Testimony of Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI
Before the Senate Committee
on the Judiciary
June 6, 2002
"A New FBI Focus"
Good morning Chairman Leahy,
Senator Hatch, and members of the Committee. I appreciate
this opportunity to appear before the Committee today and
discuss the recently announced FBI reorganization plan that
was submitted to the Congress.
When I appeared before the Committee in early May, I was able
to discuss in only the most general terms some of the ideas,
concepts, and proposals that were being considered for refocusing
the FBI's mission and priorities and restructuring the Bureau.
I am pleased that the second phase of my on-going reorganization
has been cleared by the Attorney General and the Administration
and transmitted to the Congress for review.
A New FBI Focus
Since becoming Director, I have
been able to observe firsthand the volatile environment in
which the FBI is called to operate. I have become increasingly
convinced that success in the post-9/11 environment depends
upon the FBI becoming more flexible, agile, and mobile in
its capacity to respond to the array of difficult and challenging
national security and criminal threats facing the United States.
The FBI must become better at shaping its workforce, collaborating
with its partners, applying technology to support investigations,
operations, and analyses protecting our information, and developing
core competencies.
I am equally convinced that
success demands that the FBI become more proactive in its
approaches to dealing with the threats and crime problems
facing the United States, especially in the areas of counterterrorism,
counterintelligence, and cyber-crime/infrastructure protection.
And, I believe it will become even more important for the
FBI to continue to develop and maintain close working relationships
with international law enforcement partners if we are to prevent
terrorist groups from gaining footholds and bases of operation
for launching attacks against the United States. Protecting
America in this new environment requires the FBI undertake
a series of management actions built upon three key inter-related
elements: (1) refocusing FBI mission and priorities; (2) realigning
the FBI workforce to address these priorities; and (3) shifting
FBI management and operational cultures to enhance flexibility,
agility, effectiveness, and accountability. This new focus
and the accompanying organizational changes being proposed
are intended to strengthen and guide the Bureau through these
uncertain and challenging times and are in direct response
to the shortcomings and issues that have been identified over
the last several months. More importantly, they are in direct
response to the tragic events of 9/11 and the clearly charted
new course for the FBI mandated by the paramount mission of
prevention.
Refocusing Mission and Priorities
Even though the external environment
in which the FBI operates is volatile and uncertain, the basic
mission of the FBI remains constant. First, and foremost,
the FBI must protect and defend the United States against
terrorism and foreign intelligence threats. Second, the FBI
must uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States.
And third, the FBI must provide and enhance assistance to
its federal, state, municipal, and international partners.
While the FBI's core missions
remain constant, its priorities have shifted since the previous
FBI Strategic Plan was issued in 1998 and the terrorist acts
of September 11, 2001. Under the new alignment, the FBI's
focus is to:
- Protect the United States
from terrorist attack.
- Protect the United States
against foreign intelligence operations and espionage.
- Protect the United States
against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes.
- Combat public corruption
at all levels.
- Protect civil rights.
- Combat transnational and
national criminal organizations and enterprises.
- Combat major white-collar
crime.
- Combat significant violent
crime.
- Support federal, state, municipal,
and international partners.
- Upgrade technology to successfully
perform the FBI's mission.
These are the FBI's priorities,
not only for the Bureau in its role as a national agency,
but also for each local FBI field office. The first eight
priorities reflect the core of the FBI's national security
and criminal investigative responsibilities. The last two,
while not investigative in nature, are equally critical to
enabling the FBI to successfully achieve its goals and objectives.
In pursuing these priorities,
I expect the FBI and its employees to be true to, and exemplify,
certain core values. These core values are:
- adherence to the rule of
law and the rights conferred to all under the United States
Constitution;
- integrity through everyday
ethical behavior;
- accountability by accepting
responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences
of our actions and decisions;
- fairness in dealing with
people; and
- leadership through example,
both at work and in our communities.
These missions and priorities
are consistent with the existing authorities conferred and
jurisdictions established by law and executive order for the
FBI. I believe these missions and priorities represent the
expectations that the American people, the law enforcement
community, the Congress, and the Administration hold for the
FBI.
