Posted on 10/25/2001 7:19:00 AM PDT by LiveFree2000
October 25, 2001
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Behind the facade of cooperation following the Sept. 11 attacks, less than amicable relations between New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the FBI have further deteriorated. According to New York City sources, the mayor has engaged in more than one shouting match with FBI Assistant Director Barry Mawn.
It's the same old problem because it's the same old FBI. Newly appointed, much-acclaimed Director Robert Mueller makes little difference. The bureau refuses to share information with local police agencies. It won't permit security clearances for high local officials. Law enforcement officers around the country say that attitude lent itself to catastrophe Sept. 11 and could permit further disasters.
Last Friday in Washington, Mueller--amiable and agreeable--sat down with big-city police chiefs and promised things will get better. The chiefs doubt whether Mueller or Tom Ridge, the new homeland security director, can change the bureau's culture--described to me by one police chief as ''elitist and arrogant.'' Efforts to enlist members of Congress into pressing for reform find politicians awed by the FBI mystique.
The FBI's big National Security section in New York City long has grappled with the New York Police Department. ''The FBI's attitude has been that if you need to know, we'll tell you,'' one New York police source told me. That ''need'' never occurs, with the FBI adamantly against any local anti-terrorism activity. The locals, in turn, complain about the feds failing to follow important leads.
Giuliani is not venting his outrage in a time of national crisis, but sources report a high decibel level in private by the mayor. The complaint to Mawn is that the NYPD is out of the loop, its senior officers not even granted security clearances.
Such complaints are common across the country, but only a few police chiefs speak publicly--notably Edward Norris of Baltimore (who complained in congressional testimony), Michael Chitwood of Portland, Maine, and Dan Oates of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Chitwood's experience is most bizarre. He was infuriated to learn that the FBI knew of a visit to Portland by two Sept. 11 hijackers but did not inform him. When his police pursued a witness of that visit, the FBI threatened to arrest the chief. ''I ignored them,'' Chitwood told me. Has cooperation with the bureau improved? ''Not a bit,'' he said. Only Tuesday he learned from reading his local newspaper about a plane under federal surveillance parked at the Portland airport for seven weeks.
Oates is familiar with the FBI, having tried to work with the feds during 21 years with the NYPD before retiring this year to go to Ann Arbor. As a deputy chief who was commanding officer of NYPD intelligence, he describes the FBI as ''obsessed with turf.''
Closing doors to police officers particularly infuriates Oates. ''The security clearance issue is a tired old excuse that allows the FBI not to share,'' he told me. ''They should hand out 10,000 security clearances to cops around the country.'' Oates and other police chiefs believe Sept. 11 might have been averted had the FBI alerted local police agencies about a Minnesota flight school's report of an Arab who wanted instructions for steering a big jet, but not for landing or taking off.
Police chiefs would open the FBI to the same probing of decisions and actions that they routinely perform after the fact. They also would like the same rules for the bureau that govern most of the nation's police departments. In the FBI, nobody takes the fall for blundering.
A promise that things will change in the FBI was implicit in Mueller's remarks to city police chiefs last Friday. Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, another NYPD veteran who is more cautious in his criticism of the feds than his former colleague Oates, sounded skeptical after the meeting. ''I'm hopeful,'' he told me, but would make no predictions.
What he hopes for is the safety of the American people. The police chiefs of America want a top-to-bottom cleansing of the FBI that will require leadership from the Oval Office. If George W. Bush doubts the urgency, he should ask Rudy Giuliani.
October 25, 2001
I thought J. Edgar Hoover was dead?
Maybe too many "important leads" lead back to the FBI. Maybe they're "obsessed with turf" because they're doing so many things they should be ashamed of that they can't afford to let anybody know anything.
The most important time to control an investigation is when your own hands are dirty in the crime being investigated.
I really have to laugh when the media talks about what a good governor Kitzhaber is! We have our economy tanking, unemployment is among the highest in the nation, the schools are terrible, roads are a joke, the state budget is bloated in areas it doesn't need money and lacking where it does. And now, our Secretary of State has been upheld in a blatantly partisan redistricting plan that will ensure that the Demoncrats will control this state for at least the next 10 years.
Oh well, at least we are finally getting some rain.
For those who may not remember, Guliani was the Federal Prosecutor for the Southern District, US Supreme Court. (NYC, more specifically Manhattan) He is singlehandedly credited with putting more Maffia Dons and underlings in jail then any Federal Prosecutor in history. Guliani may have become somehat politically oriented since those days, but he still has savvy and perseverance to do the job. Most important is the fact that he is a political renegade whose main thrust is his job, not the political ramifications of his actions. With Mueller, we have a politically correct bureaucrat that will always be crippled by his political correctness. In retrospect he was a good appointment for Bush who was looking to heal the country in a bipartison way early on in his term. Now, he (Mueller) has become a very bad choice.
The FBI. Very bad. Still crippled by the Clintonoids who control the local offices and major departments within the bureau. what the FBI needs is a purge of Reno's gang of Clinton protectors.
About 4-5 years ago, Andy Kerr, then director of ONRC said that there were too many jobs and too many people working and living in Oregon. They had to eliminate the bad jobs and force some people to move from Oregon! Katznslobber was at that left wing enviral meeting and basically agreed!
So the last 3-4 years of his term has been aimed making businesses the evil people as well as the evil logging/wood businesses. The attempted Rural Cleansing of the Klamath Basin Farmers cost the state about $300 million in lost revenue. The closure of the aluminum factories along the Columbia River has cost close to 10,000 jobs. The evil green enviralists have just about finished off the lumber/logging business in Oregon. The Intel CEO was so po at the anti business atmosphere, he said no more Intel investments in Oregon.
Heavy duty construction companies are either going broke or leaving Oregon! Five plus years ago, Oregon had so much heavy duty construction going on, it was the hub of heavy construction on the west coast!
Your brother who lives in Eugene, know all about the anarchists who burn and destroy and live operate in the open in Eugene! ELF demanded free campus time to show how to commit terrorist activities in Portland.
Glad to hear about the rain, the state was in a full blown drought most of this year!
Be careful up there!
Really? Name some. I only remember them going the other way.
The arrogance of the FBI and not sharing data is as old as J. Edgar. (We love Nero Wolfe and enjoyed that show when it was first on and the rerun on 7 Oct..
What I'm referring to is the political correctness of today's FBI since Jake Reno and Clintooon were installed in 1993! What Rudy is referring to is as old as the agency. When they broke up organized crime in Chicago and other big cities in the 1930's. The cops were more crooked than the the organized crime people. If the FBI shared data with the cops, it was back to the crime bosses as soon as a phone call could be made. So they stopped sharing! That still can be a problem in some cities and states!
Don't bother using logic. This LLAN-DDEUSANT pperson iis aa ttwit.
You have to go back 140 years for an example? Sickles, whom you mentioned, is the only one I could think of, and he was a Union General. As I recall my history, the Democrats easily won NY City in the 1864 elections. There doesn't seem to have been any reason for them to switch to the Republican party at that time. How about a 20th century example?
We can expect, with 100% certainty, the same results.
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