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CNN Live Today

FBI Prepares for Major Overhaul

Aired May 29, 2002 - 12:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to get more into exactly what these changes are that are coming to the FBI. Now to the bureau's many critics, it's a mystery why it has taken this long. But the biggest question is whether the new FBI can prevent a repeat of September 11th.

CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena is standing by there at FBI headquarters for today's big announcement.

Kelli, I was just talking with Michael Weisskopf about what to expect from this news conference. You broke a bit of the news yesterday. Why don't you go over it quickly, a review of what you're expecting to hear.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Sure thing, Carol.

Well, first of all, this reorganization has been in the works for months. And it is a reorganization full scale. We are talking about trying to change the culture at the FBI, the structure at the bureau and, above all, the priorities.

Now on that front, priority number one for the FBI from this point forward is to prevent another terrorist attack. That, of course, is a shift from its previous focus, which was on crime fighting. FBI is going to double the resources for counterterrorism. We're told they're going to have more than 2,000 agents devoted to counterterrorism. The FBI is hiring about 500 additional analysts with expertise in languages, world cultures and technology. They're signing more than 500 agents -- reassigning those agents from other criminal divisions, such as narcotics, white-collar crime and violent crime squads.

The FBI will also create an office of intelligence. That office will be led by a CIA official. That office will have 25 CIA agents working in it. The CIA agents will also join FBI field offices. Now along with these FBI changes, the Justice Department happens to be rewriting investigative rules. That is going to give field agents more authority to conduct investigations. For example, now a special agent in charge in a field office can start a terror investigation without having to go to headquarters for approval. And that is something that some former FBI officials applauded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OLIVER "BUCK" REVELL, FORMER ASSOCIATE DEPUTY FBI DIRECTOR: The attorney general guidelines made it practically impossible to collect intelligence prior to a crime being committed domestically. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required you to show information that an individual or group was either part of a foreign hostile power or of a known terrorist organization.

So there's been some fairly substantial barriers to collection of intelligence. Plus, the FBI has been an investigative agency, not an agency focused on analysis. And I think that's going to have to be shifted as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARENA: Now these changes, of course, come in this, as you said, heavy criticism of the FBI for perhaps missing signals that may have thwarted or perhaps curtailed the September 11th attacks. FBI Director Robert Mueller has said in the past and testimony before Congress and in public appearances that he does not believe that any information that they had post-9/11 or pre-9/11 would have prevented those attacks. We will hear what he has to say in some more detail in about an hour from now. And there will also be a private meeting with journalists and the FBI director following his public appearance -- Carol.

LIN: Kelli, any argument yet from civil rights organizations about the greater latitude that agents are going to have to be able to investigate people?

ARENA: Well, you know, it's a very fine line that we're walking here. And all along, privacy groups and civil rights groups have been keeping a close eye and rearing their heads every once in a while saying, "Hey, wait a minute. What are we talking about?" And the Patriot Act, for example, that was passed after 9/11, which gave investigators more authority for wiretapping, you know, more easily being able to obtain warrants and so on, caused a bit of a stir. But public polls have shown that at least public support for these changes in the interest of preventing terrorism, there is a lot of public support here.

So, it's a very fine line. There will be a lot of scrutiny over what the Justice Department is doing in terms of rewriting those investigative guidelines. That is a separate action, as you know, from the FBI reorganization. So close watch. I'm sure that once the dust settles from what did the FBI know and what did they do with the information, once this reorganization is solidly in place, I think at that point then people will start taking a really close look right now at what the changes are and whether or not they infringe on civil rights.

LIN: But, Kelli, is it really clear yet with all these suggested changes, as you've been reporting them, how they would, if they were in place on September 10th, would have prevented what happened?

ARENA: You know, Carol, that is the million-dollar question. And I can tell you that even critics of the FBI have said to me that they do not believe that there was enough information out there of a specific nature to prevent these attacks. And even if you talk about the Phoenix memo, for example, which came from a Phoenix agent saying, hey, I think we need to can the flight schools because I have suspicions that perhaps might be sending Middle Eastern men to flight schools, at the time that that memo came in, none of the 19 hijackers was in a U.S. flight school.

If you look at the Zacarias Moussaoui information, even if they had obtained a warrant to search his computer, the only thing that investigators found on his computer was information about crop dusting and also some numbers that may prove an al Qaeda link. But there was no specific information regarding the 9/11 attacks. So there's a lot of discussion about that, but I have to tell you, I haven't had anybody definitively say "yes" to me on that answer, Carol.

LIN: All right. Well, all the more reason to be watching at 1:00, when we expect to see this news conference with the attorney general and the director of the FBI. Kelli Arena, giving us a preview of some of the answers as well as some of the questions we'll be asking today.

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