FBI Drops Law Enforcement as 'Primary' Mission - Mission creep

[Magda Hassan]

FBI Drops Law Enforcement as 'Primary' Mission

• BY John Hudson
  
• JANUARY 5, 2014 - 09:49 PM
  

The FBI's creeping advance into the world of counterterrorism is nothing new. But quietly and without notice, the agency has finally decided to make it official in one of its organizational fact sheets. Instead of declaring "law enforcement" as its "primary function," as it has for years, the FBI fact sheet now lists "national security" as its chief mission. The changes largely reflect the FBI reforms put in place after September 11, 2001, which some have criticized for de-prioritizing law enforcement activities. Regardless, with the 9/11 attacks more than a decade in the past, the timing of the edits is baffling some FBI-watchers.
"What happened in the last year that changed?" asked Kel McClanahan, a Washington-based national security lawyer.
McClanahan noticed the change last month while reviewing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the agency. The FBI fact sheet accompanies every FOIA response and highlights a variety of facts about the agency. After noticing the change, McClanahan reviewed his records and saw that the revised fact sheets began going out this summer. "I think they're trying to rebrand," he said. "So many good things happen to your agency when you tie it to national security."
Although a spokesman with the agency declined to weigh in on the timing of the change, he said the agency is just keeping up with the times. "When our mission changed after 9/11, our fact sheet changed to reflect that," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told Foreign Policy. He noted that the FBI's website has long-emphasized the agency's national security focus. "We rank our top 10 priorities and CT [counterterrorism] is first, counterintel is second, cyber is third," he said. "So it is certainly accurate to say our primary function is national security." On numerous occasions, former FBI Director Robert Mueller also emphasized the FBI's national security focus in speeches and statements.
FBI historian and Marquette University professor Athan Theoharis agreed that the changes reflect what's really happening at the agency, but said the timing isn't clear. "I can't explain why FBI officials decided to change the fact sheet... unless in the current political climate that change benefits the FBI politically and undercuts criticisms," he said. He mentioned the negative attention surrounding the FBI's failure in April to foil the bomb plot at the Boston Marathon by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Whatever the reason, the agency's increased focus on national security over the last decade has not occurred without consequence. Between 2001 and 2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents dedicated to counterterrorism, according to a 2010 Inspector's General report. That period coincided with a steady decline in the overall number of criminal cases investigated nationally and a steep decline in the number of white-collar crime investigations.
"Violent crime, property crime and white-collar crime: All those things had reductions in the number of people available to investigate them," former FBI agent Brad Garrett told Foreign Policy. "Are there cases they missed? Probably."
Last month, Robert Holley, the special agent in charge in Chicago, said the agency's focus on terrorism and other crimes continued to affect the level of resources available to combat the violent crime plaguing the city. "If I put more resources on violent crime, I'd have to take away from other things," he told The Chicago Tribune.
According to a 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation, the Justice Department did not replace 2,400 agents assigned to focus on counterterrorism in the years following 9/11. The reductions in white-collar crime investigations became obvious. Back in 2000, the FBI sent prosecutors 10,000 cases. That fell to a paltry 3,500 cases by 2005. "Had the FBI continued investigating financial crimes at the same rate as it had before the terror attacks, about 2,000 more white-collar criminals would be behind bars," the report concluded. As a result, the agency fielded criticism for failing to crack down on financial crimes ahead of the Great Recession and losing sight of real-estate fraud ahead of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
In many ways, the agency had no choice but to de-emphasize white-collar crime. Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI picked up scores of new responsibilities related to terrorism and counterintelligence while maintaining a finite amount of resources. What's not in question is that government agencies tend to benefit in numerous ways when considered critical to national security as opposed to law enforcement. "If you tie yourself to national security, you get funding and you get exemptions on disclosure cases," said McClanahan. "You get all the wonderful arguments about how if you don't get your way, buildings will blow up and the country will be less safe."
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...ry_mission

[Lauren Johnson]

From the FBI.Gov website:

Our Priorities
The FBI focuses on threats that challenge the foundations of American society or involve dangers too large or complex for any local or state authority to handle alone. In executing the following priorities, the FBIas both a national security and law enforcement organizationwill produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats and to bring to justice those who violate the law.
1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
4. Combat public corruption at all levels
5. Protect civil rights
6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
7. Combat major white-collar crime
8. Combat significant violent crime
9. Support federal, state, local and international partners
10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission

Notice number 7: it has to be MAJOR white-collar crime. Apparently the 2008 'til now financial disaster is not 'major white-collar crime' since it was largely not investigated. What would it take to get to the "major" category?

