Key FBI witness retracted criticisms in McVeigh case

'No Fly' List Is Challenged in a Lawsuit

ASHINGTON, April 22 — Civil rights advocates demanded today that the federal government explain how hundreds of people — some of them vocal critics of the Bush administration — have ended up on a list used to stop people suspected of having terrorist links from boarding commercial air flights.

In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco, the American Civil Liberties Union said government officials had improperly withheld information about how people wind up on the "no fly" list, what steps are taken to ensure its accuracy and how people who are erroneously detained at airports can get their names off the list.

"Without even basic information about the no-fly list or other watch lists," the lawsuit said, "the public cannot evaluate the government's decision to use such lists."

Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the F.B.I. and federal transportation officials have generated secret lists of people suspected of having terrorist ties who should be stopped and questioned if they try to board an airplane.

Law enforcement officials say the policy is a necessary safeguard to prevent the type of security lapses that allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to board a plane even though intelligence officials had reason to suspect they were terrorists.

But the so-called no-fly lists have generated criticism. Many people have been mistakenly stopped, while others assert they were on the list in part because of their strong liberal politics.

In a well-publicized incident last year, some two dozen members of a group called Peace Action of Wisconsin, including a priest, a nun and high school and college students, were detained in Milwaukee en route to a "teach-in" and missed their flight.

In San Francisco, meanwhile, Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams, two self-described peace activists who help run a publication called War Times that has been critical of the administration's terrorism policies, were detained on their way to Boston. An American Trans Air employee told them their names appeared on a no-fly list, according to the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, which includes both women as plaintiffs.

Officials insisted they were not seeking to single out legitimate political critics. Ms. Adams's name may have been similar to that of another person on the no-fly list, they said.

Ms. Adams said in an interview that "it strains my credulity" to think that her longtime role as a political advocate did not play a part in the incident. "It's bad enough that the government is stopping people in these vast quantities," she said. "But then to learn that you can't even find out why they did it is just an additional injury."

In its lawsuit, the civil liberties union said it had documented 339 cases since the Sept. 11 attacks in which people at San Francisco International Airport were stopped and questioned because they were thought to be on the no-fly list. While the group's investigation has focused on San Francisco because of complaints there, it said the situation there offers a window into what is happening at airports around the country, based on anecdotal evidence the group has collected.

"There's every reason to believe this is happening at airports around the country," said Jayashri Srikantiah, staff lawyer for the A.C.L.U. of Northern California.

The civil liberties union brought the lawsuit under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act after federal officials turned down several months of requests for information on the passenger lists.

The F.B.I. told the group in a letter last December that it found "no records pertinent" to the no-fly issue. But A.C.L.U. officials said records from the San Francisco airport showed that the F.B.I. was contacted about many of the airport detentions.

Officials at the Transportation Security Administration, named as a defendant in the suit, did not return calls seeking comment. Officials at the F.B.I., also named as a defendant, said they could not comment because the lawsuit was pending.

But a law enforcement official, who would speak only if not named, acknowledged that there was confusion in the public about how the no-fly lists were created and executed. The official said the F.B.I. provided intelligence on people suspected of links to terrorism, which was relayed to the transportation security agency. Transportation officials then provide airlines and airports with lists of people to look for at airports.

The security agency "needs to do a better job of explaining what this list is," the official said.

The official insisted that politics had nothing to do with who makes the list, saying that "people that are expressing their constitutional rights of free expression would not come to the attention of the F.B.I."

Prosecutors Detail Lavish Way of Life of Double Agent Suspect

OS ANGELES, April 16 — It was no secret in political and social circles here that Katrina Leung, a long-time F.B.I. informer who is accused of being a Chinese double agent, liked the good life.

Ms. Leung, a 49-year-old businesswoman who was arrested last week, dressed impeccably, gave lavish parties at her home in San Marino, owned various businesses and property, and frequently flew overseas.

But the extent of Ms. Leung's assets, which the authorities have described as "enormous and complex," has begun to emerge in recent days, although a full accounting may never be known.

At a bail hearing for Ms. Leung on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said that she and her husband, Kam Leung, had access to at least $872,000 in bank and retirement accounts in the United States and that the couple might have had millions of dollars in foreign accounts under different names.

United States Assistant Attorney Rebecca Lonergan said Ms. Leung could use these assets if she chose to flee the United States. The prosecutor said Ms. Leung, a naturalized American citizen, had not reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in overseas earnings on her United States tax returns.

