December 2, 2001, Washington Post, Letter, FBI Hindsight, by Lawrence Rosenshein,
I would be amused by the Nov. 28 front-page story in which ex-FBI officials carped about Attorney General John Ashcroft's and Director Robert Mueller's actions if their criticisms weren't so pathetic.
These are the people whose exempting of the top 200 officials of the FBI from lie detector tests led to having a Soviet mole in our midst for 15 years.
If they stopped so many plots, why didn't we hear about them? Wouldn't it have been useful for the public to know about all of these plots -- maybe the operators of the flight schools would have been suspicious when Saudis with cash showed up for flight lessons but didn't want to learn how to take off or land.
And if they had information about so many terrorists planning actions against us, why didn't they resign and make a stink that President Clinton wasn't doing enough to stop the overseas training?
We're past the point of sitting back and foiling plots on our soil. We now need to go after the perpetrators in the holes where they live.
LAWRENCE ROSENSHEIN
Upper Montclair, N.J.
See:
February 20, 2001, Washington Transcript Service, FBI Director Louis Freeh Holds News Conference Regarding Charges Against FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen,
