Report: FBI still outgunned by terror threat

A blue-ribbon panel that reviewed the FBI’s response to challenges after the September 11 attacks has concluded that the premier federal law enforcement agency isn’t moving fast enough to transform itself into an intelligence operation that can predict future terrorist attacks and gather information overseas about threats to Americans.

The three-member board tempered its criticism of the FBI with plaudits for its progress since 2001, but the commission said more change is “urgently” needed — a critique that seems particularly pointed in light of the more than 13 years that have passed since the Al Qaeda-directed attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“During the decade and a half after 9/11, the FBI has changed. It is currently changing, but must urgently and boldly accelerate this change,” former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Colo.) said during a press conference at FBI Headquarters in Washington. “Leadership at all levels of the FBI is not unified or consistent in driving cultural change…..Over the course of this next century, hundreds of Americans’ lives will depend on it.”

In an effort to embrace the report’s themes, FBI Director James Comey appeared Wednesday morning with Roemer and the two other panel members: former Attorney General Ed Meese and Georgetown University Professor Bruce Hoffman.

“The progress has been extraordinary….but it’s not good enough,” Comey declared as he welcomed the report, ordered by Congress to assess the FBI’s compliance with recommendations put forward by the original 9/11 commission.

— The FBI hasn’t done enough to integrate intelligence analysts into the bureau’s work and still lacks a clear career path for such specialists, resulting in many of them leaving for jobs elsewhere in the government.

— The bureau’s practice of rotating personnel through top assignments disrupts their ability to oversee needed changes and to develop expertise critical to assessing terrorism and national security threats.

— Some FBI agents stationed abroad, called legal attaches, don’t have the equipment needed to easily access sensitive intelligence and lack the necessary authority to marshal resources.

— Improving information sharing with state and local officials is a post-9/11 “good news story,” but some local and state police officials still feel they’re simply mined for data and rarely get back information from the feds.

— The FBI should get out of the business of what federal officials refer to as “countering violent extremism,” because it is ill-suited to such work.

Comey said he agreed with many of the report’s recommendations, but he challenged the proposal that the FBI leave counter-extremism work to other agencies.

“I respectfully disagree with the review commission,” the director said. “It should not be focused on messages about faith it should not be socially-focused, but we have an expertise…I have these people who spend all day long thinking dark thoughts and doing research at Quantico, my Behavioral Analysis Unit. They have an incredibly important role to play in countering violent extremism.”

Some counter-extremism experts and many in the Muslim community have argued that the FBI and federal prosecutors — who play key roles in the current effort — are not the best interlocutors because they’re perceived as trying to develop informants rather than help communities head off trouble. The review panel seems to back that view, while adding that the FBI effort is too poorly funded to make a significant impact.

“The FBI should not be utilizing their resources in what you might call the retail business of countering propaganda,” Meese said. “The bureau doesn’t have the resources to get into the business of the….social and preventive aspects of it.”

Roemer pointed to language report language saying the FBI’s “fundamental law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities do not make it an appropriate vehicle” for such counter-extremism efforts.

The panel also looked at the FBI’s still-ongoing investigation of the 9/11 attacks, as well as new case theories. The commission concluded that an FBI source reported to have been a potential route to reach Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s may not have ever been in direct contact with the Al Qaeda leader, and there was no reason to think that would have produced information on an attack whose planning began in 1998 or 1999.

The review group also dismissed reports that a Saudi family living in Sarasota, Fla., described as having fled the U.S. soon after the 9/11 attacks, had links to the hijackers or the crime.

The commission did find that there is “ongoing internal debate” within the FBI about whether the two of the hijackers may have had assistance as they prepared for the attack or shared plans for the crime with others.

“The fact that there is some debate, internal debate within the FBI between different teams, I think, we found that to be healthy — productive,” Roemer said.

Comey said the internal discussions haven’t changed the FBI’s basic conclusions about 9/11, but they are evidence that agency continues to challenge its assumptions.

“We have no credible evidence that there were additional participants, supporters, funders that we haven’t charged, we haven’t identified,” the director said. “No one has forgotten. We’re continuing to see is this lead worth pursuing is that lead worth pursuing and arguing with each other about what could be drawn from what leads.”

The report also looks at five major terrorism cases the FBI has handled since 9/11 and evaluates its performance. The panel said that more aggressive collection of human intelligence in Boston’s Muslim community could have alerted the bureau to the fact that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev had angry outbursts that led to his banning by a local mosque.

Comey said he believed the FBI could try to gather information on potential crimes while still respecting religious freedom.

“I would hope that people would tell us if they hear someone in an educational institution, a religious institution, or standing on a street corner talking about something beyond faith, about violence about engaging in some conduct that would be criminal,” Comey said. “I’m a big fan of the First Amendment. I think people should worship as they choose, that people shouldn’t worry about the FBI trying to figure out how they understand their faith. But when someone crosses that bright line from discussing and thinking to talking about acting, I would like to know.”

While Comey was in the hot seat Wednesday, answering reporter’s questions about the FBI’s effort to transform itself, the commission’s review is more of a report card on the tenure of his predecessor, Robert Mueller. He took over the bureau a week before 9/11 and stepped down in September 2013, making way for Comey.

The review panel was the brainchild of former Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who pushed through legislation to force an assessment of whether the FBI had complied with the recommendations of the original 9/11 commission. Wolf attended Wednesday’s event and told reporters he believes the review panel did “a good job.”

Everyone know that the Feds have defined gun owners, conservatives, libertarians, vets, and evangelical Christians to be the terror threat. There is nothing more federal than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You bet they are out manned and out gunned by their own definition of the enemy, and that’s the way if should be.

As TJ said, when the people fear the government we have tyranny, and when government fears the people, we have freedom. The problem today id that the government has no regard does not hear, and does not fear the public.

I remember when there used to be a clear delineation: FBI for domestic security, CIA for international security. But both agencies hated that, for the simple reason that it told both of them there was somewhere where “they couldn’t go.”

This goes against the grain for both police and intelligence agencies, who tell themselves they could do so much more if they are just “untied”. But the truth is just the opposite.

When any form of government wants to expand beyond its limits, its “main mission” suffers. The bureaucrats’ pipe dream always begins with, “My job would be so much easier, if...”

But what *invariably* results, is that the bureaucracy spends all of its time on wasteful minutiae, while the “main mission”, the “big stuff” gets ignored. It is a recipe for disaster.

The US is heading in the same direction as did East Germany towards the end. While their country was impoverished and falling apart, as well as horribly polluted, due almost entirely to neglect, almost *half* of their population had been coerced into laying information about the other half.

Warehouses filled with dossiers on every person in that country. Vast amounts of useless and petty trivia: how much toilet paper they used, and the amount of time they spent in the bathroom, to the second.

And the bureaucrats were convinced that every bit of that useless and worthless trivia was life or death important. While at the same time their stores were empty, their people were miserable, and their lives were moribund.

This is what our government agencies want as well. Not to do their jobs, but to do other bureaucrats jobs, and to force on everybody else a meaningless, life in a fishbowl life. Meanwhile ignoring everything important, and real threats that are obvious.

My experience with the FBI is thus:

1. They’re always smarter than you, no matter what.
2. Solutions must come from them, per #1.
3. Failure to recognize #1 and #2 lead to project paralysis.
4. The lower the rank, the stronger these attributes are manifested.
5. Some completely write you off if you believe morality and forgiveness are better coming from Christ, rather than from government.

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