[Infowarrior] - FBI Agents’ Role Is Transformed by Terror Fight

[Richard Forno]

August 19, 2009
F.B.I. Agents’ Role Is Transformed by Terror Fight
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/us/19terror.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
NORWALK, Calif. — The report last month was chilling: a 55-gallon drum  
of radioactive material had gone missing during shipment from North  
Carolina to California. Even worse, the person who signed for the  
cargo was not an employee of the company that ordered the load.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation here ramped up, consulting health  
officials, questioning radiation specialists and tracking down the  
trucker who dropped off the material, which could be used in a  
radioactive-bomb attack. Three hours later, the shipper found the drum  
— still sitting on a loading dock 20 miles from its destination in the  
Los Angeles area — having confused it with a similar shipment sent to  
a different company on the same day.

For an F.B.I. team here that vets tips and threats about possible  
terrorist activity, it was yet another false alarm in a job largely  
defined by hoaxes and bogus leads that must still be run to ground.

“A lot of time we are chasing shadows,” said Lee Ann Bernardino, a 20- 
year F.B.I. special agent who handled the case, “but it’s better to do  
that than find out later you let something get by.”

Spending two days with Agent Bernardino’s 21-member threat squad,  
known as Counterterrorism 6, or CT-6, offered a rare window on the  
daily workings of an F.B.I. transformed after the attacks of Sept. 11,  
2001. The bureau now ranks fighting terrorism as its No. 1 priority.  
It has doubled the number of agents assigned to counterterrorism  
duties to roughly 5,000 people, and has created new squads across the  
country that focus more on deterring and disrupting terrorism than on  
solving crimes.

But the manpower costs of this focus are steep, and the benefits not  
always clear. Of the 5,500 leads that the squad has pursued since it  
was formed five years ago, only 5 percent have been found credible  
enough to be sent to permanent F.B.I. squads for longer-term  
investigations, said Supervisory Special Agent Kristen von KleinSmid,  
head of the squad. Only a handful of those cases have resulted in  
criminal prosecutions or other law enforcement action, and none have  
foiled a specific terrorist plot, the authorities acknowledge.

As part of the larger debate about the transformation of the F.B.I.,  
some counterterrorism specialists question the value of threat squads  
— which are also in Washington, New York and a few other cities.

“Just chasing leads burns through resources,” said Amy Zegart, a  
professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who writes  
extensively on intelligence matters. “You’re really going to get bang  
for the buck when you chase leads based on a deeper assessment of who  
threatens us, their capabilities and indicators of impending attack.  
Right now, there’s more chasing than assessing.”

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has acknowledged the toll  
of the shift of agents to counterterrorism and intelligence duties. It  
comes at the cost of resources to combat corporate and financial  
fraud, and the deadly drug war in Mexico. About 40 percent of the  
bureau’s agents are devoted to fighting terrorism.

The threat squad here is just one part of the F.B.I.’s sprawling Los  
Angeles field office. About 30 percent of the office’s 750 agents work  
on terrorism cases, including Al Qaeda, Hamas, terrorism financing and  
animal rights extremists.

Federal agents say a major lesson of the Sept. 11 attacks is that all  
credible reports of possible terrorist activity must be checked. And  
they say it is more efficient for one squad with specially trained  
investigators to assess these tips, allowing other agents to stay  
focused on longer-term terrorist inquiries.

The squad’s work here has yielded important results, officials say. In  
March 2008, Seyed Maghloubi, an Iranian-born American citizen, was  
sentenced to 41 months in prison for plotting to illegally export  
100,000 Uzi submachine guns to Iran, via Dubai.

His arrest stemmed from a tip from a police informant whom Mr.  
Maghloubi contacted about buying the weapons. The threat squad picked  
up the tip and developed information that led to a federal sting  
operation against Mr. Maghloubi.

Responsible for overseeing seven counties and 19 million people in  
Southern California, the threat squad was created in May 2004 after  
threats to shopping malls on the West Side of Los Angeles diverted  
about 100 agents from other counterterrorism inquiries.

Working out of a drab office building here 15 miles southeast of  
downtown Los Angeles, the investigators sift through tips and threats  
called in by the public or passed on by a regional intelligence  
center. The agents check databases and conduct field interviews before  
deciding whether to act on a case immediately, farm it out to another  
F.B.I. squad or refer it to another law enforcement agency.

“Someone has to go out and knock on the doors,” said Frank Leal, a 29- 
year detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department  
assigned to the threat squad along with investigators from 10 other  
local, state and federal agencies. “You don’t want any one of those  
leads to go boom.”

The squad now gets about 80 leads a month, down from a peak of about  
140 a month a few years ago, a decline Agent von KleinSmid attributed  
in part to greater screening of tips by other intelligence analysts.

Recent reported threats range from the mundane to the bizarre.

On Aug. 1, a man called in a bomb threat to a Marriott-chain hotel in  
Hollywood. The authorities found nothing in a sweep of the hotel. A  
few hours later, the same man called to ask if the hotel had by any  
chance lowered its rates recently, and if it would do so if a bomb  
threat came in.

Security guards have questioned people taking pictures of oil  
refineries in the Los Angeles area. Many turned out to be college  
students fulfilling assignment for class projects.

Another recent reported threat sounded like a Hollywood thriller. In  
June, a college student told her University of California, Riverside,  
professor that her father, a Pakistani microbiologist, was secretly  
testing botulism toxins on animals in their basement on the outskirts  
of Los Angeles. F.B.I. agents, backed by police and hazardous-material  
experts, moved in on the house only to find nothing. The student had  
been trying to impress her professor in a weird way, investigators said.

Nicholas M. Legaspi, the lead F.B.I. special agent on the bogus  
biolaboratory case, said he had no regrets about the effort devoted to  
the false alarm, which he said had served as an excellent training  
exercise.

Agent Legaspi said his initial frustration about working on the threat  
squad was tempered by overseas assignments in which he investigated  
the attacks in Mumbai, India; worked alongside American Special Forces  
in Afghanistan; and interrogated Qaeda detainees at the American  
prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“For the first several years, it was very disappointing always chasing  
ghosts,” said Agent Legaspi, a former officer in the Army and the  
California Highway Patrol. “But looking at what goes on overseas keeps  
me sharp. I realized the terrorists are deadly serious. It makes me  
hungry to do this job.”