White House to Keep Agencies’ Focus on Terrorism

By Gideon Swift | Published: March 26, 2009

The Obama administration is moving to solidify one of the most significant shifts of resources put into place under President George W. Bush: the transformation of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into agencies where the top priority is counterterrorism rather than conventional law enforcement.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other Justice Department officials have emphasized that they will not cut resources allocated to national security in the foreseeable future, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, told lawmakers on Wednesday that “we have no intention of retreating from preventing a terrorist attack on American soil as our No. 1 priority.”

The Obama administration’s decision to maintain current levels of national security staffing comes as officials acknowledge, as Mr. Mueller did in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the shift of agents to counterterrorism and intelligence duties after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has seriously complicated other efforts. Those include demands for resources to combat corporate and financial fraud and a deadly drug war across the border with Mexico.

“The logical consequence of cannibalizing our criminal program to augment our national security efforts is that we have reduced the ability to surge resources within our criminal branch,” Mr. Mueller said.

He added, in response to lawmakers’ questions, that the bureau needed more agents to address financial fraud and crime related to drug trafficking.

The administration’s position underscores the extent to which Mr. Obama’s legal team has found itself following many of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies, even as Mr. Holder has asserted that the Justice Department will differ markedly by being more respectful of civil liberties and constitutional limits.