[Magda Hassan]

Notice number 7: it has to be MAJOR white-collar crime. Apparently the 2008 'til now financial disaster is not 'major white-collar crime' since it was largely not investigated. What would it take to get to the "major" category?

:hock:: :: ::willynilly::

The mind just bogles trying to work that one out!

[Peter Lemkin]

They were NEVER into solving crimes and law enforcement...only in killing people, spying on people, scapegoating some they didn't like and making life a general hell for leftists and progressives - those who challenged the system's failures and lies. Hoover himself played golf and went to the races with his Mafia friends and then declared over and over that there was no organized crime nor criminals in the USA. Innocent socialists and communists and those suspected of same were hounded, prosecuted, imprisoned [or their lives ruined] and a few executed. The FBI did a sterling jobs on the JFK, RFK and MLK cases - which were typical of their law enforcement work.......

As to white collar crime, I think they interpret that as clerical collars.

When not persecuting the innocent, the FBI has been very active on committing crimes [the list is too long to even mention], assisting in crimes and covering up others...much more than 'solving' them and bringing real criminals to justice. That they now declare their prime job is 'National Security' is chilling...but to be expected....as it is a false-front word for repression and removal of freedoms.

[Magda Hassan]

Hoover himself played golf and went to the races with his Mafia friends and then declared over and over that there was no organized crime nor criminals in the USA.

When he wasn't trying on frocks.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5635[/ATTACH]

Or playing with his little friend

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5636[/ATTACH]

[Peter Lemkin]

Hoover himself played golf and went to the races with his Mafia friends and then declared over and over that there was no organized crime nor criminals in the USA.

When he wasn't trying on frocks.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5635[/ATTACH]

Or playing with his little friend

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5636[/ATTACH]

[TABLE="width: 90%, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD][TABLE="align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Welcome to the bizarre world of J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until his death in 1972. Rumors of Hoover's homosexuality were rampant but suppressed during his lifetime. A favorite story is that Mob-friendly lawyer (and deep closet case) Roy Cohn possessed a photograph of Hoover in drag, which he used to blackmail the FBI director into denying the existence of the Mafia. In 1993, Anthony Summers, in his book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, also claimed that Hoover did not pursue organized crime because the Mafia had blackmail material on him. In support of that, Summers quoted Susan L. Rosenstiel, a former wife of Lewis S. Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries Inc., as saying that in 1958, she was at a party at the Plaza Hotel where Hoover engaged in cross-dressing in front of her then-husband and Roy Cohn, former counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy."He [Hoover] was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces and lace stockings and high heels, and a black curly wig," Summers quoted Susan as saying. "He had makeup on and false eyelashes." Susan claimed Cohn introduced Hoover to her as "Mary." Hoover allegedly responded, "Good evening." She said she saw Hoover go into a bedroom and take off his skirt. There, "young blond boys" worked on him in bed. Later, as Hoover and Cohn watched, Lewis Rosenstiel had sex with the young boys.A year later, Susan claimed, she again saw Hoover at the Plaza. This time, the director was wearing a red dress. Around his neck was a black feather boa. He was holding a Bible, and he asked one of the blond boys to read a passage as another boy played with him. It was episodes such as these, Summers declared, that the Mafia held over Hoover's head. "Mafia bosses obtained information about Hoover's sex life and used it for decades to keep the FBI at bay," the jacket of the book says. "Without this, the Mafia as we know it might never have gained its hold on America."
As far as anyone can determine, Hoover never had a romantic attachment with a woman, or even a date. Classical statues of nude men adorned his garden. He lived with his mother until she died. Then there was Clyde Tolson, a fellow FBI agent. In April, 1928, Clyde Tolson joined the Bureau. Tolson, a tall, handsome man, was five years younger than Hoover. Quickly after coming to the bureau, he became Hoover's closest personal friend and business associate. His promotion within the Bureau was unprecedented. Hoover and Tolson rode to work together, ate lunches together, traveled on official business together, went to social functions together and vacationed together. They are now buried side by side.It wasn't until after his death that Americans learned J. Edgar Hoover was a secret transvestite, but long before that, it meant bad news for some FBI recruits. The alleged discovery of Hoover's long-lost diary has revealed how he may have misused his power as FBI director to satisfy his own twisted cravings, destroying the lives of many recruits in the law-enforcement agency. The diary purports that from at least the mid-1930s onward, Hoover would require selected agents to take on special undercover assignments, often lasting for years, as women or drag queens in high heels and skirts. Sources speculate that Hoover, unable to dress openly as a woman, forced some of his underlings to take up his freakish habit so he'd feel more normal. He reportedly enjoyed training these agents himself, selecting their outfits, applying makeup and fixing hairdos. Most men hated these assignments and many were threatened with firing or even jail time for their cooperation.
The diary recounts at least one case in the 1950s in which Hoover had the mother of an agent jailed on trumped-up charges to keep him on duty as a red-headed, high-heeled gun moll. Perhaps the weirdest case is that of 24-year-old Bert Horgson, a six-foot Swede who left his family and girlfriend in Minnesota in 1935 to fight Nazi spies with the FBI. Once Hoover caught sight of him, however, the slim, blue-eyed Horgson was instead given a different assignment -- and spent the remainder of his career in dresses and high-heeled pumps as Hoover's "special agent."
The diary recounts how Hoover kept Horgson from quitting by alternating promises of reassignment with intimidation of both Horgson and his family. Hoover even went so far as to have Horgson's legal identity changed from male to female -- making it illegal for him to dress as a man for most of the 30s, 40s and 50s -- and had agents make sure he complied. Even Hoover's death in 1972 brought Horgson no reprieve. In a final bizarre ploy from beyond the grave, Hoover left orders that the 60-year-old FBI man was to be confined to a special high-security nursing home as a national security risk.Horgson found himself forced to remain "Bettina Horgson" until his death 29 years later. Horgson died in 2001 at the age of 89 in a government nursing home in Washington, D.C. One government source says, "this is one of the strangest, and most flagrant abuses of power I've ever heard of."
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Worst of all [as being gay is no crime] is that Hoover actively persecuted others for the 'crime' of being gay in his position as FBI director.

