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Recrimination or Reform? e FBI’s Current Crisis

Is Not the Bureau’s Biggest Problem

Darren E. Tromblay

Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 10:00 AM

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Darren E. Tromblay has served the U.S. Intelligence

Community, as an Intelligence Analyst, for more than a

decade. He is the author of The U.S. Domestic

Intelligence Enterprise: History, Development, and

Operations (Taylor & Francis, 2015) and co-author of

Securing U.S. Innovation (Rowman & Little�eld, 2016).

Mr. Tromblay has been published in Lawfare, the Hill,

Small Wars Journal, and Intelligence and National

Security.

Darren E. Tromblay has served the U.S. Intelligence Community, as an Intelligence

Analyst, for more than a decade. He is the author of The U.S. Domestic Intelligence

Enterprise: History, Development, and Operations (Taylor & Francis, 2015) and co-

author of Securing U.S. Innovation (Rowman & Little�eld, 2016). Mr. Tromblay has

been published in Lawfare, the Hill, Small Wars Journal, and Intelligence and

National Security. He holds an MA from the George Washington University’s

Elliott School of International Affairs, an MS from the National Intelligence

University, and a BA from the University of California. Mr. Tromblay can be

reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this essay are entirely his

own and do not represent those of any U.S. government or other entity.

***

Recrimination or Reform? The FBI’s Current Crisis Is Not the Bureau’s Biggest

Problem

by Darren E. Tromblay MA, MS

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is once again the target of intense criticism for

its questionable judgment. At the center of the latest storm is its handling of issues

pertaining to the 2016 presidential election. Outrage has now reached a new

decibel level, with the announcement by Department of Justice’s Of�ce of the

Inspector General (IG) that it will be initiating a review into allegations with a

nexus to both the Bureau’s Director and Deputy Director. This, however, is only

the latest in a series of post-9/11 missteps that have ranged from technology (e.g.

Virtual Case File) to human capital (a counterterrorism head who did not know the

difference between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam). mission. Rather than engage

in punitive �nger pointing and recrimination, U.S. national security would be much

better served by an examination of the FBI’s underlying structural de�ciencies

that have undermined its efforts to reform and evolve.

Two major faults have compromised the FBI’s development. The �rst is its lack of a

de�ned mission. First, the FBI has no formal charter (although Congress—between

1978 and 1980—gave consideration to the matter although the proposal would

not have covered the entire organization). Second, the Bureau’s conceptualization

of national security has not kept pace with the United States’ needs. While U.S.

policymakers require information that will provide them with an informational

advantage, the FBI—despite its post-9/11 measures—remains a fundamentally

reactive agency. In this void, it has attempted to de�ne itself by function, rather

than objective. Under then-Director Robert Mueller III, it presented itself as a

bifurcated intelligence and law enforcement organization. More recently its

identity has become an ungainly “intelligence-driven and a threat- focused

national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement

responsibilities.”

Un-Chartered Territory

The lack of a charter creates problems for the FBI—and its customers—in several

ways. First, it has resulted in evolution by aggregation—rather than assuming

functions that �t within a de�ned framework, the Bureau has accumulated such a

diverse set of missions that it cannot establish a coherent corporate culture. The

nuanced discipline of counterintelligence, the methodical approach of intelligence

collection in furtherance of a criminal investigation, and the physical preparedness

of the Hostage Rescue Team are alike only in the lowest-common-denominator of

stopping threats. (An interesting thought experiment is that the Department of

Homeland Security has been ridiculed for combining 22 different agencies but the

FBI is in a similar position of herding functions, if not agencies.) It is dif�cult to

identify and excise the elements that are only marginally-related to a central

mission if that mission does not exist.

Although the FBI’s lack of a formal charter is the most extreme example,

vagueness of mission is a shortcoming of multiple U.S. agencies with intelligence

responsibilities. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can point to

the National Security Act of 1947 as its founding document, the legislation was

little more than an acknowledgement that the United States needed a foreign

intelligence service, rather than a detailed delineation of the agency’s roles and

organization (a problem exacerbated by the clause allowing for “other functions

and duties related to intelligence”). More recently, the formation of the

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was the recognition of a perceived need

—rather than a well-though-through effort—to address national security needs.

