Courtesy: The Washington Post
The Justice Department will unveil changes to FBI ground rules today that would put much more power into the hands of line agents pursuing leads on national security, foreign intelligence and even ordinary criminal cases.
The overhaul, the most substantial revision to FBI operating instructions in years, also would ease some reporting requirements between agents, their supervisors and federal prosecutors in what authorities call a critical effort to improve information gathering and detect terrorist threats.
The changes would give the FBI’s more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing.
Authorities say the changes would eliminate confusion for agents who investigate drug, gang or national security cases.
The overhaul touches on several sensitive areas. It would allow, for example, agents to interview people in the United States about foreign intelligence cases without warrants or prior approval of their supervisors. It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI’s authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups.
“We wanted simpler, clearer and more uniform standards and procedures for domestic operations,” said a senior Justice Department official. “We view this as the next step in responding to post-9/11 requests that the FBI become better at collecting intelligence and using that intelligence to prevent attacks.”
The move comes a year after the Justice Department’s inspector general documented widespread lapses involving one of the bureau’s most potent investigative tools, secret “national security letters” that FBI agents send to banks and phone companies to demand sensitive information in terrorism probes.
[Editorial Comment: Okay folks, I'm gonna do some creative Editing and cut to the paragraph that might 'interest' (Read Unnerve) most of my readers. From page 2, just above the last paragraph.]
…One of the areas still under discussion, according to a senior Justice Department official, is the standard for the FBI’s rare involvement in responding to civil disorder. Under the current standards, FBI involvement requires the approval of the attorney general and can last for only 30 days
The new approach would relax some of those requirements and would expand the investigative techniques that agents could use to include deploying informants. FBI agents monitoring large-scale demonstrations that they believe could turn dangerous also would have new power to use those techniques.
Editorial Comment: Do go back and read the full Article, here -Shinai.
