employee and an F.B.I. official working for the counterterrorism center at C.I.A. headquarters, the C.I.A. employee noted that the bureau already had the information about Mr. Midhar.
"It wouldn't surprise me, however, if different people continue to ask you for updates, not having gotten the word that the F.B.I. already has the facts," the e-mail message said, according to the C.I.A.
A C.I.A. official said such correspondence about Mr. Midhar showed that "to say we held out information on him is wrong."
In the midst of the leaking, Mr. Goss's caution appears to have influenced Mr. Graham. The senator, for example, has frequently said he believed that Mr. Tenet should remain at the C.I.A. despite the intelligence failure on Sept. 11.
Mr. Graham took over as chairman of the Senate intelligence panel only a few months before Sept. 11, after Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party and tilted control of the Senate to the Democrats. Though he had been on the committee for some time, Mr. Graham was still getting used to running the panel and immersing himself in the details of the intelligence world when the attacks occurred.
In the months since, Mr. Graham and his staff forged an alliance with Mr. Goss and his aides to get the C.I.A. and the rest of the intelligence community billions of dollars in more financing as well as new powers to fight terrorism. "Senator Graham and I have been through a lot, and we are comfortable working together," Mr. Goss said.
Senator Shelby and his staff felt increasingly isolated as Mr. Graham was able to circumvent them to forge an alliance with the House Republican leadership.
Both Mr. Graham and Mr. Goss said they have no objection to the creation of a Sept. 11 commission, perhaps because they both know that the proposal seems destined to die in the Republican-controlled House.
"It doesn't really affect what we are doing," Mr. Graham said recently. "We will continue to do our investigation whether or not there is a commission."
