:: Deepquest ::

Under his watch, the FBI has moved forward in its implementation of new technology systems, says Attorney General John Ashcroft. But Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard claims that he asked Ashcroft for more money to update the Bureau’s counter-terrorism initiatives, including core I.T. needs. Pickard asserts that Ashcroft said no.
According to testimony delivered before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, intelligence agencies were hampered in their efforts to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks partly because of aging computer equipment, especially within the FBI.

Tuesday’s witnesses spoke of an FBI that was using clunky, outdated hardware and software in the days leading up to the 9/11 attacks. None of the five witnesses is reputed to have any I.T. expertise, however. They did not offer much analysis of the technology itself — except to make it sound as though 1980s DOS software was installed for FBI use in 1995.

Consequently, it is difficult to know whether old technology is a convenient target — especially considering the problem might actually be (as HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey would insist) human error. The humans in Tuesday’s hearing were not about to offer a Richard Clarke-inspired mea culpa.

Could the latest hardware and software have prevented the hijackings that led to the disasters in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania? Witnesses and commissioners agreed that I.T. muscle would have made a difference, at least in the ability of separate agencies, such as the FBI and CIA, to better communicate with each other.

In his opening statement, Philip Zelikow — the Commission’s executive director, as well as a history professor at the University of Virginia — set the tone for much of Tuesday’s hearings by quoting several budget decisions that prevented the FBI from enhancing its intelligence tools.

Zelikow said the FBI installed outdated equipment in 1995, which he compared to computers from the 1980s. “The FBI’s primary information-management system,” he said, paraphrasing FBI Director Louis Freeh, “limited the bureau’s ability to share its information internally and externally. The FBI did not have an effective system for storing, searching or retrieving information of intelligence value contained in its investigative files.”

FBI Director Freeh also repeatedly asked for funds to upgrade computers and software, but the lack of I.T. expertise in the Bureau hampered its efforts to convince Congress to release more money to the FBI’s budget.

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