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US Senate Democrat Calls for Investigation of FBI Mistakes
A prominent US Senate Democrat on Sunday called for congressional hearings and a comprehensive investigation into the failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce documents about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Senator Charles Schumer, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee, told the CBS "Face the Nation" program that his panel would hold hearings into why this happened.
Schumer said he was urging Bush to set up a blue-ribbon commission of leading law enforcement experts "to just examine the FBI from top to bottom."
The FBI failure to deliver the documents to McVeigh's defense team has forced Attorney General John Ashcroft to delay McVeigh's execution, the first federal execution in 38 years, from the coming Wednesday until June 11.
"We've had mistake after mistake after mistake," Schumer said, citing a number of problems at the FBI, including the February arrest of agent Robert Philip Hanssen, who is charged with selling national secrets to Moscow, and a botched investigation last year of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Meanwhile, Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, also criticized the FBI and its director, Louis Freeh, who recently announced he will retire in June.
"I think there is a management culture here that is at fault. It is kind of a culture that puts image, public relations and headlines, ahead of the fundamentals," he told ABC. "I don't think he (Freeh) has been willing to challenge the management culture."
Oklahoma city bomber McVeigh is re-evaluating his position on wanting to be executed after learning the FBI failed to disclose evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case, his lawyers said on Sunday.
McVeigh "has indicated now that he is at least willing to take a fresh look at things, hear our analysis of the facts contained within the documents and our legal analysis of his options," Nigh said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
McVeigh and his lawyers are considering whether to seek a delay in his execution, but Attorney General Ashcroft said he would not again delay McVeigh's execution.
Just days before McVeigh was to be executed, the FBI disclosed that some 3,135 investigation materials, including interview reports and physical evidence such as photographs, letters and tapes, were withheld from McVeigh's lawyers.
McVeigh was to be executed for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
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