The FBI, under fire for alleged mishandling of information and threats agents received before the Sept. 11 attacks, is preparing to shift its primary focus from solving crimes after they happen to preventing terrorism.
FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft are expected to announce a series of changes in the FBI on Wednesday as part of a reorganization designed to boost the agency's analytical and intelligence-gathering and -sharing capabilities.
Under the new plan, Justice Department officials said, fewer resources will be devoted to investigating drug trafficking, violent crimes and white-collar crimes. Approximately 4,000 police and FBI agents will be assigned exclusively to counterterrorism duties.
In addition, Mueller plans to create the National Terrorism Task Force, designed to centralize terrorism investigations and analysis at the FBI's Washington headquarters. Officials said Mueller wants to bring in dozens of agents from the CIA and other intelligence agencies to implement better sharing of information.
"The biggest challenge will be to fundamentally alter the culture from what it was, primarily, a law enforcement agency, to an agency that develops the highest state of the art of gathering information, analyzing information, and delivering intelligence products that are designed to pre-empt actual terrorism," said former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger.
Local Agents and Police to Take More Active Role
Sources said that Mueller also wants to expand the role of local police in fighting terrorism, and the FBI wants to authorize the sharing of classified information with 1,000 more police nationwide.
Ashcroft is also said to be developing guidelines that would allow FBI field offices to take immediate action and bypass FBI headquarters in cases involving emerging terrorism situations.
This new authority would allow special agents in charge of field offices to open their own investigations without prior approval, or to extend preliminary investigations without having to wait for authorization.
Congress Demanding Explanations
The latest changes in the FBI come as lawmakers are demanding answers for the agency's alleged mishandling of information and terrorist threats before the Sept. 11 attacks and debate over whether officials could have done more to prevent the attacks.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have heard testimony from Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams, who wrote a memo two months before the attacks expressing concern about Middle Eastern men linked to Osama bin Laden and terrorist groups taking lessons at U.S. flight schools.
Williams' memo failed to reach higher FBI authorities, and agents failed to connect the memo to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was detained in August after raising suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. Officials believe Moussaoui is the alleged "20th hijacker" who intended to help the 19 men who hijacked four planes in the September attacks.
An FBI unit at headquarters charged with fighting terrorism apparently got both pieces of information. Critics said Mueller's reorganization is only a start to solving the FBI's problems and that he must also focus on changing the agency's mindset.
"Director Mueller needs to reorganize and reform the FBI, but he has to fix the root of the problem: the bureau's cultural problems with preventing crimes, putting image over substance and cooperating with other agencies," Sen. Chuck Grassley, senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "Making technology and intelligence analysis priorities are no-brainers, but a new organization chart alone won't work."
Complaint From FBI Agent
Last week, Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley, Mueller wrote a 13-page letter to Mueller complaining about how he and other top FBI officials were handling questions related to how the bureau handled the attack. While she did not accuse the agency of a cover-up, she said officials were trying to "minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI." Rowley also said FBI headquarters should have approved a request from the Minneapolis office for a search warrant involving Moussaoui.
"When, in a desperate 11th-hour measure to bypass the FBI HQ roadblock, the Minneapolis division undertook to directly notify the CIA's counterterrorist center, FBI HQ personnel chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval," Rowley wrote.
Various lawmakers wrote Mueller a letter last week demanding that Rowley be granted whistle-blower status, and that she not face retaliation for coming forward. Some are also calling for the formation of an independent panel to investigate the FBI's handling of terrorist information before the attacks.
(China Daily May 29, 2002)
