Freeh Testimony to 9/11 Commission

COMMISSIONER JAMES THOMPSON: I want to explore in a little more detail one of the assumptions of Commissioner Ben-Veniste's questions.

In looking at the Olympics, you had a defined event, in a defined place, over a defined period of time, a defined air space above the Olympic facilities. And so I presume that law enforcement planning to prevent any interruption or interdiction of the Olympics would have imagined any kind of possibility of intrusion of bomb, missile, plane, whatever into that space; is that correct?

FREEH: That's correct.

THOMPSON: And though you say the FBI was not involved with the planning of the G-8 summit in Italy, the same sort of assumptions would have been made, would they not: defined event, defined time, place, air space?

FREEH: A defined and specific threat and time and place, correct.

THOMPSON: Is it a fair assumption to leap from those kinds of examples to the notion that you could, with the best of intelligence or law enforcement or thought, gone to an assumption that on any given day, in any part of the United States, on any one of the more than 4,000 flights that are in the air on any given day in the United States, utilize the same methods and guard against the same kind of attacks?

Or is that a leap too far?

FREEH: Well, I think, you know, to amass the kinds of resources and protective operation that you've both alluded to in your questions, there's a limited capability in terms of duration for that kind of an operation.

For instance, with respect to the millennium, we were planning for months and months prior to that event. And at the time of the millennium, you know, thousands and thousands of law enforcement agents and other government agents, military personnel, you know, were on duty around the world because of a specific event. The attorney general and I were in, you know, our command post through the night on December 31st.

But we could not have sustained that, you know, for weeks and weeks beyond that period, nor would there have been a basis to do that without a specific threat.

So I think to do the kinds of protective operations that we would like to do, and do, in fact, perform when NATO is meeting, when the pope is visiting, when the president is at a summit, when the World Cup is going on, when presidential conventions are in session, all of those events in specific places and times, because of the threats as we understood them, including airborne threats, we were able to marshal resources and perform protective operations. But you need a time and place to do that if you have resources available.

THOMPSON: You testified that you transferred 600 agents from headquarters to the field because there was a 22-month hiring freeze in the FBI.

Why was there a 22-month hiring freeze in the FBI and when did it occur?

FREEH: Well, you have to ask Congress about why they had the freeze, it occurred for...

THOMPSON: So it's a congressionally imposed freeze?

FREEH: Yes. We were not authorized to hire people for a 22 month period.

When I became director in September of 1993, we were in the middle of that freeze, and it went for a total period of 22 months, which is why I was putting people on the street from headquarters.

THOMPSON: Now the budgeting process in the federal government with particular regard to the FBI do I assume works something like the FBI decides how much money they'll ask for in any given fiscal year, it moves up through the attorney general's office, goes from there to OMB, and from OMB to the Congress? Is that right?

FREEH: That's correct.

THOMPSON: In the whole time that you were the director of the FBI, did your initial requests for funding, going up to the AG, ever make it through that process -- the level that the FBI requested?

FREEH: No. And that's probably true for every agency in this town.

THOMPSON: So true not only for you and the FBI, but your predecessors and successors and for every federal government agency, is that right?

FREEH: That's correct. That's how the budget process works.

THOMPSON: OK.

The Patriot Act has some provisions that are due to expire next year, I believe. Do you believe that those provisions should be renewed? And do you think the Patriot Act needs strengthening in any provision apart from that to help us protect America from terrorism?

FREEH: Which provisions in particular are you speaking about with respect to renewal?

THOMPSON: There's a -- there were at least two and I think it may not have been in your testimony but in the testimony we'll hear later this afternoon from Acting Director...

FREEH: It's not in my testimony. I mean, I'll comment on them, I just don't know which ones you're referring to.

THOMPSON: I think maybe in Pickard's -- well, let me come back to that after I find what I'm looking for and let me ask you this...

FREEH: I can answer the second part of your question, though.

KEAN: This will be the last question, Commissioner.

FREEH: Yes, with respect to one area that's not addressed -- and I've mentioned this in my testimony and members of the Intelligence Committee and others have heard me testify about this repeatedly -- nowhere in the Patriot Act, nor in any of the other post-September 11 measures, is there any effort to address the issue of encryption.

It's mindboggling to me that in the aftermath of September 11th and the information that we've accumulated today, including the use of encrypted channels of communication by terrorists, that our law enforcement agencies still do not have either the authority or the technology to break down encrypted messages.

And for those who don't know about the issue -- none of the commissioners but other people -- encryption is the technology that allows message bits, communications, either data or voice, to be scrambled so you can't understand what's being said.

Again, it's mindboggling to me -- and I testified dozens and dozens of times, along with Janet Reno and others, for some relief that this is completely unaddressed. I think it's a huge gap in our national security, and one that I would urge the commission to look at.

THOMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste has one clarifying remark.

BEN-VENISTE: Director Freeh...

KEAN: You've got 10 seconds.

(LAUGHTER)

BEN-VENISTE: I don't think I can do it in 10 seconds, Tom.

