IT TURNS OUT that on the morning of September 11, 2001, two FBI agents were monitoring phone calls from the home of a madam of a New Orleans brothel. Yes, the prostitution supervised by one Jeannette Maier so concerned the feds, who suspected it involved drug trafficking and organized crime, that wiretap authority had been duly secured. But with the terrorists attacking back East, the agents shut down the wiretap. They were back listening the next day, and in March a dozen women were indicted on charges including money laundering, racketeering, prostitution, and marijuana possession. Last month, Maier and her mother, Tommie Taylor, pleaded guilty to prostitution conspiracy.

The FBI was proud of its work–and has publicized it. But the case has drawn only criticism. It isn’t hard to see why, since here you had agents investigating prostitution even as al Qaeda terrorists were assembling in America to kill Americans. Of course, the Bureau didn’t know that, though it now concedes it might have been able to figure out at least part of the terrorist conspiracy before September 11. Even so, the New Orleans case, active on the very day the terrorists struck, sharply raises the question of federal law enforcement priority: Why should the feds have probed activity that local authorities typically handle?