Pros, Cons of Creating an 'American MI5'

W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 14 -- With the recommendation of Congress' Joint Intelligence Committee this week that serious consideration be given to establishing a domestic intelligence agency comparable to Britain's MI5, the issue seems to be approaching critical mass.

Much of the push for creating such an agency, or, more accurately, breaking it off from the FBI, originates in the criticism of the bureau's various failings pre-9/11 adequately to analyze and assess clues that supposedly could have led it to uncover the plot and prevent the attacks.

The question also naturally arises with the attorney general and FBI director constantly emphasizing that they are restructuring and re-engineering the bureau to make countering terrorism its first priority, and even to change it from a strictly law enforcement agency that responds to crimes, to a more proactive one that can prevent the crimes.

In fact, last spring I first raised this question with the director in a sit-down with reporters. At that time he acknowledged the legitimacy of the question, but countered that one of the most valuable attributes of the FBI is its interaction with other law enforcement agencies, both foreign and domestic; the information gleaned from those contacts, he argued, is invaluable on the intelligence side.

A few weeks ago it became obvious there are some in the administration who are rather enamored of the idea of creating an MI5. At that time, the best defense of the bureau's remaining in charge of counterterrorism came from the attorney general, who argued that the lesson of 9/11 is that more and better integration, communication and coordination is needed, and "the establishment of a separate, distinct agency would be to move in the other direction, instead of to integrate and cooperate and communicate."

I thought it might be useful to see what the experts in counterterrorism have to say on the subject.

The Pros

One former senior Justice official was in favor of at least giving the idea "serious analysis." His main rationale is that "the FBI is not really very well-suited" for the job; that there is a basic difference between trying to arrest and prosecute somebody who has committed a crime, and trying to prevent the crime in the first place.

He also argues that programs such as the controversial Pentagon Total Information Awareness being developed by John Poindexter are "going to happen; we'll be doing more data mining, more information analysis" and he would "feel more comfortable if all that information were not going to be ending up with the FBI and law enforcement."

He noted that several large cities' police departments are currently in court, trying to get out from under consent decrees that had prevented their spying on domestic groups. Aren't you a lot more uneasy having police departments doing that kind of thing? he demanded.

At least one FBI agent, rather surprisingly, agreed with this argument. He said he's spent most of his career on the criminal side, although he has some experience on the intelligence side as well. He says the FBI "can't do it. We have never been analytical, we don't have the ability; it'll be four to five years before we have a clue."

He maintains that the "old mentality" still manifests itself despite all the e-mails from the director; no matter how many times Bob Mueller insists that terrorism is the first priority, there will be special agents in charge who are still devoting most of their resources to the old priorities, such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and other crimes that the locals could easily handle.

He said it's not like Osama bin Laden is running around his neighborhood, but to be genuinely proactive is nearly impossible "when you still have to do all the other stuff." I countered that they had supposedly pulled back from bank robberies. He said, yeah, sure, but "we still respond." Maybe not with eight agents — but the bureau still picks up the bank film, still interviews the witnesses, etc. The idea was supposed to be that the FBI would only respond if there were some overarching reason, some activity that only they could perform.