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FBI tracking Saddam sympathizers in U.S.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday his agency has been preparing for the possibility of domestic terror attacks if the United States and its allies go to war with Iraq. In an exclusive interview with CNN, which will air in its entirety Sunday, Mueller said the FBI has been keeping an eye on people in the United States who have ties to terrorism and Saddam Hussein. "We have developed plans to address that possibility and to assure that anyone who may be supportive of the current regime of Iraq who is in this country and may have had ties to terrorism, we know about," he said. "We are comfortable that we have the capability of assuring they do not undertake a terrorist attack." CNN has reported that some Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans have been and will remain under surveillance. Regarding the issue of accountability for security lapses in intelligence before the September 11 attacks, Mueller said it would be easy to provide a sacrificial lamb to take the blame, but there's no evidence the FBI knowingly withheld information about the terrorist strikes. "It would be very easy for me or somebody else to say, 'OK, here is the person, the one person accountable for this and I am going to fire them.' ... That is not the solution to the problem," he said. "The solution is far more intricate or difficult, because it goes to changing an institution, our institution. It is more difficult in the sense we have to establish ways to exchange information that we had not established before. I think the committee is right to focus on those lapses. I also have to focus on those lapses and make certain we improve." Mueller was referring to the Joint Intelligence Committee in Congress that is investigating intelligence shortcomings in the months before the September 11 attacks. The committee approved a report Tuesday that includes recommendations on how to correct those problems. Mueller said the FBI has already implemented several of the reforms the joint commission is recommending. But he balked at the idea of a domestic spy agency, saying it would only add more bureaucracy. "What you do not want is yet another institution with the walls between the institutions at the point in time we are trying to break down the walls that have existed between the FBI and the CIA, that have existed between intelligence and the criminal side, because to be most effective we have to break down those walls and have that exchange of information that will give us the fuller picture, the fullest picture of what al Qaeda contemplates undertaking within the United States," he said.
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