The FBI today played down a secret report that warned the agency director in the months before September 11th of a significant terror threat from the Middle East and said the bureau did not have the resources to combat it.
The internal report to the Department of Justice evaluated the status of the counter-terrorism program, an FBI official said. It didn't deal specifically with threats from any particular country or terrorist groups, the official said.
The report, first disclosed by The New York Timestoday, was made public as the Bush administration is facing criticism for how it handled intelligence information on terrorist threats in the months before the September 11th attacks.
"It was intended to develop a five-year plan to increase funds for the counter-terrorism program to deal with the threat level that was currently available," the official said on condition of anonymity. "It was a budget document. ... It was not a complete assessment of whether the bureau could thwart terrorism," he said.
He added: "No one is denying there was a threat out there prior to September 11th. Look at the USS Cole (which was bombed at a Yemini port in 2000) and the embassy bombings (in Africa in 1998). The potential for terrorism obviously was there."
Quoting senior government officials, The New York Timessaid the secret internal assessment, called the 'Director's Report on Terrorism', found that nearly every major FBI field office lacked the staff needed to evaluate and deal with the threat posed by al-Qaeda, the network Washington blames for the hijacking attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.