FBI to get more power to spy on the home front
By Don van Natta in Washington
May 31 2002
As part of a sweeping effort to transform the FBI into a domestic terrorism prevention agency, the United States Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, will relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying, government officials said.

Mr Ashcroft and the FBI director, Robert Mueller, were set to announce a broad loosening of the guidelines on Thursday that at present restrict the FBI's surveillance of religious and political organisations, the officials said.

Mr Mueller called the move to make terrorism prevention the bureau's first priority, followed by counter-espionage, "a dramatic departure from the past". The fight against organised crime, which defined the FBI for much of its history, was relegated to the sixth priority.

"After September 11 it became clear we had to fundamentally change the way we do our business," Mr Mueller said.

He also said that the arrest of the alleged hijacking conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and warnings from a Phoenix FBI agent about terrorists at aviation schools would not, on their own, have led investigators to the September 11 plot. But if the FBI had connected those two cases with other evidence that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was keenly interested in aviation, Mr Mueller said, "who is to say" what could have been discovered.


Under the present guidelines the FBI cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places such as mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause, or
evidence leading them to believe that someone in the group
may have broken the law.
Full investigations of this sort cannot take place without the consent of the attorney-general.


Many investigators have complained since September 11 that Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques, apparently knowing that religious institutions are usually off limits to FBI surveillance squads.

American Civil Liberties Union officials criticised the guidelines, saying they represented another step by the Bush Administration to roll back civil-liberties protections in the name of improving counter-terrorism measures.

"These new guidelines say to the American people that you no longer have to be doing something wrong in order to get that FBI knock at your door," said Laura Murphy, director of the Washington national office of the ACLU.

The revised guidelines would shift the power to initiate counter-terrorism inquiries from FBI headquarters to the special agents in charge of the bureau's 56 field offices, the officials said. Such a shift would allow FBI officials to be much more proactive in preventing terrorist acts.


FBI's top ten priorities

1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack

2. Protect the US against foreign intelligence operations

3. Protect against cyber-based attacks and high-tech crimes

4. Combat public corruption

5. Protect civil rights

6. Combat transnational and national criminal organisations and enterprises

7. Combat major white-collar crime

8. Combat significant violent crime

9. Support federal, state, local and international partners

10. Upgrade technology