NEW TRENDS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT
By Louis J. Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
In this adaptation of a speech given to the 1997 Federal Judges' Association Conference, Louis J. Freeh, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), talks about the new forms of transnational crime that the bureau must confront, and the importance given to integrity and ethics in the training of FBI agents.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be here and to see so many good friends. I think the association is a great network and force for input and evaluation, and I am delighted to be addressing you today. Let me just take a few moments to discuss a number of areas that I think will interest you.
As you are aware, we are expanding a lot of our international programs. These will translate into new cases and investigative matters in the courts. We are finding that the nature of crime -- particularly economic crime and certainly in the areas of drugs, organized crime and terrorism -- is taking more and more of a global nature. The transnational trends, with respect to these types of crime, have been increasing dramatically.
We had a recent case where an individual sitting in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a laptop computer, worked his way into a Citibank account in New York and was able to move several millions of dollars before the bank itself identified the move. It was a $400,000 loss, but a good lesson for law enforcement and the bank. We understood from that experience that we are going to be dealing with this new type of crime more and more.
We are finding that the advent of the Internet and computers has really been, for law enforcement, a whole new venue in which to operate. We are now chasing fugitives not only over back fences, but also through the Internet.
Our agents who are executing search warrants are now, more often than not, seizing hard drives and computers, in addition to records and books. I think that we will reach a point very quickly where evidentiary questions, as well as the scope and focus of warrants -- whether they be Title III or search warrants -- will change dramatically because of the new technologies, and because of the manner in which information is generated, stored and transmitted.
VULNERABILITIES IN THE INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
This new technological awareness has caused us to create programs which work actively to identify vulnerabilities in our infrastructure. It is clear now that with respect to terrorism as well as criminal activity, our infrastructures -- particularly the critical ones -- are very pronounced areas of vulnerability. For instance, even a moderately sophisticated individual could attack information systems. More and more of our law enforcement infrastructure, and much of the judicial infrastructure, is residing in and engineered for informational systems. As those systems become more vulnerable, they increase the opportunities for criminals and terrorists to accomplish great damage. For instance, an attack on a stock exchange, or on a power grid in the northeast part of the United States in the middle of winter, could severely damage lives as well as property. We are finding this is an area where we need to be much better prepared.
THE FBI LABORATORY
Unfortunately, some of the vulnerabilities of our informational infrastructure are reflected in our organizational infrastructure: I refer specifically to the FBI laboratory, where, as a result of an Inspector General's report, we have put into place quality assurance units that we did not have heretofore, peer reviews and more scientists managing the lab. We have brought into the laboratory many civilian scientists for the first time in our history, and I think that the end result will be a much stronger lab. For example, the FBI laboratory recently was responsible for the freeing of a state prisoner who had spent nine years in jail, convicted on a case for which the laboratory, in a later examination, was able to find exculpatory evidence. Our DNA Unit, which conducts examinations for federal, state and local authorities, absolves the suspect in 25 percent of its examinations.
We perform approximately 600,000 examinations a year in our laboratory. We have given information on these examinations to prosecutors, which in some cases will go to defense lawyers and defendants, and will probably be the subject of motions in courtrooms. At this point, we do not know of any FBI or state case that has been compromised by the findings and the criticism of the FBI laboratory. We have very, very dedicated men and women in that laboratory.
We are building a new FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, at our training facility. That laboratory will be completed by the end of the decade. It will be a cutting edge, first-class teaching laboratory where both state and local scientists also will complete residencies, and where we will continue to do the forensic examinations for which the FBI laboratory is renowned. We are confident that it will remain, as it is now, the leading forensic laboratory in the world.
THREATS TO MEMBERS OF THE JUDICIARY
I will talk now a little bit about the investigations that we work on, with respect to threats against judges, magistrates and employees of the court.
When I travel around the country, many judges ask me if the number of threats is significantly higher. It may seem so, but our statistics show otherwise. In 1996, for instance, we received and worked as investigative cases, 45 separate threats against federal judges, and a lesser number against other court employees. The threats against Supreme Court justices, which we categorize separately, have remained relatively low over the last few years. We take those threats very, very seriously. We work on them quickly and diligently, and we report comprehensively the results of those examinations.
I am particularly sensitive to those cases, since the last prosecution that I did as an assistant U.S. attorney involved the assassination of a judge I followed on the court, in the Southern District of New York -- Judge Richard J. Daronco, who was murdered. I can assure you that the FBI, together with the Marshals Service, works those cases thoroughly.
Most of the threats are neutralized because of the kind of people making them. In many cases, inmates and people who have psychiatric histories make the threats. We make every attempt to neutralize them as soon as possible.