In addition, Ms. Leung claimed mortgage interest deductions on a California residence that was not in truth mortgaged, Ms. Lonergan said.

Citing her "significant foreign assets" as a flight risk, Federal Magistrate Victor B. Kenton on Tuesday ordered Ms. Leung held without bail until trial on charges of illegally obtaining secret documents from her Federal Bureau of Investigation handler, with whom she had a sexual affair.

The magistrate said that despite the best efforts of the authorities, "there is much about the defendant's financial wherewithal that has not been revealed in the court."

In a statement released today, Ms. Leung's lawyer, John Vandevelde, asked that the public "not jump to any conclusions" regarding the government's portrayal of his client's assets.

"Information is being withheld from us, and the government has only shown the tip of the iceberg," Mr. Vandevelde said. "When all the information is out it will show that for 20 years the F.B.I. controlled everything and knew everything that Ms. Leung did. Her overseas activities furthered her role for the F.B.I."

Ms. Leung, who is said to have extensive contacts in the Chinese government, was recruited by James J. Smith, an F.B.I. agent who was her main handler and lover for 20 years until his retirement in 2000.

Mr. Smith has been charged with gross negligence in his handling of national security documents that officials say Ms. Leung copied and passed on to the Chinese government. Mr. Smith was released last week on $250,000 bond.
At the bail hearing for Ms. Leung, her lawyers argued that the F.B.I. was fully aware of their client's every action and approved them.

They said Ms. Leung's home in San Marino, a rich suburb just east of Los Angeles, was equipped with built-in microphones and video cameras that allowed American agents to spy on her Chinese house guests.
"The F.B.I. fed information to her and encouraged her to give it to the People's Republic of China in order to obtain the trust of the P.R.C. and obtain information in return," according to the documents filed by Ms. Leung's lawyers.
Underscoring what prosecutors said was Ms. Leung's vast wealth, she and her family had offered to post bail for as much as $2 million in property to secure her release. Her husband, brother and sister, all attended the hearing but declined to be interviewed.

Ms. Leung, who wore a green windbreaker jacket and navy blue sweat pants, was escorted into the courtroom in shackles. Her hair pulled back in a long ponytail, Ms. Leung appeared relaxed and confident. She often smiled when looking back at her relatives.
Prosecutors provided some details of the sources of Ms. Leung's assets and the complex financial schemes they said she used to hide them.

For starters, they said Ms. Leung had received $1.7 million for work and expenses as an informer for the F.B.I. in which she provided the agency with secret material on the Chinese government over 20 years.
Ms. Leung, who is fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, also was paid $1.2 million in 1995 and 1996 for negotiating a deal that allowed Nortel Telecommunications to do business in China, prosecutors said.

As Nortel's representative, Ms. Leung, who used the business name "Merry Glory" for the deal, received 3 percent of any contract that she obtained for Nortel, they said.
Prosecutors said a review of Ms. Leung's personal tax returns showed that she reported neither the F.B.I. payments nor the Nortel payments as income on her on federal income tax filing, as required by the Internal Revenue Service.
According to an affidavit filed by federal prosecutors in connection with the bail hearing, Ms. Leung admitted to the authorities that she had two bank accounts in Hong Kong under the name Merry Glory and Right Fortune.

The accounts were used "to create the appearance of a separate creditor to which she made mortgage payments when in fact she was paying herself," the document stated.
Ms. Leung bought her home in San Marino about 12 years ago for $1.4 million, prosecutors said. She made a down payment of half that amount and financed the balance.

She deposited payments from Nortel in her Right Fortune account and used the money to pay off the balance of her mortgage. "This created the appearance she had refinanced with another company and enabled her to falsely claim mortgage interest deductions for her residence after she had in fact paid her mortgage in full," the affidavit said.
Nancy Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, said that because of privacy laws that protect all taxpayers the agency could not comment on whether it would investigate Ms. Leung in connection with tax fraud.

Spy Suspect May Have Told Chinese of Bugs, U.S. Says

ASHINGTON, April 14 — Counterintelligence officials fear that an F.B.I. informer in Los Angeles tipped off the Chinese government to a covert United States effort to plant listening devices aboard China's version of Air Force One, several government officials said today.

The National Security Agency, the supersecret eavesdropping agency, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other intelligence organizations, led an operation to plant bugs in a Boeing 767 used by the president of China while it was in the United States for refitting, officials said. The listening devices were quickly discovered, and the Chinese government disclosed the incident early last year.

