Nearly six years after Nine-Eleven, a report finds America’s top law enforcement agencies still aren’t cooperating toward the common goal of preventing more terrorist attacks. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley requested the probe from the Inspectors General at the Justice Department and Homeland Security after reports surfaced that inter-agency "turf wars" are putting roadblocks in front of important investigations.
Grassley says, "The report documented reports that disputes between agents of the F-B-I and the Immigration Enforcement agency resulted in leads and even in entire cases being ignored even though they might’ve had connections to terrorist activities."
Grassley says it’s obvious the report’s findings justify concerns about a lack of trust between our two largest federal law enforcement agencies. He say they should be working together, not against each other, adding, "I hate to think how much our law enforcement agencies could be missing because of petty turf battles."
Grassley says, "That’s a pretty bad judgment against any agency that ought to be cooperating to protect us from terrorists but not willing to work with each other to get the job done." The review says agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the F-B-I aren’t working with each other on key probes, while seven in ten terrorist financing cases suffered from lack of cooperation.
Grassley says the findings underscore the need for continued vigilance by Congress. He says "that kind of institutional vanity should have been history on September 12, 2001."