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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Blaming "bureaucratic red tape" for the FBI's 9/11 failures, the top lawman essentially tells the public, "Trust us." Should we?
May 31, 2002 | Attorney General John Ashcroft's granting of increased powers to the FBI may seem like a case of strange timing. Why, after all, would Ashcroft reward an agency with more authority as it comes under fire for fundamental incompetence, not to mention its history of abusing its power?
But a day after FBI Director Robert Mueller's dramatic concession of failures in the agency to prevent the tragedies of Sept. 11, it became clear that Ashcroft intended to also blame excessive "bureaucratic red tape" for the agency's failures. Critics were quick to decry this new weakening of previous restrictions as a further diminishment of civil liberties.
The new guidelines give local field agents more autonomy to conduct counter-terrorism investigations without approval from Washington. That part seems a direct response to the concerns raised by Minnesota FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who made headlines last week with her scathing, 13-page memo to Mueller. Rowley said current FBI guidelines force field officers to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops, which greatly slows down investigations.
Ashcroft said the new rules would also allow agents to monitor and infiltrate religious and political groups suspected of terrorist activities, and even, Ashcroft said, gives agents new freedom to surf the Internet. With great flourish, Ashcroft derided the old rules for prohibiting agents from using "the Internet in the same manner as any member of the public might do."
Under the old guidelines, for example, if an FBI agent got a tip about a person's possible link to al-Qaida, that agent could not do any Internet searches for that person and al-Qaida unless a crime had already been committed, according to Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo.
"They couldn't even do things like go online and do searches on general topics unless it was in accordance with an open investigation," Corallo said.
Another major change announced Thursday was permission to allow FBI agents to pose as ordinary citizens and infiltrate religious or political groups.
Ashcroft went to great lengths to point out that such infiltration would only be permitted "for the purpose of detecting or preventing terrorism or other criminal activities." Civil libertarians worry that the term "terrorism" is too broadly defined, and the new guidelines essentially give the FBI carte blanche to spy on domestic political groups.
So, how does Ashcroft define "terrorism"?
"Well, obviously, terrorism has definitions," Ashcroft said. But Justice Department officials said they could not immediately provide a working definition of what would be considered "terrorism" by the department, only offering that definitions could be found in case law and a series of government rules and regulations.
When asked at the press conference if the new guidelines meant agents could now, for example, try to infiltrate mosques, Ashcroft offered an indirect "yes," but made sure to add that he was simply giving FBI agents rights that ordinary citizens already have.
Since Sept. 11, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have charged that some mosques are hotbeds of terrorist activity. Osama bin Laden reportedly established his first American terrorist cell at a Tucson, Ariz., mosque, and many terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, reportedly use mosques for fundraising and recruitment for terrorist activities.
Among them, the Islamic Center of Cleveland has been investigated for raising money for Islamic Jihad, which the State Department lists as a terrorist organization. Brooklyn's Al-Farouq Mosque has also been linked to "Afghan jihad" fundraising.
