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Liberty or Safety: The Balancing Act
With the second anniversary of our nation’s most devastating terrorist attack approaching, we cannot help but reevaluate the progress of our FBI. We continue to ask the question of whether or not the new FBI director can straighten out the obvious management problems that have vexed the nation’s most important federal law enforcement agency. The answer is given on a daily basis as we realize we’ve had no catastrophic terrorist attack since September 11, 2001. In the days following 9-11, FBI Director Mueller spent much time meeting with the president. My sources tell me that at one meeting as Mueller was trying to recite facts about the terrorist attack to illustrate the FBI’s ability to conduct a post-crime investigation the president made it clear that he was less interested in finding out what happened, and more interested in preventing future attacks. During the course of a single conversation, George W. Bush defined the problem facing the FBI and fixed it. With his new marching orders, Director Muller returned to the FBI and began a policy overhaul that has resulted in the departure of most of the FBI’s senior management. The sweeping personnel changes at 9th and Pennsylvania have echoes in the FBI’s field offices as well, because vacancies and policy changes at the top cause a major reshuffling out in the field. Those senior managers who could not get with the new program, or who stood guilty of foot-dragging on important terrorism leads from the field, such as those developed in Minneapolis and Phoenix, found themselves transferred, demoted, or the subjects of severe arm-twisting to elicit retirement papers. When you look at FBI Headquarters today, there are few senior managers who served under the previous FBI Director, Louis Freeh. To understand the significant change in the approach to the investigation of terrorism by the FBI, one needs only to look back at the eight years of Bill Clinton’s administration. Recall that all attacks against the interest of this nation were treated as crimes requiring high profile investigations, and quite often, the FBI was the lead agency given the case. Thus, when embassies were bombed by Osama bin Laden, Clinton called in the FBI to conduct a criminal investigation instead of ordering a military strike. When suicide bombers in an inflatable boat blew out the side of a U.S. warship in Yemen, acting on orders by bin Laden, again Clinton ordered the FBI to conduct a criminal investigation. There were many other examples of how the FBI was used by the Clinton-Reno-Freeh team to address international terrorism in this less lethal way, but the important thing to note here is that the FBI’s internal resources were not being well utilized in fact, FBI assets were being squandered by an administration determined to side-step the bin Laden problem a growing menace with proven ability and plainly stated objectives: to kill Jews and Americans. Before 9-11, the FBI was basically divided into two parts. On one side was the criminal division which had the responsibility for making sure federal laws were being enforced. On the other side of the FBI were the “spooks,” working on foreign counter intelligence and domestic terrorism. The difficultly in merging the two functions is obvious: when you chase foreign spies you use sensitive methods and means to get the information you need to access the threat and hopefully neutralize the dangers. This includes lots of electronic eavesdropping and other techniques that the FBI and other intelligence agencies don’t want exposed in some criminal case discovery proceeding. Remember that the FBI does not do this work alone. The CIA, NSA, Department of Defense and the Secret Service as well as intelligence agencies of foreign allies all work together against world terrorism or dangerous political “isms” such as those that currently strangle the citizens of Cuba, China and North Korea. Also consider the inherent dangers that a criminal case creates for the deeply placed “agents” who secretly serve the U.S. in foreign lands. Federal judges can often order the federal government to produce witnesses for the defense, even if they are highly placed spies. One criminal case can wipe out dozens of sensitive “eyes and ears” as well as disclose the federal government’s more secretive intelligence gathering technology. In other words, the FBI divisions were not only fighting for turf and budget not to mention face-time with the director but were fighting to maintain a wall between their respective divisions so that they both could operate effectively. Of course, in this struggle, the criminal division had much to gain, and the counter intelligence division had much to lose. The Clinton administration preferred the clumsy, ineffective path of trying to bring terrorists to court a path sure to result in catastrophic destruction for U.S. interests. But a criminal case, by its very ponderous nature, bought time for Bill Clinton and his failed foreign policy. When the music stopped, Bill Clinton was no longer president, and somebody else was left holding the tab for an eight year-long party during which Clinton was able to avoid making hard choices, such as going to war with Osama bin Laden. The strike against us on 9-11 has given our new president an opportunity to reshape an agency badly in need of reform. Mere management shake-ups and reorganization would not have accomplished much, no matter how well intended, planned and executed. There was an entrenched mentality of how things should be done in the senior ranks of the FBI. Eight years of Bill Clinton and nearly eight years of Louis Freeh reinforced that mentality. The FBI has a new mission to head off terrorism and prevent future attacks. This means that much of what the FBI does and learns will never see the public light of day. The new mission greatly empowers the “intelligence” side of the agency and helps to streamline the criminal side. No longer will the FBI be able to afford taking on every “Tom, Dick and Harry” violation of federal law that a pandering congress wants to throw at it. A leaner, meaner FBI is being crafted as I write this article. The inherent danger of this newly shaped agency is that future politicians may be able to use the FBI to investigate domestic dissent, claiming that any opposition to the federal government’s agendas may indicate a willingness to commit terrorist acts. History gives us a few examples to support this: abortion clinics blown up by pro-life advocates on the Right, various citizens blown up with letter bombs from a nutcase on the Left, and, of course, the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Office Building also serves as justification for some for watching our own citizens more closely. But do these cases justify increased citizen scrutiny? Such domestic terrorist acts are rare, and when closely examined, it’s easily determined that these terrorists deranged criminals, really have acted on their own. Will the FBI end up investigating us all by claiming that every one of us has potential to be a future terrorist because we have an opinion different from the party in power? These are the questions that we should be asking the FBI today. The pratfalls of the FBI’s past are becoming a distant memory in the wake of 9-11. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of these significant and preventable errors. But can we get security from terrorists domestic or foreign without significant loss of civil liberties? That is the question that justifies closer scrutiny of the FBI. Let’s make sure they’re investigating the right people and not looking into your business or mine because we happen to own a gun, or vocally support a politician who adores the Bible or the Bill of Rights. |
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"FBI assets were being squandered by an administration determined to side-step the bin Laden problem a growing menace with proven ability and plainly stated objectives: to kill Jews and Americans."
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