Last week, Washington was obsessed by one question: what did the president know before September nth? This week, a new question has taken its place: what did the FBI know before September 11th? The first debate died a well-deserved death. The second debate is leading to the biggest shake-up of the FBI in its history. It is now clear that FBI agents out in the field were investigating the behaviour of suspicious Arabs before September nth, and that their bosses buried their investigations. Last July, an agent in the bureau's Phoenix office told FBI headquarters that he was worried that al-Qaeda agents were training in American flight schools. The Washington bureaucrats did nothing. A little later, Minneapolis agents, excited by their arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui (the alleged 20th hijacker), asked for a search warrant to examine his laptop computer. The bureaucrats refused, despite receiving reports from French intelligence about Mr Moussaoui's involvement with Islamic terrorism.
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