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| FBI reorganizing |
| 2002-05-29 |
| The FBI is completing plans for a broad reorganization to focus more tightly on preventing future terror attacks, including the formation of a new office of intelligence and strengthened oversight of counterterror investigations. The reshaping of the bureau appears to result at least partly from criticism over its efforts before the Sept. 11 hijackings. Naw! Y're joshin' us? Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were expected to outline high-profile changes at the FBI's headquarters. They were to include FBI ties with the CIA and an overhaul of the FBI's outdated computer systems. FBI's computers have been a disgrace since shortly after they bought them. You have to shovel coal in the back of some of them... The FBI also expects a hiring binge by September to take on more than 900 agents nationwide, especially specialists in computers, foreign languages and sciences. "We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller told a Senate panel this month. "We must improve how we hire, manage and train our work force, collaborate with others and manage, analyze, share and protect our information." Also have to work on interagency coodinatin and tasking priorities. There's always been a problem there... Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., predicted that congressional hearings next week on the reorganization plan will focus on the bureau's handling of a warning last June from its Phoenix office about an inordinate number of Arabs attending flight training schools in the United States. That'll probably be where they shoot the last of the wounded. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |