FBI whistle-blower faces public grilling

6 Jun, 2002 09:05 AM2 mins to read

WASHINGTON - Coleen Rowley, the FBI whistle-blower who accused the bureau of mishandling warning signs before September 11, today faces her first public grilling at a Senate hearing on United States counterterrorism efforts.

Rowley shocked the FBI last month by sending a 13-page letter to director Robert Mueller, questioning his handling of information and accusing him and other top FBI officials of "skewing the facts" when commenting on how much the FBI knew before the September 11 attacks on the US.

The Minneapolis-based agent will be making her first public statements since sending her letter when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee's oversight hearing focusing on the Justice Department's counterterrorism efforts.

Rowley, who was interviewed at FBI headquarters yesterday by Congressional staffers from the Senate and House intelligence committees, is likely to be questioned about the FBI's practices and attitudes and her views on FBI changes announced over the past few weeks.

She is one of three witnesses expected to testify at the hearing, which is taking place as the intelligence committees of the House and Senate conduct a joint probe of the failure of US intelligence to stop the September 11 attacks.

Mueller is also likely to be asked about some of the concerns Rowley raised in her May 21 letter. In that letter she complained that FBI headquarters should have approved a request from its Minneapolis office for a search warrant involving Zacarias Moussaoui, who was being held in August after arousing suspicions at a Minnesota flight school.

Moussaoui was in custody in Minnesota when the September attacks occurred, but was charged in December with conspiring to carry out the attacks. Authorities suspect he intended to join the 19 men who hijacked four planes that day, but agents never received a search warrant before September 11.

Mueller is also likely to be asked why the FBI failed to act after one of its agents sent a memo two months before the attacks warning that Middle Eastern men were taking flight lessons and urging an investigation.

- REUTERS

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