Henry Crumpton served as U.S. coordinator for counterterrorism from 2005 to 2007.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI, the world’s leading law enforcement agency, has labored to transform itself into an intelligence organization — while preserving its policing pre-eminence. This challenge has proved difficult.
There are major cultural and structural differences between law enforcement and intelligence. I saw how different when I was a senior CIA officer on loan to the FBI, as the deputy chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section from 1998 to 1999. I retired from government service — but recent conversations with knowledgeable government officials suggest that this remains true today.
The FBI is still measuring success, according to one well-informed confidant, based on arrests and criminal convictions — not on the value of intelligence collected and disseminated to its customers.
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As much as I am skeptical of such insights coming from retired government officials–particularly when they accompany the publication of their books–Crumpton hits many nails on the head.
Indeed the FBI and CIA are different animals–that has never been the issue. The FBI’s post-9/11 rebirth as an “intelligence-driven organization” had more to do with its survival than it did with delivering any solutions for how best to address terrorism.
Unfortunately, the result has been an FBI that is a mere shell of its former self as the world’s best criminal investigative agency. That was sacrificed in order to achieve its present role as a domestic CIA-clone.