- In a lead editorial today in the Wall Street Journal,
the nation's most respected financial paper called on FBI Director Rober
Mueller to resign.
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- The Journal asked that in the wake of 9-11, "The
issue now is whether, and how, the CIA and FBI can regain public confidence
and deter future attacks."
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- The Journal said Mueller had clearly lost the confidence
of the American people.
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- Though Mueller only took the helm the of the FBI weeks
before Sept. 11, the Journal said that Mueller's reforms proposed this
week were only rearranging "bureaucratic furniture."
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- In the aftermath of Sept, 11. when accountability of
the FBI was demanded, the Journal said that Mueller had made clear "the
lesson is that mistakes will go unpunished or be covered up, especially
if they're committed close to the top. Specifically, this goes to the heart
of the credibility of Mr. Mueller.
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- "The highly publicized letter from veteran agent
Coleen Rowley is devastating on this score. Mr. Mueller can't be blamed
for September 11--he took office only on September 4. Yet his statements
since that date have been, to say the least, embarrassing. First he proclaimed
that the FBI had no information on possible terrorist attacks prior to
September 11. This was the line he kept up for months-'circling the wagons,'
as Agent Rowley put it.
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- "Then, as information dribbled out--the Phoenix
agent's memo on Arabs enrolling at flight schools, the Minneapolis agents
who had identified Zacarias Moussaoui as a terrorist threat--he amended
it to say that despite the information nothing the FBI might have done
would have changed anything. Agent Rowley puts it succinctly: 'I think
your statements demonstrate a rush to judgment to protect the FBI at all
costs.' Specifically, she accuses Mr. Mueller and senior FBI officials
as having 'omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mischaracterized' her
office's probe of Moussaoui."
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- The Journal notes that only after Rowley's memo was released,
which demonstrated the director was indeed engaging in a cover-up, did
Mueller act.
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- "So now that his job is on the line, Mr. Mueller
has apologized more or less. He concedes that the 9/11 attacks might have
been detectable, even going so far as to thank Agent Rowley for her memo.
This is a step forward, but the question for his future leadership is whether
everyone in the FBI will see this for the self-protection it is."
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- The Journal pointed out that "If Mr. Mueller had
wanted to send a message to change the FBI mindset, he would have fired
the supervisory special agent who ignored the Minneapolis warnings on Moussaoui.
Instead, Ms. Rowley says, that agent was promoted."
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- The Journal's editorial comes in the wake of new revelations.
Veteran FBI Agent, Robert Wright, who had been assigned to the FBI's Counter-terrorism
office, went public Thursday saying the FBI leadership could have prevented
9-11, but field agents were deliberately thwarted in doing their jobs.
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- Wright's allegations deal with warning he made before
9-11, but at his press conference yesterday, his attorney, Judicial Watch
chairman Larry Klayman, said that that Mueller and the FBI has sought to
censor Agent Wright, and have threatened him with criminal prosecution
if he reveals embarrassing information about the Bureau.
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