AT LAST, EYES ON THE FBI

AT LAST, EYES ON THE FBI
Los Angeles Times: When FBI agents arrested Robert Philip Hanssen in February, they nabbed one of the most damaging traitors in American history, a turncoat in their ranks who revealed secrets that aided enemies including, perhaps, Osama bin Laden. The most important thing Hanssen revealed, however, is just how inept the nation's leading federal law enforcement agency has become, and how urgent its need for a radical makeover.
In a new book, "The Bureau and the Mole," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David A. Vise reports that Hanssen gave the Kremlin the United States' plan for carrying on government functions during nuclear war as well as access to an online intelligence system-information that Moscow's agents may have passed on to Bin Laden.
Sexual fantasies: Vise also charges that Hanssen left a voluminous Internet trail of sexual fantasies about himself and his wife under his own name and that his own brother-in-law, a fellow FBI agent, had warned his superiors in the Chicago bureau that he suspected Hanssen of spying. The agency, Vise writes, "could have halted Hanssen's damaging disclosures in 1990 by carrying out a standard probe involving physical and electronic surveillance."
The intervening decade was not the FBI's best. The Richard Jewell-Olympic bombing investigation, the Wen Ho Lee espionage case and the agency's failure to turn over documents in the Timothy McVeigh case have caused public confidence in the bureau to plummet.
The attacks on Sept. 11 threw a withering spotlight on the bureau, and at last meaningful change appears to be in the works. To begin with, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has ordered his deputy, Larry Thompson, to do a "comprehensive review" of the FBI, and Judge William H. Webster, a former director of the bureau and the CIA, heads a commission examining internal security. In addition, Ashcroft has given the Justice Department's inspector general expanded powers to investigate allegations of bureau irregularities -- an important reform since, until now, the FBI had been responsible for policing itself.
Perhaps the most promising signs, however, have come from new FBI head Robert Mueller. In contrast to his predecessors, Mueller has been listening to recommendations from Capitol Hill about improving security. Already, he has restructured the agency, creating a new position that will focus on internal risks.
Ingrown hostility: By all indications, Mueller is tenacious and determined that the shakeup he has launched will amount to more than a mere shuffling of bureaucratic chairs. Real reform will depend on overcoming the bureau's ingrown hostility to change. Mueller should start by rooting out and punishing anyone responsible for the Hanssen debacle. That would clear the way for stopping anyone who might be planning a follow-up to Sept. 11. The Hanssen espionage case and the Sept. 11 atrocities put a withering light on the bureau. Positive change may now be underway.