It is reported that there is widespread amazement in the Pentagon that the anti-Taleban bombing campaign has worked so well and so quickly. It was hardly four weeks ago that the first US bomb was dropped and only two weeks since the capital Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance. This surprise in Washington is the shiny flip side of a feeling after Sept. 11 that America’s law enforcement agencies are not up to the job of protecting the country.
The criticism has fallen specifically upon the FBI which has had a long run of spectacular failures. Even before the World Trade Center attack, of which it had not the slightest warning, there was wide acceptance that the FBI was in need of root-and-branch reform. The fact that President Bush moved rapidly to create an Office of Homeland Security hours after the Al-Qaeda attacks was a tacit admission that the FBI itself was not up to the job of protecting the United States. While many saw the Homeland Security Office as a political move, creating a lightning rod for the White House in the event of further terrorist attacks, for the FBI the move was depressing. The heavy-handed detention of hundreds of Americans of Arab origin has done little to improve the FBI’s international reputation. However at the moment, the majority of Americans are in panic and are less interested in preserving the civil rights upon which their political system is based, than in doing anything and everything to avert further terrorist attacks.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft has charged FBI Director Robert Mueller with pushing through major reforms, which will see a radical thinning of the headquarters staff and a reorganization of the investigative departments. But, probably, the major problem that ought to be addressed is the FBI’s own vision of itself. As the designated domestic agency with a writ that runs throughout the United States, the Fed’s G-men have all too often acted overbearingly when working with local law enforcement officers.
The myth of the G-men grew when America was emerging as the predominant world power. The FBI was created over 20 years before the CIA which emerged after World War II. At that point, the CIA was given responsibility for overseas intelligence and the FBI was obliged to focus entirely upon domestic investigations. The CIA tended to look at foreign governments while the FBI got on with the job of fighting organized crime and narcotics. Between the two of them there was what turned out to be a fatal gap, which was international terrorism.
Although the CIA came to focus on state-sponsored terror networks, its writ remained exclusively overseas. Until the Oklahoma bombing, America had never felt the blast and impact of terrorist attacks. This bred the complacency and lack of focus both in the FBI and the country as a whole, which meant that when Al-Qaeda struck, the bureau was running around like a headless chicken and most Americans were incoherent with shock. The most important thing for America to do now is not simply to reorganize its federal-law enforcers, but to take on board the message that the problems of the rest of the world are not safely “over there”, well beyond US borders, but are immediate and everyday concerns.
