Law enforcement

Former FBI Agent: Our Terrorism Strategy Isn’t Working

Attorney General Michael Mukasey made the latest and most significantchanges to the FBI’s authorities in December 2008. He created a new type of investigation, called an “assessment,” which could be opened for an “authorized purpose,” but without requiring any particular factual predicate suggesting wrongdoing. The next level of inquiry, a “preliminary investigation,” requires only “information or an allegation” to open renewable six-month investigations. Opening full investigations requires an “articulable factual basis” that “reasonably indicates” someone is planning criminal acts, a standard “substantially lower” than the probable cause necessary for obtaining search warrants or wiretaps.

The FBI opened more than 82,000 “assessments” of individuals and groups in the first two years it had this authority, in addition to thousands of predicated investigations into more than 200 federal crimes. Recognizing the FBI has only 14,000 FBI agents across the country and around the world provides perspective on the increased workload these changes create. When the FBI conducted an assessment of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev based on a warning from Russian intelligence that he planned to join Chechen terrorist groups, it was only one of 1,000 assessments the Boston FBI conducted that year.