[David Guyatt]

From the FBI.Gov website:

Our Priorities
The FBI focuses on threats that challenge the foundations of American society or involve dangers too large or complex for any local or state authority to handle alone. In executing the following priorities, the FBIas both a national security and law enforcement organizationwill produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats and to bring to justice those who violate the law.
1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
4. Combat public corruption at all levels
5. Protect civil rights
6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
7. Combat major white-collar crime
8. Combat significant violent crime
9. Support federal, state, local and international partners
10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission

Notice number 7: it has to be MAJOR white-collar crime. Apparently the 2008 'til now financial disaster is not 'major white-collar crime' since it was largely not investigated. What would it take to get to the "major" category?

Silly me, I read No. 4 as "combine public corruption at all levels"... and then continued seeing combine instead of combat for the rest. That dyslexia, eh.

[Lauren Johnson]

From the FBI.Gov website:

Our Priorities
The FBI focuses on threats that challenge the foundations of American society or involve dangers too large or complex for any local or state authority to handle alone. In executing the following priorities, the FBIas both a national security and law enforcement organizationwill produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats and to bring to justice those who violate the law.
1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
4. Combat public corruption at all levels
5. Protect civil rights
6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
7. Combat major white-collar crime
8. Combat significant violent crime
9. Support federal, state, local and international partners
10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission

Notice number 7: it has to be MAJOR white-collar crime. Apparently the 2008 'til now financial disaster is not 'major white-collar crime' since it was largely not investigated. What would it take to get to the "major" category?

Silly me, I read No. 4 as "combine public corruption at all levels"... and then continued seeing combine instead of combat for the rest. That dyslexia, eh.

::pullhairout::

[David Guyatt]

From the FBI.Gov website:

Our Priorities
The FBI focuses on threats that challenge the foundations of American society or involve dangers too large or complex for any local or state authority to handle alone. In executing the following priorities, the FBIas both a national security and law enforcement organizationwill produce and use intelligence to protect the nation from threats and to bring to justice those who violate the law.
1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
4. Combat public corruption at all levels
5. Protect civil rights
6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
7. Combat major white-collar crime
8. Combat significant violent crime
9. Support federal, state, local and international partners
10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission

Notice number 7: it has to be MAJOR white-collar crime. Apparently the 2008 'til now financial disaster is not 'major white-collar crime' since it was largely not investigated. What would it take to get to the "major" category?

Silly me, I read No. 4 as "combine public corruption at all levels"... and then continued seeing combine instead of combat for the rest. That dyslexia, eh.

::pullhairout::

::evilpenguin::

[Peter Lemkin]

More than 40 years ago, on the evening of March 8, 1971, a group of burglars carried out an audacious plan. They pried open the door of an FBI office in Pennsylvania and stole files about the bureau's surveillance of anti-war groups and civil rights organizations.
Hundreds of agents tried to identify the culprits, but the crime went unsolved. Until now.
" We thought somebody needed to confront Hoover and document what many of us knew was happening.

