- To uphold the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law
- To protect the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities
- To provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies
- To perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public and is faithful to the Constitution of the United States
How the FBI Is Organized
The FBI is located in Washington, D.C., and is headed by a director, who holds a maximum term of ten years. The director is appointed by the president but has to be approved by the Senate. The FBI director and the Washington, D.C., office coordinate the work of fifty-six field offices, about four hundred satellite offices (called resident agencies), and forty-five foreign posts (called legal attaché offices, or legats). As of June 30, 2003, there were nearly 28,000 FBI employees. About 11,633 of these were special agents, while 15,904 held support positions.
The FBI's goals are often confused with those of several other government agencies, notably the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). The FBI is distinct from the CIA in two major ways: (1) the CIA is specifically forbidden from collecting information on U.S. citizens or corporations (it is allowed to collect information only on foreign citizens and other countries); and (2) the CIA is not a law enforcement agency but rather collects and analyzes data pertinent to national security. The FBI differs from both the DEA and the ATF in that those agencies have very specific missions (the enforcement of drug laws and the enforcement of firearms statutes, including the investigation of nonterrorist arsons and bombing incidents, respectively), while the FBI, as stated on its Web site (http://www.fbi.gov/), is the "primary law enforcement agency for the U.S. government."
The FBI's activities are monitored by a variety of government agencies. The FBI director reports directly to the U.S. attorney general. The FBI reports investigative findings to the attorney general and U.S. attorneys nationwide, and these findings are also often examined by judicial agencies. The U.S. Congress supervises FBI budget requests (in 2003, the budget was $4.3 billion), as well as its day-to-day operations and investigations.
The History of the FBI
THE EARLY YEARS: FOUNDING TO WORLD WAR II. The FBI came into being on July 26, 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt's attorney general, Charles J. Bonaparte, ordered a group of special agents to report to Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch. In 1909 this force was designated the Bureau of Investigation. At first, the bureau mainly investigated crimes like antitrust or naturalization violations. After the outbreak of World War I (1914–18), its mandate expanded, with the bureau gaining some responsibility in such areas as espionage, sabotage, and selective service. It monitored individuals such as anarchists, communists, trade union activists, civil rights activists, and foreign resident agitators. However, after the war, the bureau was criticized for supposedly conducting illegal searches and denying suspects proper legal counsel.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the bureau expanded. In 1924 perhaps the bureau's most famous director took office—J. Edgar Hoover, who would remain bureau/FBI director for almost half a century until his death in 1972. Hoover immediately began to reform and "professionalize" the organization. The fingerprint database, which would come to be the largest repository of fingerprints in the world, was created in 1924. The FBI Laboratory was established in 1932 to analyze physical evidence. In 1934 agents gained the legal right to make arrests themselves rather than having to rely on local law enforcement officials, and in 1935 the bureau became known by its current name, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As World War II (1939–45) started in Europe, the FBI began focusing significant energies on such wartime issues as sabotage, and when the United States entered the war in 1941, the bureau's responsibilities increased again. This time, it was responsible for enforcing the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent, something that was done, supporters argued, for reasons of national security, despite J. Edgar Hoover's protests that it was an unnecessary measure.
CONTROVERSIAL DECADES: THE 1950s TO 1970s. In the post–World War II period, the Soviet Union gained in power and became a major rival of the United States. In the late 1940s the Soviet army occupied much of Eastern Europe. China fell to the communists in 1949, the same year the Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon. The combined specters of communist aggression and atomic weaponry made the American public nervous. The FBI began undertaking thorough background checks of applicants for government jobs—particularly those requiring access to nuclear data or materials.
Yet during the 1950s and 1960s, the FBI overstepped its bounds, providing secret assistance to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUAA) and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The HCUAA and Senator McCarthy promoted communist "witch hunts" in an attempt to expose communist sympathizers, whom they believed had infiltrated all parts of American culture and government and who threatened national security. The FBI provided the HCUAA with information from confidential files.
The 1960s were a turbulent decade, during which the FBI was involved in civil rights cases in America's South. In the summer of 1964 the FBI investigated the murders of three voter registration workers in Mississippi. In 1967 seven men connected to the Ku Klux Klan were convicted of the murders. The FBI also investigated and made arrests in the assassinations of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers. Violent groups such as the Weather Underground, who set off bombs in the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and the Black Panther Party, whose members were involved in several shootouts with police, were also investigated.
