OPINION:
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, wants to break up the bureau into two agencies. One would pursue criminal violations, and the other would engage in counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.
Mr. Patel’s rationale is that the corruption of the FBI that occurred under Director James Comey more than six years ago took place on the counterterrorism and counterintelligence side of the bureau rather than the criminal side.
“The biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops,” Mr. Patel said in a September interview on the conservative “Shawn Ryan Show.” “I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”
The FBI is not perfect, but the reason we have not had a successful foreign terrorist attack since 9/11 is the FBI’s structure, which combines an intelligence agency with a law enforcement agency. Unlike the British MI5, which is strictly an intelligence agency, the FBI can use its coercive criminal law authority to obtain cooperation and leads on terrorist plots.
Counterterrorism investigations often begin with inquiries into other crimes, such as money laundering, fraud and drug offenses. As the FBI is now constituted, those leads can be passed seamlessly to agents pursuing terrorist activities. The British MI5 model creates a wall that impedes quick response.
Without law enforcement powers, MI5 cannot use the threat of prosecution to elicit cooperation and recruit informants.
“The FBI model of combining intelligence and law enforcement responsibility is the envy of allied services, including the British,” John L. Martin, who had extensive dealings with MI5 as chief of the Department of Justice’s counterespionage section for 25 years until 1997, told me for my book “The Secrets of the FBI.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Martin said, “MI5 is constantly impeded by its inability to quickly translate intelligence operations into arrests and prosecutions. Setting up an MI5 in the United States would create a significant and unnecessary barrier to fighting terrorism and espionage at a time when this country needs to enhance its communications among agencies and to quickly react to terrorist threats.”
Combining an intelligence agency with a law enforcement agency keeps agents focused on violations of law rather than investigating political beliefs, as occurred when J. Edgar Hoover headed the FBI.
Back then, the FBI investigated citizens for subscribing to leftist publications or for speaking out against the government. This was justified as intelligence gathering, a vague standard used to justify investigating anyone perceived to be different.
That meant the FBI violated Americans’ rights under the Constitution and lost focus on what it was supposed to be uncovering.
If that does not send a chill down your spine, Mr. Patel’s idea to shut down FBI headquarters would lead to successful terrorist attacks because FBI investigations directed by any number of disparate field offices would lack focus and proper supervision. Any organization needs a headquarters to direct operations, which is even more vital for the FBI.
Investigations that threaten our national security must be centralized close to the CIA to seamlessly and securely pass along information and oversee the process. To do otherwise would be to return to the days before 9/11, when this wall prevented the FBI and CIA from sharing information and even prevented FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence agents from sharing information with fellow FBI agents pursuing criminal cases.
Because of the wall, which the 2001 Patriot Act eventually upended, crucial leads that could have rolled up the 9/11 plot were not pursued.
“The greatest single structural cause for the Sept. 11 problem was the wall that segregated or separated criminal investigators and intelligence agents,” then-Attorney General John Ashcroft told the 9/11 commission.
In his interview with Mr. Ryan, Mr. Patel said that he would “take the 7,000 employees that work in that [FBI headquarters] building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops.”
No, FBI agents are not cops. They are highly trained agents who pursue sophisticated investigations that require skills police officers often do not have.
Bureaucrats often try to solve problems with a quick fix that shows they are doing something, no matter how inane. In the case of the FBI, the quick fix proposed by Mr. Patel would be a step backward in the war on terrorism, could infringe on Americans’ rights and could lead to devastating terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction that could potentially wipe out the U.S.
• Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the author of “The Secrets of the FBI.” His book “The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency” led to the dismissal of William Sessions as FBI director.
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