In the years since 9/11, the FBI has refocused its efforts beyond law enforcement to include, and even prioritize, intelligence gathering and counterterrorism operations. As the United States’ official domestic security agency, the FBI’s responsibilities have become quite expansive.
“Today’s FBI is a threat-focused, intelligence-driven organization,” stated FBI Director James Comey last December.
“Instead of developing and collecting intelligence to solve a case, the FBI now collects and uses intelligence to develop a threat picture that is used to disrupt threats before they occur,” explains Elaine Lammert, Cipher Brief expert and former Deputy General Council at the FBI.
This shift was underscored in January 2014 when the phrase ‘law enforcement’ was dropped from the FBI’s mission statement. Now, the FBI’s official website displays a link entitled “The Post 9/11 FBI: How we have become a more intel-driven and future-focused agency.”
Accompanying the FBI’s post-9/11 transformation are questions regarding the role that the organization should play in ensuring national security. In the past, the FBI worked backwards, tracing the steps of crime scenes and subsequently arresting suspects. Today, things have undergone a 180-degree turn as the FBI has taken the lead in investigating and thwarting domestic terrorist threats.
These added responsibilities have placed a hefty burden on the FBI, leading some to believe that the FBI’s new approach may ultimately have an adverse effect on the organization’s efficiency.
“The law enforcement and intelligence cultures are equally powerful, but are diametrically opposed in many key ways,” writes John Sipher, Cipher Brief expert and former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service. “By its very nature, criminal investigation is retrospective—investigators investigate after a crime has been committed. While law enforcement is interested in what happened, intelligence is interested in what will happen.”
Some maintain that the creation of a separate agency that solely focuses on monitoring domestic terrorist threats would behoove the American security apparatus. This approach has been adopted around the world by various countries that have split their domestic security into two distinct agencies – one for law enforcement and one for counterterrorism.
“Most developed democratic countries have domestic intelligence agencies focused 100 percent of the time on preventing attacks,” explains Sipher.
In the United Kingdom, for example, domestic security is divided between the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) and the MI5. While the NCIS serves as a domestic police force with a focus on organized crime, the MI5 is charged with conducting counterterrorism investigations.
This also holds true for Israel, where the Lahav 433 spearheads the country’s law enforcement activities while the Shin Bet operates in the counterterrorism realm.
And the urgency of this matter should not be understated. Many of the lone-wolf attacks in the Untied States, including the Boston Marathon bombing, the Chattanooga shooting, and the Orlando attack, were carried out by individuals who were at one point or another included on an FBI watch list or had close family members placed on the FBI’s watch list.
“Unfortunately, this falls into what we are now seeing again as a gap in coverage,” explained Mitch Silber, Cipher Brief expert and former Director of Analysis at the NYPD in his analysis of the Orlando attack.
“The FBI one way or another came across these individuals, interviewed them, even investigated them to some level, and eventually came to the conclusion that there wasn’t something there that justified arresting them or continuing an open investigation. So they closed the investigation. And then low and behold, these people activated and to awful and deadly consequences,” he continued.
This is not to understate the critically important role the FBI has played in ensuring national security. The FBI’s successes have proven far greater than its failures and the organization works tirelessly to keep American citizens safe here at home.
In fact, Lammert believes, “There is tremendous benefit in having the FBI be a domestic intelligence agency with both a national security and law enforcement mission. The FBI has fully integrated intelligence into its operations and has the unique ability to action its own intelligence.”
But is there more that can be done to mitigate the increasing number of threats posed by terrorists seeking to strike the U.S. within its borders? Perhaps the creation of a separate agency completely devoted to monitoring domestic terrorist threats could relieve some of the FBI’s intensifying burden.
“Any successful domestic intelligence service would rely on a deep and close relationship with the FBI,” writes Sipher.
Since 9/11, there have been no catastrophic terrorist attacks coordinated from overseas on the homeland, but the recent lone wolf attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando raise the inevitable question about whether enough is being done to keep America safe. As the nation’s lead player in domestic counterterrorism operations, the FBI will no doubt face more scrutiny.
Bennett Seftel is the deputy director of editorial at The Cipher Brief.
