By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2001; Page A15

For weeks, state and local police officials across the country, eager for a more active role in investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, have complained of being largely shut out of the case by the FBI. The bureau, often citing national security concerns, has been stingy with details about the suspects and vague about the progress and direction of the probe, according to frustrated police chiefs in big cities and small towns alike.

Now, acknowledging that the investigation has been ill-served by the FBI's deeply ingrained culture of secrecy, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has promised to increase the role of nonfederal law enforcement agencies, according to an FBI official and the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Bruce D. Glasscock, the head of the police chiefs group, said he and Mueller had an "extremely candid" telephone conversation Thursday about the growing complaints. He said Mueller, who was sworn in as FBI director a week before the attacks, acknowledged that the bureau has made insufficient use of its state and local counterparts in the biggest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

Almost since the investigation began, state and local police officials have complained -- first among themselves, and eventually to the news media and to Congress -- that FBI agents investigating the attacks have all but shunned the hundreds of thousands of police officers in the country.

Because they are familiar with their communities and have street informants that FBI agents do not, police chiefs say, local officers could be particularly helpful, for example, in tracking down the 200-plus people still being sought by federal agents for questioning in the attacks.

"It's very troubling," Philadelphia's police commissioner, John F. Timoney, said in an interview yesterday. "We've got the troops out on the street, but they have little information."

A spokesman for Mueller, without being specific, said in a statement yesterday that the director has been "meeting with local law enforcement leaders to get this issue resolved" and "has taken a number of steps with more to follow." Glasscock said that in their telephone conversation, Mueller outlined three "immediate" measures. An FBI official who asked to remain anonymous confirmed those plans yesterday and said they likely would be announced soon.

Glasscock said Mueller promised to add two nonfederal police representatives -- chosen by Glasscock's organization and the National Sheriffs' Association -- to the group of federal law enforcement, intelligence and military officials who are monitoring the investigation in the FBI's ultra-high-tech Strategic Information Operations Center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Glasscock said Mueller also assured him that the bureau would share more information with state and local police about the 200-plus people on the FBI's "watch list" who are being sought for questioning in the attacks. Although the list was distributed weeks ago to police departments across the country, state and local authorities have complained that it is a virtually useless roster of Arabic names with no background information.

Mueller promised that the FBI would enter substantial background data on those 200-plus people into the National Crime Information Center computer system, Glasscock said. The NCIC, maintained by the FBI, is a vast repository of information on criminal suspects and law enforcement records to which police officers nationwide have access.

According to Glasscock, the FBI director also said he would greatly increase the number of anti-terrorism task forces based in FBI field offices. The task forces, composed of local, state and federal investigators, operate out of 35 of the 56 field offices. Glasscock said Mueller promised to order the other 21 offices to assemble task forces "as quickly as possible. Skip all the formalities. Skip the paperwork. Skip the memorandums of understanding."

Glasscock said that Mueller "initiated our telephone conversation," which lasted a half-hour, and that the director "was very candid from the start."

"He told me what he had been hearing," meaning the complaints of police chiefs, "and that he understood our frustrations," Glasscock said, adding that Mueller's proposed solutions "took the words right out of my mouth."

Baltimore's police commissioner, Edward T. Norris, was among the first to publicly criticize the FBI for its "disconnect" with local police departments. "The FBI has a total of 11,533 agents," Norris told a House subcommittee on Oct. 5. "There are nearly 650,000 police officers in this country. We want to help, and I think the nation needs us to help."

In Portland, Maine, Police Chief Michael J. Chitwood said the FBI warned him that he was "skirting on obstruction of justice" after his department began investigating the movements of two hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari. They spent the night of Sept. 10 in Portland before flying to Boston and boarding one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

"It's to the point now where I personally don't talk to them," Chitwood said in an interview, referring to the FBI agents in an office across the street from his. "My detectives take any information they get and bring it over there, but it's a one-way street."

Without addressing the police chiefs' complaints, FBI spokesman John Collingwood said in a statement yesterday that Mueller believes an increased role for state and local law enforcement agencies will help the investigation. "We all appreciate the added resources and expertise our colleagues will bring to bear during this crisis," Collingwood said.

An FBI official said Mueller intends to discuss his plans further in a meeting Thursday in Washington with nonfederal law enforcement officials from around the country.