They can take the FBI out of the J. Edgar Hoover building, but they can't take J. Edgar out of the FBI
Very disappointing start to FBI "reform"
J. Edgar Hoover must be laughing. Not even at the pinnacle of his 48 years as FBI director did he have as much power as the FBI has today. Not even close.
Instead of trimming back the FBI to its bare essentials, and spinning off functions to independent agencies to rein it's powers, we're watching the opposite happen.
Few details are out, but the clues show the Bureau in a dangerous direction.
The administration had an excellent start, tearing out the politicization and wokeness that discredited and ruined much of the intelligence community.
The structural and functional changes - so far - are not so hopeful. Some specifics were revealed in new legislation by Senator Tom Cotton. Those specifics and others make it clear that instead of curbing the FBI's centralized powers, the Trump Administration has decided to centralize the FBI even more.
This is especially troubling from a president and his supporters who have suffered so much from FBI abuse.
I had laid out a general road map for FBI reforms in my book, Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains (2024).
The idea was to give our country the best federal investigative and law enforcement capabilities, and best counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and other national security capabilities, by re-thinking the obsolete Bureau.
Not much to cheer about as of this date. The big "reforms" so far include:
Keeping a large FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, DC. FBI to move out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the palatial Ronald Reagan Building. No public explanation yet how FBI HQ plans to downsize sufficiently to make that move.
The bright side is that this plan cancels the worse problem of a Pentagon building-sized FBI headquarters compound in the DC suburbs, which has been canceled.
Centralizing the Bureau's terribly flawed, non-strategic approach to counterintelligence by absorbing the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) functions from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), rather than create an entirely new, stand-alone counterintelligence service with the best CI people from FBI and ODNI.
Making the FBI even bigger by absorbing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), instead of the other way around and then dismantling the unnecessary elements of the merger.
So far, the FBI has offered few public details on all but ATF, but it's clear that under its new leadership, the FBI is becoming more centralized and thus more dangerous to the citizen.
Below is a slightly edited excerpt of part of my proposal in Big Intel to remove the national security functions from the FBI and create independent agencies, each with its own culture, to deal with each function.
National Security Branch. The National Security Branch is arguably the most politicized and compromised component of the entire FBI. This branch must be broken apart, division by division, with relevant personnel, authority, equipment, and budgets transferred to other agencies and, where desirable, to states.
The National Security Branch contains a Counterintelligence Division, whose most famous chief was Peter Strzok. This division has seldom done well to combat foreign intelligence services in a strategic fashion. It has functioned as a fly-swatting operation to go after low-hanging fruit, and not as a strategic tool to penetrate and disrupt hostile intelligence organizations from within. The most high-value FBI victories against deeply penetrated foreign spies generally have come from walk-ins and defectors from foreign intelligence services like the Soviet KGB and GRU, the Russian FSB and SVR as well as GRU, and not from painstaking, long-term counterintelligence penetration work. The personnel evaluation system put in place by Mueller, with its accounting-style box-checking demands and executive financial rewards, disincentivizes strategic counterintelligence work and empowers foreign spies.
The independent Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, or ONCIX, was created in 2001, before Mueller, to address the problem. Unfortunately, after a promising start under non-FBI counterintelligence professionals Michelle Van Cleave and Ken DeGraffenreid, the office, since-renamed the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), was virtually taken over by Mueller’s FBI and neutered as a strategic counterintelligence entity. The FBI Counterintelligence Division has become one of the most politicized elements in the Bureau, despite Peter Strzok’s departure in disgrace. Here’s an interim solution:
Transfer the FBI Counterintelligence Division to the NCSC under a new leadership and ethos from outside the Bureau, with a limited number of personnel billets to force undesirable FBI personnel out of the transfer. NCSC says its role is to “lead and support the U.S. Government’s counterintelligence and security activities,” so the FBI Counterintelligence Division is redundant. This is a dangerous move, though, because the present NCSC is both flaccid and politicized.
Parcel out the Counterterrorism Division, the Terrorist Screening Center, and related elements of the National Security Branch to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),* and make NCTC an independent and small counterterrorism agency. NCTC has its own problems that need addressing, but is the only logical home for the terrorism-related units of the FBI.
Move the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate of the FBI National Security Branch to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, commonly known as ATF. This is a far from ideal solution given the ATF’s own history and ethos, but ATF is a standing law enforcement body its own personnel trained in dealing effectively with weapons of mass destruction. One can deal with ATF later.
These three steps will leave the FBI without a National Security Branch, while keeping the important public functions elsewhere in government. These steps will excise the most toxic branch out of the Bureau.
The public is going to pay a high price for these mistakes.
Here's how to get a copy of Big Intel in print, e-book, or audio: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Intel-Heroes-State-Villains/dp/1684513537/
* In making final edits to Big Intel in late 2023, I mistakenly wrote that NCTC was part of the Department of Homeland Security. This was my oversight. As of this writing, as in 2023, NCTC is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The logic, though, still applies: Counterterrorism functions of the FBI should be transferred to a stand-alone counterterrorism agency, which the FBI can assist with investigations.