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FBI Responsible For Bungled
McVeigh Case As Spy Indicted
WASHINGTON, May 16 (News Agencies) - FBI Director Louis Freeh accepted responsibility in Congress Wednesday for his agency's bungled handling of evidence in the Timothy McVeigh case but insisted that the Oklahoma City bomber was justly convicted.
Freeh acknowledged "failure" in the McVeigh case, but insisted that recently unearthed evidence the agency had failed to hand over to lawyers at his trial would not change the outcome of the case and McVeigh's conviction.
"As director, I am accountable and responsible for that failure and I accept that responsibility," he told a House Appropriations hearing.
But, he said, "A review of these materials disclosed no new information relevant to the guilt or innocence of Timothy McVeigh. The underlying investigation and his guilt remain unchallenged."
McVeigh has admitted out of court that he carried out the bombing, considered the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil. He had previously dropped all his appeals, saying he would rather be executed than spend years in prison.
Indignant at the FBI's handling of evidence in the McVeigh case and other humiliating errors in recent years, lawmakers proposed the creation of a separate office to keep an eye on the bureau, which has been accused of living a "cowboy culture" of independence.
"Historically, the FBI has sought its independence, but I'm afraid that independence has been at the cost of accountability," said Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Select Intelligence committee.
Durbin on Wednesday proposed the creation of a separate, independent Inspector General's office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to increase oversight of the country's top law enforcement agency.
The FBI has come under heavy fire for misplacing thousands of pages of documents related to the McVeigh case, that his lawyer Robert Nigh has said could throw the entire case into question.
At a press conference Wednesday outside the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where McVeigh is being held, Nigh said McVeigh and his legal team were considering their next step.
"Everything is available to us right now in terms of potential legal options and we're going to consider them all," said Nigh said.
Freeh said some 100 boxes of material had been found, including witness interviews, but added, "nothing in the documents raises any doubt about the guilt" of McVeigh.
McVeigh is on death row in Terre Haute, awaiting execution for the April 19, 1995, bombing which killed 168 people.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has postponed McVeigh's death by lethal injection from May 16th to June 11th, giving McVeigh's attorneys fewer than 30 days to review the papers and decide whether they can appeal the case of the convicted 33-year-old Gulf War veteran.
Lawmakers who see the latest fracas as an abuse of power demanded the agency be reined in.
"The more power you have in the agency, the more that power needs to be questioned and challenged" by Congress, said David Obey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations committee.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the McVeigh scandal erupted last week, Freeh admitted that FBI field offices had ignored his express instructions in 1996 to hand over all documents related to the case, and still more papers had been discovered this week.
"This was a management problem," he said.
Freeh, who is to step down in June, told the committee he had recommended the FBI stand down for a day to begin implementation of a number of initiatives aimed at improving the bureau.
"I have instructed the agency… to hire a world-class records expert for this issue alone," he said. Other measures included setting up a separate office of records management and policy, and training for all employees on records policy.
In another scandal at the agency, former FBI official Robert Hanssen was formally indicted Wednesday for spying for Russia and the former Soviet Union, a federal prosecutor said.
Ken Melton, U.S. Attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, said the 56-year-old veteran counterintelligence officer was charged with 21 counts, including espionage, and could face the death penalty.
A career agent responsible for monitoring Russian intelligence activity in the United States, Hanssen was arrested in February after allegedly leaving classified information in a Virginia park for his Russian handlers.
"Fourteen of the 21 counts have capital eligible powers," Melton told reporters.
"For 15 years, he has been betraying his country," he added, saying the former Federal Bureau of Investigation official had "intentionally caused grave and serious damage to the security of the United States."
Earlier, Hanssen's attorney, Plato Cacheris, said his client, who is to make his first court appearance on Monday, wanted to plead not guilty.
Hanssen allegedly began to pass highly sensitive information to Moscow in 1985 and continued to do so even after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
He had virtually unlimited access to state secrets and is believed to have seriously compromised U.S. national security.
Prosecutors have alleged that the Soviet spy agency KGB and its Russian successor, SVR, paid Hanssen a total of $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and deposits in a Russian bank account for his services, according to court documents.
Investigators said Hanssen, a devout Roman Catholic and father of six who apparently wanted to be a spy since he was a teenager, was a meticulous double agent so secretive he never met his Russian handlers and they never knew his real identity, according to court documents.
Hanssen's arrest was the culmination of a combined sting operation mounted by the FBI, the CIA and the U.S. Justice Department in one of the biggest spy scandals to hit the United States.
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