New Orleans Attack Came As The Fbi Was Facing Political Heat And Bracing For A Transition

Joining law enforcement officials to update the public in the hours after a man killed 14 people and injured dozens of others in New Orleans , Louisiana's junior Republican senator, John Kennedy, implored the FBI to "catch these people" - and then added one more eyebrow-raising request of the federal government.

"After we get to the bottom of this," he said, "they need to tell the American people the truth."

The comment appeared to allude at least in part to an FBI official's erroneous assertion hours earlier that the Bourbon Street rampage was "not a terrorist event," a misstep the FBI tried to clean up with a follow-up statement that said the bureau was indeed investigating the Islamic State group-inspired attack as "an act of terrorism."

But more broadly, the suggestion that federal officials might obscure the truth of the investigation, and Kennedy's warning that he would "raise fresh hell" if they did, reflected the uneasy position the FBI had already found itself in by the time of last week's attack: buffeted by suspicion and public criticism from lawmakers, especially allies of President-elect Donald Trump, and bracing for a leadership change expected to produce dramatic upheaval at the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency.

"When the rubber meets the road, what really matters is that even in spite of all of this noise - and that's all it is, is noise - the bureau goes about doing its job on a day-to-day basis," said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI counterintelligence executive.