FBI expands its role in domestic spying

Despite its recent $170 million computer software fiasco, the FBI will significantly expand its intelligence-gathering activities in the US, "including stepped-up efforts to collect and report intelligence on foreign figures and governments, a function that long has been principally the CIA's domain," reports the Los Angeles Times Friday.

The move comes despite the fact that months ago, some members of Congress were debating whether to "strip the bureau of its ability to conduct intelligence functions, after widespread bungling and intelligence failures in the months before Sept. 11," reports the Times.

Ultimately, Congress and the Sept. 11 commission concluded that it was in the interest of national security that the FBI's nascent intelligence arm remain intact and be allowed to grow.

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But the role expansion by the FBI – coupled with recent reports that the Pentagon has significantly increased its military intelligence collections using foreign spies or " humint" over the past two years – is seen by Washington and CIA insiders as a potential bureaucratic pincer against the traditional role of the CIA, says the Times.

The CIA was singled out for harsh treatment by the independent panel that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, and is undergoing painful restructuring under new leadership. Some worry that new Director Porter J. Goss is not doing enough to fight off the [FBI] bureau's push.

The Pentagon will soon begin using its own special intelligence teams to work with US military forces in world trouble spots, reports the Washington Post.

It wasn't until the Washington Post revealed the existence of a new Strategic Support Branch under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) that the Pentagon acknowledged the program, simultaneously refuting charges that Donald Rumsfeld was trying to circumvent the CIA, reports Reuters.

The Pentagon stated that the program was developed with the cooperation of the CIA due to changes sparked by Sept. 11, reports Reuters.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said at a briefing that Pentagon groups of interrogators, linguists and others had been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan on an ad hoc basis for two years but are now being organised into 10-member civilian teams for deployments on request this year.

Both Mr. Mueller and CIA director Goss have been actively involved in discussions of their respective roles, reports the Times.

The bureau in December launched discussions with top CIA officials to rewrite the two-decade-old ground rules covering how the agencies conduct their intelligence efforts in the US and abroad. That effort reflects an acceleration of the FBI's foreign-intelligence collection efforts in the US in recent months, as well as the desire of top bureau officials to assert what they view as their legal duty to track CIA activities in the US and coordinate with the agency's operations.

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