Loading ...
FBI Power in Terror Cases Grows, Metro Detroiters Worry It'll Open Door to Profiling
Beginning Monday, the FBI will get increased power to investigate suspected terrorists under revised administrative guidelines that some Muslim Americans and civil rights advocates in metro Detroit are concerned may target innocent people.
The new Justice Department guidelines will allow FBI agents, for the first time in terrorism-related cases, to use undercover sources to gather information in preliminary probes, interview people without identifying who they are and spy on suspects without first getting clear evidence of wrongdoing.
They’re the most significant changes the Bush administration has made since 2003 to rules that govern security investigations in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
FBI officials say they need the changes because they are hamstrung by outdated rules that limit their ability to investigate people in national security cases.
FBI agents have met with Arab-American representatives in metro Detroit twice to assure them that the new guidelines won’t target them, pointing out that the rules state they must be applied in a “reasonable manner that respects liberty and privacy.”
But critics say the plan will allow for abuses by agents, including more racial and religious profiling and intrusive investigations into political and religious groups.
Those concerns are amplified in Michigan, a major center of Islam and home to the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States.
Some say they worry there will be more undercover agents and informants infiltrating mosques, attending events like Palestinian conferences, and snooping into the private lives of ordinary residents.
“There is anxiety the Middle Eastern community will be targeted,” said Dearborn attorney Nabih Ayad, who often defends Arab Americans charged in national security cases. “There is always a danger in the implementation when you give such discretion in the hands of agents.”
Those concerns may be revisited again sometime next year. Because the new guidelines were not created through legislation, President-elect Barack Obama’s administration could decide to remove them.
A spokesman for Obama’s transition team declined to comment.
Early in the presidential campaign, Obama criticized the Bush administration for adopting homeland security policies that he said threatened liberty and privacy rights.
But then-Sen. Obama supported a surveillance bill in June that was opposed by liberal activists.
The guidelines, the changes
The changes essentially consolidate what are currently five sets of guidelines for various types of investigations — criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations — into one basic set of rules.
The current guidelines came about in the 1970s, after congressional and public pressure brought to light the abuses of the FBI during the civil rights and antiwar movements.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft moved to change those guidelines in order to help the FBI become proactive in fighting terrorism.
But the Justice Department says the changes didn’t go far enough.
Right now, agents can’t conduct preliminary investigations, known as threat assessments, into suspected terrorist cases. And they can’t conduct what are known as pretext interviews, where FBI agents disguise their identities in order to obtain information.
In Senate testimony in September, FBI Director Robert Mueller offered the hypothetical example of an anonymous e-mail the FBI receives saying “that there was drug trafficking at a bar in a particular area.”
Under the current criminal rules, the FBI could “send an agent in an undercover capacity or recruit sources to do that,” Mueller told the Judiciary Committee.
But “if that same e-mail came in and said that Hizballah was recruiting individuals, or Al Qaeda, we would be barred from doing that. The only thing we could do under the current national security guidelines is go in … and announce ourselves as an FBI agent. … It does not make any sense.”
Praises and concerns
Some security experts applaud the changes.
“The revision is a necessary and important step,” Michael Rolince wrote in an Oct. 28 paper for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Rolince is a former FBI agent, on the job for 31 years, who was special agent in charge of counterterrorism in Washington from 2002 to 2005.
At the same time, Rolince said, the changes must come with proper training and a strong emphasis on outreach to Arab-American communities.
That outreach was seen last month when members of the FBI and other federal agencies met with Arab Americans and Muslims at a Lebanese center in Dearborn to discuss the changes.
Andrew Arena, special agent in charge of the FBI Detroit office, said there would be no profiling under the new regulations.
“Every agent in the FBI is going to be trained on these guidelines,” he said.
But groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union say the new rules open the door to racial, ethnic and religious profiling because they explicitly rely on guidelines that allow profiling in limited cases.
They also fear that the new guidelines will allow agents to investigate people without any evidence of wrongdoing.
“That’s an extraordinary power,” said Mike German, a former FBI special agent who now is policy counsel for the ACLU.
But Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said, “At the end of the day, the FBI is not going to open an investigation simply on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion.”
Arena agreed.
In metro Detroit, “the concern in the community is that there’s going to be abuses, and it’s going to open up the possibility of profiling. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” he said.
Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press
Picture caption:
FBI special agent in charge of the Detroit Office, Andrew Arena