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FBI Revamp to Make “Fighting Terrorism” its ”Central Mission”
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Ashcroft, left, and Mueller,right |
WASHINGTON, May 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Following the uproar facing the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) handling of alleged information that could have alerted them to the attacks of September 11, the FBI on Wednesday was set to announce plans to completely reorganize its structure to make the fight against terrorism its central mission, officials said Tuesday.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the law enforcement agency's embattled director, Robert Mueller, provided the reorganization plan's specifics, which were reported Tuesday to focus on “moving resources from various branches within the FBI to counter terrorism."
Ashcroft stated that the restructuring would change "FBI structure, culture and mission to one of preventing terrorism."
"It became clearer than ever [after September 11] that we had to fundamentally change the way we do business... It requires a redesigned and refocused FBI,” Mueller stated.
"Our analytical capacity is not where it should be," he continued.
The changes are also set to include a revamping of the FBI’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a renovation of the FBI’s archaic computer system.
The grand vision of Mueller's reorganization plan, mulled over since it was first announced in December, has already been presented to
Congress.
Justice Department sources suggested that roughly one quarter of the federal agency's 11,400 personnel will be diverted to anti-terror assignments - more than double the number of staff devoted to that area of law enforcement before the September attacks.
Around 400 agents assigned to anti-narcotics details will be reassigned to the anti-terror data analysis field, while "flying squads" of agents ready to investigate potential terrorist acts around the world are also to be created.
In a sharp turnaround, the formerly top priority of the U.S. war on drugs did not even make the wish list presented to Congress in the last several weeks.
Another 1,770 agents are to be assigned to teams to stop terrorist acts from even taking place, likely an attempt to scale the mountains of criticism piling up on the embattled agency over its perceived failure to address intelligence clues before the attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed more than 3,000.
But a cloud of suspicion continues to hover over the tactics and goings-on at the FBI, after a damaging memo sent last week by a longtime FBI lawyer condemning the agency's actions before and after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States surfaced in the press, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Minneapolis-based FBI veteran lawyer Coleen Rowley excoriated both the director and a number of high-ranking FBI officials at the agency's Washington headquarters for ignoring or missing warnings that could have disrupted the attacks, according to the memo published Tuesday by Time magazine on its website.
In publishing the 13-page memo - which was sent to Mueller and hand-delivered to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, the magazine suggested that Rowley could be a star witness in any
Congressional investigation of the attacks.
What form such a probe could take is currently the spoils in a battle between the legislative body and the White House.
Among criticism leveled by Rowley at the system in which she had worked since 1980 was that headquarters personnel routinely stalled requests for search warrants.
Such stalling, she claimed, hindered FBI agents' access to the laptop computer of suspected "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui - arrested August 16 at a Minnesota flight school for an immigration violation.
Moussaoui, so far the only person charged with conspiracy in the attacks that left more than 3,100 dead in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, had been on a French watch list since the late 1990s, under investigation for his connections with Muslim groups, the newsweekly said.
Rowley also explicitly detailed her doubts that the FBI could have prevented the attacks in any case. That is small comfort, however, for the agency under increasingly heavy fire for what has been seen as its ineptitude both in preventing the September attacks and guarding against similar strikes on U.S. soil.
The memo from Minneapolis comes on the heels of revelations from an FBI field office in Phoenix, Arizona, where an agent in July 2000 authored a memo discussing a possible link between student pilots and an Islamic group.
Both Mueller and Ashcroft, who has since September 11, boosted both the financial resources and access to the public of the federal law enforcement agency, were informed of the existence of the Phoenix memo just days after the attacks. It is alleged that neither official told the president.
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