Washington ? The FBI’s embattled director acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that investigators might have been able to uncover part of the Sept. 11 plot if the FBI had properly put together all the clues in the possession of the bureau and other agencies.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters that the Minnesota arrest of alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and warnings from a Phoenix FBI agent about terrorists at aviation schools would not, on their own, have led investigators to the Sept. 11 plot.

But if the FBI had connected those two cases with other evidence that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network was keenly interested in aviation, Mueller said, “who is to say” what could have been discovered.

“I can’t say for sure that there wasn’t the possibility that we would have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers,” he said.

Mueller, who took the reins at the FBI a week before the attacks of Sept. 11, outlined his efforts Wednesday to bring new aggressiveness and organization to the fight on terror. He admitted FBI missteps and even said he agreed with a Minnesota agent’s recently publicized scathing assessment of inertia at FBI headquarters.

In one new example of missed clues, the FBI released a memo Wednesday in which one of its own pilots warned in 1998 about Middle Eastern males receiving flight training in Oklahoma that “may be related to planned terrorist activity.”

New clue emerges

Mueller made clear that he still believed the chances of uncovering the Sept. 11 plot were exceedingly slim, even with the available clues.

Yet the comments, which came during a news conference focused on the FBI’s reorganization efforts, marked the first time that a Bush administration official has indicated, even in such tentative terms, that the Sept. 11 hijackings might have been glimpsed beforehand if the FBI had acted more aggressively.

In the latest clue to emerge, a memo dated May 18, 1998, outlines how the chief pilot in the FBI’s Oklahoma City division observed large numbers of Middle Eastern males receiving flight training at the state’s airports.

The agent, who was not identified, said “this is a recent phenomenon and may be related to planned terrorist activity,” according to the memo titled, “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” The agent speculated that light planes “would be an ideal means of spreading chemical or biological agents,” the memo said.

One FBI official said Wednesday night that “we have no information that the people he was talking about were engaged in terrorist activities. It was a hunch.”

Mistakes acknowledged

Mueller’s remarks were made a week after Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley wrote a scathing, 13-page letter to Mueller accusing FBI headquarters of hampering the Moussaoui investigation, and rebuking Mueller and others for claiming that there was no way the FBI could have uncovered any of the hijackers.

While denying that he had “skewed the facts,” as Rowley alleged, Mueller acknowledged that he was mistaken in saying on Sept. 15 that the FBI had no inkling of terrorist involvement in U.S. flight schools.

Mueller said he was only later informed of the Phoenix memo, in which FBI agent Kenneth Williams warns that suspected terrorists were enrolled in aviation studies in Arizona.

Mueller said he had written to Rowley thanking her for her letter the handling of which is the subject of an inspector general’s investigation and assured her that she would not face retaliation for her blunt comments. Rowley has sought protection under federal whistle-blower laws.

“It is critically important that I hear criticisms of the organization, including criticisms of me, in order to improve the organization,” Mueller said. “Because our focus is on preventing terrorism, more so than in the past we must be open to new ideas, to criticism from within and from without, and to admitting and learning from our mistakes. I certainly do not have a monopoly on the right answers.”

Terror is new focus

Mueller was joined Wednesday by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in formally announcing a radical restructuring of the FBI, which plans to double the number of agents devoted to counterterrorism and to hire hundreds of linguists, scientists and other specialists focused on preventing terrorist attacks.

The plans, some of which require congressional approval, also would create “flying squads” at FBI headquarters to assist in terrorism investigations in field offices around the nation and abroad.

As a result, the FBI will investigate fewer cases involving narcotics, white-collar crime and violent crimes, although Mueller stressed that the bureau will remain involved in complex and multijurisdictional cases that require its expertise.

Saying that the most important priority for the agency is preventing terrorist attacks on the United States, Mueller conceded that the events of Sept. 11 made it clear that the agency “had to fundamentally change the way we do business.”

In outlining what he called “a shift from reactive to proactive” work, Mueller said the agency must “do a much better job of recruiting and training our work force … (and) do a better job of analyzing data and put prevention ahead of all else.”