NewsMax.com Staff
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002

"Time is not on our side," the Alabama senator and ranking GOP member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said.

"You know," he told the Times, "we were told that there would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that. I think that most of the information that our staff has been able to get that is real meaningful has had to be extracted piece by piece."

Asked if he was accusing the agencies of a deliberate slowdown he said "I'll have to let you make that judgment call," adding: "You're dealing with smart people. No one likes to be investigated."

He said that on 9/11 when the Pentagon was still on fire, his instant conclusion was that this was a result of a monumental intelligence failure.

"I felt so then; I know so now," he said. "It seems that every week, every month, there are new revelations that support my basic conclusion that I came to early on, on September the 11th."

The senator explained that the failures started in 1993 after the bombing of the World Trade Center. "That should have been, in my judgment, a wake-up call that terrorists would hit us on our own soil with devastating effect," he said.

Ticking off other instances of intelligence lapses he mentioned the attack on the United States barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the explosions at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000.

He also cited such recent revelations as the ignored memorandum from an FBI agent in Phoenix warning that Osama bin Laden's followers might be training for terrorist operations at American flight schools; the refusal by bureau headquarters to seek a search warrant that would have allowed Minneapolis agents to search a laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, now charged with being a conspirator in the Sept. 11 plot.

"There are a lot of other things that I believe we don't know," he said. "As a matter of fact I believe that there will be more - there will be more information coming out of this joint inquiry. Some, I know, will be very, very sensitive. Some should be brought to the attention of the American people."

He suggested that the information would prove explosive. "I think there are some more bombs out there," he said, adding, "I know that."