FBI reports missing guns, laptops

By Terry Frieden
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Hundreds of stolen or missing firearms and laptop computers are missing from the FBI, according to an extensive internal review announced by the Justice Department on Tuesday.

Nearly 500 weapons were missing, including rifles, pistols and submachine guns, officials said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft responded by asking the department's inspector general to conduct a department-wide review of weapons and equipment inventories.

Ashcroft's action followed a meeting with acting FBI Director Tom Pickard, who told him the bureau's "top to bottom review" found the unaccounted items in a search described as the most thorough inventory search in more than a decade.

The news came just a day after Ashcroft told a congressional hearing that a string of publicized troubles over the past decade have damaged public trust in the bureau.

This year alone, the FBI has been rocked by news that longtime counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen spent 15 years spying for Moscow. Revelations that FBI agents failed to disclose thousands of pages of documents in the Oklahoma City bombing case forced Ashcroft to postpone the execution of convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh for a month.

Last week, Ashcroft tightened Justice Department control over the FBI by giving the department's inspector general jurisdiction over allegations of FBI misconduct. Several members of Congress have complained the FBI has tried to cover up rather than correct its mistakes.

Classified information on one laptop

The FBI launched the investigation of missing weapons and laptops under intense scrutiny from the Justice Department and Capitol Hill. The search covered weapons that had been issued from the late 1970s, and which had been reported missing or stolen over the last eleven years.

The laptops had also been reported missing over that period of time.

"This is the most comprehensive look we have had at this inventory," an FBI official said. "It's part of a 'Back to the Basics' campaign, as we call it."

The FBI found 184 stolen or missing laptops, including one containing classified information from two closed investigations. Officials refused to identify which investigations were involved, but said they were two or three years old. FBI officials insist there is no evidence any investigation was compromised.

Of 13,000 laptops used by the FBI, they said 171 were missing and 13 were stolen.

The FBI attributed many of the missing laptops to a lack of documentation when they destroyed outmoded computers.

The agency said it has tentatively determined 449 weapons were unaccounted for. Of that number, 184 weapons of various types had been stolen, most of them from vehicles during the past 11 years.

Another 265 weapons have been reported lost. About 91 of the lost weapons had been used in training, 66 were lost to agents who had retired and apparently not turned in their service revolvers. Another four of the unaccounted weapons were associated with agents who were fired or had died, FBI officials said.

The FBI officials said they could open criminal investigations against the individuals who had retired or been fired and not returned their weapons.

The officials also said they believe some of the lost weapons could be attributed to undercover operations involving task forces and to training weapons provided to local police departments which were not returned.

More investigations to come

Most of the missing weapons are handguns, including service revolvers and pistols. Officials said, however, some long guns also were missing, including rifles and submachine guns.

The FBI information indicated at least a few of the stolen weapons had been used in robberies, but they had no detailed data.

The information was immediately provided to Capitol Hill, where Wednesday morning the second in a series of oversight hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take place.

A Justice Department official said the inspector general's investigation was ordered "out of an abundance of caution." A department-wide examination will include missing weapons and equipment at the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshal Service and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The FBI's decision to examine its inventory came after a lawmaker inquired about missing weapons in the wake of an inspector general's report in March that showed the Immigration and Naturalization Service had 539 unaccounted for firearms.

The INS had 293 weapons missing involving cases now closed and 246 associated with cases still open. The Justice Department found that 130 of the INS weapons had been lost or stolen, and more than 100 had been unaccounted for due to administrative errors. The inspector general's probe of the INS resulted in 44 of the reported missing weapons being found.