FBI BOOSTS OVERSEAS PRESENCE TO FIGHT TERRORISM

WASHINGTON - In an effort to attack terrorism, drug trafficking,
organized crime and other threats at their roots, an unprecedented
number of FBI agents are now working overseas. FBI Director Robert
Mueller says they are "critically important" to preventing more
terrorist attacks.

FBI agents played key roles in investigating the murder this year of
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and the 1998
bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But the bureau's
effectiveness is limited by a shortage of agents with language skills
and foreign expertise and by relationships with foreign governments
that range from reluctant cooperation to outright obstruction.

American officials complain that Saudi Arabia prevented FBI agents
from investigating the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers U.S. military
housing complex, which killed 19 Americans and was sponsored, some
American intelligence officials believe, by Osama bin Laden.

When the FBI tried to investigate the bin Laden-backed bombing of the
destroyer USS Cole in 2000, relations between the bureau and the
government of Yemen grew so scratchy that the U.S. ambassador had the
FBI's top official on the scene removed from the country.

But while FBI officials say they get too little cooperation from some
foreign governments, some civil liberties organizations complain that
they get too much.

Because the bureau sometimes obtains information from interrogations
that violate U.S. legal standards, human rights groups charge that the
FBI has been complicit in human rights violations. In Pakistan, for
example, critics allege that agents have participated in raids and
tolerated detentions that breach U.S. norms.

Overseas Program Effective Tool

The FBI's role overseas dates from World War II, when the bureau
dispatched agents to U.S. embassies in Europe to counter Nazi spies.
They occupied fewer than two dozen posts overseas in the mid-1990s
when then-FBI director Louis Freeh sought to double their number.

Terrorism was a faint threat when the expansion began; a 1996 State
Department tally of terrorist incidents reported "the lowest annual
total in 25 years."

That year, however, the bombing of Khobar Towers gave Freeh reason to
expand the FBI's overseas presence to Saudi Arabia. He also sent FBI
agents - as legal attaches assigned to U.S. embassies - to Egypt,
Pakistan, Israel, Poland, Estonia and Ukraine.

"The overseas program of the FBI is the most effective tool available
in protecting our nation from the threat of international organized
crime and global terrorism," Freeh told the Senate Foreign Operations
Subcommittee in 1998.

Agents Called "Rambos"

Today, the FBI has agents based in 44 countries and operating in 52.
An FBI spokesman declined to say how many personnel are assigned to
foreign duty. In 1999, the number was about 150. In major
investigations, scores of agents on temporary assignment join them.

More than 70 agents rushed to Saudi Arabia after the Khobar Towers
bombing, but Saudi authorities barred them from participating in the
questioning of suspects and witnesses by Saudi police. The Saudis, in
turn, complained of high-handed FBI agents who refused to share
information they gathered.

Ultimately, American officials found the Saudis' evidence unconvincing
and the Saudis refused to turn over 14 suspects - 13 Saudis and a
Lebanese - named in U.S. indictments filed in June 2001.

But FBI agents abroad can't do much on their own.

"We have no jurisdiction to interview subjects, investigate crimes or
make arrests," Mueller said in a speech in Singapore in March.
Consequently, in foreign operations, "the bureau is only so good as
its ability to form close and abiding relationships with its many
colleagues overseas."

That problem beset the FBI's investigation in Yemen of the USS Cole
bombing in 2000 and 2001. Armed FBI agents offended Yemeni
authorities, who called them "Rambos" and kept them at a frustrating
distance from their investigation. U.S. Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine,
caught in the middle, at one point expelled the FBI's chief
investigator, John O'Neill, from the country.

Bodine subsequently was reassigned stateside. O'Neill died in the 2001
World Trade Center attack.

Looking for Internationalists

The FBI's critics say its agents often are culturally
hidebound.

"They operate in the Middle East like they're in New Jersey, and that
doesn't work," said a senior U.S. official.

An FBI agent said that before Sept. 11, the bureau generally posted
only senior agents overseas, regardless of language skill and cultural
acumen.

Today, the FBI looks harder for internationalists. Nonetheless, it
"never has enough agents or linguists who speak ... critical
languages" such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Farsi
or Vietnamese, an official from the investigative services division,
David Alba, told a Senate oversight subcommittee in 2000.

The FBI appears to have been most effective in Kenya, Tanzania and
Pakistan - all countries where English is widely spoken.