Law Enforcement, Responses to Terrorism

Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security, (2004)

Law Enforcement, Responses to Terrorism

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, constituted a watershed event in American history, particularly for law enforcement. In the aftermath of that event, the nation's principal law enforcement officer, the attorney general, introduced new measures designed to prevent and combat terrorism, while the leading U.S. law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), increasingly turned its intention toward terrorism. Through its Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which provides assistance and coordination to first responders at the local level, the Justice Department has helped state, county, and municipal forces respond to terrorism. The agencies have in turn developed a myriad of programs to improve intelligence collection and processing, increase the capacity to address terrorist acts, communicate with other public safety agencies, and respond to citizen fear while assisting victims.

The Patriot Act

Following the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft drafted legislation known as the U.S. Patriot Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law on October 26,2001. Controversial among civil libertarians, who regarded it as an erosion of freedoms, the 342-page bill contained changes to some 15 different statutes. Collectively, these changes gave the Justice Department and its agencies a number of new powers in intelligence gathering and criminal procedure against drug trafficking, immigration violations, organized criminal activity, money laundering, and terrorism and terrorism-related acts themselves.

Among its specific provisions, the Patriot Act gave increased authority to intercept communications related to an expanded list of terrorism-related crimes; allowed investigators to aggressively pursue terrorists on the Internet; provided new subpoena power to obtain financial

A 17-pound miniature helicopter created by a group of researchers at the Massachusette Institute of Technology in 2002 could have future uses for civilian or military surveillance, shooting aerial camera footage, or scouting disaster areas and other dangerous terrain. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS .

information; reduced bureaucracy by allowing investigators to use a single court order for tracing a communication nationwide; and encouraged sharing of information between local law enforcement and the intelligence community.

Prior to the Patriot Act, federal law had sharply limited the ability of prosecutors and law-enforcement officials to share investigative information with other federal officials, let alone local ones. Thanks to the Patriot Act, sharing would increase between intelligence organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose purview is international; the FBI, whose area of focus is domestic; and first responders, whose focus is the community. Such information sharing, it was hoped, would prevent information from falling through the cracks.

The FBI

Allegations made by several special agents against their employer, the FBI, provided an example of the problems that occurred prior to the implementation of such information sharing. In July, 2001, Special Agent Kenneth Williams of the Phoenix FBI office sent his superiors a memo warning that Arab males with possible links to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden were training at an Arizona flight school. The bureau rejected his pleas for an investigation.

Around the same time, Special Agent Colleen Rowley of the Minneapolis office requested a warrant to conduct wiretaps and a computer search against an Arab trainee at a local flight school who had aroused suspicions when he told instructors that he only wanted to learn how to fly a plane, not how to land it. He was arrested for immigration violations in August, but still the bureau took little interest in Zacarias Moussaoui. Only after the September 11 attacks did authorities search the computer of the so-called "20th hijacker," at which time they found phone numbers that might have led them to Moussaoui's alleged coconspirators.

A new focus on counterterrorism. The problem with the FBI was not incompetence or ignorance; rather, prior to September 2001, its mission had been strictly that of a lawenforcement agency. Its job was primarily to solve crimes that had already occurred, not to collect intelligence concerning terrorist attacks and other crimes that had yet to take place. Nor did it work closely with the CIA, because their missions were different, the one concerned with domestic affairs and the other focused on international concerns.

Criticized for not taking enough measures to direct the bureau toward its new mission, Mueller in the spring of 2002 announced a number of new reforms. These included the hiring of more analysts; the re-tasking of special agents to counterterrorism; the creation of an intelligence office; development of terrorism expert support teams to work with the bureau's 56 field officers; recruitment of Arabic speakers and others fluent in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages; creation of a joint terrorism task force to coordinate with the CIA and other federal agencies; and the improvement of financial analysis and other forms of strategic analysis directed toward terrorist groups.