FBI and CIA finally agree to fight terrorism together

The FBI unveiled sweeping plans yesterday to strengthen its counter-terrorist operations in the US in an effort to ensure that it is never again caught napping as it was before the attacks of 11 September.

Under the reorganisation announced yesterday by the FBI director, Robert Mueller, and John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, 480 agents will be transferred from criminal work to anti-terrorism. The investigative and crime-solving agency created by the legendary J Edgar Hoover also aims to recruit 900 linguists, computer experts and other specialists. In an even more striking departure, 50 CIA staff will join new terrorism taskforces in FBI offices around the country – a sign of how two agencies that had been fierce competitors realised they must co-operate if the terrorist threat is to be met.

"Our analytical capacity is not where it should be," Mr Mueller said. After 11 September, "it became clearer than ever that we had to fundamentally change." The FBI's priority henceforth would be to protect America from another terrorist attack.

The FBI says it will allow greater latitude to agents in the field. But, say many sceptical agents, the proof of that pudding will be in the eating. In her scathing memo to Mr Mueller earlier this month, Coleen Rowley, a Minnesota agent, accused the director of misrepresenting the facts about what the FBI head office knew and when, and said that reforms might only make its bureaucratic problems worse.

The extent to which police forces around the world failed to respond to clues suggesting an impending massive attack against the US last year was underlined by Italian police intercepts between summer 2000 and early 2001 of conversations in a car between suspected members of al-Qa'ida.

Translations of the intercepts have been submitted in evidence at a trial in Milan, which has already convicted four Tunisians, including Ben Soltane Adel, who on tape in January 2001 is heard asking whether fake documents had worked for "the brothers who are going to the United States".

It was not clear whether the FBI had access to the transcripts, and if so, what action was taken. The tapes contain references to a "madman but a genius" behind an operation "that would never be forgotten".

The central figure in the tapes is an Egyptian-born imam, Abdelkader Mahmoud es-Sayed, believed to be the leading Italian agent of al-Qa'ida. Italian police believe he fled Italy in July 2001 for Afghanistan, where he may have been killed during the US-led campaign.

* British marines have launched an operation in eastern Afghanistan to restrict and contain al-Qa'ida forces and the remains of the Taliban. As the country prepares for a meeting to choose a transitional administration, a spokesman said some 300 men had been deployed for Operation Buzzard in the south of the mountainous Khost province, down to the largely unpatrolled border with Pakistan. Lieutenant-Colonel Ben Curry said: "The operation is part of an overall aim to deny al-Qa'ida and Taliban freedom of movement, or resupply, in the Khost region."

Wire taps al-Qa'ida's plans

From the Italian intercepts:

"This will be one of those strikes that will never be forgotten ... The person who came up with this programme is a madman ... but a genius." (al-Qa'ida suspect Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman, 12 August 2000)

"The danger in the airports ... There are clouds in the sky there in international territory, in that country [the US]. The fire has been lit and is awaiting only the wind." (Abdulrahman again, the same day)

"Don't ever say those words again, not even joking! ... This plan is very, very secret, as if you were protecting the security of the state." (Egyptian al-Qa'ida suspect Abdelkader Mahmoud es-Sayed on 24 January 2001, to Ben Soltane Adel, who had asked about "the brothers who are going to the United States")