A Critique of Federal Agencies Prior to the September 11 Essay

A Critique of Federal Agencies Prior to the September 11 - Essay Example Several agents are criticised for having failed to effective and efficient in preventing terrorism acts, some of these agents discussed in this paper include the FBI, the INS, CIA, immigration department and the FAA.In February 1993 a bomb exploded under the twin towers and the FBI arrested proprietors of the act including Mohammed Salameh and Nidal Ayyad who were convicted, however it was clear that these were not the only individuals who plotted the bombing, (NCTA report (2004) page 74)In the department of justice countering terrorism is under the FBI, before the 9/11 bombing the special agents in FBI field offices were free to set priorities and assign officers appropriately. To avoid duplication each office worked on different cases. The organisation of the FBI was organised in such a way that they did not put much effort on counter terrorism activities and this was due to two reasons. (NCTA report (2004) Page 74)Performance in the FBI was determined by the number of arrests and prosecutions, this made special agents to concentrate more on domestic crimes rather than terrorism because counter terrorism work involved lengthy investigation that in the long run would not yield positive results. This also made individual officers to concentrate much on domestic crimes such as drug crimes and gang crimes. (NCTA report (2004) Page 74)... ffice of origin concept, this means that a field office was assigned a specific case, this meant that if a field office was concentrating on a certain case the other officers would be working on other cases, the New York office was assigned the Bin Laden case following the east Africa bombing. As a result of this individual officers were less concerned with the Bin Laden case and this meant that the New York office held all the information regarding al Qaeda. (NCTA report (2004) Page 74) Louise Freeh was appointed as the director of the FBI in 1993, he brought changes in the to bureau including decentralisation, after the 1993 bombing Freeh created a division in the bureau that would concentrate mainly on counterterrorism, the FBI counterterrorism division budget tripled but in 1998 and 2000 the counterterrorism budget remained relatively constant, this meant that the bureau did not concentrate on emphasising more on terrorism, the other problem that arose is that the budget allocated to this new department would be reprogrammed for use in other cases, this was also evident where twice as many individuals in the bureau concentrated on local crimes. (NCTA report (2004) Page 76) This new division was supposed to provide new information that the FBI did not have, however the new division was treated as one that provided assistance to the existing case, the recruitment was done within the FBI and the bureau failed to recruit individuals with relevant education to help in analysis of terrorism, for this reason therefore the creation of the division would not meet the main objective which was to counter terrorism. (NCTA report (2004) Page 77) The FBI also faced some legal constraints in investigating international terrorism, the 1978 congress enacted the foreign