from the NYTimes
F.B.I. Is Assailed for Its Handling of Terror Risks The F.B.I. came under withering criticism on Tuesday from the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, with its chairman describing new staff reports on the bureau's performance before and after the attacks as an "indictment of the F.B.I." "It failed and it failed and it failed and it failed," the chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the bureau at a public hearing of the 10-member panel. "This is an agency that does not work. It makes you angry. And I don't know how to fix it." As the commission released a pair of interim staff reports that offered extensive and agonizing new details about how the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. may have bungled opportunities to thwart the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Kean said he welcomed President Bush's comments this week that the White House would consider an overhaul of the nation's intelligence agencies, including the F.B.I. Mr. Kean's criticisms of the bureau were echoed by others on the bipartisan commission on Tuesday and came as the panel conducted sometimes harsh questioning of Louis J. Freeh, director of the F.B.I. from 1993 until he retired three months before the Sept. 11 attacks; Thomas J. Pickard, who was the bureau's acting director during the summer of 2001; Attorney General John Ashcroft and his predecessor, Janet Reno. In their testimony, all four insisted that they had no higher priority than counterterrorism before Sept. 11.
