From: pgammill@home.com
Wider FBI Crime Fighting Role Urged
Tuesday, 1 February 2000
WASHINGTON (AP)
THE ATTORNEY general and the FBI should have more authority to coordinate the fight against new and increasingly dangerous forms of crime, a congressional commission said Tuesday.
The Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement, formed in part in response to such contentious law enforcement episodes as the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco, recommended that the FBI take over enforcement functions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The ATF is part of the Treasury Department.
The anti-drug effort of the Drug Enforcement Administration should become a separate division of the FBI, it said.
Congress has failed to act on similar recommendations in the past.
"Much of today's current structure is based on problems of the past, such as Prohibition," said former FBI Director William H. Webster, chairman of the five-member commission. "The nation critically requires a federal law enforcement establishment that is ready to meet the crime problems of the future."
Those problems include global criminal cartels, cybercrime and domestic and international terrorism, the report said.
Attorney General Janet Reno and Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, in a joint statement, said: "We have previously considered, studied and rejected the idea of merging the ATF and DEA into the FBI. We believe such a merger would be unnecessary and would be detrimental to our law enforcement efforts."
Commission member Donald Dahlin of the University of South Dakota said fighting such new threats "will be an increasingly difficult task" if federal law enforcement is not coordinated better.
The report said the attorney general should be responsible for overseeing all major federal law enforcement policies and practices.
Created by Congress in 1996, the commission also chided Congress for its recent tendency to "federalize" crimes. It said 40 percent of federal crimes have been put on the books since 1970, and the total now is more than 3,000. "This situation threatens to overwhelm federal law enforcement capacities, just as dramatic and serious new law enforcement challenges grow in intensity."
Webster acknowledged that others in the past, going back to Lyndon Johnson, attempted, with limited success, to restructure the ATF or consolidate law enforcement efforts.
He said adoption of his commission's recommendations "is possible if Congress agrees the need is there."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said his panel "will study the report and review its recommendations." A hearing was scheduled Thursday on the findings.
Webster said that while such events as Ruby Ridge and Waco had become "metaphors" for some recent problems in law enforcement, they were only part of a larger picture that included real successes such as law enforcement coordination after the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The FBI was deeply involved in both the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and 1993 Waco, Texas, incidents. At Ruby Ridge, the wife and son of white separatist Randy Weaver and a deputy U.S. marshal died. At Waco, which began with a botched ATF raid on the Branch Davidians religious sect's complex, the FBI was in charge for most of the standoff that ended in the complex's destruction by fire, with more than 80 people dead.
The commission also recommended that law enforcement and intelligence agencies coordinate their activities better, that global crime be made a national law enforcement priority and that Congress require that law enforcement agencies establish new standards for professionalism and integrity.