U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were expected Wednesday to outline high-profile changes at the FBI's headquarters, including closer ties to the CIA and an overhaul of the FBI's outdated computers.
The FBI also expects a hiring binge by September, adding more than 900 agents nationwide, especially those specializing in computers, foreign languages and science.
"We must refocus our mission and our priorities, and new technologies must be put in place to support new and different operational practices," Mueller told a Senate panel earlier this month. "We must improve how we hire, manage and train our work force, collaborate with others and manage, analyze, share and protect our information."
The changes to the nation's premier law enforcement agency will indirectly affect citizens everywhere. The FBI's renewed focus on terrorism means responsibilities for some types of crimes will be shifted to state and local police -- who already complain they're overwhelmed.
Although Mueller previously had suggested a wholesale shift of some investigations to state and local police, officials say the FBI will continue to pursue bank robbers, white-collar criminals and drug dealers -- even as it focuses more on terrorists.
The FBI has indicated it will increasingly ask state and local cops for help on "note jobs," or bank robberies with a single armed bandit committing an isolated theft. The bureau also may seek local help with kidnappings when the victim isn't taken across state lines.
State and local police did convince Mueller that a wholesale shift of some crimes away from the FBI was a bad idea. Some bank robberies, for example, are committed by thieves who are active across states and might be stealing money for domestic terrorism.
"The bureau needs to be in that circle," said William B. Berger, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the police chief in North Miami Beach, Fla.
Mueller also was expected to announce a new computer-crime division that will include the bureau's National Infrastructure Protection Center, which tries to protect the country's most important computer networks from attacks.
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