NEW FBI WORRIES FEW

WASHINGTON (GNS) - Tommy Ferrell remembers when his dad, then Adams County
sheriff, worked closely with 25 FBI agents stationed in Natchez to fight
race-based violence during Mississippi's dark days of civil rights strife
in the 1960s.

The agents are gone now. But southwest Mississippi still has a local FBI
presence, a lone agent four counties away in the town of McComb who
sometimes helps Ferrell - the current Adams County sheriff - fight crime.
Ferrell is proud that with the FBI's help, he has just finished cracking an
interstate truck theft ring.

But Ferrell, also the new head of the National Sheriff's Association,
worries that a valuable partnership between the FBI and local police is
threatened because of the Bush administration's decision to change the
FBI's chief mission from crime solving to counterterrorism.

"The bottom line is that this is going to have a terrible impact on us and
we're bracing for it," he said.

Restructuring of the FBI began right after the Sept. 11 attacks and is
expected to accelerate now that FBI Director Robert Mueller has revealed
his detailed plan to retool the agency. Mueller has picked W. Wilson Lowery
Jr., an agency outsider and former corporate executive, to carry out the
changes.

Reform of the agency also was made the No. 1 priority after revelations
that Washington headquarters mishandled information from agents in the
FBI's Minneapolis and Phoenix field offices that may have helped uncover
plans for the attacks.

Soon the 94-year-old agency will have a new chain of command. About 400
agents will be redirected from drug investigations and nearly 100 others
from their work on violent and white-collar crime. Another 900 new agents
with special language, computer and science skills will be hired. A top CIA
official has been sent to the FBI to coordinate the agency's intelligence,
25 CIA agents will teach their FBI counterparts how to be analysts, and
chasing terrorists has become the most important job at the 56 field offices.

But some of these changes need congressional approval, and it appears that
lawmakers aren't ready to rubberstamp the proposal.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who heads the House Appropriations
Committee that oversees the FBI budget, has requested an independent review
of the plan and has scheduled hearings on the proposed reorganization. Like
Ferrell, Wolf is concerned that Mueller's plans to shift hundreds of FBI
agents and 766 support personnel to the war on terrorism may leave a void
in other important law enforcement functions.

Ferrell and his counterparts across the nation realize that law enforcement
was changed forever when hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.

But he and others worry about the FBI's abandonment of some of its
traditional duties. For instance, the bureau now is expected to leave the
investigation of most "note jobs," isolated bank robberies committed by
single armed bandits, to local police. The FBI's retreat from this field
worries some because, while most crime dropped in the past few years, the
number of bank heists increased 25 percent in two years, from 6,599 in 1999
to 8,259 in 2001.

Since the days of Bonnie and Clyde, the FBI has been able to do what local
police can't - track criminals across state lines and keep a national crime
database.

Working with the FBI also helps local police because the agency has
resources, including money to pay informants and buy evidence, that most
police and sheriff's departments lack. The FBI also has access to
information culled from grand juries and secret sources that are off-limits
to the local police but come in handy in joint investigations.

"We're going to have to pick up the slack, and that may be difficult,"
Ferrell said.

But some say the FBI's 11,000 agents represent a fraction of the nation's
law enforcement strength and that their redeployment will have little
effect on fighting street crime. Jim Pasco, executive director of the
Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, predicted that the
nation's police departments won't see a change in their operations.

"In terms of just fighting any kind of crime at the beat level, the FBI is
not particularly relevant," he said.

And if any local police department is inconvenienced from the change, it's
a small price to pay, Pasco said.

"Which did more damage to America, the destruction of the trade center or
the robbing of a bank in Duluth?" Pasco asked.