FBI and NYPD must not forget lessons of 9-11

A recent, petty snit between New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly and FBI director Robert Mueller is just the sort of thing that undermines homeland security. They need to knock it off.

One urgent recommendation from the 9-11 Commission was more collaboration among the alphabet soup of intelligence, local law enforcement and homeland security agencies.

Their turf-guarding failure to share information contributed to their inability to “connect the dots,” concerning al-Qaida’s activities.

Now, more than 10 years later, we learn the NYPD got no details about the recently foiled Yemeni underwear bomb plot for a week after news of it was leaked, leading to some testy sniping between Kelly and Mueller. The public deserves better.

Some days after Kelly went public with his pique at being kept in the dark, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) grilled Mueller about it last Wednesday in a Senate hearing and Mueller acknowledged some “bumps in the road” in the relationship between the two alpha dog agencies.

The FBI and NYPD are supposed to routinely share information with one another and other agencies via the Joint Terrorism Task Force created after 9-11. Beyond that, Mueller said he and Kelly get together every six months or so. He allowed that he would take Kelly’s call should he pick up the phone.

In the interest of smoothing ruffled feathers Schumer asked Mueller to make a call instead — which he grudgingly agreed to do.

Public squabbling over who calls whom is awfully petty for two people leading the effort to keep us safe. And professional jealousy is no excuse for ignoring a hard-won lesson of 9-11.