FBI Changes Its Mission to War on Terror

The Federal Bureau of Investigation embarked on the most fundamental transformation of its 94-year history yesterday, switching its focus from traditional law enforcement to the prevention of terrorism after coming under intense fire for failing to stop the September 11 attacks.

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, declared "a dramatic departure from the past" making terrorism prevention the bureau's first priority, followed by counter-espionage.

The fight against organised crime, which defined the FBI for much of its history, was relegated to the sixth priority, after combating cyber-crime and public corruption, and safeguarding civil rights.

"After September 11 it became clear we had to fundamentally change the way we do our business," Mr Mueller said.

A string of sweeping reforms includes the establishment of a national joint terrorism taskforce in Washington; and the drafting of 400 agents now working in narcotics units into counter-terrorist units, along with hundreds from units combating crimes such as kidnapping and bank robbery.

Mr Mueller has also asked for the funds to hire 900 more agents, of whom 500 would be counter-terrorism analysts.

Mr Mueller said that more than 3,700 agents, a third of the total workforce, would be working in counter-terrorism. The structure of the bureau would be thoroughly reorganised, creating a new terrorism prevention unit and a counter-terrorism analysis unit, as well as an office of intelligence under the command of a veteran CIA official.

Mr Mueller also said he would upgrade the FBI's technology. September 11 exposed the fact that the bureau was struggling with computers that were over a decade old and incapable even of sending photographs over the internet.

However, the FBI's critics suggested that the changes were too incremental to face the threat posed by terrorism.

The reforms have come at a moment when the FBI's standing is at its lowest, following a string of revelations that it had failed to act on clues pointing to al-Qaida's hijacking plot.

Most damaging of all was a memorandum to Mr Mueller last week from an agent in Minneapolis, accusing the FBI's middle management of undermining the investigation of a suspect arrested last August, Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now on trial for his involvement in the conspiracy.

The whistleblower, Coleen Rowley, pointed out that if her office had known that another office in Phoenix, Arizona, had already expressed concerns that al-Qaida members were using US flight schools to prepare for a terrorist attack, it could have done more to pre-empt the looming threat.

Mr Mueller, who took up his job on September 4 last year, made a point of thanking Ms Rowley for her outspoken letter. "We must be open to new ideas, to criticism from within and without and to learning from our mistakes," he said.

He said the Washington headquarters would set up flying squads to support field offices and coordinate the work of field agents: "It is critically important for us to have that connection of dots to ensure we stop another attack."

The Republican senator Charles Grassley said that the shift in manpower was relatively small in percentage terms and he doubted whether it would go far enough in "changing the agency from one that goes after Bonnie and Clyde to one that directs its attention to the likes of Osama bin Laden".