The FBI faces an angry grilling from a Senate committee today after admitting it has lost more than 180 laptop computers - at least one containing classified data - as well as 449 handguns and submachine guns over the last decade.
FBI officials discovered the missing equipment during an inventory undertaken at the request of the justice department. The investigation also revealed that one of the missing guns had been used in a homicide. The bureau said yesterday that it tracks lost weapons, but this was the first time a serious effort has been mounted to try to get an account of missing equipment from all FBI field offices.
The scale of losses and thefts emerged as the Senate judiciary committee prepared to bring in FBI officials for questions on the agency's management. Today's hearing is likely be laced with senatorial outrage over the loss of so much dangerous equipment by the nation's premier law enforcement agency.
"To have laptops missing that could have national security information on them would be atrocious," said republican senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, a long-time FBI critic. "For the FBI to have lost firearms and failed to account for them is inexcusable."
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York democrat, added: "The fact that, with computers with classified information and with weapons like machine guns, the FBI had such lax procedures is damning, especially for what has been regarded as the premier law enforcement agency in the world."
The FBI has been under fire for mistakes going back years, including the failure to provide thousands of documents to Timothy McVeigh's lawyers, the Robert Hanssen spy case, the bloody Branch Davidian and Ruby Ridge standoffs and the botched investigation into the former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
"Large FBI foul-ups used to be extraordinary events, yet now they appear to be deteriorating into regular occurrences," said the House of Representatives judiciary committee chairman, James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin republican.
Senators have complained for weeks that the FBI has a culture of covering up its mistakes and have offered several bills to reform the agency, including provisions for outside reviews and more power for agency watchdogs such as the inspector general's office.
Besides the theft of 184 FBI weapons, 265 were lost, said FBI and justice department officials, discussing the problem on condition of anonymity. Most of the missing weapons are handguns, officials said, but submachine guns are also included.
A total of 184 laptops are missing, including 13 which are believed to have been stolen, officials said. They said that in addition to one computer known to have contained classified information, three other missing machines might have housed classified material.
After the FBI reported the missing hardware, the attorney general, John Ashcroft, asked the justice department's inspector general to do a department-wide review of inventory controls over guns and other law enforcement equipment.
Useful links
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