DEEP CHANGES PLANNED FOR FBI

Focus On Countering Terrorism Against U.S.

WASHINGTON - With the FBI facing intense criticism over its performance
before Sept. 11, the bureau is planning a series of changes intended to
fundamentally alter its mission from solving crimes like bank robbery to
countering terrorism, government officials said Tuesday.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is planning to outline today the changes, which
include the transfer of more than 600 agents assigned to investigating
narcotics, bank robberies, kidnappings and other traditional crimes to
investigating and analyzing the terrorist threat to the United States, the
officials said. In addition, 50 officers of the CIA will be spread
throughout the bureau's field offices to help with analysis of intelligence
about terrorist threats.

Throughout its history, the FBI has redefined itself to reflect the
crime-fighting issues of the day. But the changes being proposed by Mueller
are designed to go deeper. Mueller has begun the transformation of a law
enforcement agency into what will be at its core a domestic intelligence
agency, bureau officials suggested. He is asking for a budget increase in a
"massive'' effort to hire 900 linguists, computer experts, engineers and
scientists over the next few months to improve intelligence-gathering and
analysis.

The changes are a shift in the direction set by J. Edgar Hoover, who
emphasized pursuing traditional criminals. Over time, that included the
gangsters and rumrunners of the Depression, political militants in the
1960s and the drug lords of the 1980s and 1990s. The bureau judged its
success by the numbers of high-profile criminals jailed, rather than by the
prevention of violent acts.

Culture Of Resistance

Mueller's proposals, his supporters say, are also intended to shake up an
insular culture that has resisted changes sought by other directors. Two
years ago, Mueller's predecessor, Louis Freeh, declared that terrorism was
the FBI's top priority, creating a separate division to combat it. But it
is the counterterrorism division that is now under heavy fire for missing
potential warning signals in the weeks before Sept. 11.

Mueller's reorganization reflects the current view in counterterrorism
circles that only an aggressive intelligence apparatus combined with a
vastly expanded analytical capability can thwart terrorism.

Mueller, who took over at the FBI on Sept. 4 after shaking up the U.S.
attorney's office in San Francisco, is expected to announce the creation of
a centralized intelligence-analysis unit based at the headquarters in
Washington.

CIA Presence

Mueller is also tapping into CIA resources, putting 50 CIA employees on
joint terrorism task forces in field offices around the country, according
to congressional sources briefed on his reorganization plan.

Last week, congressional officials confirmed that an additional 25 CIA
employees would join the FBI as counterterrorism analysts.

"We can no longer be all things to all people in law enforcement,'' said
one high-ranking federal law enforcement official. "These changes are long
overdue.''

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a persistent critic of the bureau, said he was
unsure if the changes Mueller was said to be planning would accomplish the
goal of ``changing the agency from one that goes after Bonnie and Clyde to
one that directs its attention to the likes of Osama bin Laden.''

Grassley said it was important to change the culture of the FBI and have it
discard its traditional role of compiling statistics on the number of
crimes solved to preventing terrorist crimes for which there is often no
clear credit to be claimed. He said the shift of 620 agents represented a
small shift -- instead of 18 percent of the bureau's approximately 11,500
agents devoted to counterterrorism duties, it would be 22 percent.

Moreover, Grassley was one of a handful of lawmakers who said they were
skeptical of the timing of Mueller's announcement.

Grassley said the announcement appeared to be designed to serve as a
distraction from the criticism the bureau is enduring over its failure to
detect a pattern in the intelligence warnings received in different
quarters of the government before Sept. 11.

In another development, an internal bureau memorandum released Tuesday said
the FBI seriously mishandled a surveillance operation involving bin Laden's
terror network two years ago because of technical problems with the
controversial Carnivore e-mail program, part of a "pattern,'' indicating
the FBI was unable to manage its intelligence wiretaps.

A March 2000 attempt to secretly monitor the e-mail of an unidentified
suspect went awry when the Carnivore program retrieved communication from
other parties as well, according to the memo, which was obtained by the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based advocacy group
opposed to the technology.

Carnivore, which has been renamed DCS1000, is a computer program that
allows investigators to capture e-mail sent to and from criminal and
terrorism suspects. But the newly released memo indicates that, in at least
one case, the program retrieved e-mail from innocent people not involved in
the investigation as well.