W A S H I N G T O N, May 31 — In its time-honored way, the FBI allowed bad news to obscure and overshadow the long-awaited announcement by Director Robert Mueller of Phase Two of his reorganization plan.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Unleashing the Bureau
In fact, in the past week to 10 days, the FBI's press coverage got so bad one almost would have thought that former Director Louis Freeh's chief of staff was again honchoing its public relations.
P.R. 101 would have dictated that as soon as Minneapolis Agent Coleen Rowley's letter became public (which of course it did within nano-seconds of being delivered to Capitol Hill), Mueller should have gotten out in front of it, declaring that the problems she complained of were just the very thing that he was planning to fix, that this is why he needs to make these changes, why he needs new agents, new technology, new resources, etc., and by the way, none of this happened on his watch.
But while he did immediately forward her diatribe to the Justice inspector general, no comment was made on any of her charges. First there were a couple of days of leaks, then virtually the entire letter was obtained and published by Time.
Rowley was embraced as a whistleblower, the courageous "FBI Mom," and was lionized to such an extent that by the time Mueller announced his Phase Two plans, some believed that Rowley was the reason for his changes.
In Mueller's on-camera statement Wednesday prior to explaining his reorganization, he finally addressed the recent furor head-on:
"In the last few weeks, two separate matters have come to symbolize that which we must change. First is what did not happen with the memo from Phoenix, which points squarely at our analytical capacity. Our analytical capacity is not where it should be. Our analysts are working harder than ever and they need help, and I believe that this plan addresses that need.
"And second, the letter from Agent Rowley in Minneapolis points squarely to a need for a different approach, especially at headquarters. And with that proposition, there really should be no debate."
He very smartly thanked Rowley for her letter, said it was important that he receive criticism of both the organization and himself (Rowley's letter contained some surprisingly personal attacks on the director), and invited anyone with any other complaints to bring them to his attention.
"I certainly do not have a monopoly on the right answers," he declared.
At the reorganization announcement, Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced Mueller with positively fulsome praise, even recounting his wartime heroics as a Marine in Vietnam, down to listing the medals and honors he had won.
The director stood there listening, looking excruciatingly embarrassed. Ashcroft's staff insisted that the attorney general simply likes, admires and supports the director and wanted to make that point.
But more than a few cynical reporters leapt to the assumption that since Mueller was being lauded so highly, it must mean he was in trouble. So several stories the next day suggested the director was under fire, fighting for his job, and even trotted out the timeworn adjective "embattled."
In fact, President Bush indicated his strong support of Mueller and his reform plan on Thursday, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's spokesman said that Leahy likes Mueller, and thinks "he's doing his darndest" to get a handle on a difficult mission.
Leahy, D-Vt., is particularly impressed by the flexibility Mueller has demonstrated and likes his attitude of being willing to bring in outside experts to enhance the FBI's performance. And the agents in the field I've been able to talk to seem generally supportive. So if there's a drumbeat out there, it's so far being played in a rather small echo chamber.
It was of course entirely expected and rather anti-climactic when the director announced that the bureau's major priorities are to protect the United States from terrorist attack, as well as foreign intelligence operations and espionage.
And much of the reassignment of agents had been leaked and anticipated for weeks if not longer; my Gentle Readers have known for months that the bureau would be pulling out of most drug investigations, except for those of major organizations or where removing agents from multi-agency task forces would be detrimental to an investigation.
But clearly field agents — including Coleen Rowley — will be reassured by his statement that "We need to do a better job at headquarters in assisting the field, and that's number one. And we need the people back at headquarters who are aggressive, who have spent time in the field, and who will be understanding of the field in terms of pressing forward on terrorism cases."
However, he made clear that while "99 percent of the investigation will be done in the field," everything has to be reported back to headquarters so that new intelligence analysts can coordinate the information flow.
"[I]t is important to have at headquarters people who are knowledgeable about [Osama bin Laden], people who are knowledgeable investigators, and people who ... [have] respect from the field. Because headquarters has to play a principal role in addressing terrorism. It has to be focal point for the intelligence, not only from around the country, but from the CIA, from various countries overseas, and should be in the position to take that intelligence, analyze that intelligence, disseminate that intelligence, and suggest to the field avenues of investigation."
And just in case you have any question about what he's talking about, he added, "It's up to headquarters to make certain that, in the case of [accused "20th hijacker" Zacarias] Moussaoui, for instance, that the agents who were working on the Moussaoui case got the Phoenix memorandum that was put out in July by Agent Williams there. It is critically important that we have that connection of dots that will enable us to prevent the next attack."
Of course, officials still maintain that despite Rowley's rant the Minneapolis office did not have sufficient evidence to go before the FISA court and request a national security warrant to search Moussaoui's computer.
The standard is there must be probable cause to believe that the subject is an agent of a foreign power. French intelligence had provided evidence of "ties" to radical fundamentalists, but nothing hard, and certainly nothing that connected him to bin Laden.
