FBI – national security role

Role in national security

According to the testimony of Director Robert S. Mueller III before the Senate Judiciary Committee on 5 March 2008, the FBI’s top priority is counterterrorism, with counterintelligence second; he described the FBI as “a lead agency for foreign counterintelligence in the United States”.¹

The FBI’s National Security Branch brings together the Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions, the Directorate of Intelligence, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate and the Terrorist Screening Center. At the time, the FBI’s resources were split roughly equally between national security and criminal programmes.¹

Oversight

The Church Committee (1975–1976) described the FBI’s COINTELPRO programme, whose targets included Martin Luther King Jr., as an example of abuses by intelligence agencies.²

In March 1976 Attorney General Edward H. Levi issued guidelines for the FBI’s intelligence activities, and in April guidelines for its domestic security investigations, in response to concerns raised by the Church and Pike committees. An Act of 1 June 1968 (Public Law 90-351) introduced a ten-year term for the FBI Director, appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate, to take effect after Hoover’s tenure.³

History

According to the FBI, on 29 June 1908 Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte ordered the creation of a force of special agents; 26 July 1908 is regarded as its formal starting date. In March 1909 the unit was named the Bureau of Investigation, in 1932 the United States Bureau of Investigation, in 1933 the Division of Investigation, and on 1 July 1935 the Federal Bureau of Investigation.³

J. Edgar Hoover led the Bureau from 10 May 1924 (initially in an acting capacity) until his death on 2 May 1972. On 24 May 1936 President Roosevelt entrusted the FBI, Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence jointly with investigating espionage, sabotage and subversive activities.³

On 12 September 2005 the National Security Branch was created, combining counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence.³

Counterintelligence cases described by the FBI

The Duquesne spy ring: on 28 June 1941 FBI agents arrested Fritz Duquesne and 32 other German agents. A key role was played by William Sebold, recruited by German intelligence in 1939, who agreed to work for the FBI as a double agent; the FBI ran a radio station on Long Island in his name. Nineteen defendants pleaded guilty and the remaining 14 were convicted at a trial that ended on 13 December 1941; on 2 January 1942 all were sentenced, to a combined total of more than 300 years in prison.⁴

Robert Hanssen: the FBI agent was arrested on 18 February 2001 on charges of spying for the KGB and the SVR, while placing a package at a dead drop in a park in Vienna, Virginia. According to the FBI, his activities began in 1985; he received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and the FBI judged the damage to be exceptionally grave.^3,5

The case of Rudolf Abel (1957) is described in the entry Bridge of Spies.⁶

The FBI and Poland

According to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the Polish People’s Republic intelligence officer Marian Zacharski, sentenced in the US in 1981 to life imprisonment, was released after about four years in prison in the exchange on the Glienicke Bridge on 11 June 1985. In mid-1985 the head of GDR intelligence, Markus Wolf, proposed that the Americans also release William H. Bell and James D. Harper, agents of Polish People’s Republic intelligence in the US; this did not happen.⁷