The Justice Department needs to continue allocating resources for terrorism. But it better beef up the fight against fraud, including mortgage fraud. That, simply put, has become financial terrorism and it’s helping bring down our economy, not to mention harming the American psyche.
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is moving to solidify one of the most significant shifts of resources put into place under President George W. Bush: the transformation of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into agencies where the top priority is counterterrorism rather than conventional law enforcement.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other Justice Department officials have emphasized that they will not cut resources allocated to national security in the foreseeable future, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, told lawmakers on Wednesday that “we have no intention of retreating from preventing a terrorist attack on American soil as our No. 1 priority.”
The Obama administration’s decision to maintain current levels of national security staffing comes as officials acknowledge, as Mr. Mueller did in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the shift of agents to counterterrorism and intelligence duties after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has seriously complicated other efforts.
Those include demands for resources to combat corporate and financial fraud and a deadly drug war across the border with Mexico.
