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Justice faults FBI intelligence: Unable to 'connect the dots'

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, May 16, 2005

WASHINGTON — The FBI is hampered by a lack of professional analysis and continues to fall short in its goals to collate and integrate intelligence, according to a review by the Justice Department.

"Our review found the FBI had difficulty pulling information together from a variety of sources, analyzing the information, and disseminating it," the report by the department's inspector general said. "In other words, the FBI lacked the ability to 'connect the dots' or establish relationships among varied pieces of information."

The FBI failure in providing strategic assessments regarding insurgency threats came despite a 37 percent increase in the number of analysts hired since September 2001. The analysts were meant to help in Arab and other Middle East language intercepts of suspected Islamic insurgents in the United States, Middle East Newsline reported.

The report, "Federal Bureau of Investigation's Efforts to Hire, Train and Retain Intelligence Analysts," said that despite being better qualified the new analysts have been ordered to perform clerical and other tasks that take them away from intelligence work.

The Justice Department cited the FBI's failure to hire a sufficient number of analysts, improper training and inability to collect, analyze and integrate intelligence from numerous sources. The department said this has hurt the law enforcement and domestic intelligence community in face of threats from Al Qaida and related groups.

Analysts were most under-utilized at FBI headquarters in Washington and received less pay than in other positions, the report said. The FBI analysts were also provided with less training than counterparts at the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency.

"Moreover, the FBI lacked the capability to prepare a strategic or 'big picture' threat assessment," the report said. "Our report concluded that the FBI lacked a professional corps of intelligence analysts with a defined career path, standards for training or experience, and a system for effectively deploying and utilizing analysts to assess priority threats at either the tactical, investigative or operational, level or the strategic — long-term or predictive — level."

But the inspector general report said the FBI has fallen far short of its hiring goals. The report cited the FBI achieving less than 40 percent of its goal of hiring 787 analysts by Sept. 30, 2004.

The report said the FBI has failed to determine the total number of intelligence analysts required to meets the agency's mission. The report said that over the last few months the FBI's Office of Intelligence began work on a formal requirements determination.

"However, the FBI has not yet completed an estimate of the number of analysts needed, nor has it finalized the methodology for doing so," the report said.


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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