FBI director’s proposes team to probe terrorism

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — A new FBI "supersquad," headquartered in Washington, would lead all major terrorism investigations worldwide under FBI Director Robert Mueller’s plan to remake the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said Tuesday.

The proposed shift would include the hiring of hundreds of agents and analysts as well as the creation of an Office of Intelligence, headed by a former CIA official, that would serve as a national clearinghouse for classified terrorism information, according to those familiar with Mueller’s plans.

The changes are part of a broad reorganization in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Robert Hanssen spy scandal. They highlight a dramatic decline in clout for the FBI’s Manhattan field office, which until Sept. 11 served as the hub of the bureau’s terrorism cases.

Mueller’s proposals, some of which would require congressional approval, follow recent criticism on Capitol Hill over an apparent lack of coordination on terrorism cases within the FBI. Mueller came under fire last week from several Senate Democrats, who said the FBI did not respond aggressively enough to possible warning signs of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Mueller and other top FBI officials believe that creating a specialized team in Washington will help the bureau spot patterns and connections among terrorist associates that might otherwise get lost within the bureaucracy, officials said.

For example, Mueller testified last week, the FBI never considered whether the case of alleged terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August at a Minnesota flight school, was connected to warnings from the Phoenix field office in July about Middle Easterners enrolled in flight training academies.

But the plan already is creating concern among some of the FBI’s powerful special agents-in-charge, or SACs, who command most of the FBI’s 56 field offices, and some of the 11,000 agents, who fear that traditional crime-fighting will be overshadowed by counterintelligence and counterterrorism goals.

"A lot of agents are concerned that they’ll start hacking and hewing on our programs, and in the end we won’t be as effective," said Nancy Savage, a Eugene, Ore., agent who serves as president of the FBI Agents Association. "There are still good reasons why we do these kinds of criminal investigations."

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