Confusion and lack of information hampering probe, say officials

RELUCTANCE and difficulties in sharing information among the growing number of agencies investigating the serial sniper case, along with FBI problems handling thousands of phone tips are slowing and hampering the probe, according to law enforcement officials.

The investigation’s information-gathering effort is so unwieldy that even the suspected sniper failed in repeated efforts to get through to authorities over the weekend on a special telephone tip line that has been swamped with calls since the shootings began, FBI sources said.

Law enforcement officials across the region have repeatedly stressed the cooperative spirit of their joint task force. Nevertheless, from the street to the executive offices, they say they are struggling to get the information they need about everything from road closures to a profile of the sniper and theories about his motives.

With so many federal agencies and local police departments consumed by the investigation, information sharing was perhaps certain to be a problem, particularly because authorities want to carefully guard information that only the sniper could know or that could lead them to the killer.

“It’s a tough situation. You can’t share everything you know all the time,” said one ranking law enforcement official. “When you have the contents of the note, do you broadcast it immediately or do you work with it for several hours? I don’t think it’s easy to make those calls.”

Local law enforcement officials said that concern about leaks to the media has become so great that important information about the sniper investigation is not being shared with the people who need it most: the street detectives working each shooting.

“We’re not in the information loop,” said one local law enforcement source, who added that normal investigative conventions have largely been thrown out the window. “If we’re going to be a part of this, we want all the information we can get.”

Part of the problem, several officials said, is that detectives, agents and prosecutors do not know where to turn. “What I honestly don't know is who is in charge,” one police official said.

While Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose remains the public face of the investigation, several law enforcement and government officials said federal agencies are making all the important decisions.

There is no way to marry or even track leads that may be related. They are phoned in to a central FBI tip line and then ferried out to the police departments. “They can have two separate investigations going of the same person,” an FBI investigator said.

Already, there are numerous task forces in the region dedicated to the same goal: hunting down the sniper.

One of the most public examples of that strain came last Monday when police in suburban Richmond swarmed a white van and detained its driver at a gas station phone booth even as Chief Moose went on television to send a message to the suspected sniper.

Sources said task force members did not learn of the detention until they heard the White House announce it at a televised news conference. Maryland investigators called it “a rookie move” that tipped their hand.

Some of the more frustrating problems concern the FBI’s toll-free tip. A caller believed to be the sniper “tried to call four times over the weekend. Three times he couldn’t get through. One time he was blown off,” an FBI source said.

The tip line had generated 67,215 calls as of midnight Sunday. The system handling the huge volume of leads, dubbed ‘Rapid Start’ in the days after September 11, is anything but that, say some police and FBI sources who have called it ‘Rapid Stop.’