Fox News THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON June 4, 2002 Tuesday (17:00)
Political Headlines: Congressional Hearings on Intelligence Failures
By: John Gibson, Heather Nauert, Catherine Herridge
JOHN GIBSON, HOST: Did our intelligence fail pre-9/11? Did agencies share information? Was there enough information to predict the crime of the century? Hearings have begun that will probe those questions.
HEATHER NAUERT, FOX CORRESPONDENT: What does our country have in common with Syria, Sudan, and Iran? None of them have ratified a treaty making women equal to men. Sound surprising? I'm Heather Nauert. I'll have the details coming up.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL CORRESPONDENT: Should you know your neighbor's sexual history, if that neighbor has a history of sex crimes? Maybe not. A judge is declaring Michigan's sex registry unconstitutional.
I'm Judge Andrew Napolitano, and I'll explain the law on that one.
GIBSON: And what's the big idea with playing the racial profiling card? Some people claim that federal agencies couldn't investigate terrorist threats because of a politically correct climate and racial sensitivities. Others say racial profiling is just an excuse. We'll kick around those ideas later in the show.
First, the big picture.
High-speed police chases usually end with a bang. This guy somehow survives after his pursuit abruptly stopped against a bridge abutment.
Another cantankerous bridge, This the I-40 that collapsed over the Arkansas River last month after a barge hit it. Demolition teams are taking over for the barge, bringing the rest of it down.
Rio (ph) Britannia. Queen Elizabeth marks 50 years on the throne with four days of jubilee celebrations in London. Rah, rah.
Hi, everybody. THE BIG STORY for Tuesday, June 4th. The FBI and the CIA pointing fingers as lawmakers look for answers. They want to know what went wrong in the intelligence community before terrorists struck on 9/11. High-level, closed-door hearings underway now on Capitol Hill.
Catherine Herridge life in Washington with the details.
Catherine.
CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX CORRESPONDENT: The latest agency to take a beating is the NSA. Fox News has learned that some of the intelligence collected by the National Security Agency wasn't ever analyzed because they didn't have enough translators.
And Fox News has also confirmed that word came down from the White House to the head of the CIA, the FBI, and Justice Department to do what they can to stop the leaks. The administration officials saying they are tantamount to mutually assured destruction for the agencies.
All of this on the day that joint intelligence hearings got underway on Capitol Hill. The closed-door sessions now taking a hard look at the information that existed before 9/11, how it was handled, and what needs to change at the agencies so we can avoid the loss of more American lives.
The president saying today he's seen no evidence to date that could have prevented the attacks, and he expressed some concern about the probe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want the Congress to investigate, but I want a committee to investigate, not multiple committees to investigate because I don't want to tie up our team when we're trying to fight this war on terror. You know, I don't want our people to be distracted.
In terms of the gossip and the finger pointing, level-three staffers trying to protect -- you know, trying to protect their hide, I don't think that's of concern. That's just typical Washington, D.C.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HERRIDGE: Among the thousands of documents turned over by the CIA for the hearings, memos describing al Qaeda's intent to launch attacks to inflict heavy casualties in this country.
Reports focussing on the possibility of suicide bombings, plots to fly planes into buildings, as well as intelligence intercepts as late as the day before the attacks using cryptic phrases like "Tomorrow will be a great day for us."
And perhaps, one of the most high-profile examples is that of the Minneapolis FBI field office and the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui. In a lengthy memo, Coleen Rowley criticized the FBI director and painstakingly detailed what she saw as efforts by headquarters to undermine her office's attempt to search Moussaoui's computer.
Those at the heart of the congressional investigation expect many more revelations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. PORTER GOSS (R-FL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: We've got a whole room full of Coleen Rowley-type documents right now. I won't say they're exactly the same or quite as sensational or speak to a leader of an agency's motives.
But we have got all kinds of materials that we are reviewing with professional staff. That's why we're having the investigation. And I believe most of that is going to be of interest to the American public.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HERRIDGE: And the hearings will go public June 25th, and, sometime early next year, we'll get the final report. But, as one lawmaker said today, we owe the victims a, quote, "serious, thorough, and credible investigation. Let's hope we get it."
John.
GIBSON: Catherine Herridge in Washington.
