Two senior Senate Judiciary Committee members want the Justice Department to release a newly completed classified report on the FBI's handling of information it received prior to the September 11 attacks, including an agency memo on Zacarias Moussaoui and information about two of the al Qaeda hijackers.
Sens. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, and Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said in letters Friday to Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that the report includes terrorist information "that was not acted upon, or not acted on in the most effective and efficient manner."
The report includes information on the FBI's handling of the so-called Phoenix memo; the handling of information about Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the September 11 attacks; and the FBI's investigation into two of the September 11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar.
The senators also want the release of two other reports that involve accusations made by a former contract linguist, Sibel Edmonds, about problems in the FBI translation program, and an audit of the FBI's overall translation program.
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