Enlightened Librarian: Not enough spooks in the FBI

Not enough spooks in the FBI · Nov 5, 01:01 PM

This week’s New Yorker has an interesting article by Elsa Walsh, “Annals of Intelligence: Learning to Spy” (offline only, alas), that discusses attempts to revamp the organization’s counter-terrorism division from that of a detective agency, one that primarily gathers evidence, to an anticipatory body, one that actively hunts for terrorist activity and anticipates possible attacks. The distinction is partly changing the bureau’s emphasis from an information “vacuum cleaner” to one that concentrates on the most likely means of terrorist communication, namely the Internet and other high-tech avenues. Led by Maureen Baginski, the ex-head of signals intelligence at the ultra-secret National Security Agency, the change in emphasis has resulted in what will be nearly $600-million in computer and network upgrades at the FBI, replacing 1980s-era equipment and dial-up modems that had been in use until as late as this past spring.

The effort is leading, Walsh says, to the FBI acting more like a traditional spy organization, using informants, psychological profiling and fictional scenarios to attempt to narrow the field of possibilities and to turn information noise to usable intelligence. However, like the CIA, the FBI has been criticized for putting too much faith in technological eavesdropping, and downplaying the importance of human agents:

A critic of the bureau, John MacGaffin, who had been the C.I.A.’s No. 2 person for clandestine operations until 1993, and, until 1998, a senior consultant at the F.B.I., was pessimistic. MacGaffin, who had met with the 9/11 Commission, believed that the key problem was not a failure to connect the dots but a failure to find enough of them. “The thing that is not better—that is not more intense and is the sine qua non to doing this right—is spies,” MacGaffin said. “People in the innermost councils of those who would do us grievous harm. And we do not have those in any adequate—even approaching adequate—number. And that’s the only way you’re going to beat this.” He called this a failing of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.

What I find interesting is the FBI’s sudden leap from a Cold War-era mindset (with the equipment to match) to an entirely technology-driven agenda that discounts the effectiveness of human actors. Here is an example of the same kind of technological hubris that is evident in my previous post about changes in the U.S. military.

Americans, and the West in general, have a right instinct to lessen people’s exposure to harm by having technology intercede where possible. But there also seems to be a reluctance to admit the vulnerabilities that attend such decisions. In counter-terrorism efforts, the result is a dependence on intelligence gained at several removes without the nuances that might be learned first hand by spies. Militarily, high-tech sensory aids and bodily protections introduce a shell of dependencies that can easily malfunction or distract in battle, or dangerously augment a feeling of invulnerability. I believe that an accelerating trust in the enduring capabilities of technology is increasing one’s sense in the West that a citizen’s life is inviolable, wars may be fought cleanly, and one may live sheltered from the terrors of the earth. This belief in the divine rationality of Western life is as dangerous an attitude as the myth-bound view of Islamic terrorists who pronounce love of death.

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