Catherine, thanks very much.
Fixing the FBI and the CIA ASAP and getting to the bottom of intelligence failures. Joining us from Washington with more, John Pike, director of globalsecurity.com -- .org. Excuse me, John.
So this morning, "USA Today" is saying the U.S. actually had agents inside al Qaeda. Are we going to learn eventually from these closed-door hearings that the red flags were much redder, much larger, and waving much more than we've had any idea so far?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well, certainly, we've learned an awful lot within the last month or so that we didn't know publicly eight months ago. In fact, I think the intelligence agencies are learning a lot today that they should have known but didn't know a while back.
My gut hunch, though, is that what we've had leaked the last couple of weeks is probably the worst of it. You're going to see each agency come forward with sort of their one horror tale, but most of what was happening -- we're going to have to wait for the historians when it's all declassified half a century from now.
GIBSON: But how are we ever going to have any confidence in the notion that we can head off these kinds of attacks if now we know we have an agent inside al Qaeda overhearing certain things like "It's going to be a big day tomorrow" and we still couldn't learn enough to stop it?
PIKE: Well, that's why we have troops in Afghanistan right now. That's why there are troops in the Philippines, in Georgia. That's why there are dozens of ships at sea and the -- off the coast of Somalia.
The bottom line is that there's no way that intelligence alone is ever going to be able to stop all of these operations. They've certainly had some successes, but if we're depending on intelligence alone, we're not going to be able to stop them.
GIBSON: All right. Now these closed-door hearings are going on with -- it -- both the Senate and House Intelligence Committee.
PIKE: Right.
GIBSON: Why? Why aren't these out in the open where we can all hear what's being said?
PIKE: Well, because most of what is being said is going to how it is the United States intelligence community is trying to detect these terrorist operations, and, obviously, you don't want to be giving away the store to let them know exactly what it is we're doing.
So I think that it is going to continue to be highly classified, and the stuff that's coming out in public is only a very small tip of the a very large iceberg.
GIBSON: What do you think of the notion that has been bandied around a bit today that Porter Goss in the House and Senator Graham in the Senate are a little too friendly to the agencies. The agencies, the FBI and the CIA, are going to get much friendlier treatment than if Richard Shelby, let's say, was in charge?
PIKE: Well, I think that there's really a fundamental problem that the oversight committees have. They normally have small staffs. Most of the people either currently or used to work in the intelligence community.
The question, though, of whether there needs to be an independent commission -- I think it's really premature to talk about that. There's no indication at this point of the sort of fundamental problem that would require going outside the regular congressional oversight process.
GIBSON: What about the fundamental problem with the two agencies themselves? Is the FBI -- are the FBI and the CIA enough, or is there enough of a gap between the two and little likelihood of their cooperation that we're actually faced with -- we need some other counterterrorism agency?
PIKE: Well, we've already seen a lot of institutional reforms there. The counterterrorism center was set up by the director of Central Intelligence. The FBI's doubled the personnel that they have working on terrorism.
I think that there is a real question, though, about Governor Ridge, whether we need a homeland security agency that's going to bring in a lot of the physical security agencies that we have. That's a sort of institutional reform that we simply haven't seen any movement on, and that's the one that I'm most worried about because it's probably the most important and the least glamorous.
GIBSON: You know, there's a simulated -- sort of an exercise, a test on simulated hijacking, which is nice, but does that do any good? Does it matter if authorities simulate a hijacking and test their response?
PIKE: Well, I think that they have to be doing that to deal with the hijackings. They need to be doing that to deal with the question of dirty bombs. All of these agencies need to be doing these sorts of exercises. Obviously, you want to have that exercise at the very front line.
I think they need to be doing a lot more testing of airport security so that we have a better sense of how much improvement has been done there because there's a lot more that needs to be done just in terms of that basic physical security.
GIBSON: John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org.
John, thanks very much.
PIKE: Thank you.
GIBSON: Coming up on THE BIG STORY, a push to give the FBI greater freedom to spy on foreign terrorists has civil-rights activists up in arms, and if it looks like a terrorist and quacks like a terrorist and waddles like a terrorist, should investigators close their eyes or risk getting sued for racial profiling? That conundrum coming up on THE BIG STORY.
Copyright 2002 Fox News Network
