Controversial U.K. spy agency could serve as model
for U.S. - MI-5 long accused of abusing power Excerpt:
LONDON - Britain's controversial domestic spy unit, MI-5, is emerging as a model for a possible U.S. agency that may be created to take over the FBI's role in the expanding fight against terrorism.
U.S. lawmakers look to MI-5 - once so secret that even its director's identity was kept from the public - as proof that an internal spy unit can exist in a democracy without trampling on citizens' right to privacy.
They contend that the FBI is trained in law enforcement, not crime prevention, and is inadequate for the task of intelligence gathering. That's the specialty of MI-5, whose agents enjoy broad powers to eavesdrop on British citizens, even if that means entering their homes to plant a wiretap or other intrusive devices.
MI-5 operates under parliamentary oversight. Wiretaps can be installed only if approved by Cabinet-level officials, but some Britons believe that MI-5 still has far too much power to act against British citizens. The agency has also been accused at times of pursuing a political agenda.
Paul Flynn, a Labor Party member of Parliament from Wales, said the British lawmakers who serve on the MI-5 oversight committee are not well-informed about the agency's inner workings.
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Related article.....
Shift would leave FBI in charge of crime, not spies
U.S. panel endorses creation of intelligence agency like Britain's
12/26/2002
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON - There's growing attention to the idea of creating a domestic spy agency, which would strip the FBI of an anti-terrorism intelligence role that it has only recently embraced as its top mission.
The concept, which has circulated since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, gained momentum this month when a federal commission recommended establishment of a domestic intelligence agency.
The panel, led by former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, expressed concern about the nation's top law enforcement agency juggling domestic intelligence along with its historic focus on solving and preventing crime.
"The FBI's long-standing law enforcement tradition and organizational culture persuades us that, even with the best of intentions, the FBI cannot soon be transformed into an organization dedicated to detecting and preventing terrorist attack," the Gilmore Commission concluded in its fourth annual report on terrorism.
Mr. Gilmore warned that a dual law enforcement/intelligence mission carried out by an agency with arrest powers could lead to a public perception of the FBI as a "kind of secret police."
The commission proposed creation of a National Counter Terrorism Center that would gather intelligence and conduct domestic surveillance, bringing together analysts currently working for the FBI, the CIA and other agencies.
The suggestion comes on the heels of a recommendation a week earlier by leaders of a House-Senate investigation into the Sept. 11 intelligence failures that Congress carefully consider creation of an agency along the lines of Britain's MI-5.
"We very definitely have to have that debate as a nation," said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla.
Officials with the Justice Department and the FBI maintain that there is no need for a domestic intelligence agency and that the FBI is well along the way toward remaking itself into a counterterrorism agency.
FBI Director Robert Mueller rejected the idea of a new domestic spy agency in a Dec. 19 speech in New York, offering his first explicit public opposition to the proposal.
"Establishing a new domestic intelligence agency would constitute a step backward in the war on terror, not a step forward," the director said in a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, calling the FBI "uniquely situated for the counterterrroism mission."
"Combining law enforcement and intelligence grants us ready access to every weapon in the government's arsenal against terrorists," he said. "We can now make strategic and tactical choices between our law enforcement options of arrest and incarceration and our intelligence options of surveillance and source development."
The comments underscore a growing FBI lobbying campaign against any stripping away of its counterterrorism role.
Mr. Mueller and his aides insist the FBI has remade itself since the Sept. 11 attacks - adding major resources to its counterterrorism division, hiring new intelligence analysts and linguists, and working more closely with the CIA and creating joint terrorism task forces with state and local authorities nationwide.
Still, critics insist that it may be asking too much of the FBI to remake itself into an intelligence agency and steer rank-and-file agents focused on law enforcement into new roles.
"Today we don't have the luxury of trying to turn the FBI into something it's not meant to be. We need to create what we actually need," Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said in a recent Brookings Institution speech on homeland security.
"FBI agents are very good at law enforcement, but law enforcement is not intelligence," said the potential Democratic presidential contender, who serves on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees.
While the FBI's performance came under sharp attack during the congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 failings, Mr. Mueller said his agency has rebounded.
"Over the last year, the FBI has identified, disrupted and neutralized a number of terrorist threats and cells," he said. "We have the personnel, tools and assets needed to do the job."
The FBI is getting some support from unlikely quarters: the American Civil Liberties Union, which noted that the FBI already is performing the domestic counterterrorism role.
"As Americans, we have always rejected an internal spy agency - even when we feared possible nuclear annihilation during the Cold War," ACLU legislative counsel Timothy Edgar said after the Gilmore report came out. "While we strongly agree with Governor Gilmore that the FBI should not become a 'kind of secret police,' that problem is not solved by creating a different agency whose main purpose is to investigate Americans who are not engaged in any criminal wrongdoing."
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