Lessons of 9/11 and the D.C. Area Sniper Shootings

LESSONS OF 9/11 AND THE D.C. AREA SNIPER SHOOTINGS

Mr. KENNEDY. A year ago, the entire capital region was terrorized by unknown killers striking randomly, without warning, without any discernible pattern, and without mercy. Sadly, we know now that those savage murders could have been prevented.

On 9/11/2001, we had learned that the oceans could no longer protect us from the terrorism that has plagued other nations.
We learned that our law enforcement agencies and our intelligence agencies were not adequately organized, trained, or prepared to identify the terrorists and prevent them from striking.

We learned, especially from the report of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, that there were serious problems with information analysis and information sharing between agencies at the Federal, State and local levels, and even between Federal agencies.

As the FBI Director told the committees, no one can say whether the tragedy of 9/11 could have been prevented if all of the problems of our foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies had been corrected before 9/11. But 9/11 was certainly a wakeup call to these agencies. They were on notice that, whatever the reasons for their failure to connect the many "dots" which their separate activities had uncovered before the terrorist attacks, they needed to change their ways.

The tragic DC area killings of a year ago, in which 13 people were shot and 10 lost their lives, provided a dramatic test of how well we had learned the lessons of 9/11. At the time, we had no way of knowing whether the shootings were the work of demented citizens, homegrown terrorists, or foreign terrorists bent on spreading mortal fear among the people.

In many ways, the law enforcement response was a model of the lessons already learned. Over 1,300 Federal agents of all types joined hundreds of State and local law enforcement personnel in a joint intensive effort to identify and apprehend the killers. The cooperation among law enforcement agencies in the area was close and seemingly effective.

But in some vital respects, the events of last October revealed shockingly that a year after 9/11, we had not yet filled obvious gaps in our day-to-day law enforcement and intelligence activities.

We had not made sure that all of the Nation's police agencies at all levels were communicating with each other with the fastest possible technology, and acting in real time to share the useful information they had gathered.

Unfortunately, too much of the national effort had been invested in arguing over broad and controversial new investigative and enforcement powers that threatened draconian violations of basic rights and liberties, with little benefit to homeland security.

These debates deflected attention from the urgent need to assure that every jurisdiction in the Nation has—and uses—full access to the vast array of already available Federal resources specifically designed to assist them in their local responsibilities. The DC sniper case showed us a year ago that we need even more focus on this very practical and achievable goal, and less focus on the distracting shortcuts urged on the Nation by those who believe we must sacrifice our rights to gain security.

A year ago, we learned again that the national law enforcement system is only as strong as its weakest link. If all jurisdictions everywhere are not full partners in the legitimate, practical, day-to-day operations of the existing national system for information sharing and Federal-State cooperation, each of us anywhere is at risk.

The information now available demonstrates that the enormous tragedies of a year ago might well have been entirely prevented if authorities in a State far from the Washington area had used the existing Federal resources available to them.

The fact is, on the night of September 21, 2002, 11 days before the sniper shootings began in the Washington area, the local police in Montgomery, AL, obtained a clear fingerprint of a suspect in a brutal robbery and murder. As we now know, that fingerprint matched a print on file in the FBI electronic matching system.

That information could have quickly led the authorities to Malvo and Muhammad, the two people later charged with the Washington area killings that began on October 2 that year.

A State crime laboratory with a few thousand dollars worth of proper hardware and free software from the FBI could have transmitted the Alabama fingerprint to the FBI system on Sunday morning, September 22. That system would have automatically compared the print with the 45 million prints in the system. The matching print could have been found and identified by the FBI by noon on that Sunday. In fact, the FBI's average response time on such print matches was 3 hours and 16 minutes last year.

The FBI's State assistance program makes it easy and inexpensive for a State to transmit unidentified prints directly to the automated fingerprint system. The Justice Department even provides grants to help with the costs.

But 15 States, including the State of Alabama, are not yet fully connected to the FBI system. They cannot transmit the fingerprints found at crime scenes directly to the FBI's automated 24-hour-a-day fingerprint searching system.

In the Alabama case, had the full facilities available from the Federal Government been utilized, look-out alerts or arrest warrants for the Alabama murder suspects could have been circulated throughout the Nation some time between September 22 and September 24, followed quickly by the description and license plate number of the car they were using.

In other words, at least 7 full days before the first shooting in the Washington area, Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies could have identified Muhammad and Malvo and could have been searching urgently for them, because they were wanted for the robbery/murder in Alabama. Tragically, we now know that local police officers in two other States made traffic stops of the suspects' car and checked the driver's license and plates with the national databases during those 7 days.
But because the readily available national system had not been used, those checks produced no response. Malvo and Muhammad were not apprehended, and the DC area sniper shootings took place.

It is not my purpose to single out Alabama for special blame. This is a national problem. Fifteen States are not fully connected to the FBI's electronic matching system. Many other States may not take full advantage of this and other Federal resources.

The FBI spent $640 million building its fingerprint system, because it persuaded Congress that "if we build it they will come." The system works well beyond the planners' dreams. It usually responds on a ten-fingerprint check of an arrested suspect within 20 minutes. It usually reports on an unknown single fingerprint within about 3 hours.

Thirty-five States are fully using this valuable resource. They use the system routinely and automatically, because as one police official put it, "You catch bad guys" this way. In fact, some police departments sent the FBI all the old unidentified prints they had as soon as they connected to the system. Time after time, even very old prints from unsolved cases were matched with prints in the system, and old crimes were finally solved.

On this sad anniversary of the DC sniper shootings, I hesitate to discuss these painful facts, when the victims' families are still grieving. But I, too, have been where they are now, and so I feel I can speak the painful truth, the truth that will teach us how to make the future better than the past.

The truth is that we now know this tragedy could have been prevented—not by tougher laws or more intrusive investigative powers, not by ethnic or racial profiling, but by strengthening and fully using the effective systems we already have in place.

Attorney General Ashcroft wants even more law enforcement powers that will threaten still more basic rights. But I say, let's fix the nuts and bolts of the system we already have. It is a scandal that 15 of our States are still not fully linked to the FBI system. The financial cost is small, and Federal grants are available to defray it and pay the cost of any training that is needed. Hopefully, no such avoidable tragedy will ever happen again, and the victims we mourn and honor today will not have died in vain.