FBI faces staff shortage

New York, Oct 19 (PTI) American intelligence agency F.B.I. is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, a media report said Sunday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation slashed its criminal
investigative work force to expand its national security role
after the September 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800
agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal
programmes, to terrorism and intelligence duties, a report
published in 'New York Times' said.

Citing current and former bureau officials, the paper
said that the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed
in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has
taken on urgent importance in recent weeks because of the
nation's economic woes.

The pressure on the intelligence agency, it said, has
recently increased with the disclosure of criminal
investigations into some of the largest players in the
financial collapse, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The F.B.I. is planning to double the number of agents
working financial crimes by reassigning several hundred agents
amid a mood of national alarm. But some people inside and out
of the Justice Department wonder where the agents will come
from and whether they will be enough.

So depleted are the ranks of the F.B.I.'s white-collar
investigators that executives in the private sector say they
have had difficulty attracting the Bureau's attention in cases
involving possible frauds of millions of dollars, it added.

Since 2004, the report said, F.B.I. officials have warned
that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has
repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to
replenish the ranks of agents handling non-terrorism
investigations, according to records and interviews.

But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new
agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused
on counterterrorism.

Citing previously undisclosed internal F.B.I. data, the
paper aid the cutbacks have been particularly severe in
staffing for investigations into white-collar crimes like
mortgage fraud, with a loss of 625 agents, or 36 percent of
its 2001 levels.

Over all, the number of criminal cases that the F.B.I.
has brought to federal prosecutors — including a wide range of
crimes like drug trafficking and violent crime — dropped 26
percent in the last seven years, going from 11,029 cases to
8,187, Justice Department data showed. PTI