Minneapolis FBI office getting new special agent in charge

By Steve Karnowski
Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS - The Minneapolis division of the FBI will be getting a new special agent in charge later this month, an FBI spokesman said Tuesday.

FBI Director Robert Moeller III has appointed Ralph S. Boelter, who's coming from FBI headquarters in Washington, spokesman Paul McCabe said. He's expected to arrive Jan. 22.

Boelter replaces Michael Tabman, who was recalled to headquarters last year. The FBI said in September that Tabman had been "temporarily assigned to FBI headquarters to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest" during an internal inquiry into an unspecified "ongoing internal administrative matter."

McCabe would not comment on Tabman's duties now except to say Tabman "was officially transferred back to Washington, FBI headquarters" and remains on the payroll.

Reports in September by KMSP-TV and the Star Tribune, quoting unnamed sources, said the internal inquiry involved a claim of workplace retaliation against Harry Samit, an agent in Minneapolis who helped lead the investigation of now-convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

The FBI at the time declined to confirm the reason for the inquiry, and McCabe declined to do so again Tuesday, saying he can't comment on personnel matters.

Samit arrested Moussaoui at an Eagan flight school 3 1/2 weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to get a search warrant for Moussaoui's computer in the days before 9/11.

When Samit testified in Moussaoui's trial last year, he accused his superiors of "criminal negligence" for rejecting his 70 attempts and said bureaucratic resistance by FBI headquarters "prevented a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks."

Moussaoui, a confessed al-Qaida conspirator who was the only person ever charged in the United States over the Sept. 11 attacks, is now serving a life sentence.

Samit remains in the FBI's Minneapolis office and is assigned to the joint terrorism task force, McCabe said.

Samit did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.