Psst -- leads from public to FBI rise

0 Comments | USA TODAY, August, 2008 | by Donna Leinwand

WASHINGTON -- Cynthia Stanton never knows what looms when she takes her first look into the computer queue of FBI tips awaiting her attention.

Perhaps it's the key to a terrorism case -- or perhaps not.

"'I saw Osama bin Laden driving a cab in Brooklyn,' I got that once," Stanton says. He wasn't.

Stanton is a technical information specialist in the FBI counterterrorism division that fields public tips via a form on the FBI's website. She investigates more than 100 a day.

The FBI's Public Access Center Unit opened in September 2001 -- in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks -- to collect and vet terrorism tips from the public.

The FBI expects to receive its 2 millionth tip this month. After tapering off in the years after the...