WASHINGTON - The FBI has unveiled sweeping plans to strengthen its counter-terrorist operations in the United States, to try to ensure that it is never again caught napping as it was before the attacks of September 11.
Under the reorganisation, announced yesterday by FBI director Robert Mueller and Attorney-General John Ashcroft, more than 500 agents will be transferred from ordinary criminal work to anti-terrorism.
The bureau also aims to recruit 800 linguists, computer experts and other specialists to boost its analysis capability.
In an even more striking departure, 50 CIA employees will join new terrorism task forces in FBI field offices around the country - a sign of how two agencies which had been fierce competitors realise they have no alternative but to co-operate if the terrorist threat to the US is to be met.
There will even be an Office of Intelligence at the FBI, headed by a CIA official.
"It is critically important to our ability to address terrorism that we have a vibrant, active, aggressive headquarters that has the analytical capability to support that," Mueller said.
The extent to which police forces around the world failed to respond to clues of an impending massive terrorist attack against the US last year was underlined by Italian police intercepts between summer 2000 and last year of conversations in a car between suspected al Qaeda members.
Translations of the intercepts have been submitted in evidence at a terrorist trial continuing in Milan.
The trial has already brought the convictions of four Tunisians, including Ben Soltane Adel, who, on a tape recorded in January last year, is heard asking whether fake documents had worked for "the brothers who are going to the United States".
It was not clear whether the FBI had access to the transcripts, and if so, what action was taken.
The tapes contain references to a "madman but a genius" behind an operation "that would never be forgotten".
But, officials point out, the intercepts could refer to plans other than September 11 - for instance an attack on the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, two months earlier.
The central figure in the tapes is an Egyptian-born imam, Abdel Mahmoud Es Sayed, believed to be the top Italian agent of al Qaeda, who Italian police say fled Italy in last July for Afghanistan, where he may have been killed during the United States-led campaign.
The FBI reforms, if successful, will inevitably bring about a huge change in the culture of the bureau.
The investigative and crime-solving agency created by the legendary J. Edgar Hoover will be transformed into one whose prime task will be to prevent terrorist attacks from happening.
An organisation which hitherto has abhorred co-operation with the CIA will have to work hand in glove with its arch-rival.
At the same time, the FBI says it will allow much greater latitude to agents in the field.
But, say many sceptical agents, the proof of that particular pudding will be in the eating.
The reforms, part of a revamp started by Mueller last year, come amid growing criticism by lawmakers and even some FBI agents that the bureau failed to properly anticipate the September 11 hijack attacks that cost about 3000 lives.
Mueller, who took over as FBI chief just one week before September 11, has faced recent questions over whether the FBI had information that could have helped prevent the attacks, but which it failed to understand or digest.
Criticism has focused particularly on a memo written by an agent in Phoenix two months before the attacks, expressing concerns that Middle Eastern men linked to Osama bin Laden were taking lessons at US flight schools.
The memo was sent to FBI headquarters, where it languished without action. Agents failed to connect it with the August arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was detained after raising suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota.
Mueller, who said more memos about potential warning signs could still be disclosed, admitted the Phoenix memo had been mishandled.
He said it should have been shared with the CIA and should have been seen by top-ranking FBI officials.
Last week, an agent in the Minneapolis field office took the unusual step of writing to Mueller complaining that FBI officials in Washington hampered the Moussaoui investigation.
Mueller thanked agent Coleen Rowley for her memo and criticisms and said: "We should have been more aggressive here in supporting them and in the future I think we will be."
* The FBI released a new memo in which one of its pilots had warned about Middle Eastern males receiving flight training for possible terrorist acts.
The agent, the chief pilot in the FBI's Oklahoma City division, said he had observed large numbers of Middle Eastern males receiving flight training at Oklahoma airports in recent months, according to the memo dated May 18, 1998.
The agent, who was not identified, said "this is a recent phenomenon and may be related to planned terrorist activity", according to the memo titled Weapons of Mass Destruction.
- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
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