- Bonnie Raines

For the first time, a new book reveals that the burglars were peace demonstrators who wanted to start a debate about the FBI's unchecked power to spy on Americans. And it's coming out at a time when the country is weighing the merits of surveillance all over again.
The plotters executed their break-in on a night when millions of people sat glued to their TV sets, watching Muhammad Ali square off against Joe Frazier for the heavyweight championship of the world. That 15-round bout was a brilliant distraction exploited by a group of anti-war activists who set out to burgle a small FBI office outside Philadelphia and expose some of J. Edgar Hoover's secrets.
Bonnie Raines was one of those activists, and she's talking publicly about what she did for the first time in 42 years.
"It seemed that no one else was going to stand up to Hoover's FBI at that time, and we knew what Hoover's FBI was doing in Philadelphia in terms of illegal surveillance and intimidation," Raines says. "And we thought somebody needed to confront Hoover and document what many of us knew was happening."
Stealing From The FBI
Weeks earlier, Bonnie had piled her long hippie hair into a winter cap, put on a pair of glasses and posed as a college student interested in the FBI. She wanted to get a look inside the bureau's small office in the town of Media, Pa., to case the joint, even if it meant risking imprisonment.
Another member of the team, draft protester Keith Forsyth, was chosen to pick the lock at the FBI office. But when the time came, he got a nasty surprise.
"When I got there, there was a brand-new high-security lock on the door," Forsyth says.
Forsyth rushed back to confer with the other burglars, and they agreed to keep trying. So he returned to the office, got down on the ground and slowly applied a crowbar to another door.
"It was a great relief, because, you know, the original plan was for me to be in and out in a couple of minutes, and I don't know how long I spent up there but it was probably at least an hour," Forsyth says.
Forsyth and the other burglars chose the name of their group carefully.
"We called ourselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI," says John Raines. He was a professor of religion at Temple University and Bonnie's husband.
The burglars were sure that Hoover who ruled the bureau with an iron fist had been carrying out illegal surveillance on Vietnam protesters and civil rights groups.
"And he was an icon nobody in Washington was going to hold him accountable," John Raines says. "He could get away with doing whatever he wanted to do with his FBI, and it was his FBI, nobody else's."
The breaking and entering was supposed to get evidence of that spying so Congress and the public could no longer ignore it. Not long after the burglary, reporter Betty Medsger received an anonymous package at her desk at the Washington Post: secret documents. She published the story.
"The country learned for the first time that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was almost completely different from what the country thought it was," Medsger says.

The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI
by
Hardcover, 596 pages

An Agency Revealed

Medsger's new book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, covers the history of that episode, and the revelations those documents helped bring to light.
For one, the FBI had been opening files on so-called subversives including people who simply wrote letters to the editor objecting to the war in Vietnam. The papers also showed the FBI was encouraging agents to infiltrate schools and churches in the black community using secret informants, turning people against each other.
"I think most striking in the Media files at first was a statement that had to do with the philosophy, the policy of the FBI," Medsger says. "And it was a document that instructed agents to enhance paranoia, to make people feel there's an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
Powerful stuff for people like John Raines, who had traveled south as a Freedom Rider and marched in Selma, Ala., on Bloody Sunday.
"The distinction between being a criminal and breaking laws is very important," he says. "When the law, or when the institutions that enforce laws [and] interpret laws, become the crime as happened in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, then the only way to stop that crime from happening is to expose what's going on."

Before long, the purloined files from that tiny FBI office published by Medsger and other reporters began to attract wide attention. It took years and revelations by other reporters and a congressional investigation led by Sen. Frank Church, but eventually lawmakers did rein in the FBI and the CIA.
Medsger's new book about the FBI investigation fills in some details. Hundreds of agents were dispatched to find the burglars. The FBI narrowed its search, building profiles of seven prime suspects. But they got almost all of the suspects wrong.
The burglars had been meticulous. They left no fingerprints, and they surreptitiously photocopied the files at the colleges where they taught. FBI agents did visit Raines, but he deflected their inquiries.
"With no physical evidence left from the burglary itself, they were faced with having to sort through a thousand or 2,000 suspects, and that was an overwhelming job, which of course did overwhelm them," John Raines says. "They never found us."
The burglars went about their lives, vowing never again to talk or meet to protect their secret. John Raines started writing the first of many books. His wife, Bonnie, a child and family advocate, describes carrying on this way: "In my case, it was working and pursuing a degree and driving carpool."
A Crime Revealed
After five years, the statute of limitations passed on the crime of burglary, and members of the group say they breathed easier. But still they kept their mouths shut until one night, years later, when Betty Medsger happened to be eating dinner in the Raines house.
That's when John Raines mentioned in an offhand way that he had anonymously sent Medsger documents from the FBI burglary in 1971.
"I said, 'Are you telling me that you were the burglars in Media?' " Medsger recalls. "And they said yes. And I was very shocked and very eager to know more."
The Raines family helped her locate the others involved in the burglary. Most of them agreed to break their silence four decades after they took on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and won.