Mission Creep
By Gary Aldrich (09/30/03)
After September 11, 2001, a task force composed of the Customs and Treasury Departments, the I.R.S. and the Secret Service established “Operation Green Quest.” This investigation was designed to find money being moved about to fund new terrorist activity, and was staffed by top financial investigators from each of the four agencies.
The Department of Justice has decided to move the investigation to the F.B.I., and Customs officials are hopping mad about it. Some critics are calling the move a blatant power grab by the F.B.I.
I disagree. From the time the FBI was formed, J. Edgar Hoover made it policy to hire Attorneys and Accountants before any other disciplines were considered. The FBI has the most qualified, most educated financial investigators of any federal agency and they have years of experience of highly complex cases under their belts.
Meanwhile, down at the Alcohol, Tobacco Tax, and Firearms agency, or ATF as it is commonly referred, bureaucrats are getting the bad news that the FBI will also become the lead agency to handle domestic bombings. Here too, critics of the FBI rush to defend the ATF, an agency that in recent years has suffered from its own scandals and serious shortcomings.
Yet choosing the FBI for this important task makes perfect sense. The FBI has emerged as the lead agency on the war on terrorism. Why should they show up at a bombing crime scene and play second fiddle to another law enforcement agency that is waiting to see if Middle Eastern terrorists are behind the bombing?
Change always comes hard to federal agencies. You would think agency management would be happy when they have fewer violations to investigate. Sadly, it is the nature of bureaucracy to seek new missions, even as they complain that they lack the resources to handle the ones they already have.
But what about these increased responsibilities for the FBI at a time when they too have more on their plates than they seem able to handle? It is a fair question. Over the years, the FBI has accumulated more odds and ends federal violations than you can imagine.
Either the FBI seeks new powers to complement the ones they already have, or they have them assigned by a Congress that can turn every molehill into a mountain given enough special interest pressures. At some point, the agency gets too large to manage.
Customs, ATF, Secret Service, IRS, and Treasury agents should enjoy this reprieve as the very unusual positive change that it is. They can now investigate the core violations they were supposed to handle when they were first established.
But somebody in authority should take a look at what the FBI has as its responsibility – it’s too large and complex for any one agency to effectively and efficiently deal with. Perhaps this is a good time for the FBI to get rid of some of the nonsense violations taking up so much of its time and energy.
Two examples are car theft and bank embezzlements. Perhaps Treasury agents could get some of those bank embezzlement cases, while Customs can track some of those stolen vehicles that are being shipped overseas. We don’t need FBI agents working on minor federal violations when there are terrorists to investigate and arrest.
Mission creep plagues every federal agency and eventually handicaps law enforcement. Federal agencies that lose a few violations for whatever reason should be grateful – not jealous. Agency reforms and realignments have been needed for a long time. A terrorist attack is what it took to jump-start the process.
But while we load up the FBI with real important work, lets help them by taking away some of the lesser violations that have nothing to do with the FBI’s core mission.
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