In the 1970s there were attacks on the FBI's domestic information gathering after news damaging to the FBI emerged—notably, that many of the FBI investigations of the 1950s and 1960s were illegal. At the time, public scrutiny went beyond the FBI's information activities to its program of domestic covert actions, called COINTELPRO—shorthand for "counterintelligence program." COINTELPRO was evidently intended to disrupt and discredit the leaders of certain domestic dissident groups, such as "New Left" groups (who opposed the Vietnam War), the U.S. Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party, black nationalists, the Black Panthers, and other extremist groups. It became clear that these secret disruptive activities, which dated back to the 1950s, went well beyond the law in most instances.
According to Kenneth O'Reilly (in "Federal Bureau of Investigation," Dictionary of American History, Supplement, New York: Scribner's, 1996), "After Hoover's death in 1972, many of the FBI's files were opened under the Freedom of Information Act. They revealed that the bureau had done much more than compile intelligence on such 'dissidents' as civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Special agents committed thousands of burglaries to gather information and ran counterintelligence programs to 'neutralize' communists and anti-Vietnam protestors." The FBI also ran illegal wiretaps and collected and distributed information for political reasons. Special committees from the Senate and House investigated these abuses, and a 1977 DOJ task force referred to these types of actions as felonious conduct. It also became known that Hoover also used the power of the FBI to more or less blackmail politicians into keeping him in office. He used FBI staff to conduct research on prominent congressional representatives and senators, then used any negative information as leverage against them.
The 1970s were also made turbulent by the Watergate scandal, which forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign. It also led to the resignation of the acting FBI director, L. Patrick Gray, because he had destroyed Watergate evidence and had leaked information on the FBI investigation to White House staff. Watergate hearings revealed that President Nixon had used the FBI to conduct illegal investigations of his political enemies.
COINTELPRO was terminated by the attorney general in 1971. In the early 1990s, the FBI pulled back on its domestic counterintelligence activities, limiting its focus to domestic terrorist and antigovernment militia groups. In a way, this newfound restraint would be rewarded: the 1996 AntiTerrorism Law, passed by Congress in response to the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Atlanta, Georgia (Olympics), bombings, gave freer rein to the FBI to conduct surveillance and counterintelligence against truly violent groups.
RECENT HISTORY: THE 1980s THROUGH TODAY. In the early 1980s the prevalence of terrorism soared, and counterterrorism became an important part of the FBI's mission. At the same time, the FBI worked with the DEA to combat drug activity. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States was left as the one major superpower in the world. The FBI took this opportunity to concentrate more of its resources on domestic issues while still taking a large part in national security efforts. Some three hundred special agents were reassigned from counterintelligence work to domestic violent crime investigations. Not all of the FBI's domestic efforts were successful, and the shooting deaths in 1992 of two members of a white separatist family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the eighty deaths resulting from a standoff at the Branch Davidian religious sect compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993 turned some public opinion against the FBI. Many American politicians and citizens considered the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents evidence that the FBI could not adequately handle "crisis situations."
In addition, then–FBI director William S. Sessions was accused of numerous ethical violations, including personal use of FBI resources. A DOJ investigation later confirmed these violations, but Sessions refused to resign, so he was fired by then-President Bill Clinton. Louis J. Freeh, who became FBI director in 1993, attempted to revitalize the beleaguered bureau, streamlining and overhauling various FBI procedures. An International Law Enforcement Academy was founded in 1995.
Terrorism continued to be a major issue throughout the 1990s, and the FBI participated in investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City, the 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the "Unabomber" bombings of Theodore Kaczynski, and U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The late 1990s saw more controversy, related to supposedly sloppy work at the FBI Laboratory and the investigation of Richard Jewell, who was questioned in connection with a bombing at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Jewell, a security guard who was working at the Olympics, was originally the FBI's prime suspect. Jewell was never charged, and his name was ultimately cleared, but the FBI was suspected of leaking his name to the media and of interviewing him outside the guidelines of the law. The FBI Laboratories were cleared by a 1997 DOJ investigation of the most heinous charges, but the FBI did censure agents for violating Jewell's rights when they interrogated him without his lawyer present.
The FBI took a leading role in investigations relating to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including the perpetrators of the attacks, the anthrax-laced letters that followed, and the prevention of future attacks. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, more than half of the FBI's special agents were working on issues directly related to the attacks or prevention of future attacks.
FBI Investigations
On its Web site the FBI defines its "investigative functions" as "applicant matters; civil rights; counterterrorism; foreign counterintelligence; organized crime/drugs; violent crimes and major offenders; and financial crime." It can take on any investigation that Congress has not expressly given to another federal agency. Examples of investigations handled by other agencies include postal investigations, which are handled by the U.S. Postal Service; customs investigations, handled by the U.S. Customs Service; and counterfeiting investigations, handled by the Secret Service. The mandate of the FBI includes gathering information and evidence and making arrests (at least on U.S. soil—special agents generally do not have the power to make arrests abroad). However, the FBI has no power to prosecute or recommend prosecution for specific individuals; those decisions must come from federal prosecutors working for the DOJ.
