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Seasoned observers of federal law enforcement point to a continuing trend of pulling agents and resources from traditional crime units to fight terrorism. The proposed federal budget doesn’t add a single dime to hire or maintain agents in the FBI’s crime-fighting squads, which remain at least 1,700 agents below pre-9/11 levels.
Restoring the FBI’s crime-fighting capabilities just isn’t a priority for this White House. And they admit it.
“The assumption that how it was pre-9/11 is how it ought to be for all time is not the correct premise,” Deputy Budget Director Steve McMillin told the Associated Press. After the terrorist attacks, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counter-terrorism, according to public records.
Those agents were never replaced, leaving crime squads depleted and causing huge drops in both investigations and case referrals. FBI cases brought to federal prosecutors dropped 34 percent from 2000 to 2005. White-collar and civil rights referrals plunged about 66 percent over the same period.
“All these people who run around and say ‘smaller government, smaller government, smaller government’ are getting what they want – and that means not enough FBI agents to prosecute crime,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a leading critic of the ongoing depletion of traditional law enforcement units, told the Associated Press.
Bush’s proposed budget calls for increasing FBI funding in 2009 by $451 million, to a total of $7.1 billion. That includes funding 280 additional agents for national security programs, but none for criminal programs, said Tony Bladen, the FBI’s deputy assistant director of resource management.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has lobbied unsuccessfully with the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department, seeking more money for the FBI’s criminal program.
That has left him in the awkward position of having to appear before Congress to defend administration spending plans that he knew failed to address the demand for traditional law enforcement in his own agency. “This is a law enforcement agent; he knows what he needs,” Murray said of Mueller.
“But he is handcuffed by this administration.” Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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