Realigning the Workforce
to Address Priorities
In recognition of the continuing
terrorist threat facing the United States from the Al-Qaeda
network and of the urgent need to continue building the FBI's
capacity to prevent future terrorist acts through improved
analytical and intelligence information sharing capabilities,
I am proposing a permanent shift of 518 field agents from
criminal investigations to augment our counterterrorism investigations
and activities (480 agents), implement critical security improvements
(13 agents), and support the training of new Special Agents
at the FBI Academy (25 agents). The FBI will need to sustain
its present level of commitment to combating and preventing
terrorism for the foreseeable future and be sufficiently flexible
to quickly shift whatever additional resources are necessary
to meet any counterterrorism investigative demand that materializes.
These 518 agents will be taken primarily from FBI drug investigations
(400), although there will be some shift from white-collar
(59) and violent crimes (59 agents).
The decision to propose reducing
the FBI's level of involvement in drug investigations came
after careful consultation with FBI Special Agents in Charge
(SACs), United States Attorneys, state and municipal law enforcement,
Members of Congress, and others - including DEA Administrator
Hutchinson who also sits on the Department of Justice Strategic
Management Council. The FBI will still participate in Organized
Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) with other federal,
state, and municipal law enforcement. Our resources for OCDETF
cases are not affected by the realignment of drug resources.
Even after the proposed reduction of 400 agents, the FBI will
still be devoting nearly 1,000 agents to drug-related cases.
What I am asking our SACs to
do is reevaluate the level of FBI involvement in other drug
cases and, where possible and without jeopardizing current
investigations, reduce FBI resources. Where in the past we
might have contributed 10 to 12 agents for day-to-day involvement
in a task force or investigation, we might contribute 5 to
6. SACs may augment that day-to-day commitment with additional
resources to meet special needs, such as the execution of
search warrants or coordination of multiple arrests. We will
also be more deliberate in opening cases involving drug cartels
and drug trafficking organizations and making sure our efforts
do not overlap or duplicate those of the DEA. As a result
of the realignment of 400 FBI Special Agents, I believe the
FBI and the DEA working together can ensure that federal resources
are appropriately applied so that the critically important
war on drugs is not impaired in any way and that support to
state and local agencies is not diminished.
Similarly, in the areas of White-Collar
Crime and Violent Crime, I am proposing relatively modest
reductions of agent personnel B roughly 2.5 percent in White-Collar
and 3 percent in Violent Crime. Again, I will expect SACs
to evaluate day-to-day levels of commitment to Safe Streets
Task Forces and make adjustments. In the area of white-collar
crime, we may adjust some of the thresholds used for determining
whether to proceed with an investigation and defer other cases
to agency inspector generals who posses the necessary expertise
to handle criminal investigations. But, I expect the impact
on our state and municipal partners in these two areas to
be relatively minor. Let me assure you of one thing: if a
state and municipal law enforcement agency does not possess
a needed expertise, the FBI will provide the assistance and
expertise needed.
This reallocation of field agent
staffing should enable each SAC to satisfy both the near-term
investigative requirements and the national programmatic objectives
for the top three priorities - counterterrorism, counterintelligence/espionage,
and cyber-crime/infrastructure protection. Our foremost mission
is to protect the United States from terrorist attacks, foreign
intelligence operations, and cyber attacks. These are dynamic
challenges that threaten the very security of the Nation and
the safety of the American public. Consequently, I consider
the Agents provided to each field office for these three priorities
to be the minimum level of investigative effort for these
programs for the foreseeable future. Moreover, it is my expectation
that in addition to these resources, each SAC will, on an
ongoing basis and in consultation with national Counterterrorism,
Counterintelligence, and Cyber executive management at FBIHQ,
be prepared to devote whatever additional resources are necessary
to fully address and resolve every emerging threat and every
situation that may arise in these three critical areas.
Shifting FBI Management and
Operating Culture to Enhance Flexibility, Agility, and Accountability
Implementing the revised FBI
priorities outlined above and redirecting the FBI workforce
toward these priorities requires a concurrent shift in how
the FBI manages these cases from a national perspective. These
changes will also require changes in how we operate within
our offices and perform our work.
In support of our top three
priorities, I am directing a series of changes to strengthen
the FBI's national management and oversight of counterterrorism,
counterintelligence, and cyber-crime investigations and programs.
These cases and investigations are critical to the very foundation
of the FBI's ability to protect national security. These cases
often involve parallel efforts in multiple locations within
the United States and foreign countries and require extensive
coordination and collaboration with other Intelligence Community,
state, municipal and international partners. These cases also
are complex in terms of inter-relationships among groups and
individuals, a complexity that requires continuity and specialized
expertise and tradecraft. Most importantly, these cases require
an organizational capacity to quickly respond and deploy personnel
and technology to emerging and developing situations.