SPECIAL AGENTS. The FBI staff who carry out investigations are called special agents. They have numerous powers to help them fulfill their duties, including the rights to carry weapons, to arrest suspects, and to subpoena witnesses of grand jury investigations. With judicial backing, they can tap telephone lines, read mail, and obtain personal documents such as tax returns and telephone bills.
SHARING AUTHORITY WITH LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT. In investigations with "concurrent jurisdiction" (for example, where a crime is a local, state, and federal violation at the same time), the FBI does not "outrank" the other agencies. Law enforcement agencies representing all levels of government, including the FBI, often work cooperatively on investigations. Some of the ways in which the FBI can assist local investigations include:
- Monitoring and identifying fugitives' fingerprints. The FBI maintains a Criminal Master File in its Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that contains the fingerprints and criminal histories of more that forty-seven million individuals.
- Entering data on local fugitives into its national database, the National Crime Information Center. In 2003 the center revealed that it processes about 3.5 million inquiries a day from law enforcement agencies across the nation.
- Providing laboratory analysis of evidence
- Pursuing and attempting to arrest fugitives who cross state lines or leave the country. According to information available on the FBI's Web site in October 2004, at any given time the FBI is searching for about twelve thousand fugitives.
Local law enforcement agencies assist the FBI by providing it with crime statistics, which are then collected in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. These statistics are provided by about seventeen thousand agencies, and the data represent 94% of the U.S. population. The FBI works with federal law enforcement agencies as well, both on specific investigations and in ongoing task forces, and also shares information with some foreign law enforcement organizations. Training of law enforcement officers is provided by the FBI to both domestic and foreign law enforcement staff.
INTERNATIONAL AND TERRORIST THREATS. The FBI has various duties in regard to terrorism and espionage. It investigates bombings both on U.S. soil and abroad when the suspected target of the bombing is a U.S. citizen or a U.S. interest (such as an embassy). It works with other domestic and foreign agencies to share information that might be useful in combating terrorism. The FBI monitors hate groups and potential terrorist groups in accordance with guidelines set by the attorney general. Only those groups showing strong evidence of a predilection toward unlawful behavior are monitored.
Beyond terrorism, the FBI also has other duties to protect the country from international threats, including counterintelligence. According to information available on the FBI's Web site in October 2004, "the FBI is responsible for detecting and lawfully countering actions of foreign intelligence services and organizations that employ human and technical means to gather information about the United States which adversely affects U.S. national interests." This espionage can consist of "the acquisition of classified, sensitive, or proprietary information from the U.S. government or U.S. companies." The FBI estimates that espionage costs the United States $100 billion each year.
A Changing FBI in the Wake of 9/11
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against America, a new wave of criticisms were leveled at the FBI. Several different incidents provided detractors with ammunition. For one, a group of FBI counterterrorism special agents based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, learned of a new student at a Minnesota flight school—one Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui piqued the agents' interest because he paid $6,200 in cash for flight training and only wanted to learn to fly, not land, Boeing 747s. When Moussaoui's visa expired in August 2001 and he continued to remain in the country, the Minneapolis agents arrested him and did a thorough background check, only to discover that his background included ties to followers of Osama bin Laden. The agents requested a special search warrant to check a computer disk owned by Moussaoui, but their request was denied. Less than a week later, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rocked the nation. As of 2004, Moussaoui was being prosecuted as the alleged "twentieth" hijacker, who would supposedly have participated in the attacks had he not been in FBI custody.
A "whistle-blowing" letter from Minneapolis FBI Chief Counsel Colleen Rowley accused the FBI of deliberately obstructing the Minneapolis agents. Another FBI special agent, Kenneth Williams, wrote a memo in July 2001 warning of suspicious activity by Middle Eastern men in Arizona flight schools. The Phoenix, Arizona, agent suggested that FBI headquarters take a nationwide survey of Arab-American flight school students, but the memo was not passed along to the appropriate people and was never acted upon. The FBI director was not aware it existed until a few days after September 11, 2001. A 1998 memo out of the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, FBI office warned of a similar phenomenon but did not receive much attention either.
As part of the wave of reforms undertaken after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III instituted a major reorganization of the FBI to deal with such complaints. Director Mueller viewed his plan as an "evolving road map" that could be adjusted to meet the needs of American security. According to a June 6, 2002, statement before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary ("A New FBI Focus"), Director Mueller adapted previous strategic plans to come up with the following ten priorities for the FBI (listed here in his own words):
- Protect the United States from terrorist attack.
- Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage.
- Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes.
- Combat public corruption at all levels.
- Protect civil rights.
- Combat transnational and national criminal organizations and enterprises.
- Combat major white-collar crime.
- Combat significant violent crime.
- Support federal, state, municipal, and international partners.
- Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission.
In the same statement, Director Mueller noted that the changes to the FBI to accomplish these priorities would
FIGURE 8.4
be "built upon three key interrelated elements: (1) refocusing FBI mission and priorities; (2) realigning the FBI workforce to address these priorities; and (3) shifting FBI management and operational cultures to enhance flexibility, agility, effectiveness, and accountability."
The priority reorganization led to important changes in the FBI's Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Laboratory divisions, and the establishment of a Cyber Division, as well as a Security Division, Records Management Division, and Office of Law Enforcement Coordination. Other changes included personnel reorganization, revised procedures for information sharing, and changes in the way the FBI conducts criminal investigations.
PERSONNEL CHANGES. In addition to the movement of personnel from some divisions to others, the personnel reorganization led to five new executive assistant directors, who report directly to the FBI director. These assistant directors oversee the areas of intelligence, counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal investigations, law enforcement services, and administration. (See Figure 8.4). This relieved some of the burden formerly shouldered by the FBI's deputy director and increased accountability and oversight.
The restructuring plan also called for the nature of the FBI's workforce to change. Previously, most special agents had been generalists. After the reorganization the agency sought subject experts with extensive knowledge in such fields as information technology, foreign languages, engineering, and so forth.
INFORMATION SHARING AND THE OFFICE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT COORDINATION. In a May 8, 2002, statement before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary ("FBI Reorganization"), Director Mueller admitted that "information sharing," or FBI coordination with state and local law enforcement authorities, left something to be desired: "[Our] history of solid, personal relationships alone was not addressing the basic information needs of our counterparts…. Adding 650,000 state and local officers to our efforts is the only way to make this truly a national effort, not just a federal effort." Many of the changes to specific FBI divisions integrated an increase in information sharing with state and local law enforcement agencies.
The FBI's plan also created a new Office of Law Enforcement Coordination, whose purpose is to "improve relationships and information sharing with state and local police professionals and others" ("FBI Reorganization"). The emphasis on information sharing had its genesis in local law enforcement complaints that the FBI sometimes kept local agencies "out of the loop" and that FBI personnel turnover had a damaging effect on cooperation efforts.
STRONGER FBI/CIA COOPERATION. The FBI also strengthened its ties with the CIA to facilitate information sharing. In a June 27, 2002, statement before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs ("Homeland Security"), Director Mueller noted that the FBI/CIA "relationship has a long history, and is the subject of much contemporary comment, most of it critical. But for those commentators, I would counsel caution. The relationship has changed, and is still changing, all for the better." Under the new plan, FBI staff worked at CIA headquarters, and vice versa. Information about important security issues was exchanged between the two agencies on a daily basis.
SECURITY DIVISION CREATED. The FBI reorganization plan included the creation of a Security Division, the purpose of which is to raise the level of FBI security practices and standards. This measure was in many ways a response to the 2001 arrest of Robert P. Hanssen, a veteran FBI special agent who was charged with selling national security secrets to the Soviet Union/Russia during a fifteen-year time span. As Director Mueller's May 8, 2002, statement declared, "We need to remedy the weaknesses that the Hanssen investigation made painfully obvious."
RECORDS MANAGEMENT DIVISION ESTABLISHED.The FBI reorganization plan established a new Records Management Division. This division is charged with modernizing FBI record-keeping systems, policies, and procedures in order to prevent important records from becoming lost or misplaced.
COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION REORGANIZED. Much of Director Mueller's plan focused on improvement of the FBI's counterterrorism investigations and programs. The FBI Counterterrorism Division work was once done by local field offices investigating groups in their own areas, with little contact between them. In December 2001 the
TABLE 8.1
| FBI intelligence analysts, 2004 | ||
| Year | Total | Hired |
| SOURCE: "Intelligence Analysts," in Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: The FBI's Counterterrorism Program since September 2001, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, April 14, 2004, http://www.fbi.gov/publications/commission/9-11commissionrep.pdf (accessed September 23, 2004) | ||
| FY 2001 | 1023 | 42 |
| FY 2002 | 1012 | 96 |
| FY 2003 | 1180 | 250 |
| 3/4/2004 | 1197 | 72 |
| Grand total | 460 | |
Counterterrorism Division was reorganized into branches, sections, and units, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the terrorism threat facing the United States. (See Figure 8.5.) Each component within the division is staffed with intelligence analysts and subject matter experts who work with agents in the field, providing a real-time reaction to imminent threats.
