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PANEL ONE OF THE TENTH HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ONTERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES RE: "LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY" THOMAS H. KEAN, CHAIR; LEE H.HAMILTON, VICE CHAIR PHILIP D. ZELIKOW PRESENTS STAFF STATEMENT:"LAW ENFORCEMENT, COUNTERTERRORISM, AND INTELLIGENCE COLLECTIONIN THE UNITED STATES PRIOR TO 9/11" WITNESS: LOUIS J. FREEH, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE FBI
 
9:01 A.M. EDT, TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 2004
 MR. KEAN:
(Sounds gavel.) Good morning. As chair of theNational Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, Ihereby convene this commission's 10th public hearing. Thehearing will run all today and tomorrow. Our focus for the nexttwo days will be "Law Enforcement and the IntelligenceCommunity."As we did with our two prior sets of hearings this calendaryear, we precede each series of witnesses with a statement fromthe Commission staff. These statements are informed by the workof the Commissioners, as well as the staff, and they representthe staff's best efforts to reconstruct the factual record ofwhat happened. Judgments and recommendations are forcommissioners and the Commission to make, and of course we'll dothat in the course of our work, and most definitively andfinally in our final report.Viewers, by the way, who are watching at home can obtainstaff statements at www.9-11commission.gov.Before we begin, let me make just a brief request to membersof the audience who have taken the time to be with us today.We're going to be hearing from a lot of witnesses in the courseof the next two days. As a courtesy to them and theCommissioners, I ask you if you could refrain from any louddemonstrations of approval or disapproval because that simplytakes time away from the witnesses and takes time away from theCommission members who are questioning. There are ample otherways in which you can inform the Commission of your opinions,and I encourage you to avail yourselves of them. On behalf ofthe witnesses, on behalf of the staff and the Commission, thankyou very much for your cooperation.
 
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We will now hear our first staff statement. It is entitled,"Law Enforcement, Counterterrorism and Intelligence Collectionin the United States Prior to 9/11."It will be read by our executive director, Phil Zelikow, ofthe Commission staff.
 MR. ZELIKOW:
Members of the Commission, with your help yourstaff has developed initial findings regarding law enforcementand intelligence collection in the United States prior to the9/11 attacks. These findings may help frame some of the issuesto be discussed during this hearing and inform the developmentof your judgments and recommendations.This statement reflects the results of our work so far. Weremain ready to revise our understanding of this topic as ourinvestigation progresses.This staff statement represents the collective efforts of anumber of members of our staff. Caroline Barnes, ChristineHealey, Lance Cole, Michael Jacobson, Peter Rundlet, DougGreenburg and Barbara Grewe did most of the investigative workreflected in this statement.We were fortunate in being able to build upon stronginvestigative work done by the congressional Joint Inquiry andby the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General.We've obtained excellent cooperation from the FBI and theDepartment of Justice, both in Washington and in six FBI fieldoffices across the United States.The role of the FBI. The FBI played the lead role in thegovernment's domestic counterterrorism strategy before September11. In the 1990s most of the FBI's energy was devoted to after-the-fact investigations of major terrorist attacks in order todevelop criminal cases. Investigating these attacks alwaysrequired an enormous amount of resources. As most of theseattacks occurred overseas, many of the FBI's top terrorisminvestigators were deployed abroad for long periods of time.New York was the office of origin for the al Qaeda program,and consequently where most of the FBI's institutional knowledgeon al Qaeda resided. Working closely with the U.S. Attorney forthe Southern District of New York, the Justice Department andthe U.S. intelligence community, the FBI's New York field officewas often successful in these investigations. Many of theperpetrators of these plots were identified, arrested,
 
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prosecuted and convicted. These were episodes such as the WorldTrade Center bombing, the Landmarks plot, the Manila airlinesplot, the Khobar Towers bombing, the East Africa embassybombings, the Millennium plot and the
U.S.S. Cole
bombing.Going to the top of page 3 of the statement.The approach to counterterrorism. The FBI took a traditionallaw enforcement approach to counterterrorism. Its agents weretrained to build cases. Its management was deliberatelydecentralized to empower the individual field offices and theagents in the street. The Bureau rewarded agents based onstatistics reflecting arrests, indictments and prosecutions.As a result, fields such as counterterrorism andcounterintelligence, where investigations generally result infewer prosecutions, were viewed as backwaters. Agents developedinformation in support of their own cases, not as part of abroader, more strategic effort.Given the poor state of the FBI's information systems, fieldagents usually did not know what investigations agents in theirown office, let alone in other field offices, were working on.Nor did analysts have easy access to this information. As aresult, it was almost impossible to develop an understanding ofthe threat from a particular international terrorist group.Agents also investigated their individual cases with theknowledge that any case information recorded on paper and storedin case files was potentially discoverable in court. Thus, therewas a disincentive to share information, even with other FBIagents and analysts. Analysts were discouraged from producingwritten assessments which could be discoverable and used toattack the prosecution's case at trial.In the investigative arena, the field office had primacy.Counterterrorism investigations were run by the field, notheadquarters. Moreover, the field office that initiated a casemaintained control over it, an approach the FBI called the"Office of Origin Model." This decentralized managementstructure allowed field offices to set their own priorities,with little direction from headquarters.Management priorities and challenges. The FBI determinedearly on in the 1990s that a preventive posture was a better wayto counter the growing threat from international terrorism. Inits first budget request to Congress after the 1993 World Trade
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