With Terror as Top Priority, Feds Pull Resources From Core Crime Fighting
Ron Buckley has spent much of his 25-year career at the Federal Bureau of Investigation poring over financial statements, looking for fraud. But on March 3, he was crouching in the Roanoke, Va., Greyhound terminal alongside a half-dozen heavily armed federal agents and a team of police dogs, waiting for suspected terrorists.
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Where the Feds Are In the wake of
the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI FY 2002 FY 2003 26% —Couterterrorism,— 36% counterintelligence, cyber crime 26% —White-collar crime— 24% 21% —Organized criminal— 14% enterprises and drugs 27% —Other field— 26% programs source: FBI |
The suspects: two Egyptian brothers, Ahmed Halmy Elsakaan and Hatem Elsakaan. Already wanted as part of an identity-fraud scheme in Virginia, one of them had just been spotted taking photos—at 4:45 a.m.—near a huge hydroelectric power complex. The team arrested the two men, who arrived at the terminal in buses bound for New York, without a struggle. The brothers later pleaded guilty to the fraud charges, but the terror connection didn't pan out.
Mr. Buckley is one of the FBI's new foot soldiers in the domestic war on terror. After Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI pulled 674 agents off their regular beats, where they investigated everything from drug smuggling to white-collar crime, and gave them a new job: Stop terrorist attacks before they occur.
It's part of a sweeping overhaul of the federal crime-fighting force, which was tarnished by its failure to uncover the 9/11 hijacking plot. Under Director Robert Mueller, the FBI is expanding its ranks, rebuilding an archaic computer network and refocusing on intelligence and counterterrorism. It has opened foreign offices everywhere from Bosnia to Uzbekistan, and in the U.S. it has formed terrorism task forces with police across the country. Overall, more than 2,000 of the bureau's 8,881 domestic agents now work full time on counterterrorism.
The bureau's new focus on terrorism is proving to be a burden on local law enforcement. Already hard pressed by a shaky economy and budget cuts, police departments across the country must fill the void left by the reassigned FBI agents, investigating more bank robberies, violent crimes and other big cases. Inevitably, crimes will go unsolved because of the lack of manpower and less access to the FBI's high-tech forensic labs.
"Just about everyone here is involved in terror cases, one way or another," Mr. Buckley says. "Everything else is on the back burner."
Mr. Buckley specialized in bank fraud and white-collar crime for most of his FBI career. With a boxer's build, close-cropped brown hair and an easy southern-Virginia drawl, the 48-year-old agent was sent to Roanoke 12 years ago and hopes to retire here. He cruises the city in an unmarked black Chevy Tahoe, wearing wraparound sunglasses and a sport coat that hides a pistol and pager. Locked in the back of the truck are submachine guns, stun grenades, body armor and hazmat suits—as well as a change of clothes and a toothbrush, for long stakeouts.
On Sept. 10, 2001, Mr. Buckley had about 20 investigations under way. He was gathering evidence against a doctor and his wife who were accused of defrauding the local Veterans Administration hospital, and his case against a bank courier charged in a robbery was headed for trial. In that case, Mr. Buckley had found a trace of blood on an envelope in a Dumpster, linked it to the crime, and after several false starts had matched the courier's DNA to the blood. The case had been solved by a paper cut—and more than a year of patient police work.
After 9/11, he says, he probably wouldn't have had time for either case. Indeed, since the attacks the FBI has moved away from whole categories of crime to focus on terrorism. FBI officials say the bureau quietly has raised the threshold for how large a bank robbery must be before the bureau gets involved; officials decline to be more specific. The FBI has also pulled back its involvement in violent crime and sharply scaled back the number of agents targeting drug cases, according to bureau officials. Nationwide, the number of new drug cases fell to 944 in federal fiscal year 2002, from 1,825 in 2000, according to a study by the General Accounting Office. New drug cases are likely to fall even further, the GAO found, with just 310 reported in the first half of 2003.
Some local FBI offices are also cutting back white-collar-crime investigations, FBI officials say. In Washington, where more than 100 agents were shifted to counterterrorism, those working white-collar and violent crime fell 50%.
Donald Thompson Jr., the special agent in charge of the FBI's satellite office in Roanoke and the larger one in Richmond, Va., says he used to send as many as four agents to bank robberies. Now he sends one, if that. "Our day-to-day involvement in that has lapsed," he says.
He also notes that drug cases are a lower priority these days. "We took down a huge group of individuals" in arrests for heroin last year, he says. "That's the type of thing that we're not going to be able to plug into anymore."
Mr. Thompson says state and local police understand that the FBI needed to divert resources. "Nobody was happy about it, and I wasn't happy about it," he says. "But you have to have priorities."
Local police are feeling burdened by the loss of federal help. Take Richmond, 180 miles away from Roanoke and home to the main FBI office in the area.
The FBI pullback comes as Richmond's police force already is strained by a budget crunch and an increase in crime. Murders rose 6.9% in 2002, burglaries 2.4%. Bank heists, meanwhile, reached an all-time high of 81, a 19% increase over the 68 reported in 2001. And in only 54% of those robbery cases were criminals arrested and charged, compared with 86% in 2001.
Andre Parker, Richmond's police chief, says he has been forced to use police retirees and volunteers to take crime reports by telephone, especially for nonviolent crimes. He says in many cases he simply can't spare cops from street duty to talk to victims in person.
Chief Parker doesn't blame the FBI pullback for the rise in crime. But he says his burden has increased now that the FBI has "been tasked with other responsibilities."