My good friend and former mentor Jim Thompson I think has misinterpreted the question put to you about the recognition by the intelligence community of the potential for planes being used as missiles.

My question to you was -- given the substantial state of information, whether by rumor or by actual intelligence relating to the use of kamikazes, suicide pilots to crash planes into buildings -- my question was: Was it a failure in thinking not to reposition our domestic air defense, led by NORAD, to protect the capital and elsewhere against the possibility of attack on the United States by air? And particularly, during time of heightened threat.

You understood that that way?

FREEH: Yes.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

KEAN: Commissioner Lehman?

COMMISSIONER JOHN LEHMAN: Thank you.

Director Freeh, welcome. I have just a few short questions.

First, during your tenure, there were sanctuary laws enforced by New York City, by L.A., San Diego, Houston, Chicago and some other cities. These were well-known to Al Qaida, if not to the American public.

These laws, as you know, in defiance of Section 133 of the Immigration Act, prohibit local authorities in those cities from cooperating with the FBI or INS in any matters having to do with immigration.

Did this trouble you during your tenure? And did you try to do anything about it?

FREEH: Well, as I mentioned in my written testimony, at the request of then Deputy Attorney General Gorelick, I made a series of recommendations with respect to the INS and asked that certain measures be taken, including legislative changes to give us a better ability to, first of all, identify alien terrorists and then detain them and remove them promptly from the United States.

With respect to the laws that you mention, I can't think of an instance in my tenure when that was a prohibition or an inhibition from us either getting some information or doing something that we wanted to do. We were more frustrated with the length of time that it took to remove aliens for whom we had documented information with respect to terrorist activities.

LEHMAN: And those recommendations that you recommended to Justice, they were turned down or just ignored or...

FREEH: No, they were actually implemented.

In fact, President Clinton, to his great credit, introduced in 1996 the Antiterrorism Bill, H.R. 2703. Unfortunately, when it was in the House there was an amendment that was entered which was passed by a large majority that stripped the bill of most of its important counterterrorism measures; in fact, the ones that Deputy Attorney General Gorelick and I recommended. In fact, I think two of you actually voted on the amendment.

LEHMAN: Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

The case law approach has been the subject of a great deal of criticism from many of the witnesses interviewed and interviewees.

You've made an able defense of it in your op-ed piece and in your testimony, however it certainly has some limitations according to some of the witnesses we've had.

We've had very senior officials in CIA tell us that they were unaware of any of the connections among the '93 World Trade Center terrorists because all the information was sealed and protected and not shared during the trial of the people.

Particularly after that material was released, and particularly after you were able to apprehend Ramzi Yousef, one of the principal actors who had escaped to Baghdad -- Abdul Rahman Yasin -- was in Baghdad and on the payroll of Iraqi intelligence.

Did you recommend doing anything to extradite him or to render him in any way as one of the key Al Qaida operatives?

FREEH: Well, over the period of years after the World Trade Tower indictments in 1993, but then maybe more particularly following the Manila Air indictment in 1995, and of course the 1998 indictments with respect to bin Laden and his associates, we continuously recommended, and actually put into play, operations to arrest and render fugitives back to the United States in those cases.

I don't recall an instance with respect to Yasin.

With respect to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, in early 1996, we actually staged agents over in the Persian Gulf and had an operation well under way to arrest him.

He was transiting a country that we thought we could get access to him. Unfortunately, that didn't work. We believe he was actually tipped off about the operation.

People like Kasi, who, of course, murdered the people outside the CIA. He was arrested by FBI agents, brought back, convicted of murder in Fairfax County. Ramzi Yousef, we spoke about.

So we continuously tried to get -- and did, in many cases -- get these fugitives. I don't recall a particular plan with respect to Yasin.

LEHMAN: One last question. The Oklahoma City case -- again, one of the criticisms has been that one of the problems of the case law approach to intelligence is that, once you focus on a convicting particular terrorists, that there has to be a hypothesis of the case and that's where all of the investigative resources are put in.

In the case of Oklahoma City, the hypothesis was that there were two Americans and they acted alone. There's a new book out now, as you probably know, called The Third Terrorist, that has new information that begs for further investigation showing the links or purporting very significant links between Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef in the Philippines, and also links between the two perpetrators and Hussein al-Husseini, the Iraqi, perhaps, agent.

Are you satisfied that you ran all of these potential Al Qaida links to ground with McVeigh and Nichols?

FREEH: Well, other than that book, which I haven't read, you know, I don't know any other credible source with respect to that kind of a link.

No, I have not run those links myself. I certainly was not aware of them when I was FBI director. I know that there is a review going on with respect to some of the matters that have been raised by his attorney in connection with the state murder prosecution that's ongoing. I guess I don't want to say anything with respect to that case as it's being tried now by a judge and a jury.

But I don't know of any connections, except the one you've just mentioned, between Ramzi Yousef and that terrorist act.

LEHMAN: Thank you.

KEAN: Vice Chairman Hamilton?