[Infowarrior] - FBI Outlines Plan to Expand Agents' Tactics; Hill Hearings Set

[Richard Forno]

FBI Outlines Plan to Expand Agents' Tactics; Hill Hearings Set

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A09

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203133_pf.html

FBI officials yesterday briefed civil liberties advocates and  
religious groups on a plan to offer agents an array of tactics to  
track national security threats, as lawmakers prepared to demand more  
information at a pair of oversight hearings next week.

The ground rules, known as Attorney General guidelines, have been in  
the works for nearly 18 months. Authorities say they are designed to  
harmonize the techniques that FBI agents can use to investigate  
ordinary crimes, collect foreign intelligence or pursue possible  
terrorist threats.

Under the new plan, agents pursuing national security leads could  
employ physical surveillance, deploy informants and engage in  
"pretext" interviews with their identities hidden to assess the danger  
posed by a subject. Such threat assessments could be initiated even  
without a particular fact or concrete lead that a person had engaged  
in wrongdoing.

Community activists and the American Civil Liberties Union, which  
attended yesterday's briefing, question how a subject's race,  
ethnicity or religious orientation might become part of attracting FBI  
interest.

A senior Justice official and a top FBI representative said race could  
never be the sole factor for opening an investigation. But it might be  
taken into account when investigators scrutinize groups, such as  
Hezbollah or the Aryan Brotherhood, that draw their members from  
specific populations, or, for example, when they follow leads about  
suspicious groups of Muslim men boarding an airplane.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III will appear next week before the  
House and Senate Judiciary committees, where lawmakers say he will be  
asked about the timing and rationale for overhauling the rules. House  
and Senate Democrats already are characterizing the move as a last- 
ditch bid to change intelligence-gathering only weeks before the  
presidential election.

But senior FBI and Justice officials, who briefed reporters on  
condition they not be identified, asserted that the changes were  
merely the latest in a series of steps to make the bureau more  
proactive after intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The measures are scheduled to take effect Oct. 1, though changes still  
could be made in some areas, including ground rules for FBI agents who  
secretly infiltrate activist groups or collect intelligence at public  
demonstrations and events without a suspected terrorist threat.

The plan also would allow FBI agents to collect information in the  
United States on behalf of foreign intelligence authorities, as long  
as their participation aligned with U.S. interests. It would allow  
agents to gather intelligence from citizens within the United States  
about areas of general interest, such as Venezuelan oil supply, at the  
direction of the White House or the director of national intelligence.

Michael German, a policy counsel at the ACLU, urged lawmakers to do a  
"thorough investigation" of the guidelines and the way they will work  
in practice. More than 30 years ago, "the abuse of these authorities  
is exactly what caused the department to create the guidelines in the  
first place," he said.