Mr. Thompson, the Richmond bureau chief, also won't attribute the rise in crime to the reassignment of his agents. But he notes that extra manpower was helpful in reducing the high level of bank robberies when he arrived in Richmond in 1998. He began sending four agents to investigate heists, instead of the usual one or two. What they found, he says, is that many of the robberies were committed by serial bank robbers, so nabbing a criminal early could prevent a string of future heists.
Joseph Samuels Jr., president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which represents 18,000 sheriffs and police chiefs, says that what is going on in Richmond is happening across the country, as local police must do more with fewer resources.
"I'm aware of departments laying off officers, not filling positions or reducing their authorized strength, and that's going on across the country," says Mr. Samuels, police chief in Richmond, Calif. "Traditionally, police and fire departments have been the last agencies cut, but that's how dire the fiscal situation is now. There are no longer any untouchables."
Since Sept. 11, Mr. Buckley and the six agents in Roanoke have immersed themselves in the city's diverse immigrant communities. New residents have been drawn to light-industrial jobs in the Blue Ridge foothills nearby, from the Elizabeth Arden perfume factory to Home Shopping Network's shipping center and the Maple Leaf Foods bakery. Among the wave of new residents are hundreds of Iraqi families, most of them refugees of the first Gulf War.
The agents worked for months to win the trust of Muslim community leaders, hoping for their help in identifying possible threats. Then, just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Justice Department ordered interviews of every male Iraqi expatriate. Mr. Buckley and his fellow agents fanned out, interviewing more than 120 men in two weeks.
"We were surprised to find nearly everyone was happy about the invasion—as refugees, they were mostly victims of the regime," he says. "But I worried that someone whose family was still in Tikrit or Nasariya would see [U.S. bombing in their hometown], and it'd send them off." He adds that some interviews yielded significant military information that was passed along to U.S. intelligence, but he declines to be specific.
Zardasht Mirza, a 32-year-old Iraqi refugee, said the FBI interview at his home was "polite." Mr. Mirza, a driver for a Roanoke cab company, said he was asked whether there were any members of the former ruling Baath party here, and whether he "would want to hurt someone here" if his favorite uncle were killed in Iraq by a U.S. bomb.
"I told them that this is a war to liberate my home from Saddam, and that is a good thing," says Mr. Mirza, whose father had been imprisoned and tortured in Iraq. "I understand there are casualties in a war."
One of the few red flags during the interviews was a former Iraqi army helicopter pilot who couldn't be located. FBI agents scoured the city to find him—only to discover he'd been invited by the U.S. military to Texas to work with Iraqi expatriates training for the war effort.
There are two mosques in Roanoke and five in Richmond, with more than 6,000 Muslims living in the area covered by the two FBI offices. Local agents met with the leaders of each mosque to offer assistance in case of any hate crimes or discrimination and to ask for help in identifying any suspicious activity.
"Right up front, they told us, 'We're not here to dig for information,' " says Ibrahim Greer, director of the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond's prison ministry. "They expressed how important it was for members of the community to let authorities know if they'd been the victims of any hate crimes or prejudice. They also said they'd be glad to come out and talk to the members of the mosque as a whole."
Almost as an afterthought, the agents said as the meeting was ending that they'd want to know if any members of the mosque heard of possible criminal activity or terror threats, Mr. Greer says.
The new focus on terror can be tough on agents such as Mr. Buckley, who must shift from gathering evidence in actual crimes to shadow-boxing with a vague and uncertain threat. The case of the Elsakaan brothers seemed to be an urgent menace as Mr. Buckley lay in wait at the bus station with his team last month.
A Tennessee Valley Authority police officer, Timothy Dilbeck, had spotted one of the Egyptian men during a predawn shift near the Norris Dam Hydroelectric Station, outside Knoxville, Tenn. Ahmed Helmy Elsakaan, 23, and his friend Jennifer Disney, 22, were at a scenic overlook, standing outside a green Ford Mustang.
As he approached, Officer Dilbeck noticed Mr. Elsakaan taking pictures. Under different circumstances, the scene wouldn't have caused the officer much concern. But it was early Sunday morning in a remote area, and the dam was considered part of the nation's critical infrastructure.
For nearly half an hour, Officer Dilbeck questioned the pair. They told him they were celebrating Ms. Disney's decision to break a yearlong, self-imposed moratorium on eating chocolate. Officer Dilbeck checked their driver's licenses and the plates on their Mustang. There were no problems in the local records, but the patrol car's computer link to the National Crime Information Center, the system that contains outstanding arrest warrants nationwide, wasn't online.
With no reason to hold the couple, he let them go. Back at headquarters, Officer Dilbeck ran the names again. There was nothing on the young woman, but Mr. Elsakaan's name came back with several aliases. He was wanted by the FBI and the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles as part of an identity-fraud scheme that included his brother.
In Richmond, FBI authorities had discovered dozens of men of Middle Eastern backgrounds had used the same Henrico County address for false identification cards, and the brothers were among them. The brothers remain in a Richmond jail and recently pleaded guilty to identity fraud. They're likely be deported as illegal aliens after serving time in jail. No further charges are expected. The photographs turned out to be of Ms. Disney, holding a bar of chocolate—and the dam wasn't even visible.
"Many of these cases aren't going to have closure," Mr. Buckley says. "We're used to trying cases after a crime has happened, but lots of these new intelligence matters won't ever get resolved."
Still, he adds, "I don't know that we have a choice."
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