These changes are also intended
to create a centralized body of subject matter experts and
historical case knowledge that, in the past, has been largely
resident in a few FBI field offices. While this field-based
concentration of such expertise and knowledge often worked
well in terms of contributing to successful prosecutions of
terrorists and spies, such expertise and knowledge was often
not available or easily shared with other FBI Field Offices
and our partners. The FBI's shift toward terrorism prevention
necessitates the building of a national level expertise and
body of knowledge that can be accessed by and deployed to
all field offices and that can be readily shared with our
Intelligence Community and law enforcement partners.
Counterterrorism Division. A significant restructuring and expansion of the
Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters is being proposed
for three basic reasons. First, the more direct role envisioned
for the Counterterrorism Division in managing investigations,
providing operational support to field offices, and collaborating
with law enforcement and Intelligence Community partners requires
additional staff at Headquarters. Second, implementing a more
proactive approach to preventing terrorist acts and denying
terrorist groups the ability to operate and raise funds requires
a centralized and robust analytical capacity that does not
exist in the present Counterterrorism Division. Third, processing
and exploiting the information gathered domestically and from
abroad during the course of the PENTTBOM and related investigations
requires an enhanced analytical and data mining capacity that
is not presently available.
Among the significant features
and capabilities of the enhanced Counterterrorism Division
will be:
- establishment of a new, expansive
multi-agency National Joint Terrorism Task Force at FBI
Headquarters to complement task forces established in local
FBI field offices and to improve collaboration and information
sharing with other agencies;
- establishment of "flying
squads" at Headquarters and specialized regional assets
to better support field investigative operations, deployments
of FBI Rapid Deployment Teams, and provide a surge capacity
for quickly responding to and resolving unfolding situations
and developments in locations where there is not an FBI
presence or there is a need to augment local FBI resources
with specialized personnel;
- augmentation of FBI capabilities
to perform financial, communications, and strategic analyses
of terrorist groups and networks; and
- support for the Department
of Justice's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and terrorism
prevention outreach efforts.
Many of you had the opportunity
to visit the FBI Strategic Information Operations Center after
the terrorist acts of September 11 and were able to witness
firsthand a true inter-agency, collaborative environment where
information flowed quickly between agencies. Others of you
saw a similar environment created at the field office level
in Salt Lake City to coordinate security and intelligence
for the Winter Olympic Games.
What we must do in our new Counterterrorism
Division is create a similar collaborative and information
sharing environment. Preventing future terrorist acts necessitates
that the Counterterrorism Division operate at a near-SIOC
like capacity for the foreseeable future. Any less of an effort
is not acceptable. Maintaining such an operating capacity,
however, is extremely labor intensive and well beyond the
pre-9/11 resource levels, capacity and structure of the Counterterrorism
Division. The proposed Counterterrorism Division reorganization
is my commitment to establishing the necessary organizational
environment and framework where such a level of commitment
can be sustained and where necessary cultural and behavioral
changes can become institutionalized over time.
Equally important to the success
of the Counterterrorism Division reorganization is changing
the underlying operations of the division to emphasize the
importance and necessity of sharing information on a timely
basis, creating an intelligence awareness among employees
B FBI and other agency B so that we look at not only the case-related
value of information, but also its relevance to the larger,
strategic view of a group or organization, and developing
and sustaining bodies of knowledge and expertise that can
be made available at a moments notice to any FBI Field Office
and our partners.
Finally, with respect to Counterterrorism,
I cannot overstate the importance of building and maintaining
effective international partnerships to combating terrorism.
Our Legal Attaches played an extremely valuable role in the
PENTTBOM investigation and continue to be critical to our
ongoing efforts to deny Al-Qaeda the ability to mount future
attacks. These partnerships will only grow more important
in the future. Consequently, I believe it may be necessary
for the FBI to consider additional Legal Attache offices in
key locations, especially in Africa.
Counterintelligence Division. Within our Counterintelligence Division, the FBI
is proposing a new espionage section that will focus on the
so-called "811" referrals and investigations of
espionage. This will allow our operational counterintelligence
sections to concentrate solely on detecting and countering
foreign intelligence operations, focus on emerging strategic
threats, and protecting United States secrets from compromise.
