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Robert S. Mueller III
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:
Q: How many of the 19 September 11 terrorists were on the FBI's international watch list?
A: None of the 19 were on an international watch list. Two names had been provided to the FBI prior to September 11 as individuals that we ought to look out for, but they had already got into the U.S. You fill in a I-94 form if you're visiting the U.S., and on it you're supposed to put where you're staying. The two individuals who ended up being the hijackers had put down "Marriott, New York City." There are about 14 Marriotts in New York City, and we were never able to find those individuals prior to September 11. They were not on a watch list; their names had been provided to us by an intelligence agency that said, "We're concerned about these people – try to find them."
Q: Why can't we hear the tape of Flight 93's flight recorder? Is it for security reasons?
A: It is a hard and fast rule of the National Transportation Safety Board that tapes not be played. I believe it was a statute passed by Congress that bars the playing of the tapes by the NTSB. It relates to the privacy of the pilots in the cockpits of our airplanes. I was convinced after listening and talking to families of those who went down on Flight 93, and also talking to victim witness specialists, that some closure would follow from their listening to the tapes. Consequently, we decided to play the tapes in a very structured environment for the families only.
Q: Given the careful planning of the September 11 attacks, what does this tell us about our ability to prevent future attacks?
A: It's a very critical question with which we live every day. Can I sit here and tell you that we will never suffer another attack? No. Are we doing everything we can to ensure that there will never be another September 11, not only me but everybody in the intelligence community, in the military, in the law enforcement community, whether it be in Washington or around the country? Yes. Every lead we have, every threat we get has to be pursued. We must take every opportunity we have to disrupt the possible planning of another attack .
Q: Should fighting cybercrime be the number one priority for the FBI in the Bay Area?
A: In our efforts to protect the digital infrastructure of the U.S. it is critically important that we address those possibilities. But when I rank our priorities, the first one is counterterrorism. Our second priority is counterintelligence. If we don't do it, there is no other entity in the U.S. to do it. Shortly after that comes cybercrime, and all of the manifestations of cyber attacks, whether it is denial of service attacks, worms or hacking attacks. We have established a new cyber division that is basically going to be one-stop shopping in the FBI for the myriad of issues that arise when you're talking about cybercrime.
Q: There has been speculation about where the next terrorist attacks may occur, and what they may be. CNN reported the next possible terrorist attack might be on financial institutions, including banks, possibly in the Northeast.
A: We have received unsubstantiated information that unspecified terrorists are considering physical attacks against U.S. financial institutions in the Northeast. The decision to put out a warning along these lines was made with the input of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security, the Treasury, and what is part of the new Homeland Advisory System. The alert is based on unsubstantiated information and without any specificity as to particular targets. We've named a number of states in the Northeast, from Maine to Virginia,
Q: Could financial terrorism take the form of massive counterfeiting of currency?
A: The Treasury and the Secret Service would be the first to address counterfeiting, whether here or around the world, but it is a concern of ours. We have not had substantial evidence of that undertaking since September 11 or even before. That does not mean that there is not that possibility out there, and our hopes are, in working closely with the Secret Service, we would be able to thwart any plans to undercut our economy in that way.
Q: To what extent is the FBI involved in preventing hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans?
A: We are very involved. The persons who perpetrated the attacks of September 11 are individuals. Special agents and officers around the country have been instructed to reach out to the Arab-American, Muslim-American and Sikh-American communities to ensure them that we are looking only at individuals who have the potential to commit terrorist acts. We have looked at every possible hate crime against one of those communities and taken it exceptionally seriously. The last time I looked at the statistics, we had opened at least 300 investigations around the country and there has been almost 90 prosecutions for people who unlawfully take out their anger as a result of the September 11 attacks. Hate crimes should be aggressively investigated and aggressively prosecuted and we are trying to do that.
Q: Given increasing domestic threats, some Americans are concerned that the FBI may adopt tactics that were used during the J. Edgar Hoover era. What's your response to that?
A: As part of the preparation for this job, you read what is out there about the history of the agency and you don't want to repeat history. One has to keep in mind that the threat of the present may look differently six months or a year or two down the road. It's critically important for the FBI and each one of its agents to understand that we operate inside the Constitution – and that's what makes our country great. We detained individuals, whom we had interviewed during the course of our investigation, in three particular ways. If they were out of status, illegally here in this country or had lied to the INS, they were detained. If an individual had outstanding federal, state, or local charges, they were detained. And lastly, a small number were detained as material witnesses; we would have to go before a judge and explain why this person had information that we thought was necessary to our investigation, and have the judge order that person be detained, pending testimony before the grand jury. We do not detain people on a whim, on a fancy, or on a speculation. When persons were detained, it was on the predication that was established under the rule of law.
Q: Do you sense that our administration currently is not maintaining funding for the critical surveillance at the ports, particularly in regard to the threat of suitcase nuclear bombs?
A: Yes, we're concerned about the millions of containers that come into the U.S. each day. The customs service has a very sophisticated program to identify those containers that are worthy of search. The U.S. government is looking for ways of making it more certain that we don't have either weapons of mass destruction or any other terrorist implements coming in through containers. But it is a risk.
Q: Would making the head of the Homeland Security Department a cabinet-level position weaken or strengthen your directorship, and how would it affect security for all of our citizens?
A: The nice thing about being the director of the FBI is that you stay away from politics. It's important for the bureau to be objective, though investigators and I will stay away from answering that question. Tom Ridge does a terrific job in coordinating a number of various institutions and driving the administration to think of and adapt solutions to a number of challenges we are facing. He and his people are coordinating the homeland defense in much the same way that Condoleezza Rice coordinates our international affairs on behalf of the National Security Council.
Q: A few months ago Governor Davis sounded the alarm that several key bridges in California from San Diego to San Francisco might encounter a terrorist attack. Was that an FBI leak? Did the Governor act appropriately at the time, and what might you have done if you were California's governor at that time?
A: It was not a FBI leak. There was, as so often happens, a threat that came in, and there was a warning. We had received information from a source who said that in the next 36 hours bridges on the West Coast would be bombed or attacked by terrorists that were using a university as a launching pad. The individual who had come into a foreign embassy – I think it was an embassy – had then left. There was a very short time frame. A determination was made that we should alert the Western Coast states to that threat, indicating that it was uncorroborated and unspecified as to bridge and to particular time. In the next day or so we were able to get the individual back and do as we do in each of these cases: identify the person, question that individual again, and often polygraph him to determine whether there was any credibility to this threat. Two or three days later we learned that it was a fabrication. So do we alert people or not? We give the information and try to give an idea as to the credibility of that source as we know it at that time. Action after that is undertaken by those who have the responsibility for the city, town or state.
Q: In a recent trip to Malaysia, you addressed terrorism and the presence of Al Qaeda members in Indonesia, a country home to the world's largest Islamic population. Was progress made?
A: One important thing for us to be effective is to develop our relationships overseas. We have a judicial and legal system in the U.S.; foreigners have to come in here and deal with it. To accomplish our law enforcement objectives overseas, we have to know that other countries have their own legal systems in which we have to operate. The best way to do that is to develop colleagues and relationships and discuss mutual concerns. Those meetings are critically important if we wish to be successful in addressing terrorism. Countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, and a number in the Middle East are areas where we have mutual interest and mutual concerns with regard to terrorism. Those meetings were exceptionally helpful because, when you have a problem down the road, it is much easier to pick up the phone and talk to somebody when you know that the face on the other end of the line.
Tom Campbell
Dee Dee Myers