Ashcroft, Mueller announce reorganization of FBI

Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI will undergo a wholesale reorganization of its "structure, culture and mission" to better cope with threats against the United States in an age of terrorist attacks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, jointly announcing the changes Wednesday, acknowledged the FBI had failed to adapt quickly to the changed law enforcement environment in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mueller said that in the wake of the attacks, "It became clearer than ever that we had to fundamentally change the way we do business... It requires a redesigned and refocused FBI."

The broad reorganization will include a new office of intelligence and strengthened oversight of counterterror investigations. It also will improve FBI ties with the CIA and overhaul the FBI's outdated computer systems.

Mueller pointedly criticized his bureau's response to attempts by agents in the field to alert headquarters to the possibility -- before Sept. 11 -- that terrorists could hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons against the American people.

"Our analytical capacity is not where it should be," he said, noting criticism the bureau has received from the legal counsel for the bureau's Minneapolis field office for its handling of accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, and its failure to respond sufficiently to a warning sounded by an agent in the Phoenix FBI office.

"I still find them somewhat embarrassing," Mueller said.

One change announced Wednesday will require the bureau to hire some 900 new agents nationwide by September, mostly specialists in computers, foreign languages and sciences.

"We have to do a much better job at recruiting, managing and training our work force," Mueller said. "We have to do a better job of collaborating with others. We have to do a better job of collecting, analyzing and sharing information."

Ashcroft expressed confidence in Mueller's ability to see the agency through this historic transformation. "Bob Mueller is the right man for that job.... This reformer will overhaul the FBI," he said.

In advance of Wednesday's announcement, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had predicted that congressional hearings next week on the reorganization plan will focus on the bureau's handling of the warning last June from its Phoenix office about an inordinate number of Arabs attending flight training schools in the United States.

The bureau also will have to answer questions about a letter from a Minnesota FBI agent angry about failed efforts to win permission to search the home and computer of Zacarias Moussaoui in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui is awaiting trial on charges he was an accomplice in the September attacks.

"Before I can evaluate the adequacy of these changes, I have to know a lot more about the specifics of the problem," said Specter, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It doesn't do a lot of good to move names around on organization charts if there aren't substantive changes. What's going to happen to the next Phoenix memo? Where's it going to end up?"

Although Mueller previously suggested a wholesale shift of some investigations to state and local police, officials say the FBI will continue to pursue bank robbers, white-collar criminals and drug dealers even as it concentrates more on terrorists.

The FBI has indicated it will increasingly ask state and local police for help on "note jobs," bank robberies in which single armed bandits commit isolated thefts. The bureau also may seek local help with kidnappings when the victim is not taken across state lines.

State and local police convinced Mueller that a wholesale shift of some crimes away from the FBI was a bad idea. Some bank robberies, for example, are committed by thieves who are active interstate and might be stealing money for domestic terrorism. "The bureau needs to be in that circle," said William Berger, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the police chief in North Miami Beach, Fla.