New York Times
Attorney General John Ashcroft has a gift for making the most draconian policy changes sound seductively innocuous. He was at it again yesterday, describing new domestic spying powers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as nothing more than the authority to surf the Internet or attend a public gathering. That is profoundly misleading. In reality Mr. Ashcroft, in the name of fighting terrorism, was giving FBI agents nearly unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity.
Americans understand the need to be vigilant against terrorism, but they also want to preserve the civil liberties and investigative safeguards that make America a free nation. Overturning the domestic security guidelines issued by the Ford administration to rein in investigative abuses promises to upset the delicate balance between security and liberty that the nation has been struggling to maintain since Sept. 11. Before it was brought under control, the FBI routinely infiltrated peace groups, electronically monitored civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., and generally engaged in spying against Americans who were critical of the government.
The Justice Department is insisting that the guidelines unduly tied the hands of the FBI ...
At a news conference Mr. Ashcroft promised that the new rules would be put in place with "scrupulous respect for civil rights and personal freedom." The sentiment is welcome, but unconvincing. Mr. Ashcroft and his colleagues have missed no opportunity since Sept. 11 to expand the investigative powers of the federal government and to stampede Congress into supporting the changes by suggesting that opposition is disloyal.
In this latest case, Americans are entitled at the very least to hear from the Justice Department what it considers to be the limits of its "scrupulous respect" for their civil rights and personal freedom -- and what oversight procedures will be used to keep the FBI in check.
Baltimore Sun
FBI Agent Coleen Rowley blew the whistle long and loud. The Minneapolis lawyer's biting complaint about FBI officials' disinterest in investigating a potential hijacking suspect prior to Sept. 11 certainly advanced this week's announced reorganization of the 94-year-old crime-fighting agency.
With one of the bureau's own joining a chorus of critics, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recognized the need to demonstrate now the bureau's commitment to a counter-terrorism offensive and its ability to undertake it. His candor and self-criticism on the bureau's lack of follow-up on two key memos pertaining to Sept. 11 must be emulated by his subordinates if the truly hard work of revamping the FBI is to be accomplished.
Under his plan, more than 600 federal agents will be reassigned from the traditional roles of investigating the drug trade, bank robberies, kidnappings and other street crimes to uncovering and thwarting the terrorist threat. Cyber-based attacks and foreign intelligence operatives also top the FBI's new hit list. ...
Mr. Mueller's advantage over his counterpart at the CIA is that he is a relative newcomer to the terrorism game -- he started at FBI headquarters a week before Sept. 11. He is not a veteran of the agency, and his no-nonsense style suggests he has what it takes to redefine an agency often characterized by the bravado of the late J. Edgar Hoover. Mr. Mueller's greater struggle may be transforming the insular nature of the institution and the inertia that has beset its superiors.
But his response to Agent Crowley's withering critique of FBI leadership deserves mention: He wrote her a thank-you note, publicly assured her that her job was safe and encouraged others to be as frank.
Washington Times
It's essential that the reforms announced this week by FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft be implemented in ways to protect Americans from terrorism without jeopardizing the basic, constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties of Americans. The Bush administration had planned to overhaul the bureau ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, but its efforts were clearly foundering until Coleen Rowley, a senior agent based in Minnesota, dispatched a blistering memo to Mr. Mueller last week describing how FBI headquarters in Washington had sabotaged her field office's investigation in August into suspicions that Zacarias Moussaoui had links to foreign terrorist cells. ...
The new guidelines announced by Messrs. Mueller and Ashcroft seek to address this problem by giving field offices like those in Phoenix and Minneapolis the authority to open terrorism investigations without having to get clearance from headquarters in Washington. Mr. Mueller noted the obvious in pointing out that, in order to prevent future attacks, the FBI must do a far better job of collecting and analyzing information from field offices. ...
However, the new regulations shouldn't be seen as a "silver bullet" that will magically make us safe. Not everything done with the mantra of "security" is either wise or necessary. Many of the problems that have plagued the FBI in recent years, such as the botched Wen Ho Lee investigation and the coverups of outrages at Waco and Ruby Ridge, were the result of bureaucratic mendacity and incompetence, problems that Messrs. Mueller and Ashcroft will have to address. Finally, color us skeptical of any government assumption of new powers, particularly the expansion of police powers. It's only good citizenship to be suspicious, and it will be up to Congress to exercise its oversight function to ensure that, in the name of fighting terrorism, the government doesn't take for its ease and convenience a vast array of new and largely unsupervised powers to erode the freedoms that America is all about.
Washington Post
Taken together, the changes in law approved by Congress after Sept. 11 and the plans announced this week to restructure the FBI constitute a shift of historic proportions: The FBI is becoming a domestic intelligence agency. Aspects of this development are both inevitable and needed. To fight terrorism, traditional law enforcement methods won't do; prosecuting the bad guys after the fact just isn't good enough. The goals must be to prevent attacks and disrupt terrorist organizations. If the bureau did not do everything in its power to prevent new attacks, it would be pilloried the next time one took place -- and rightly so. But an organization that seeks to prevent and disrupt is not chiefly a law enforcement organization. And the new FBI taking shape as a domestic intelligence agency calls to mind past abuses and future risks that must be soberly considered. ...
Can a large-scale domestic intelligence operation be bounded by law and fit within traditional American notions of liberty? ...
All of the pressure on the bureau now pushes in a single direction, toward greater aggressiveness and fewer controls, and this at a time when the Justice Department's leadership has taken a blithe attitude toward civil liberties in general. Only this week -- even as the FBI reforms were being announced -- two federal judges, acting in separate cases, rejected as unconstitutional department positions on secrecy in immigration detentions and on a citizen detainee's right to counsel. So congressional oversight of this transformation will be crucial. No one doubts the need to reconfigure the FBI. But at every juncture, Congress should ask not only about effectiveness but also about the risks to liberty -- and whether, in every case, there is no less intrusive way to proceed.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Changing the culture of a large federal bureaucracy is a tough enough challenge. Transforming the vaunted Federal Bureau of Investigation into a cohesive force to combat domestic terrorism without diluting its crime-fighting mission will be exceedingly difficult.
But Director Robert Mueller should be commended for his candor in admitting the FBI's failure to act on warning signs of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, and for his determination to prevent the FBI from being caught short again.
Mueller's sweeping reorganization plan follows the disclosure of a scathing memo from Coleen Rowley, a courageous Minneapolis agent who documented the refusal of bureau headquarters to respond to the warning signs in a timely manner. Instead of stonewalling, the director thanked her for the criticism and began to take corrective action. ...
Congress, which must approve many of Mueller's reforms, should refrain from political grandstanding and concentrate on strengthening the nation's defenses against terrorism. Having conceded past mistakes, the director has put forth an ambitious plan to help rectify them, beginning with far greater interagency coordination in intelligence-gathering and analysis. It deserves a full and fair hearing.
San Francisco Chronicle
Does this country need a better FBI? Absolutely. But whether the changes outlined by Director Robert Mueller will accomplish this goal is another matter.
The security agency was in a world of trouble before Sept. 11. It had failed to catch the decadelong spying of top agent Robert Hanssen, bungled the inquiry into weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee and withheld evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing case. It even lost scores of handguns and laptops.
Then came the horrific and undetected suicide attacks. How could this vast crime-stopping apparatus with 11,500 agents and a $4 billion budget fail us so completely?
After months of official denials came the disclosures that FBI higher-ups ignored field agent warnings of suspicious activities at flight schools, where the terrorists paid for training.
Clearly, the present agency isn't working. Mueller, a tough-minded prosecutor, was right to stop dodging responsibility and launch a house-cleaning. ...
But Americans should be rightly concerned about any expansion of surveillance, especially one as ambitious as the FBI makeover. Launched in the heat of the anti-terrorism battle, and aimed clearly at capping an outcry over the agency's failings, there is every reason to ask questions.
Can this agency turn on a dime and chase down spies effectively? What guarantees will there be for civil liberties in intelligence gathering? ...
It will be Congress' job to ride herd on such issues. The FBI has taken on the challenge of safeguarding a country that has never had a domestic spy agency.
Portland Press Herald
The diversion of hundreds of FBI agents to counter-terrorism duties, along with the hiring of hundreds more for the same reason, displays a sense of purpose that has been long neglected in both that agency and its parent, the U.S. Department of Justice.
A joint announcement this week by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller that the agency has received new authorization to conduct expanded domestic surveillance and investigations also displays that purpose, as long as safeguards are in place to prevent harm to the innocent.
Such harm may seem inevitable to watchdog groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which criticized the FBI's new powers of investigation concerning the Internet and public libraries. Certainly, Americans should be wary of threats to their freedoms of speech and association.
That being said, however, it is very likely that extremists could use such research to learn how to build or acquire weapons and bombs, get data on potential targets or subvert security systems.
Congress can conduct regular oversight to determine if Americans' rights are being trampled. The dangers exposed on Sept. 11 and thereafter, however, clearly convey the necessity of increased investigative efforts to find and stop terrorist activities before more American lives are lost.
In addition, creating much greater cooperation among all American security agencies should be a top priority of the Bush administration. Reports of warnings ignored and information that never reached the top are all too common, and should spur further reforms.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