Additionally, the management of our Counterintelligence Division
is reorienting the focus of the FBI counterintelligence program
to work more closely with other government agencies, sensitive
facilities, and the private sector to identify and protect
United States secrets from being compromised by foreign agents
and spies. As with Counterterrorism, success in the counterintelligence
area will depend upon the ability of the FBI in acquiring
agents, analysts, translators, and others with specialized
skills and backgrounds and training existing counterintelligence
personnel. The FBI is also establishing a career path for
counterintelligence agents to encourage retention of personnel
in this highly specialized field. In the end, we will have
a new structure operating pursuant to a new, differently focused
strategy that recognizes the critically important CI-21 approach.
Office of Intelligence. The December 2001 reorganization created a new
Office of Intelligence to support our counterterrorism and
counterintelligence programs. Building a strategic and tactical
intelligence analytical capacity is critical if the FBI is
to be successful at pulling together bits and pieces of information
that often come from separate sources and providing analytic
products to policy makers and investigators that will allow
us to prevent terrorist acts.
This Congress is all too familiar
with the FBI's analytical shortcomings. These shortcomings
have been documented by the FBI and others, discussed in prior
hearings and briefings and need not be restated again. Fixing
these shortcomings is going to require investments in additional
personnel, basic and advanced training, technology, and, perhaps
most importantly, time. Building subject area expertise or
developing an awareness of the potential value of an isolated
piece of information does not occur overnight; it is developed
over time. That is why I am grateful to DCI Tenet for his
willingness to detail experienced CIA analysts to the FBI
to work at both the field and Headquarters level, and to set
up and manage our Office of Intelligence. These personnel,
expected to arrive over the next several weeks, are needed
to provide the FBI with a critical near-term analytical capacity
while we recruit, hire, train, and build our analytic cadre.
Cyber Division. Last December, the Administration and Congress
approved the establishment of a Cyber Division at FBI Headquarters.
The Cyber Division will coordinate, oversee, and facilitate
FBI investigations in which the Internet, on-line services,
and computer systems and networks are the principal instruments
or targets of foreign intelligence or terrorists and for criminal
violations where the use of such systems is essential to the
illegal activity. The FBI will consolidate under a single
national program manager headquarters and field resources
associated with the National Infrastructure Protection Center
(NIPC), the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, and cyber-related
criminal investigations delegated to the FBI for investigation,
such as intellectual property rights-related investigations
involving theft of trade secrets and signals; copyright infringement
investigations involving computer software; and Innocent Images
National Initiative investigations and training. The new division
will continue a direct connection between NIPC and the Counterterrorism
and Counterintelligence Divisions regarding national security
cases. Additionally, the division will work closely with the
proposed Investigative Technologies Division regarding support
for the Computer Analysis Response Team program and deployment
of Regional Computer Forensic Laboratories.
Dealing with the problem of
cyber-crime requires skills and understanding of technology
that the FBI does not possess in great numbers. Consequently,
the FBI will develop new and expand existing alliances with
other federal, state, and municipal agencies, academia, and
the private sector.
At the field level, the approach
the Cyber Division is considering is inter-agency Cyber Task
Forces. In large FBI Field Offices, I envision the FBI maintaining
existing stand-alone National Infrastructure Protection Center
(NIPC) squads to handle computer intrusions, critical infrastructure
protection issues, and the INFRAGARD program. Complementary
Cyber Crime Squads will be established to consolidate management
and investigation of cyber-related violations currently handled
under the White-Collar and Violent Crime programs, as well
as investigate non-terrorist and non-intelligence computer
hacking and intrusion cases. In small or medium FBI Field
Offices, the FBI will either use the above model or create
hybrid cyber squads that consolidate NIPC and criminal resources
into a single squad. Regardless of the size of office, the
FBI will reach out to invite participation from other federal,
state, and municipal agencies on Cyber Crime Squads to reduce
duplication of effort and maximize resources. FBI Cyber Crime
Squads and task forces will be allied with Department of Justice
Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHiP) units in
those 13 United States cities where CHiP units are being established.
The FBI will continue its partnership with the National White-Collar
Crime Center to operate the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
Investigative Technologies
Division. I am proposing
to split the current Laboratory Division into two divisions:
Laboratory and Investigative Technologies. Recent growth in
the mission, staffing, and funding of the programs encompassed
by the Laboratory Division presents potential problems in
the areas of management span of control and effective project
management. The technical nature of many of the multi-year
projects being carried out by division project leaders requires
a degree of management oversight and involvement that can
be best achieved by splitting the current division.
