FBI Pushes to Expand Domain Into CIA's Intelligence Gathering

[emad]

FBI Pushes to Expand Domain Into CIA's Intelligence Gathering
Common Ground Not Yet Reached on Agency Roles in U.S.

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page A10

The FBI is dramatically expanding its intelligence role in the United States and is seeking control over the CIA's domestic activities, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials.

At stake is control over a pool of U.S.-based intelligence assets and information that has been invaluable in the past to understanding the intentions of foreign nations and groups.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is pushing to rewrite the rules under which the CIA and FBI have operated domestically for decades and to assert what he views as the FBI's proper authority over all domestic intelligence gathering as part of a vast, but slow-going, restructuring of the bureau to focus on counterterrorism.

But for decades, the CIA has been allowed under U.S. law to recruit foreign officials, business executives and students living in or visiting the United States to spy for the agency when they return home. CIA case officers working in the National Resources Division, which has stations in major U.S. cities, routinely debrief, on a voluntary basis, U.S. business executives and others who work overseas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1496-2005Feb5.html

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1. And our newly appointed Homeland Security Chief once again...

....is.......? So much for bringing all of the decision and intelligence gathering and analysis under a single person who is held accountable.

[bobthedrummer]

2. This is the post-Ashcroft new Gonzales FBI Counter-Intelligence unit.

Hoover's FBI was instructed to NOT communicate with CIA, interaction was mostly formal, there were many investigations of serious crimes stopped for political reasons.

Maybe they'll start prosecuting the CIA at last.