...need to be fired for monumental, criminal incompetence. In fact, I'd go further, and say that the entire organization needs to be overhauled from the top down. Same thing for the CIA.

While Samit was spending a solid three weeks trying to get Washington to act on his pre-9/11 terror fears, future 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour was raising suspicions with his flight training in Phoenix (suspicions Samit was not told about until after 9/11). Margaret Chevrette of the Pan Am International Flight Academy reported her worries to the FAA and somehow those concerns also made their way to CIA chief Tenet and into CIA memos of August 2001, but the FBI never acted on them. Yet on September 12, FBI agents interviewed Chevrette for more information on Hanjour—reflecting the fact that another local FBI agent (Arizona-based Kenneth Williams, author of the July 2001 Phoenix memo) had notified FBI headquarters of the danger posed by Middle Eastern terrorists training at U.S. flight schools.

There were also repeated attempts by the New York City FBI office to get follow-up on Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and an August 2001 request from a New York FBI agent who warned that "someday someone will die" if New York did not win approval to launch a criminal investigation of al-Mihdhar. Al-Mihdhar was on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

Minneapolis, Phoenix, New York. Three different Bureau offices were hot on the terror plot in the days leading up to 9/11 and all were stiffed by Washington. If that is not institutional incompetence, Stalin purge-worthy stuff, heaven help the next 3,000 martyrs to J. Edgar Hoover's über-suits.

One exchange from the Moussaoui trial makes clear what happened in the weeks running up to 9/11:

"You tried to move heaven and earth to get a search warrant to search this man's belongings and you were obstructed," MacMahon said to Samit.

"Yes sir, I was obstructed." Samit replied.

No disaster, it seems, can force reform on the Bureau. The same people are still manning the posts at the FBI and Main Justice. They are going to miss the next terror attack because they are dead-certain to stop the last one. That's what bureaucracies do: cover ass.

So... If the FBI searches someone then they're eeevil and sinister, overly agressive, and the real threat to our lives and liberty (Think - wiretap scandal - especially if they prevent an incident, which then never makes headlines) and if they're stingy with their search warrants, then they're "incompetent" when something happens.

Maybe they were obstructing, but they would be getting denigrated either way. And what would they have found in his home? A koran? An exacto knife?

In hindsight, it's very easy to judge. Foresight is far more difficult, almost to the point of being random.

Perhaps more damning than 9/11 is the Robert Hanssen case. He was the high ranking FBI official who spied for Russia for over two decades. A decade before he was finally caught, his own brother-in-law, a fellow FBI agent, suggested the agency take a good look at the man. They didn't apparently. If they can't catch a Russian mole at headquarters, just how good are they?

There's also the matter of their surveillance and other actions against citizens. You can make some sort of case for monitoring Communists during the height of the Cold War. But even William F. Buckley, Jr. had a several hundred page file covering all sorts of activities. He was not happy when he saw his own FBI file.

As one who works in a certain Three-Letter-Acronym organization, I can attest to the bureaucracy and rampant institution incompetence here. It's enough to make one despair for our country.

aaron- yes foresight is more difficult, but as this posting shows, some people had that foresight. in fact lots of people did. and you really need to get more sources for your news or something. the wiretapping scandal is not, as you suggest, simply that people were wiretapped, its that it was done with no warrant. this violates the fourth ammendment. there is nothing wrong with the fisa court (the only thing gonzales said was wrong with it is that it required them to do too much paper work), no new laws need to be made. its rediculous to suggest that 911 could have been prevented if bush had that power. we already should have prevented 911. and all the attempts at showing how the warrantless surveilling has foiled terrorist plots have been thoroughly debunked. i believe even the fbi has stated that they get so much worthless information from the nsa that the program has actually hurt their effort.

and also, yes some other presidents might have done similar things, but none has claimed the right to. he is truly radical. if he is allowed to ignore laws at his choosing, then what cant he do?

"the wiretapping scandal is not, as you suggest, simply that people were wiretapped, its that it was done with no warrant. this violates the fourth ammendment."

Not if they are enemy combatants it doesn't.

its the violation of the american citizens' rights that people are upset about (the constitution still applies to this group of people). the mistreatment of enemy combatants is a seperate issue.

"its the violation of the american citizens' rights that people are upset about (the constitution still applies to this group of people). the mistreatment of enemy combatants is a seperate issue."

It isn't a seperate issue when those being wiretapped were Al Quedia operatives.

And it is hard to mistreat enemy combatants when by law, rights and the Genevia Convention, they could be summarily executed on the spot as ununiformed enemy spies.

i believe only a couple american citizens have been named "enemy combatants". that is a horrible thing also, but what i am talking about is how the president has claimed the right to surveille any american citizen with no oversight (whether or not he has first declared them enemy combatants). you see, that violates the fourth ammendment. it doesnt matter if they are "al qaeda operatives", as long as they are american citizens they have rights. if there was reason to believe that these people really were al qaeda operatives, then the FISA court would issue a warrant. its a secret, rupper-stamp (virtually) court. its a very very minimal amount of oversight. and gonzales has stated the reason they couldnt use fisa is that it required them to do too much paperwork. how many people do you think that implies they are surveilling?