- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Widespread
failures by the FBI led to the belated disclosure of thousands of pages
of documents that caused a one-month delay in the execution of Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Justice Department said in releasing the
results of an investigation on Tuesday.
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- "The OIG's (Office of the Inspector General) investigation
found that the failures to disclose documents were widespread and not confined
to a single FBI field office or a few individuals," said Glenn Fine,
the inspector general of the Department of Justice, in releasing the 192-page
report.
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- The FBI had delayed in giving McVeigh's defense team
boxes of documents related to the investigation of the April 1995 bombing
that killed 168 people and gutted a federal office building in Oklahoma
City.
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- "Both FBI field offices and the Oklahoma City bombing
Task Force bear responsibility for the failure to properly disclose the
materials," said Fine.
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- When the problem of the belated disclosure of documents
was first made public in May 2001, just days before McVeigh was scheduled
to die by lethal injection, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered an investigation
to see why the FBI had waited so long to turn over boxes of documents to
McVeigh's lawyers.
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- Human error was the chief cause, the inspector general
reported.
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- "The failures that we observed stemmed from individual
mistakes, the FBI's complex document processing systems, inconsistent interpretations
of FBI policies and procedures, agents' failures to follow FBI policies,
agents' lack of understanding of the unusual discovery agreement in this
case and the tremendous volume of material being processed within a short
period of time," it said.
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- Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller both issued
statements saying they were committed to implementing necessary reforms
at the FBI.
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- "The FBI has already begun to update technology
systems, improve information management and provide more effective and
timely accountability," Ashcroft said. Mueller has begun restructuring
the FBI which has been shaken by a series of blunders over the past year,
ranging from the McVeigh files to lost laptops to having a Russian spy
within its ranks.
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- FBI SAYS FAILURES WERE UNINTENTIONAL
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- The investigation found no basis for claims by McVeigh's
lawyers that the government had intentionally failed to disclose information.
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- However, it said two FBI managers, Danny Defenbaugh --
inspector in charge of the Oklahoma City bombing investigation -- and Supervisory
Agent Mark White -- were aware of the potential problem as early as January
2001.
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- "We believe their failure to take timely action
to resolve, or report, the problem of the belated documents was a significant
neglect of their duties and we recommend that the FBI consider discipline
for these failures," the report said.
-
- Mueller said in his statement that the FBI was reviewing
the criticisms and "will quickly move to take any appropriate disciplinary
actions."
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- The inspector general's report said the problems encountered
in the Oklahoma City bombing case should be used to help ensure the FBI's
record management system is improved.
-
- It outlined a series of recommendations to help address
the FBI's weaknesses, including improved planning for complex cases, upgrading
the computer system, better training and an improvement of FBI record-keeping
systems.
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- "These problems are not new," the report said.
"The FBI has known about many of them for some time. ... But the FBI
has not done enough to address these problems."
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- "As the tragic attacks of Sept. 11 revealed, the
FBI continues to be faced with cases of the scale and dimensions of OKBOMB,
and the lessons learned from OKBOMB continue to be important," it
said, using the code name for the investigation into the 1995 bombing.
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