A few weeks back, I wrote about the seemingly unshakeable culture of technophobia at the FBI — and how nearly a third of Bureau employees still don’t have e-mail accounts, as a result.
But that’s not the only bad habit that the G-Men are having trouble breaking. As Jeff Stein reports in his must-read CQ Weekly cover story, there’s still a willful ignorance about terrorists and their methods — even at the FBI’s highest levels.
Now listen to the testimony of Gary M. Bald, the FBIs top counterterrorism and counterintelligence official, in a legal deposition last year. Questioned under oath in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by an Arab– American FBI agent, Bald was asked whether he knew the difference between Sunni and Shia, the two strains of Islam at war with each other as much as with the United States.
Bald waved off the question. You dont need subject matter expertise, he said. The subject matter expertise is helpful, but it isnt a prerequisite. It is certainly not what I look for in selecting an official for a position in the counterterrorism [program]. In other words, he didnt know the answer: that a 1,400-year-long schism over who should lead Islam, originating in fierce succession battles after the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D., is still being played out between nuclear aspirant and Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not to mention the armed factions battling for control of U.S.-occupied Iraq. The religious passions that drive the different branches of the Islamic world and the fervor that leads some to violence against the West was not on his radar screen.
Nor could Bald, or other top FBI counterterrorism officials questioned last summer, explain the web of relationships of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization with other key fundamentalist figures and groups
hat its techniques for recruiting informants change on the basis of a persons ethnic background, culture or language, according to testimony by John E. Lewis, another top counterterrorism official at the bureau. It doesnt make any difference whether somebodys from the Middle East or a white supremacist or from Australia, Lewis said, meaning that Middle Eastern terrorists rat out their brethren for the same reason Klansmen do: for money, revenge and disenchantment with the cause.
That the FBIs American recruits spoke the Klans language in Mississippi and understood its culture and politics was not seen as any kind of special advantage thats being lost in the battle against foreign terrorists. Under further questioning, Lewis also admitted that he had no previous counterterrorism experience himself.
UPDATE 1:48 PM: “The salient fact is that, approaching five years after 9/11, we still do not have a domestic intelligence service that can collect effectively against the terrorist threat to the homeland or provide authoritative analysis of that threat,” John Gannon, a former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today. “It is not enough to say these things take time. It could not be clearer from the Intelligence Communitys experience over the past 25 years that it is extraordinarily difficult to blend the families of intelligence and law enforcement, and that the Bureaus organizational bias toward the latterfor deep-seated historic reasons–is powerful and persistent.“
Read more testimony here.
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>In other words, he didnt know the answer: that a 1,400-year-long schism over who should lead
>Islam, originating in fierce succession battles after the death of Mohammed in 632 A.D.,
and there is some one who may not have understood the difference between a RPV and an UAV, also maybe not between the individual trees and the forrest, picking on some one who does not know to claim that as the whole picture of the forrest. Well, if this works as disinformation, this has done the job. Keep help the disnformation rolling.
This may sound taboo to many but I still think the FBI should stick to perverts and domestic criminal activities and the CIA should be in charge and like the FBI can do to the local cops the CIA should be able to assign local FBI to help track suspects or help in general.
Terrorist are a foreign infiltration Military not domestic criminals. We are not talking about some racist Americans born and bread here but pissed about were to sit on the bus we are talking about foreign nationals and immigrants that have been purposely infiltrated into our nation by a stateless yes but definitely organized nation/movement to kill our Nation. This is WAR not a police action. These guys dont want to rob the local bank or kill some victim in the shadows they want to kill absolutely the maximum number of US citizens as humanly possible.
The FBI has for very good reason very strict limitations to protect our citizens rights when dealing with cases. But when it comes to foreign terrorist that are driven by the objective to kill as many as possible those limits just get in the way of expediting our defense. The FBI doesnt have offices or contacts all over the world in BFE like the CIA does and the CIA has assets/technologies they can exploit overseas that cant be shared with the FBI so because the CIA cant operate in the States we have suspects running free. What kind of sense is that?
Good Evening Folks,
Way back when, there was a saying, “You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.” Little has change with in the culture of the FBI, ignorance and dedication to an ingrained cuture that has the survival of itself as it’s major goal.
As suggested in another responce here the FBI is not the best agency to conduct domestic counter terrorism activity. Nothing short of a break up of DHS and staring over seems to be the only solution to the problem.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Maybe that’s why the NYPD has gone its own way.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050725fa_fact2
Nowhere, in statute, regulations, Congressional authorizations, charters, etc is any agency in the U.S. charged with “domestic” intelligence, rather the F.B.I.’s statute is that of “counter-intelligence.” It can be an important definitional distinction as we look to what reforms and efforts the FBI neeeds to have…