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Commission Statement #9

We received this from Deryl Dantzler, Dean of the (much revered) National Criminal Defense College:

The 911 Commission Staff Statement of 4/13 points out that the pervasive practice of concealment of information from criminal defendants was part of the reason that the FBI was unable to process the information they had. Efforts to circumvent Brady, Rule 16 and 18 USC 3500 prevented them from doing their jobs!

As prepared for delivery to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Law Enforcement, Counterterrorism, and Intelligence Collection in the United States Prior to 9/11 Staff Statement No. 9:

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"Agents developed information in support of their own cases, not as part of a broader, more strategic effort. Given the poor state of the FBI's information systems, field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on. Nor did analysts have easy access to this information. As a result, it was almost impossible to develop an understanding of the threat from a particular international terrorist group.

"Agents investigated their individual cases with the knowledge that any case information recorded on paper and stored in case files was potentially discoverable in court. Thus, there was a disincentive to share information, even with other FBI agents and analysts. Analysts were discouraged from producing written assessments which could be discoverable and used to attack the prosecution's case at trial."

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The full text of the statement is available here. (pdf)

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