The FBI and the land of the free

"War," a wise man once observed, "is the health of the State."

He was referring, of course, to wars among nations, but he could as easily
have been talking about our current moral equivalents: the "war against
crime," the "war on drugs" and the "war against terrorism."

With foreign threats largely in eclipse and national defense no longer
supplying a ready warrant for expansions of government power, these
internal threats have become the justifications for large and often dubious
expansionism of federal authority and control over Americans' everyday
lives. And the greatest beneficiary of these expansions has been the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

To an extent that should have provoked far more concern and debate than it
has, the FBI has grown enormously in budget, manpower, and jurisdiction
all the result of presidential requests or congressional initiatives taken
in response to the threats of terrorism and drugs and crime.

To be sure, Americans have legitimate cause for concern about all these
things. But since the beginning of the Republic, Americans also have been
legitimately concerned about dangerous and undue expansions of federal
power especially police power. It is a serious question now whether the
proper balance between those concerns is being lost.

Since 1993, when Louis J. Freeh took over as FBI director, the agency's
budget has grown by at least 40 percent, from $2 billion, to $2.8 billion.
The number of FBI agents has grown by almost 25 percent, from 9,000 to
11,200. The agency has struck intelligence alliances with the CIA and the
National Security Agency, among others. It has opened offices in places as
distant as Poland, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and plans 46 foreign offices
by the year 2000. Relying on new interpretations of old guidelines, it has
become more aggressive in investigating putative domestic security risks.
An the old notion of the FBI as confined to a narrow range of federal
crimes has gone the way of the dodo; the agency is now involved in or leads
almost any type of investigation, no matter how local.

Many civil libertarians have begun to worry, with reason, that all of this
amounts to a federalization of police power in the United States.

Freeh and his supporters respond that the expansion of the FBI authority is
sensible and justified. Crime particularly crimes like drug trafficking
or terrorism is no respecter of municipal, state or national boundaries,
they say. If the government is to five the American people the safety and
security they need and deserve, then it must have the authority and the
resources to go after bad guys (or potential bad guys) wherever they exist.

Safety and security. They are the siren songs of those who would be our
guardians. And as out plummeting crime figures indicate, their song is not
just a seduction, an empty enticement. The question, as always, is one of
price. An increasingly muscular FBI can make us safe, but will it leave us
free?