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FBI Is Short On Agents

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The New York Times

Published: October 19, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis, according to current and former bureau officials.

The bureau slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties. Current and former officials say the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas such as white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance in recent weeks because of the nation's economic crisis.

The pressure on the FBI 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 FBI 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 FBI'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. Some companies victimized by fraud have begun turning to private investigators and accountants to do the legwork in the cases before turning their work over to the FBI.

Since 2004, FBI 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 nonterrorism investigations, according to records and interviews. But each year, the requests have been denied.

According to previously undisclosed internal FBI data, the cutbacks have been particularly severe in staffing for investigations into white-collar crimes such as mortgage fraud, with a loss of 625 agents, or 36 percent of its 2001 levels.

Overall, the number of criminal cases that the FBI has brought to federal prosecutors dropped 26 percent in the past seven years, going from 11,029 cases to 8,187, Justice Department data showed.

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