The Laboratory Division will
continue to focus upon the collection, processing and analysis
of evidence, training, and forensic research and development.
The proposed Investigative Technologies Division will concentrate
on providing technical and tactical services in support of
investigators and the Intelligence Community, such as electronic
surveillance, physical surveillance, cyber technology, and
wireless and radio communications, as well as the development
of new investigative technologies and techniques and the training
of technical agents and personnel.
Criminal Investigations. The American people look to the FBI for leadership
in investigating the most serious national and international
crimes and criminal enterprises and for cooperating and assisting
other federal, state, municipal and foreign law enforcement
authorities. As a national law enforcement agency, FBI Field
Offices should draw upon national criminal investigative priorities
to develop local crime-fighting strategies. The national priorities
I have identified will serve the FBI as a critical common
denominator that links criminal investigative activities across
field offices.
In developing local criminal
priorities and resource allocation plans, each SAC should
also take into account the ability of state, municipal, and
other federal law enforcement to handle the full range of
criminal violations which may vary widely among jurisdictions
and agencies. This requires the FBI to be more flexible and
collaborative in its approaches to its criminal investigative
mission. At the same time, SACs should, in consultation with
the United States Attorney and appropriate state and municipal
authorities, develop and implement appropriate strategies
and resource allocations for addressing the FBI's other criminal
investigative priorities. These five areas are: public corruption,
civil rights, transnational and national criminal organizations,
major white-collar crime, and significant violent crime.
Given the near-term requirement
to ensure the resource needs of our top three priorities are
satisfied, SACs must be more focused and deliberate in his/her
management of resources allocated to criminal priorities.
Consequently, it is imperative that SACs avoid duplicating
the efforts of other agencies or direct resources against
crime problems that can be more appropriately handled by other
agencies. We must be prepared, for the time being, to defer
criminal cases to others, even in significant cases, if other
agencies possess the expertise to handle the matter adequately.
In situations where other federal, state, and municipal capabilities
are not sufficient to handle a case or situation, SACs should
be prepared to step in and provide FBI resources as needed.
However, once the immediate situation is under control or
resolved I expect SACs to reevaluate the level of FBI commitment
and make necessary adjustments.
Within the conduct of our criminal
investigative mission and in our day-to-day interactions with
state and municipal law enforcement partners, all FBI personnel
must remain alert for indications of criminal or suspicious
activities that might be precursors of possible terrorist
operational and logistical activities. The PENTTBOM investigation
has demonstrated how a group of terrorists were able to infiltrate
our country and carry out extensive planning, operational,
and logistical activities without apprehension by law enforcement.
Other terrorist investigations have revealed patterns of low-level
criminal activity by terrorists. It is the duty of every FBI
employee to remain vigilant for suspicious activity or informant
information that could be a tip-off to a future terrorist
attack.
Closing
Mr. Chairman, the unpredictable
and unconventional threats to our national security and the
serious crime problems that often reach beyond our borders
necessitate changes in the FBI, changes in our priorities,
changes in our workforce, and changes in our approach to performing
our mission. Critics often characterize the FBI as being resistant
to change, citing an "insular" culture. I have had
the opportunity to work closely with the fine men and women
of the FBI under the extreme circumstances of the last nine
months. I am confident of their recognition of the importance
of this critical moment in our history and I am confident
that change is being embraced. I will not pretend it will
be easy but I also do not doubt that a different FBI is emerging
post-9/11.
What I am proposing is an evolving
road map for moving the FBI forward through this time of uncertainty
and unpredictability. As an evolving strategy, it will be
adjusted to meet changes in the world in which we must operate.
Our adversaries, whether they are terrorists, foreign intelligence
agents, or criminals, are not static or complacent and we
must not be either. The challenges facing the FBI requires
a workforce that possess specialized skills and backgrounds,
that is equipped with the proper investigative, technical,
and analytical tools, and possesses the managerial and administrative
competencies necessary to deal with a complex and volatile
environment. Beyond the changes and proposals I have outlined
today are changing and revitalizing internal processes are
also necessary to eliminate internal Astove-pipes@ and barriers
that prevent us from being more collaborative among ourselves
and with our external partners.
I welcome your comments and
suggestions relative to the management and organizational
changes that I have submitted to the Congress. I appreciate
the support that this Committee has given to what we are trying
to accomplish and I particularly appreciate the recognition
of the urgency with which I believe these issues must be addressed.
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