In an unconscionable blunder that once again leaves egg on the face of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI produced 3,000-plus pages of documents regarding the Oklahoma City bombing just one week before convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh was scheduled for execution.
In yet another baffling turn of events, the FBI has released belated evidence to the McVeigh defense team in violation of an earlier legal agreement. The mistake joins a growing list of high-profile episodes where FBI missteps have triggered suspicion about the nation's premiere law enforcement agency.
It is extremely disappointing to those of us who are charged with congressional oversight of this agency to watch the FBI make mistake after mistake after mistake. And in this case, the agency's colossal error will result in more pain and suffering for the survivors and families of the victims killed or maimed because of the tragic 1995 bombing.
Assigning blame on a computer glitch makes it hard for me to lend a sympathetic ear. If this were the first time documents suddenly appeared, I might be persuaded by the FBI's computer theory. But the list of mishandled investigations and high-profile gaffes by the agency continues to grow, including its actions in 1993 at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas; the fatal shoot-out at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; the botched investigation in Atlanta at the summer Olympics in 1996 involving wrongly accused suspect Richard Jewell; and, the 1999 Wen Ho Lee espionage investigation at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico.
What's more, the agency has suffered from two of its own recent headline-making faux pas. They include a scathing 517-page report in 1997 by the Justice Department's Inspector General, which spelled out a pattern of mishandled evidence emerging from the revered FBI Crime Lab and its failure to root out a veteran agent who is accused of selling national security secrets to Moscow since the mid-1980s.
So what is going wrong at the FBI? I have identified the culprit as a cowboy culture that has crept into place and entrenched itself within the agency's bureaucracy. Careers are made in high-profile investigations that elevate the agency's reputation around the world. But management needs to wake up and understand that belated evidence and botched investigations are tarnishing the agency's image, not burnishing it.
As I have lamented many times over in recent years, the FBI has bred a bureaucratic culture that rewards image instead of product. Instead of focusing on the fundamentals of investigating and enforcing the law, the FBI places its image on a pedestal. If only the FBI concentrated on doing what the FBI does best - seeking the truth - the better able it would be to deter terrorism, nab America's most wanted and crack criminal cases.
On Capitol Hill, the FBI has undergone less-than-rigorous congressional scrutiny. With the early retirement of the current FBI director coming in June, it will be necessary for the Senate to confirm the president's nominee for the 10-year term of his successor. And as a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will have the opportunity to weigh-in early with this nomination.
With a new FBI director, there's an opportunity, and in my view a mandate, for someone to come in who will be committed to changing this style-over-substance culture. The nominee must be prepared to take the bull by the horns and noose this management style once and for all. This latest blunder has got to be the last straw. Law and order must be restored from within so that public confidence can be restored on the outside.