United States officials have never previously acknowledged the bugging operation, and the Bush administration still publicly declines to comment.

Intelligence officials say they are trying to determine whether the Chinese found out about the operation as a result of an F.B.I. security breach that was disclosed last week with the arrest of Katrina Leung, who officials described as a Chinese double agent, and James J. Smith, a former F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles who was her contact at the bureau. The two had a long-term sexual relationship, court documents said.

Officials familiar with the investigation said that if the bugging operation was compromised as a result of the F.B.I. case, it would be one of the most damaging losses associated with it.

National Security Agency officials are said to be furious that F.B.I. officials involved in planning the bugging operation did not tell them of their suspicions that the bureau had been penetrated by China.

Mr. Smith, who was the top expert on Chinese counterintelligence in the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles field office from 1996 until his retirement in November 2000, has been questioned about the bugging operation by the F.B.I., people close to the case said today. When the agents first interrogated Mr. Smith several months ago about his relationship with Ms. Leung, the Chinese plane was one of several issues they were keenly interested in pursuing.

"That was obviously a hot button issue," said an official who demanded anonymity.

The F.B.I. theorized that Mr. Smith's "pillow talk" with Ms. Leung might have included rumors about the intelligence community's efforts to bug the plane. Mr. Smith adamantly denied having discussed the case with Ms. Leung, and his lawyer, Brian Sun, said today that there was "absolutely not" a connection. "My client flat-out did not talk about the plane with her," he said.

The case widened late last week when another former F.B.I. agent, who has not been charged in the case, resigned his post as chief of security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after it was revealed that he had an extended sexual relationship with Ms. Leung. Although he was not named in court documents, several officials identified William Cleveland as the former San Francisco agent. In addition, the F.B.I. has opened an investigation involving an active F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles in connection with Chinese intelligence operations, officials said.

In January 2002, Chinese officials said that they had discovered that China's presidential aircraft had been bugged after it was refurbished in the United States. The Chinese said that they had found 27 listening devices on board, including some in the bathroom and in the headboard of the Chinese president's bed. China bought the airplane in June 2000 for $120 million, and it was sent to San Antonio International Airport for refitting by several contractors. It was delivered to the Chinese government in August 2001.

The Chinese said that they had discovered the listening devices in October 2001, soon after accepting delivery on the plane.

Law enforcement officials today played down the possibility of a connection between the F.B.I. case and the airplane operation, and said that senior F.B.I. officials were not certain that a link would be found.

Yet officials said they were still in the beginning phases of their investigation of the F.B.I. case, and so it will take more time to determine the full extent of any damage to national security. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department are conducting separate investigations into the case, as investigators examine what secrets Ms. Leung may have given up and what management problems at the F.B.I. may have allowed the problem to go undetected .

"We have to look at everything," a senior law enforcement official said today. "No conclusions have been reached. We'll have to go through a whole assessment of what she knew."

Still, F.B.I. officials are skeptical of what Mr. Smith has told them. Prosecutors noted in court filings last week that Mr. Smith denied having an affair with Ms. Leung, only to be contradicted by tapes that recorded the pair in a hotel.

Mr. Smith was Ms. Leung's F.B.I. handler for nearly 20 years, and the two had an affair for almost as long, court documents said. Ms. Leung was a highly paid F.B.I. informer, but prosecutors now say that she took classified documents from Mr. Smith, photocopied them, and passed them to handlers in Beijing.

Mr. Smith was also active in investigating accusations that the Chinese tried to buy influence in the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. Law enforcement officials said Ms. Leung was a key informer in the campaign finance investigations, and they are concerned that she could have compromised the politically charged case by telling the Chinese where the investigation was heading.

Lawyers for Ms. Leung said in a court filing late today in Los Angeles that the government's case was "skimpy." While the lawyers acknowledged that Ms. Leung, a prominent political fund-raiser, did give information to the People's Republic of China, they said it always was at the behest of the F.B.I.

"The F.B.I. controlled everything she did," Janet Levine, a lawyer for Ms. Leung, said in the filing. "The F.B.I. fed information to her and encouraged her to give it to the P.R.C. in order to obtain the trust of the P.R.C. and obtain information in return. For over 20 years, she was used and controlled by the F.B.I."

