FBI RUSHES TO REMAKE ITS MISSION

Counterterrorism Focus Replaces Crime Solving

After decades of pursuing gangsters and drug kingpins to great acclaim, the
FBI is rushing to remake itself as the nation's primary line of defense
against terrorism, a seismic shift for an agency that historically has not
adjusted easily to change.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and
his handpicked FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, have begun to refocus
the bureau's efforts on detecting and thwarting future terrorist assaults,
instead of pursuing culprits after crimes are committed. The shift to
counterterrorism would leave many crimes traditionally investigated by the
FBI to local police or other agencies.

Preventing terrorism has never been the overriding purpose of the FBI. Many
lawmakers, experts and even some Justice Department officials said they are
uncertain whether the bureau is positioned to undertake the task now.

"A lot of this is being developed on the fly," said a senior FBI official.
"This is a moving train, and we're all running to keep up."

Despite a doubling of the bureau's funding after the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, less than a sixth of the FBI's budget is devoted to
counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

The bureau has lost dozens of veteran agents with counterterrorism
experience in recent years and faces the retirements later this month of
Neil J. Gallagher, its national security chief, and Deputy Director Thomas
J. Pickard, who has overseen the massive probe into the Sept. 11 attacks on
New York and Washington.

"Mueller is essentially waging two wars at the same time: one against
terrorism and one against his own bureaucracy," said Kris Kolesnik, a
former investigator for Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) who specialized
in FBI issues and now heads the National Whistleblower Center. "They are
not geared up for prevention of anything. They are geared up to arrest
someone after a crime has been committed."

The FBI's intelligence failings before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and
its stalled investigation of the anthrax cases have also begun to provoke
criticism from some on Capitol Hill. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who
held hearings on the anthrax case last week, said she was disappointed by
the slow progress. "I was really taken aback by how little they seem to
know," Feinstein said in an interview.

Nevertheless, Ashcroft and Mueller are clearly heading the FBI in a new
direction. In a speech to Justice Department managers last week, Ashcroft
said the FBI "is at the center of our counterterrorism effort." He has
cited new the anti-terror law approved by Congress as a "mandate for
fundamental change" and has ordered the FBI "to put the prevention of
terrorism" ahead of all other priorities.

"I don't know of anyone at the senior levels of the FBI that is in
disagreement about a need for change," said John E. Collingwood, an FBI
assistant director. "Half the battle is recognizing the need. I think
September 11th did that for us."

At the same time, however, some in the FBI believe they may be losing turf
and autonomy. In recently passed anti-terror legislation, Congress gave the
Treasury Department a new role in combating terrorism and increased the
CIA's ability to use information gathered by the FBI in domestic criminal
investigation.

In the name of waging a more coordinated global attack against terrorism,
the Bush administration is pressing the three agencies into an alliance
that would, in effect, create a single, unified federal police and
intelligence system. It would join the FBI-centered forces at Justice with
the CIA-centered forces of the intelligence community and the Treasury
Department agencies that will operate a new financial intelligence
gathering bureau.

The FBI is also adjusting to its role as just one part of the international
campaign against terrorism, an effort that includes U.S. military forces
abroad, a senior Justice Department official said.

"It is not a criminal case," a senior Justice Department official said.
"They are not the major players, they are not calling the shots. For a lot
of us who are used to thinking of terrorism as a crime to be solved, it is
a sea change. And it is uncomfortable. Even if you like it, it is
uncomfortable."

To some, Ashcroft's plan to shift the FBI's primary focus from solving
crimes to preventing terrorism and gathering domestic intelligence points
the bureau back to a model pioneered by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
in the Justice Department's campaign against terrorism and subversion in
the 1950s and '60s.

Numerous congressional, academic and journalistic studies of Hoover's FBI
have documented that, whatever else the emphasis on intelligence gathering
achieved, it did not help the FBI solve serious crimes or prevent acts of
terrorism.

A General Accounting Office study of 17,528 domestic intelligence
investigations in 1974 found that less than 2 percent of those cases
produced a prosecution of any kind, or provided advance warning of terrorism.