Both agencies were responses to crises triggered by intelligence failures (Pearl

Harbor for the CIA and the attacks of September 11 for DHS) and, consequently,

the vividness of the need to respond took priority over how to respond. However,

unlike the FBI, both of these agencies are enshrined as a concept in legislation.

This provides at least a modicum of focus for their actions, unlike the Bureau,

which began as a detective bureau for the Department of Justice and has

incrementally expanded to become a member of the U.S. intelligence community.

The overstretched FBI—a mile wide and an inch deep—cannot emphasize subject

matter expertise. With so many missions within one agency, it should not be a

surprise that Bureau executives’ biographies are accounts of ricocheting between

disparate divisions in search of the next promotion. Ambition is not necessarily a

bad thing. However, allowing movement across such a far-�ung �eld of disciplines

does nothing to enhance expertise necessary to comprehend and lead in an arcane

discipline (and the Bureau is certainly known for arcane disciplines). Furthermore,

the wide array of responsibilities means that the FBI can too easily redirect

resources toward the latest “shiny object” rather than maintaining awareness of a

sustained issue. For instance, with the end of the Cold War, the FBI redirected

several hundred agents, whose national security expertise was no longer

considered relevant, to criminal work, only to reassign several hundred agents

back to counterterrorism following the attacks of September 11. While terrorism

did not go away during that decade (as indicated by the 1993 World Trade Center

bombing, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City, and the

1998 embassy attacks) the FBI’s resources did.

Reformed (Perhaps) but Still Reactive

The second issue for the FBI is an entrenched, reactive approach to the world

around it. This dates to its founding in 1908, as an agency focused on rooting out

political corruption which then grew to take on a variety of duties vis-à-vis both

foreign and domestic national security threats. (Any of the Bureau’s operational

activities—whether under the National Security Branch or the Criminal

Intelligence Division—should be considered to be “national security” in nature,

since they all preserve the integrity of U.S. elements of national power.) However,

by 1947, U.S. policymakers recognized that they needed a proactive approach to

intelligence, while the FBI continued to operate in reaction to identi�ed threats. Its

current structure cements this vision, with “counterterrorism”,

“counterintelligence”, and “criminal investigative” divisions. Furthermore, the

Threat Review and Prioritization (TRP) by which the Bureau identi�es the issues of

greatest signi�cance has been the target of criticism by both the Department of

Justice’s IG and the 9/11 Review Commission. TRP is a parochial process which

seems to decouple the Bureau from the National Intelligence Priorities

Framework, rather than integrating the FBI into the Intelligence Community.

The FBI may be fundamentally unable to substantially reform its approach to

intelligence. In one of several efforts to make the Bureau more intelligence-

oriented in the decade after 9/11, Mueller characterized the FBI’s intelligence

mission as moving from “thinking about ‘intelligence as a case’ to �nding

‘intelligence in the case’”. However, indicators of interest may not be located in a

case, which—by �rst focusing on malfeasance—rules out the opportunity for

identifying data which may not be nefarious but nonetheless of value in providing

policymakers with an informational advantage. Mueller remained anchored to the

concept that cases—and thus reactivity—provided the framework for the FBI.

Speaking in 2008, he referred to new human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors as

�lling the “spaces between the cases”. Aside from being abysmally trite, this

comment made collection beholden to cases—which de�ned the landscape—

rather than predicated on intelligence requirements.

As an agency that thinks �rst about the concept of “threat”—and then about the

type of threat—it has little institutional use for subject matter expertise.

Enlightened managers may individually appreciate the strengths of employees but

this is no match for the oft-cited “needs of the Bureau”. As noted previously, agents

skilled in one area may be redirected toward an unrelated issue. This indifference

to expertise has severely damaged the Bureau’s analytic corps as well. Historically,

analyst positions were �lled indifferently—sometimes given to individuals who

lacked basic college educations—a problem which the FBI’s Of�ce of Intelligence

attempted to remedy after September 11, by requiring existing analysts to reapply

for their positions. However, the Of�ce’s initiative was canceled prior to

completion. This failure to demand credentials arguably had a negative impact on

the workforce, indicated by the Department of Justice IG’s determination that

newly hired analysts with the highest education were also the most likely to leave.

When bodies, rather than brains, are the priority, these conditions are unlikely to

change.

The FBI does have the capability and the responsibility to conduct positive

intelligence collection, which makes its reactive posture even more unacceptable.

The Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations explicitly identify

the Bureau as the “primary collector of foreign intelligence within the United

States.” It was the FBI’s Cold War-era SOLO operation that provided signi�cant

reporting on the Sino-Soviet split, which was praised by a number of intelligence

and policy of�cials. However, the FBI’s ability to collect information of non-threat-

speci�c value has been stymied by multiple factors including TRP. According to the

9/11 Review Commission, �eld of�ces were penalized because, even though their

collection activities addressed US intelligence community requirements and

produced information that was included in the President’s Daily Brief, their efforts

did not correspond with the TRP issues. The divergence between what is expected

of the FBI—in terms of foreign intelligence collection—and the Bureau’s reticence

to pursue this facet of its mission arguably leaves valuable opportunities

unexploited.

Options for Restoring Effectiveness

The FBI is apparently incapable of identifying and remedying its fundamental

failings (one need only look at the Strategic Execution Team initiative of 2008).

Meaningful change will only come about if external institutions, notably Congress,

shape (strong-arm?) the Bureau’s disparate elements into a more coherent agency.

The FBI should—at its core—be premised on intelligence collection and

exploitation. Collection—across the spectrum to identify both threats and

opportunities—should be linked to the NIPF so that the FBI is working from the

same point of reference as the IC. Intelligence should be exploited to serve

strategic customers (e.g. policymakers) and tactical clients (e.g. law enforcement

activities directed against speci�c targets). Furthermore, the Bureau should speak

the same language. “National security”—protecting the integrity of U.S. elements

of national power, should be a theme across programs, whether they are focused

on state or non-state actors, foreign or domestic. Finally, the FBI should align its

terminology with the IC—forensics are simply a form of “MASINT”, evidence

functions as an “indicator”, Title III monitoring is “SIGINT”— to further speed the

coalescence of culture both within the Bureau and with the IC and other agencies

in the domestic intelligence enterprise.

In the longer term, the FBI should be incisively reduced in scope. It pre-dates a

number of the agencies that constitute the domestic intelligence enterprise and

maintains functions which are either redundant or are complementary to the

missions of other agencies. For instance, the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Forces would

�t equally well within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives or

even the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Criminal Justice Information

Services (CJIS) Division is better-suited to DHS, which has the bailiwick for the

network of fusion centers and would the a natural home for the information-

sharing functions for which CJIS is responsible. Similarly, there are functions for

which a reformed Bureau should assume responsibility. Notably, the CIA’s

National Resources Division, which conducts intelligence activities within the

United States, would �t within an intelligence-oriented FBI as would DHS’

Homeland Security Investigations. This latter move would allow DHS—a similarly

sprawling agency—to focus on its passive, protective functions (e.g. airport

screening, border protection, monitoring critical cyber infrastructure.)

Conclusion

The IG review of recent FBI activities is one more unfortunate development in the

FBI’s recent history. Rather than engage in a super�cial rapping of knuckles, or a

resource-devouring witch hunt, this latest episode should serve as the impetus for

an examination of why the Bureau continues to founder, 15 years after the attacks

of September 11. Two factors are at fault for the FBI’s current dysfunctionality.

This �rst is the lack of a charter that can provide a point of reference for

organizational decisions and for corporate culture. The second issue is an

outdated approach to national security that emphasizes threats, at the expense of

identifying opportunities that would provide decision-makers with an

informational advantage. Reform—whether it occurs entirely within the Bureau or

involves redistribution of Bureau components across the domestic intelligence

enterprise—must emphasis intelligence – threat and opportunity-oriented—that

serves strategic and tactical customers. Re-engineering the FBI for greater

effectiveness, across national security missions, will also provide impetus to

address similar issues that result from vagueness of function and organization in

other elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community and in the broader U.S.

domestic intelligence enterprise.

Darren E. Tromblay

Darren E. Tromblay has served as an intelligence analyst with the U.S.

government for more than a decade. He holds an M.A. from the Elliott

School of International Affairs at George Washington University, an M.S.

from the National Defense Intelligence College, and a B.A. from the

University of California. Tromblay is the author of "Spying: Assessing U.S.

Domestic Intelligence Since 9/11" and "Political In�uence Operations:

How Foreign Actors Seek to Shape U.S. Policy Making." He has been

published in multiple venues including Intelligence and National Security

and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. He

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can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed are solely

the author’s and do not re�ect the views of any U.S. government agency.