Defense lawyers argued that Ms. Leung, now being held without bail, should be freed on a bond of $250,000. They argued further that it was unfair for the courts to have granted Mr. Smith bail last week while declaring Ms. Leung a flight risk and ordering her held pending trial. A bail hearing is set for Tuesday in Los Angeles.

F.B.I. Was Told Years Ago of Possible Double Agent

ASHINGTON, April 11 — Senior F.B.I. officials were told in the early 1990's that a Los Angeles woman accused this week of being a double-agent appeared to be spying for the Chinese, but they continued using her as an informer nonetheless, current and former officials said today.

Around 1991, senior Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence officials met in Washington to discuss evidence that the woman, Katrina Leung, was spying for the Chinese, an official said today on condition of anonymity.

One F.B.I. supervisor in Los Angeles attending the meeting was James J. Smith, who was having an long-term affair with Ms. Leung after recruiting her to the bureau as an informer in the early 1980's. They were arrested this week on espionage-related charges.

An administration official who demanded anonymity said it was also "common knowledge" for years among senior people in the bureau's Los Angeles office that Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung were having an affair and that F.B.I. officials at headquarters suspected that there might be a Chinese intelligence "penetration" of the bureau on the West Coast.

Indeed, officials said today that they were investigating the possibility of a separate security breach involving China and another agent in the bureau's Los Angeles office.

The F.B.I.'s handling of the long-held suspicions surrounding Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung and whether it moved aggressively enough to head off the problem will be a major focus of inquiries by the bureau and the Justice Department, officials said.

Investigators are also trying to determine what information on nuclear, military and political issues she gave to China and what damage it may have caused to national security.

The bureau declined to comment today on questions about when senior officials at headquarters first became aware of suspicions in the case. "That's one of the things we're looking into as part of our oversight review: how the whole Smith and Leung matter was handled," an F.B.I. official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said.

But other current and former officials say that if it is demonstrated that senior bureau officials had evidence for years pointing to Ms. Leung's activities, the bureau is sure to face difficult questions about why it did not take aggressive steps until recently.

One theory, officials said, is that officials were trying to use Ms. Leung to pass disinformation back to her native China without realizing that she had access through her affair with Mr. Smith to very sensitive material.

"There are really two possibilities," said William Baker, who was a high-ranking F.B.I. official until 1991 but said that as chief of the criminal division he had no knowledge of the case. "You're either talking about gross dereliction of duty at F.B.I. headquarters and the L.A. field office, or the F.B.I. wanted to play her back on China, and it just backfired on them, because they were played themselves. Either way, it didn't work, and the outcome was horrible."

Mr. Baker said bureau officials in Los Angeles should have been particularly sensitive to the dangers of an agent becoming too close to an informer because in 1990 a former agent, Richard W. Miller, was convicted on charges of passing information to Moscow through his Russian lover. "The red flag should have been the Miller case," Mr. Baker said.

Mr. Smith was allowed to be Ms. Leung's so-called handler from the early 1980's until his retirement in late 2000, and officials said the two had an affair for about 18 years. The bureau paid her $1.7 million as an informer to provide information on China.

The Justice Department acknowledged in court documents unsealed on Wednesday that a second F.B.I. agent in San Francisco who was also having an affair with the woman became aware in 1991 about an audiotape indicating that Ms. Leung had unauthorized contacts with officials in the Chinese intelligence agency and was passing information to them.

The San Francisco agent alerted Mr. Smith in Los Angeles; an alarmed Mr. Smith assured him that he would take care of the problem, prosecutors said. The second former agent, who is unidentified in court papers but whom law enforcement officials identified as William Cleveland, resigned on Thursday as head of security at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after the lab began investigating the case.

Prosecutors suggested that only the two agents knew about the suspicions surrounding Ms. Leung, but officials said in interviews today that knowledge of the case extended to senior officials at the bureau.

"The F.B.I. chain of command was fully aware of the '91 report indicating that she was talking about things with China that she should not have been talking about," an official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. "Headquarters knew she had unauthorized contacts and communications with people in China. There were memos generated."

Officials said Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I. became aware of the case through back channels in late 2001 and dispatched senior counterintelligence people to do a full investigation. Last year, he demoted Sheila Horan, who was leading the national security division, because he was upset about how the case was handled, officials said.

Lawyers for Ms. Leung and Mr. Smith have defended their clients' character and pledged vindication. Brian Sun, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, said it was irresponsible for the Justice Department to try to pin full responsibility on the former agent.

