by Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post
The FBI will shift 480 agents from drug and other criminal investigations to counterterrorism posts and plans to more than double the bureau’s anti-terror forces under a major reorganization that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is scheduled to announce today.
Mueller’s plan, as outlined by law enforcement officials, would permanently devote 2,600 agents -- nearly a quarter of the bureau’s 11,500-agent workforce -- to counterterrorism units, which were staffed by 1,000 agents before the Sept. 11 attacks. The bureau is also engaged in what it calls a “massive” effort to hire 900 linguists, computer experts, engineers and scientists over the next few months to improve intelligence-gathering and analysis.
In a separate development, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is revising department guidelines to give FBI officials in the field authority to open terrorism investigations and undercover probes without clearance from headquarters. The changes, scheduled to be announced Thursday, are intended to place more decision-making power in the field, even as the gathering and analysis of intelligence are increasingly centralized in Washington.
Such authority would have allowed Minnesota agents to seek a warrant to search the laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui last August without approval from headquarters, Justice Department officials said. Coleen Rowley, general counsel of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, charged last week in a 13-page letter to Mueller that an official in the FBI’s Washington counterterror unit “seemed to have been consistently, almost deliberately, thwarting” the effort to obtain such a warrant.
Moussaoui was subsequently charged as a co-conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The details revealed yesterday follow other changes previously announced as part of Mueller’s attempt to change the FBI from a law enforcement agency to one with a major focus on anticipating and thwarting terror attacks. Many of the proposals are focused on upgrading what Mueller has acknowledged is the FBI’s limited ability to gather and analyze intelligence.
Officials previously revealed Mueller’s plan to establish Washington-based “flying squads” to coordinate national and international investigations. That move is opposed by some field agents, who are already skeptical about the competence of FBI headquarters managers.
But Mueller, who took over the FBI Sept. 4 after shaking up the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco, is seeking to bring top agents to headquarters, a move many of them resisted in the past.
Mueller is also tapping into CIA resources, putting 50 CIA employees on Joint Terrorism Task Forces in field offices around the country, according to congressional sources briefed on his reorganization plan. Last week, congressional officials confirmed that another 25 CIA employees will join the FBI as counterterrorism analysts.
Mueller’s emphasis on a stronger role for headquarters in gathering and analyzing counterterror information follows scathing criticism of some Washington supervisors for failing to act on information from field agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis last summer about possible clues that a terror strike was in the works.
In addition to the pleas from Minneapolis agents about Moussaoui, counterterror supervisors received a memo last July from a Phoenix agent, warning that al Qaeda terrorists might be training at U.S. aviation schools. Agent Kenneth Williams’s suggestion for a wider canvass of those schools was rejected.
Mueller has been briefing members of Congress about his proposed changes in closed-door meetings. Sen. Charles R. Grassley (R-Iowa) a frequent FBI critic, said he would be pleased to see agents diverted from drug investigations but is not convinced a stronger role for headquarters is wise.
“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,” Grassley said. “I think Mueller should take the advice of FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and not try to investigate terrorism out of bureaucrat central, FBI headquarters.”
One FBI agent with broad experience, including time in counterterrorism, was equally dubious yesterday. “Anything controlled by headquarters is destined to be utterly frustrated,” he said.
Several field agents said they are adamantly opposed to more interference from headquarters. But some said they were encouraged to learn recently that some highly respected field supervisors are moving to headquarters as part of the new effort.
The restrictions on field offices that Ashcroft wants to reverse are an outgrowth of privacy laws that prohibit the government from collecting or archiving information except for law enforcement purposes. In the past, the government developed information for individual cases, officials said, but it now needs a mosaic of intelligence to prevent terrorist acts.
The new rules would allow field office chiefs to conduct preliminary inquiries for a full year before seeking additional clearance from headquarters.
The continued change in FBI priorities means some of the bureau’s traditional duties will shift to other federal agencies and local law enforcers.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration and state and local police would have to fill the gap created by the diversion of 400 FBI agents from narcotics investigations. Mueller has told members of Congress that the FBI will no longer open a major narcotics probe if the DEA can do it instead, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
DEA Director Asa Hutchinson said he believes diverting FBI agents to counterterrorism is “the right priority for them,” but said the DEA may require more resources. “That will be an issue which we will have to address with Justice and with Congress,” he said yesterday.
In addition, 59 agents each in violent-crime and white-collar crime units will be shifted to terrorism investigations, according to an outline of Mueller’s plan. Thirty-eight of the diverted agents from all three divisions will be placed in the FBI’s training division at headquarters.