FBI anti-terror leaders criticized

WASHINGTON -- A lawyer who interviewed a number of top current and former counterterrorism officials at the FBI in connection with a lawsuit against the bureau has written to three senators saying that the officials lacked a detailed understanding of terrorism and were promoted to top jobs despite having little experience in the field.

In a 15-page letter, the lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, wrote that the FBI's top counterterrorism officials said in sworn depositions that they did not know the relationship between al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, a South Asia offshoot of the terror network. Nor were they aware of the link between Osama bin Laden and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a spiritual adviser to bin Laden with whom he had been associated since the 1980s.

Kohn said that the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, in his deposition, seemed unsure of bin Laden's relationship to Rahman, who is better known as the blind sheik and was convicted in 1996 on terrorism charges.

Kohn's June 17 letter was written to two Republicans, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, and one Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, each of whom has long had an interest in FBI matters. Kohn said in the letter that he was disclosing the information from the depositions at Grassley's request.

"Since 9/11 and up to today, the FBI has been led by managers without counterterrorism experience or background especially in Middle Eastern terrorism, and their testimony under oath is that they are learning about counterterrorism on the job," Kohn wrote.

In a statement on Sunday, Cassandra M. Chandler, assistant director for public affairs at the FBI said: "It is extremely difficult to respond to selected excerpts drawn from a much larger body of information which was provided by the government as part of a civil lawsuit."

FBI officials have long said that the bureau did not have a large pool of trained counterterrorism managers to draw on after the Sept. 11 attacks in its effort to expand and reorganize its counterterrorism operations.

Instead, they said, the FBI had sought to fill its managerial ranks with senior agents who were regarded as strong leaders and reserved specialized counterterrorism training primarily for agents and analysts further down the career ladder.

Kohn represents Bassem Youssef, the bureau's most senior Arab- American agent who once ran the bureau's Riyadh office and who now works at the FBI's headquarters.

Youssef, an Egyptian-born American citizen, has filed a lawsuit complaining that after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was unfairly kept out of counterterrorism matters because of his ethnicity.

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