"The bureau was fully aware from at least 1991 of the potential risks of using Ms. Leung as an asset," or informer, Mr. Sun said in an interview. "It's unfair to try to portray Mr. Smith as the only person responsible for the F.B.I.'s failure to follow up on this matter. If J. J. Smith committed acts of gross negligence, then the entire counterintelligence office of the F.B.I. was equally culpable."

After Espionage Arrests, F.B.I. Looks Back and Wonders, 'How?'

OS ANGELES, April 10 — With expensive jade jewelry, a big smile and an unshakable air of confidence, Katrina Leung always made an impression when she entered a room.

Now, as Ms. Leung faces accusations of passing secrets to the Chinese government, many associates say they are wondering how much of her public persona was genuine.

She would never forget a name or a face, associates said, even remembering to ask one business acquaintance about his elderly mother whenever they met. Fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, she made herself indispensable at Chinese-American events, said people who attended, breaking the ice and acting as a translator for people who could otherwise not communicate, while placing herself at the center of any group photograph.

And though a businesswoman, with her own consulting company, she appeared to well understand the power of politics and of playing both sides. She gave money to many prominent Republicans, including a former mayor of Los Angeles and two of California's United States Senate candidates, but also reached out to influential Democrats in a city dominated by the Democratic Party.

"She's a real spitfire," said Dorothy Perez, who worked for John Ferraro, a Democrat who was president of the Los Angeles City Council until his death two years ago. "She has the personality of a cheerleader, always going on about something. She was always trying to get people to visit China."

Ms. Leung, 49, who lives in a wealthy suburb, San Marino, was arrested Wednesday on charges of obtaining a classified national security document for the Chinese government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said that Ms. Leung had had a 20-year affair with James J. Smith, a former F.B.I. agent who had recruited her as an informer, and that she had passed on information culled from Mr. Smith. Officials said she sometimes surreptitiously photocopied classified documents he had left unattended at her house.

Mr. Smith, 59, who worked for the F.B.I. for 30 years before retiring in 2000, was also arrested and charged with negligence. He was released on bail Wednesday night.

Ms. Leung's lawyers, Janet I. Levine and John D. Vandeveld, said in a statement that she would be found not guilty and called her "a loyal American citizen."

"For 20 years she has worked at the direction and behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," they said.

"She repeatedly endangered herself in order to make significant contributions to the security and well-being of the United States and her fellow citizens."

That Ms. Leung was friendly with the F.B.I. was no secret in the Asian-American community here. She would often introduce F.B.I. agents at dinners and receptions she held for Chinese dignitaries, including those associated with the Los Angeles Guangzhou Sister City Association, which she promoted.

In the cold war era, some participants at the events saw the agents as protection, but later the continued F.B.I. presence struck some as odd. Among the agents who attended some of the events was Mr. Smith. Both Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung are married to others.

"Especially at the beginning, it was good to have someone to protect us in case anything went wrong," said one board member of the sister city association. Of Mr. Smith, the board member said: "I didn't know who invited him. You don't usually see F.B.I. agents. He seemed very nice. He was at most of the dinners. I never questioned it."

In 1997, when a big celebration was held in a college stadium marking the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, Ms. Leung was joined in a V.I.P. section by a host of prominent Asian-Americans, Mayor Richard J. Riordan of Los Angeles and a dozen or so F.B.I. agents.

"She seemed to have a working relationship with F.B.I. agents in the same way she had a working relationship with elected officials, community leaders and Chinese-American leaders," said Ben Wong, a city councilman in West Covina, Calif., who attended the Hong Kong event. "She was someone who always seemed to know a lot of people."

Ms. Leung also had a knack for finding the most important, and often most affluent, person in a crowd, several business and political associates said. One prominent Los Angeles Republican fund-raiser said he spotted her at a ball in Washington during President Bush's inauguration. A White House official could not say today whether she had been invited to the inauguration. Ms. Leung also courted Democrats, inviting them to her home for a fund-raiser for Mr. Ferraro of the city council.

Though she was not necessarily seen as someone with her own political ambition, or someone who had particularly deep roots in the local Asian-American community, she developed a reputation as the conduit for business and trade with China.

It was in that capacity that she made her deepest inroads into Los Angeles political and social life, said Michael Woo, a former Los Angeles city councilman who ran unsuccessfully for mayor against Mr. Riordan in 1993. Mr. Woo, who is Chinese-American, said Ms. Leung sensed an opportunity when Mr. Riordan won the election, but had no strong ties or support in the Asian community.

