Associated Press writer Ted Bridis reports. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday promised broader use of lie detectors and a closer check of employee financial records to help deter or catch spies within America’s elite law enforcement agency.
Mueller acknowledged delicate issues of privacy and trust. But he said FBI employees must realize that security needs to be improved after last year’s arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who has pleaded guilty to selling secrets to Moscow for nearly two decades.
“Every employee should recognize that in the wake of Hanssen, we have to emphasize security more than we have,” Mueller told reporters during a wide-ranging interview at FBI headquarters. “I will say, anybody who looks at our organization realizes that security was not a priority. We’ve moved to address that.”
Mueller’s remarks precede the release of a study on security within the FBI by a commission led by former Director William H. Webster. The report is expected to harshly criticize lax security inside the agency.
The seven-person commission – some of whose members met with Hanssen over four days – expects to deliver its report to Attorney General John Ashcroft as early as Thursday or Friday. Webster is to testify next week about the findings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mueller and his new chief for internal security, Kenneth H. Senser of the CIA, said the FBI will soon administer new lie-detector tests to 1,000 more employees. Earlier results of 700 found that fewer than 10 raised red flags, such as possible deception, that warranted additional scrutiny. Mueller declined to discuss whether those who flunked were still working with top-secret documents.
Both Mueller and Senser said they are studying the best way to broaden use of polygraphs across the FBI’s roughly 28,000 employees but are focusing for now on testing agents and others with access to the most sensitive secrets. Mueller pledged that the FBI is “not going to polygraph people indiscriminately across the bureau.”
“Nobody likes taking a polygraph,” he said. “I didn’t particularly enjoy taking a polygraph.”