FBI Moving to Check Domestic Terrorism

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing--the event many Americans thought could never happen--the FBI has instituted a series of new techniques and initiatives designed to ensure that it never happens again.

To better protect the country against the threat of domestic terrorism, the agency has stepped up its monitoring and penetration of anti-government groups. Physical security has been upgraded at most federal facilities, and a White House commission has directed security improvements and better screening of baggage at major airports.

Much of the credit goes to Congress, according to authorities. In the wake of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, lawmakers have approved $370 million for the FBI to improve training and hire nearly 2,000 more agents and technical employees for counter-terrorism duty.

These resources have been used to establish a counter-terrorism center, where more than 100 FBI agents and technicians have joined representatives from 16 other federal agencies in collecting and analyzing information that could lead to the first warning of a threat to U.S. security.

“The primary objective is to prevent these problems, but we also have the capacity to respond better in a coordinated fashion,” an FBI official said.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a leading authority on counter-terrorism, said he, for one, believes that the country is better protected against terrorists like convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh.

“We have improved out defensive position,” said Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism. “There’s a very major effort being made by the FBI, backed by additional resources. They’ve taken preemptive actions in anticipation of problems, with arrests in West Virginia, Arizona and other places.”

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Last October, for example, seven men with connections to a West Virginia-based anti-government militia were arrested on charges of conspiring to blow up the FBI’s new national fingerprint records facility.

In dealing with extremist elements of the militia movement, officials also “are handling situations in a more patient, mature way,” as evidenced by the FBI’s peaceful resolution of the Freemen standoff in Montana last year, Specter said.

FBI officials say their closer monitoring of militia groups is not an effort to shut down these groups or to deny citizens their right to join such organizations. To underscore that point, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh recently assured Congress that investigations of domestic groups “are predicated upon violations of federal law and are not based upon members’ lawful exercise of their 1st or 2nd Amendment rights.”

Freeh added that “most of the militia organizations around the country are not, in our view, threatening or dangerous.” In fact, since the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI has sought to contact leaders of the most prominent groups, “and we’ve maintained a dialogue with them,” he said.

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“On some occasions they’ve been helpful in even identifying people who they view as dangerous to others,” Freeh said.

Despite improvements in U.S. intelligence gathering, however, last year’s bombing in Atlanta during the Olympic Games remains unsolved, as do the Atlanta-area bombings of an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub earlier this year.

“It’s all an ongoing battle, and it’s not easy,” Specter said. “There are always going to be some people like Timothy McVeigh, who are anti-government.”

It is the threat of an angry individual, unconnected to any group, that is hardest to protect against, some authorities say.

Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), another advocate of tough law enforcement, said: “Although the FBI is better equipped, it doesn’t mean that terrorist incidents can’t be pulled off. The difficulty is learning about it beforehand. Intelligence is the key.”

According to FBI officials, the agency has found it difficult to hire counter-terrorism experts with sufficient foreign-language and technical skills at the government pay grades that are available. And Specter noted that the agency is “having some difficulty assimilating all their new resources.”

“The FBI has hired more intelligence analysts, but most of them are kids right out of college,” security expert Vincent Cannistraro said. “They’re bright and they’ll eventually be great assets for the government, but it’s going to be a long learning curve.”

Cannistraro, a former CIA supervisor, said the FBI traditionally has done better at keeping track of U.S. affiliates of foreign organizations than at “understanding home-grown terrorists, who are posing the fastest-growing threat.”

He added that white supremacist groups and some extreme elements in the militia movement “have always been looked upon as kind of dumb” by the law enforcement community.

“But these folks have been getting smarter and have been learning from their mistakes,” Cannistraro said.

Freeh insists that his agency is up to the task.