Ashcroft spent much of his first eight months in office coping with a
string of blunders by the FBI, including the discovery that a veteran
counterintelligence agent was a Russian spy and a document fiasco that led
to a delay in the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. At
least six separate investigations were launched into the bureau's
performance, and Ashcroft brought Mueller on board Sept. 4 amid promises of
reform.

"When you look back before September 11th, the FBI couldn't have been
further down," said a Justice Department official. "Now they're the people
on the front lines guarding us from terrorism. This is their chance to
regain some glory."

The probe of the Sept. 11 attacks, code named PENTTBOM, is the largest
criminal investigation in FBI history, with 7,000 agents and support
personnel working the case. But it has slowed dramatically in the United
States as FBI officials and Justice Department prosecutors have concluded
that the al Qaeda plot, which killed about 4,500 people, was hatched
overseas and left few living conspirators here. No one has been charged in
the United States, and the only alleged accomplices identified are three
fugitives under indictment in Germany.

The FBI has reported little progress in its probe into the mailings of
deadly anthrax spores to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.)
in Washington and to media offices in New York and Florida. Four people
have died since the first letters were postmarked nearly two months ago,
but FBI officials have no suspects and have not even determined how many
laboratories handle anthrax in the United States.

The investigation of both cases provides examples of shortcomings in the
bureau's abilities, according to law enforcement officials and some
lawmakers. Local police chiefs have also complained about a lack of
cooperation by the FBI, which has been reticent to share investigative
details with state and city officials.

In the anthrax investigation, Ashcroft said Friday that the FBI was too
slow to test a suspicious letter sent to NBC News that turned up negative
for the bacteria. FBI deputy assistant director J.T. Caruso told senators
last week that the bureau had little expertise in dealing with anthrax. He
said investigators had no idea how many labs handle the bacteria or whether
the spores found in three separate letters came from that type of facility.

"We're positioning ourselves to ask smarter questions and get better
answers," Caruso testified.

FBI and Justice officials say the anthrax threat is new to investigators
and that thousands of hoaxes and false alarms have strained their capacity
to focus on the case. As for the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI investigators point
out that similar terrorism cases -- such as the probe into the 1996 Khobar
Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia -- have taken years to yield indictments.

"This is not going to be a 60-minute FBI show," said a senior Justice
Department official. "It is going to take a while."

Speaking on CNN's "Larry King Live" Friday, Ashcroft said, "My faith in the
bureau has been growing. I think obviously as we move through these kinds
of circumstances, we get better at it."

As it scrambles to upgrade its computers, revamp training and attract more
employees fluent in Middle Eastern languages, the FBI's budget, which has
grown substantially in recent years, is poised to increase again.

House and Senate lawmakers last week approved a $250 million increase in
the FBI budget, to nearly $3.5 billion. Ashcroft announced plans last week
to divert $2.5 billion in Justice Department money to counterterrorism
efforts, the bulk of which will go to the FBI, a senior official said.

But most of the FBI's budget is devoted to other objectives -- from
organized crime to drug investigations to tracking down fugitives. Ashcroft
and Mueller have not divulged which of these programs may be curtailed or
dropped in favor of counterterrorism. Asa Hutchinson, chief of the DEA,
said in an interview that the terror probes have already drawn FBI agents
away from narcotics investigations, and he expects the shift "will put a
greater emphasis on the role of the DEA in narcotics."

There are also signs that along with its new responsibilities, the FBI will
have to live with stronger oversight of its activities.

In exchange for giving the FBI new surveillance powers in last month's
anti-terrorism bill, for example, House Judiciary Chairman F. James
Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) demanded creation of a deputy Justice Department
inspector general responsible for monitoring alleged civil rights
violations by the FBI. Congress also approved new funding for the Justice
Department's inspector general office to look into "allegations of employee
misconduct within the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration."

Sensenbrenner and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy
(D-Vt.) both vow to exercise close oversight of the FBI's pursuit of its
new mandate.

"I don't mind giving law enforceent tools," Leahy said, "but I want checks
and balances."

Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.