After Sept. 11, a search of Moussaoui's former digs in Oklahoma yielded the phone number of Mohamed Atta's former roommate in Hamburg; but as one official noted, even if they had gained that info prior to Sept. 11, nobody knew or cared about Atta at that point. And once Moussaoui's computer was searched, post-9/11, it was found to contain little more than information about crop-dusting — which led to one of our earliest alerts last fall.
One vital link between headquarters and the field in terrorism investigations unveiled by Mueller will be new "flying squads" which he explained as "a cadre of agents here who stay here for a period of time and who are well-versed in the particular terrorist group they're looking at, know all the players, know the history, know the background. And so that if you have an incident overseas or if you have a terrorist threat in the United States where you have an office that is looking at it but you need that expertise, there are people from headquarters that can go out with the experience." They are not meant to supersede those in the field but rather to assist.
He mentioned Boston, where agents and prosecutors suddenly became the recipient of the Richard Reid case when the alleged potential terrorist tried to blow up a plane by lighting his shoe-bombs. Mueller wants to have a flying squad ready to go into a situation such as that with all their expertise, not only to assist the local team, but also "when that case is done, the information from that case is not lost on those prosecutors and agents as they move on to address other cases in Boston, but comes back to headquarters."
Unleashing the Bureau
On Thursday the attorney general announced equally long-expected revisions to the various guidelines that govern the conduct of FBI investigations, relations with confidential informants, undercover operations, and wiretapping.
Ashcroft had made clear many months ago that these guidelines were being reviewed; what was not clear until his announcement was the broad scope of that review.
But as a senior Justice official who briefed us afterward said, "it is definitely a top-to-bottom review." The official made clear that not only "specific substance" but also the whole tone of the guidelines had been changed to reflect not only the new focus on terrorism prevention, but also a new-found trust in the field agent.
He added, "this is the most comprehensive revision of the attorney general guidelines since their promulgation" in the 1970s. The review encompassed not only the guidelines themselves but also "myriad memos" and other auxiliary and supporting documents.
And despite the uproar in the civil libertarian community — which began even before the announcement and has only increased since — the attorney general did not shy away one bit from the implications of the changes, or try to sugarcoat what they mean.
Several times he read the explicit language that authorizes agents once again to enter public meeting places even without any investigative lead, so long as they have a counterterrorism purpose. He also reiterated how important it is for agents to be able to surf the net just like any other American. Many of the revisions can be summed up as a devolution of authority — actions that once required high-level approval at FBI headquarters now can be authorized by the Special Agent in Charge — or sometimes lower.
The attorney general was obviously completely confident of the rightness of these changes, and their necessity in fighting terrorism, but it surely doesn't hurt that he can be equally confident of the overwhelming support of the U.S. public.
Some observers just shook their heads in world-weary disbelief. Do these guys really remember nothing of our history, several people asked me. One former Justice official promised to contact me in five years and we would share a laugh about what he predicted would be a huge FBI scandal resulting from these changes.
Others were aghast that some restrictions were being lifted on the handling of confidential informants within days of the conviction of former FBI Agent John Connolly. It was Connolly's lax handling of mobster Whitey Bulger, during which he was aware of and even permitted Bulger to continue his criminal career that had led to a thorough revamping of the Central Intelligence guidelines under Attorney General Janet Reno.
Others raised questions about why, just when the FBI is being given new priorities and powers in the counterterrorism war, one would disperse more authority to the field. To some it seems an invitation for abuse, and a return to the days of COINTELPRO. The senior Justice official promised, "we will never return to the bad old days," pointing out that the guidelines are "more rational, effective, and efficient" now than before.
He asserted that they will "penetrate down to the hearts and minds of agents" who will embrace the new rules rather than try to get around them in their frustration.
The Center for National Security Studies questioned the need for the revisions, and pointed out (as did some others) that the attorney general "surprisingly" had not discussed the (classified) guidelines that already exist for conducting international terrorism investigations, "which already allow the FBI to open terrorism investigations before any crime is committed and to attend Mosques and political meetings."
Further, the Center pointed out, "There is no indication that the FBI's Sept. 11 failures were in any way a result of those guidelines, but rather bureaucratic and cultural failures."
Jim Dempsey, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, offered some of the most thoughtful criticism of the revisions. He pointed out that what has changed in many instances is not so much allowing agents to attend a meeting or surf the net or other actions previously forbidden to them, as the removal of any requirement that the action be related to some investigation.
And he noted the speciousness in Justice materials that asserted agents could not conduct an online search under the term "anthrax" — "That is absurd — there was an ongoing investigation. ... This has little to do with searching for words like 'anthrax.' The question is whether general topical research includes searches for 'Palestinian rights' or other terms with a political, ethnic or religious significance." |