After September 11, 2001, the number of FBI agents working on counterterrorism matters rose from 1,351 to 2,398 in February 2004. (See Figure 8.6.) The number of intelligence analysts working on counterterrorism increased from 1,023 in 2001 to 1,197, as of March 4, 2004. (See Table 8.1.) In addition, after 2001 nearly seven hundred new translators, both FBI employees and contract workers, were added. Among new employees, the increases have been particularly dramatic in the languages of the Middle East. (See Table 8.2.)
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE DIVISION RESTRUCTURED.The restructuring plan for the FBI's Counterintelligence Division instituted a new espionage section, focusing on investigations. This allows operations staff to concentrate their energies on detecting and thwarting intelligence threats. The division works more closely than previously with other government agencies and the private sector to protect U.S. secrets. An Office of Intelligence was created in December 2001 to provide a "tactical intelligence analytical capacity" ("A New FBI Focus")—in other words, to try to create a "big picture" from what may be many seemingly unrelated pieces of data.
CYBER DIVISION ESTABLISHED. The FBI established its Cyber Division in December 2001. This group, according to the FBI Web site, "coordinates, supervises and facilitates the FBI's investigation of those federal violations in which the Internet, computer systems and networks are exploited as the principal instruments of targets of criminal, foreign intelligence, or terrorism activity and for which the use of such systems is essential to that activity." The FBI works with private businesses, academia, and governmental agencies to procure the technology skills needed to conduct these high-tech investigations.
FIGURE 8.5
LABORATORY FUNCTIONS DIVIDED. During the FBI reorganization, the Laboratory Division was split into two separate divisions, Laboratory and Investigative Technologies, to address questions of "mission, staffing, and funding" ("A New FBI Focus"). The new Laboratory Division collects, processes, and analyzes evidence. It also provides training and conducts forensic research and development. The Investigative Technologies Division focuses on technical support to investigators, including electronic or physical surveillance and wireless or radio communications. Like the Laboratory Division, the Investigative Technologies Division also has training and research and development functions.
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION CHANGES. With the emphasis on improvements to the FBI's counterterrorism efforts, Director Mueller pointed out that particular care should be taken that the new operations should not eclipse the FBI's "day-to-day" criminal investigation priorities: public corruption,
FIGURE 8.6
civil rights, transnational and national criminal organizations, major white-collar crime, and significant violent crime. While staff were transferred to counterterrorism assignments from criminal investigation areas like drug investigations, white-collar-crime investigations, and violent-crime investigations, these areas remain a priority.
However, in the short run, according to one of Director Mueller's statements before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the FBI
must be prepared … to defer criminal cases to others, even in significant cases, if other agencies possess the expertise to handle the matter adequately. In situations where other … capabilities are not sufficient to handle a case or situation, SACs [Special Agents in Charge] should be prepared to step in and provide FBI resources as needed. However, once the immediate situation is under control or resolved I expect SACs to reevaluate the level of FBI commitment and make necessary adjustments.
Director Mueller pointed out that it was also crucial for FBI agents working on seemingly mundane cases to be watchful for any evidence of terrorism. In his June 2002 statement he noted, "Other terrorist investigations have revealed patterns of low-level criminal activity by terrorists. It is the duty of every FBI employee to remain vigilant for suspicious activity or informant information that could be a tip-off to a future terrorist attack." That way, even FBI agents not involved in the FBI's Counterterrorism or Counterintelligence
TABLE 8.2
| FBI translators | |||
| Major language | 9/11/01 | Present | Net change |
| SOURCE: "Increased Language Translation Capabilities to Support Counterterrorism," in Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: The FBI's Counterterrorism Program since September 2001, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, April 14, 2004, http://www.fbi.gov/publications/commission/9-11commissionrep.pdf (accessed September 23,2004) | |||
| Arabic | 70 | 207 | +137 |
| Farsi | 24 | 55 | +31 |
| Pashto | 1 | 10 | +9 |
| Urdu | 6 | 21 | +15 |
| Chinese | 67 | 119 | +52 |
| French | 16 | 34 | +18 |
| Hebrew | 4 | 11 | +7 |
| Korean | 18 | 25 | +7 |
| Kurdish | 0 | 5 | +5 |
| Russian | 78 | 100 | +22 |
| Turkish | 2 | 10 | +8 |
Divisions can become useful tools in the battle against terrorism.
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