New Senate judiciary chairman plans hearings into FBI

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he intends to hold "very serious hearings" into what he terms "egregious problems" within the FBI.

"I think it is time that Republicans and Democrats, using the Judiciary Committee, do an overall look at the FBI, an in-depth look," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont on CBS' "Face The Nation" news program.

"The bureau lives sometimes as an isolated area where they forget that they're responsible to the attorney general and they're responsible to the Congress," Leahy said.

The FBI has been under fire for a number of high-profile snafus, including its revelation last month that it had failed to turn over thousands of pages of documents to attorneys during the trial of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. That development led to the postponement of McVeigh's execution.

The current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he also supports the idea of a Senate probe. He would be the ranking Republican member on the panel if Democrats, as expected, take control of the Senate this week

MESSAGE BOARD Discuss the McVeigh execution     ALSO Timeline: The FBI under Freeh Previous FBI controversies

"We need to do a top-to-bottom analysis of the FBI and help them to be able to solve some of the problems that occasionally do arise," Hatch said on ABC's "This Week."

Hatch defended the bureau and its outgoing director, Louis Freeh, saying that given the scope and complexity of the FBI's tasks, "it's amazing that it operates as efficiently and wonderfully well as it does."

Leahy said that in addition to holding hearings, he would also use confirmation hearings for Freeh's successor to examine the FBI.

Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, said Sunday that he intends to introduce a bill setting up a panel of "law enforcement experts" to scrutinize the bureau "because there have just been too many mistakes." He said he would seek a Republican co-sponsor for the legislation.

"When an agency becomes as large and bureaucratic as they are, there's trouble," Schumer said on "This Week."

"We need to examine what went wrong. If it was one mistake, fine, but it's mistake after mistake after mistake," Schumer added.

Leahy said the recent incidents that would be investigated include:

-- The FBI's probe of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing in 1996, in which a security guard was wrongly identified as a suspect. The man eventually charged in the blast, Eric Robert Rudolph, fled into the North Carolina woods and has never been found.

-- The agency's investigation into espionage allegations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which led to the controversial arrest of Chinese-American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was charged with 59 felony counts of mishandling classified data and jailed for nine months. Lee eventually pleaded guilty to a single count, and the FBI was criticized for its treatment of the Taiwan-born naturalized citizen.

-- The recent arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who allegedly spied for the Soviet Union and later Russia for 15 years under the FBI's nose without being detected.

-- Why hundreds of FBI documents in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation weren't disclosed to attorneys in the case until days before the scheduled execution of McVeigh. His execution has been delayed until June 11, but his attorneys have gone to court seeking an additional stay.