The Change Mariner

FBI Has Doubled Agents Assigned to Terror

Guardian Unlimited:

The number of FBI agents assigned to terrorism more than doubled just after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reversing a long trend in which traditional crime dominated the FBI's work, according to a Justice Department report released Monday.

In the last full fiscal year before the attacks, about 2,100 agents worked in three major FBI counterterrorism programs. Yet more than 6,800 agents were working on white-collar crime, illegal drugs and violent crime during fiscal 2000, according to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

That trend changed dramatically in fiscal 2002 after the terror attacks, when the number of FBI agents working on terrorism rose to 4,680 and those assigned to other crimes fell to just under 4,000. The fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

The report also estimated that the Sept. 11 attacks, code-named PENTTBOMB by the FBI, consumed more than 3.9 million hours of work by FBI agents and support personnel.

That is by far the largest of the 15 biggest FBI cases measured by the report since October 1995. The next largest case, an anti-child pornography effort called Innocent Images, has taken up about 628,000 hours.

The report reflects the post-Sept. 11 commitment by FBI Director Robert Mueller to make counterterrorism and counterintelligence the bureau's top two priorities. Terrorism has remained the major focus since the attacks.

In 1996 the FBI opened about 3,500 violent crime/major offender cases per month nationally compared with less than 1,500 terrorism cases. That trend has now changed, with violent crime and terrorism each accounting for slightly less than 2,000 cases opened each month.