A Distracted FBI?
The oddity of terrorism as an enterprise is that, in essence, it’s an effort by a weaker party to trick the stronger party into weakening himself by engaging in panicky overreactions. In particular, though 9/11 had an appalling cost in terms of lives and money we’ve actually seen a somewhat larger cost in lives and much larger cost in money in our response to those events.
Benjamin Friedman offers up a thought along these lines that I hadn’t heard before:
In other cost-of-fear-of-terrorism news, both Stephen Dubner of the Freakonomics blog and Bruce Schneier ask whether the diversion of federal attention from crime to terrorism since 9-11 helped cause an outbreak of financial fraud. They cite this New York Times article discussing the shift of FBI resources to counterterrorism. Dubner is unsure, but I say it’s a no-brainer that moving 2,400 FBI agents from crime to counterterrorism and the resulting 40 percent drop in financial crimes referred to US Attorney’s for prosecution caused more financial crime.
I’m not sure I buy this. Despite the increased focus on terrorism, the FBI seems to have had plenty of time to undertake missions that were considered priorities—fighting pornography, investigating Elliot Spitzer’s consensual sexual activities, etc.—and the FBI was hardly the only agency to see its interest-level of combating corporate malfeasance tumble during the Bush years. It’s true, in other words, that we ought to take a look at whether we’re getting the balance between counterterrorism and other law enforcement priorities right. But I wouldn’t be too quick to assume that it’s really the pressure of fighting terrorism that led the FBI to ease off on financial crimes.
27 Responses to “A Distracted FBI?”
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January 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
It is not the ‘oddity’ of terrorism, it is the essence.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:04 am
You only just now figured this out? OF COURSE the War on Terra was simply the all-purpose smokescreen that Bushco used to divert the populace’s attention from its criminal behavior. Duh. As many people have pointed out, all these stories about the perversion of various Federal agencies are really one big story.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:13 am
They aren’t even a new story. Does anyone remember the $100 million wasted by the Republicans in the 90s? It was in all the papers. Something about consensual sex and business losses by some member of the opposition. It might not have resulted in 9/11, but wasting that much of the FBIs time and resources certainly didn’t help prevent terrorism.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Yeah, I agree with (2) — the Bush Jr’ites sought any excuse they could get to stop investigations into financial crimes.
Because what we call “financial crimes,” Republicans view as “the free market”.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I recall that when the diversion of agents was announced, people predicted there would be a rise in other kinds of crime the FBI was responsible for investigating.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:39 am
The Wire and The Sopranos were all over this years ago.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Doesn’t seem plausible to me. Note that Madoff was running his fraudulent investment program for decades — well before W. and his crew took office.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:17 am
alkali, I can tell you from personal experience (I’m a forensic DNA expert in a county crime lab, and we do work for the lcoal FBI offices) that I have heard complaints from FBI agents that they were forced to neglect law enforcement in favor of half-cocked counterterrorism schemes. This conversation was specifically in regard to bank robberies, but I know that FBI experts in financial crimes were also diverted into investigating supposed terrorist money-laundering schemes (= anybody from an Arab country who sends money home).
January 12th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Spitzer was investigated for…wait for it..financial crimes! Yet somehow Matt missed that. It’s early, but this may be the dumbest thing Matt posts all year.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
The aggravating part is that Homeland Security is the lead counter-terrorism Cabinet Department but the the lead counter-terrorism agency, the FBI, is in an entirely different Departmnent (Justice). Just to make things even sillier, Homeland Security happens to have a fine in-house law enforcement agency, the Secret Service, but they focus on counterfeiting and identity theft when they aren’t guarding VIPs.
The job swap is obvious, give counterfeiting to the FBI and counter-terrorism to the Secret Service.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
As much as I would love to blame this on Bush and the war on civil liberties(terror), deflating financial situations ALWAYS leads to increased discovery of financial misdeeds, embezzelment and fraud. If only because when things are good, people pay less attention to where their money is going, and when things get bad, everyone watches their investments (or deposits) a lot closer. (How many people called to check on their financial advisors AFTER the disclosure of the Madoff scandal?) In addition, during “flush” times, those predisposed to criminal activity see more prosperity to covet, leading to more “borrowing”. This specific phenomenon is discussed by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book on the great crash of 1929, which he wrote in the 1950s! People haven’t changed a lick since then.
January 12th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
“the FBI was hardly the only agency to see its interest-level of combating corporate malfeasance tumble during the Bush years.”
More hackery from Yglesias. There was more (and harsher) prosecution of corporate malfeasance during the Bush administration than ever before. Look at the sentences the perps in the Worldcom, Enron, and other scandals got.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:16 am
This is old news. There was a long story, complete with quotes, graphs and statistics, in the Seattle PI over a year ago. After 9/11, white collar crime and civil rights prosecutions both dropped by 2/3rds. You’d think Matt could learn to use Google: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/311046_fbiterror11.html
“The FBI’s terrorism trade-off
Focus on national security after 9/11 means that the agency has turned its back on thousands of white-collar crimes
Thousands of white-collar criminals across the country are no longer being prosecuted in federal court — and, in many cases, not at all — leaving a trail of frustrated victims and potentially billions of dollars in fraud and theft losses.
It is the untold story of the Bush administration’s massive restructuring of the FBI after the terrorism attacks of 9/11.”
Read the whole thing as they say.
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