“Congress had been unwilling to criticize the CIA and FBI in the months after 9/11, particularly as the agencies focused on trying to thwart new attacks. But that began to change on May 8 [2002], when [Robert] Mueller, who had become FBI director a few days before the attacks, told a Senate subcommittee that his agency had not paid enough attention to a memorandum from an agent in Phoenix [Kenneth Williams] who had detected a disturbing pattern of Middle Eastern men at American flight training schools. This was the first public disclosure of the memo that had been sent to FBI headquarters in July 2001 and ignored… ‘The American people are entitled to know why red flags were ignored, and I think the F.B.I. has a lot of explaining to do,’ Senator John Edwards [Democrat] of North Carolina told Mueller.”
– Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, Page 179