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From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-14 13:08:37
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 13:08:37 -0700 (PDT)
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New York Times
June 14, 2002
C.I.A. And F.B.I. Agree To Truce In War Of Leaks Vs. Counterleaks
By James Risen
WASHINGTON, June 13 - Top officials of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. have
quietly negotiated a cease-fire between the two agencies, which have been in
a war of news leaks and finger-pointing about the intelligence failures
leading to the Sept. 11 attacks, officials familiar with the talks said
today.
After a briefing of President Bush last week, Robert S. Mueller III, the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and John E. McLaughlin, the
deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, met outside the Oval
Office, where Mr. Mueller asked for a truce and Mr. McLaughlin agreed, the
officials said.
"The leadership of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. came together and realized that
people, most likely buried deep in their bureaucracies, were engaging in
mutually assured destruction," a senior White House official said. "They
recognized that it was hurting the C.I.A., hurting the F.B.I., and it had
reached the point where they were making themselves look bad."
The White House did not broker the talks, officials said. But it is clear
that President Bush, who puts a premium on running a tight, leak-free
operation, was not happy about the battle between the agencies.
"Leaks are never a helpful way to end up on the good side of this
president," the White House official said.
The episode is the latest chapter in the decades-old culture gap between the
agency and the bureau - the nation's foreign intelligence and domestic law
enforcement bureaucracies - which have battled over status and turf since
the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles.
For now, the truce seems to be holding. When Attorney General John Ashcroft
said on Monday that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. worked together to catch Jose
Padilla, who is accused of taking part in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb"
in the United States, it was a sign the agencies wanted to put a fresh face
on their relationship.
After the arrest was announced, the C.I.A. gave information to reporters
about its role, the first time since the leaks that there seemed to be
coordination between the agencies.
Officials at the two agencies were reluctant to discuss the truce,
apparently out of concern that the other side might accuse them of violating
it. "If I talked about a truce, there wouldn't be a truce, now would there?"
asked one official.
The feud erupted in recent weeks as the Congressional investigation into the
government's performance before and after Sept. 11 began.
Both the C.I.A. and F.B.I. have scoured their files to answer questions from
Congressional investigators, and officials at both agencies knew that they
had made mistakes that would become public. The officials also knew a thing
or two about errors made by the other agency.
According to the C.I.A., the bureau was responsible for the first leak,
about the C.I.A.'s poor handling of information it had collected about two
hijackers months before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bureau officials vehemently deny the allegation, but agency officials are
convinced that the F.B.I. leaked the information to draw attention from
Coleen Rowley, a senior F.B.I. agent in Minneapolis who wrote a scathing
letter about the bureau's handling of Zacarias Moussaoui, whom federal
prosecutors now call the 20th hijacker.
In a letter to Mr. Mueller, Ms. Rowley wrote that intervention from
officials at F.B.I. headquarters prevented agents in Minneapolis from
obtaining a crucial search warrant in the Moussaoui case before Sept. 11.
She also accused Mr. Mueller and other senior officials of covering up the
bureau's mistakes.
Ms. Rowley sent copies of the letter to important lawmakers in Congress.
Parts of the letter were quickly leaked, and an edited version appeared in
Time magazine in an issue first released on May 27.
A week later, a Newsweek cover article reported that the C.I.A. had
identified two men as Al Qaeda members possibly as early as December 2000,
yet did not warn the F.B.I. or the Immigration and Naturalization Service to
place the men on watch lists until the next August.
The C.I.A. had earlier said that in late August 2001, it asked the I.N.S. to
put the men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, on its watch list to
prevent their entry into the United States. The I.N.S. responded that the
men were already in the country.
The C.I.A. subsequently asked the F.B.I. to find the two, but by then it was
too late to prevent their participation in the Sept. 11 hijackings.
Agency officials were furious with the Newsweek account, which they said
provided a partial and misleading chronology of the case, and accused the
bureau of leaking the story.
The day after the Newsweek article appeared, the agency told reporters from
several publications, including The New York Times, about e-mail messages
sent between C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials showing that the agency had shared
its concerns about Mr. Midhar as soon as it began to track him.
Mr. Mueller was outraged by the disclosures, officials said, and called the
agency to complain. C.I.A. officials, in turn, were dismayed by Mr. Mueller,
officials said, arguing that they had simply responded to criticism prompted
by leaking from the bureau.
"It wasn't a leak, it was a clarification," one intelligence official said.
The leaks were soon the talk of Washington. Senator Bob Graham, the Florida
Democrat who is co-chairman of the Sept. 11 committee, called it a
"schoolyard fight," while Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida
Republican who is the other co-chairman, made it clear he thought the leaks
were demeaning.
The ceasefire came after Mr. Mueller and Mr. McLaughlin gave a joint
briefing on terrorism to President Bush. George J. Tenet, the director of
central intelligence, was in the Middle East, so Mr. McLaughlin handled the
agency's part.
After leaving the Oval Office, Mr. McLaughlin showed Mr. Mueller an agency
cable that referred to the fact that it had given the bureau information
about Mr. Midhar as early as January 2000. At that point, Mr. Mueller
pressed for a truce. 

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