http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061213/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_terror

FBI papers on terror expertise to released

WASHINGTON - Lawyers for a once-decorated terror-fighting
FBI agent will make public hundreds of pages of testimony from the 
bureau's top brass declaring that terrorism expertise has been given 
little weight in promoting agents since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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The evidence gathered during Agent Bassem Youssef's ongoing lawsuit 
against the FBI includes statements from the agency's director, Robert 
Mueller, and many of his top supervisors on how little Middle Eastern 
experience, Arabic language skills or formal anti-terrorism training has 
played in promotion decisions.

The testimony, some of which was reported by The Associated Press in 
2005, is being posted Wednesday to a Web site for the public to see. It 
includes:

_Mueller defending the 2003 appointment of agent Gary Bald to the top 
terror-fighting job on grounds that he was qualified because he ran the 
Baltimore office when it investigated the 2002 Washington-area sniper 
shootings.

"He had the sniper case, which I don't know whether it was actually 
documented as a domestic terrorism program, but certainly it could fall 
under the category of domestic terrorism. So running the office gave him 
some exposure to terrorism matters," Mueller testified.

_Bald, who retired earlier this year, was asked about his grasp of 
Middle Eastern culture and history, and testified: "I wish that I had 
it. It would be nice."

_The agent assigned to oversee the Sept. 11 investigation at the
Pentagon acknowledged she had no formal terrorism background. "I do not 
have a terrorism background myself," agent Ellen Knowlton testified.

_John Lewis, a deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, testified 
that there was no difference in recruiting an informant to infiltrate a 
white supremacist group or al-Qaida. "It doesn't make any difference 
whether somebody's from the Middle East or a white supremacist or from 
Australia," he said.

Youssef, the agent suing the bureau, alleges he was passed over for 
several promotions that could have better utilized his skills in the war 
on terror. The FBI denies discriminating against him.

Youssef's lawyer said Tuesday he was making the depositions public so 
Americans can see the FBI answers for themselves. "The American public 
has a right to know what really happened inside the FBI counterterrorism 
division after Sept. 11," attorney Stephen Kohn said.

The documents are to be posted Wednesday to 
http://www.whistleblowers.org/html/inside_the_fbi.html

An FBI spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment 
Tuesday. In the past, the FBI has declined to discuss the Youssef 
litigation but has said the agency has fundamentally reshaped itself to 
ensure the field agents on the ground who work the cases have the 
necessary skills, training and background for fighting terrorism. It has 
noted it hired or redeployed more than 1,000 agents to counterterrorism 
and hired an additional 1,200 intelligence analysts and linguists.

Youssef was credited with improving relations with Saudi Arabia during 
the late 1990s as the threat from al-Qaida leader
Osama bin Laden grew and the bureau struggled to solve the case of the 
1996 Khobar Towers bombing. He received special awards for his performance.

But after Sept. 11, Youssef repeatedly was passed over for top-level 
headquarters jobs in terrorism. Instead, he was offered same-rank 
positions in budgeting or exploiting intelligence from terrorism documents.

Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who left that job three months 
before the terrorist attacks, testified he believed Youssef should have 
gotten an important terror-fighting job in the post-Sept. 11 era

And one FBI supervisor, just-retired agent Paul Vick, testified he was 
concerned that Youssef's skills weren't utilized after Sept. 11 and that 
some colleagues had mistaken him for another agent who was Muslim and 
had refused certain work assignments on religious beliefs.

Youssef is Christian and never refused any assignments, his lawyer said.

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