"All of a sudden there was a sense in the Asian-American community of no connection at all to Mayor Riordan, and if anything there was some hostility toward him," Mr. Woo said. "It was a vacuum waiting for somebody to fill. She was one of the people to do that."

Mr. Woo said Ms. Leung was natural for that role in that she brought with her trade opportunities with China and the Pacific Rim, which in Los Angeles's fragmented ethnic politics served as an important entree at City Hall. Eventually, Ms. Leung traveled to China with Mr. Riordan to promote trade and later met in China with Mr. Riordan's successor, Mayor James K. Hahn.

"She always seemed very shrewd," Mr. Woo said. "In a political setting, frequently you have a candidate trying to size people up, and then you can see people at a dinner or other event trying to size people up. She was one of those people always trying to size people up."

Ada Chan Wong, president of the Los Angeles Chinese Chamber of Commerce, said that Ms. Leung was gracious in opening up her home for meetings and that she volunteered her time, once serving as a judge for the Miss Chinatown pageant.

"When there was anything political with China, she was the emcee," Ms. Wong said. "When the Chinese premier visited in 1999, she emceed the event."

Ms. Wong and others said Ms. Leung was always a bit mysterious about her business. She described herself as a venture capitalist, listing herself as self-employed on campaign finance documents. Officials said the F.B.I. paid her about $1.7 million over 20 years in expenses and fees as an informer.

"I never really did understand what she did for a living, just that she was rather flamboyant about her connections to the P.R.C.," Mr. Woo said.

According to an F.B.I. affidavit, Mr. Smith recruited Ms. Leung in the early 1980's and became her handler, seeking information about China. An F.B.I. agent who worked with Mr. Smith in Los Angeles said the agency's Los Angeles bureau was "in a state of shock" over the charges against him.

"We all knew him as a decent, upstanding agent with a distinguished record," Mr. Smith's colleague said. "We are stunned and still trying to figure out how he avoided detection for so long."

Mr. Smith, 59, joined the F.B.I. in 1970 after serving in the army in Vietnam. He began his career in the bureau's Salt Lake City office and transferred in 1971 to Los Angeles, where he initially handled national security matters. From 1978 until his retirement in 2000, Mr. Smith worked in the foreign counterintelligence squad, focusing on China. He became the supervisor of that squad in 1996.

Mr. Smith, who is married and has an adult son, lives in Westlake Village, Calif., just west of Los Angeles. Although voices could be heard inside the house today, no one answered the door.

Matt McLaughlin, a spokesman for the F.B.I.'s Los Angeles office, said the investigation would emphasize supervising agents who were responsible for monitoring Mr. Smith, adding, "We need to determine if there were systemic problems in the Los Angeles office or if certain personnel failed to follow established procedures."

Undercutting the 9/11 Inquiry

t's hard to believe that everything related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will not get the most thorough public scrutiny possible. But the federal investigative committee so reluctantly supported by the White House now seems in danger of being undermined. As the first hearings open in Manhattan today, committee members are chagrined to be going hat in hand to Congress for adequate financing. White House assurances led them to believe needed funds would be included in the supplemental war budget sent to the Capitol last week. But the commission's $11 million request was not there.

Reasonable people might wonder if the White House, having failed in its initial attempt to have Henry Kissinger steer the investigation, may be resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry. The committee's mandate includes scrutiny of intelligence failures and eight other government areas.

The White House vows that in coming budget initiatives there will be no shortchanging of the nation's duty to face the facts of the tragedy. As things now stand, $3 million budgeted as start-up funding could run out this summer. An estimated $14 million is needed for the task of finding out precisely how the attackers were able to pull off their plot in which nearly 3,000 people died. This seems a bargain given the importance of the mission. By comparison, the inquiry into the shuttle disaster's loss of seven lives may cost an estimated $40 million, and the inquiry into the Whitewater controversy ate up more than $30 million.

The nation demands an unflinching 9/11 search. A forthright Congress could easily shake the money loose from the Capitol leadership. Everyone claims to have homeland security as a top priority, but anything less than a robust inquiry will amount to a fresh assault on domestic safety. Tim Roemer, a former congressman and a commission member now buttonholing old colleagues for the missing money, makes the case best: "Facing the facts won't kill us. Not getting them might."