Members of the judiciary should never be in a position where they have received a letter or a threatening call, have reported it, and have not heard back from us. If they feel that they are in that position, they should get in touch with our local special agent in charge (SAC). All SACs have been told to update the judiciary on the progress of those investigations as comprehensively as they can.
ETHICS TRAINING AT THE FBI
We are in a very dynamic stage in our development. We currently have about 75,000 applicants for special agent positions, almost all of whom are basically qualified to perform the job. We are hiring about 1,000 agents a year -- partly to make up for a hiring freeze back in 1992 and 1993, but mostly because of the new resources which we have received from Congress. By the end of 1998, we will have hired, within the last four years, about 40 percent of our workforce. This is an enormous change. We have seen, in the last couple of years, many retirements and the influx of a whole new generation of FBI agents.
We are very concerned about the early teaching and instruction of these new agents, particularly with respect to the issues of integrity and ethics. When I came to this job in 1993, I learned that the ethics portion of the curriculum was relegated to the 14th week of the 16-week course. It dealt very cursorily with the ethical obligations that law enforcement officers have to make. After going to Quantico and asking the new agents questions about hypothetical situations, I felt that there was a need for more comprehensive ethics instruction.
VISITING JUDGES AND LAW ENFORCEMENT ETHICS
To that end, I started our visiting-judge program. Many judges have come to Quantico and spent the day with our new agents. Judges do not just lecture about the role of federal courts and the relationships among courts, judges, prosecutors and investigators. They really highlight for the agents, as I believe only a judge can do, the critical importance of the integrity of our work and the ethics which we must bring to our profession.
In addition to the visiting-judge program, we have created a curriculum wherein the first two days of a new agent's training are devoted to law enforcement ethics. We have structured the curriculum with different practical problems. For instance, in a bank robbery crime scene, the agents find evidence which turns out to be exculpatory -- evidence which is contradictory to the subject who has been identified and to the theory of the case.
The problem is to instruct the agents what to do with that particular evidence, and to explain the necessity of highlighting that for their supervisors or the assistant U.S. attorney. We instruct that the importance of protecting constitutional rights is really more important than the result of any single interview, or the outcome of a particular investigation. We have woven into the curriculum many more opportunities to discuss and instruct on this important core value, not only of the FBI, but of all federal agencies that investigate criminal matters for the United States government.
We have established at Quantico an Office of Law Enforcement Ethics, and we have mandated our employees to take several hours of instruction annually in the subtleties of ethics and law enforcement integrity.
INTERNATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ACADEMY
We have also tried to export a little bit of this to our state and local teaching, as well as to the training that we do overseas. In 1994, we established the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest. The State Department, together with the FBI and other federal agencies, set it up to instruct a whole new generation of police officers coming out of Russia and the former Soviet Union, the Baltics, and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The academy deals principally with the science of policing in a democracy, which is of course much different than policing in a non-democracy.
In each eight-week session we bring in three countries at one time, three different sets of police officers with simultaneous translation. These are police officers who, in most cases, served under former totalitarian governments as civilian police officers.
The first course we teach them is on human dignity, which emphasizes the critical authority that law enforcement officers have, as well as the necessity for ethical conduct, trustworthiness, truthfulness and integrity in their profession. We are very pleased to see that, when the courses are rated by the students, the most highly rated course is the course on human dignity. This is a good echo in terms of what we are teaching and what we think the need is out there.
COORDINATING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES
Finally, I'd like to talk about some new efforts to coordinate better the work of law enforcement agencies on the federal level, and also on the state and local level. These efforts should translate into better cases, cases which are evaluated more before indictment than after indictment. Our special agents in charge (SACs) work in the field very closely with their counterparts in the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), especially where we have task forces. We have 152 task forces around the United States, where FBI agents partner up with federal, state and local officers on fugitive, violent crime or joint-terrorism task forces. Their goal is to ensure that cases are appropriately evaluated before they are presented for indictment or trial. They also ensure that we are using our resources wisely, and in a coordinated fashion.
We have created similar partnerships with the CIA and the State Department on the national security level. I think this coordination has given us the best possible cooperation that we have had in many, many years.
I try to take the opportunity when I travel around the country to meet with judges and their colleagues. I get out to an FBI office about every two weeks. Part of those visits is an opportunity to meet with the judges, if not the chief judge, then some of the others, to do two things: one, to introduce myself, and two, to ask what the FBI and what the federal enforcement authorities might be doing better in that particular district -- the quality of the cases that are being brought before the courts; the quality of the evidence and the agents. I have gotten, over three-and-one-half years, tremendous feedback and input and I appreciate that very much.
Thank you.
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Issues of
Democracy
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, November
1997