The CQ Researcher : Combating Terrorism

From the July 21, 1995 issue of The CQ Researcher, Volume 5, No. 27, p. 640.

Agency Turf Battles Hamper Anti-Terrorism Fight

By Mary H. Cooper

As the lead federal agency in the fight against domesticterrorism, the FBI has been the most visible law enforcement presence during the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing. But the FBI is hardly alone. Depending on the source of an attack, as many as 25 U.S. agencies may be involved in investigating and prosecuting suspected terrorists. [1]

Rivalries between the FBI and the smaller Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), a division of the Treasury Department, are legendary. At crime scenes where both agencies are present, officers have been known to engage in a “battle of the field jackets,” vying for the attention of news cameras by displaying their block-lettered “FBI” and “ATF” jackets.

But turf battles hobble the efforts of other agencies involved in counterterrorism as well. One near-fatal incident over conflicting rules and interests involved the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Customs Service.

The FAA, responsible for maintaining security at U.S. airports, requires that personnel with direct access to aircraft and in other protected areas wear identification badges to help police keep unauthorized people away. The Customs Service, however, has no such requirement. On at least one occasion, the refusal of Customs officials to wear airport badges has led to confrontation, with guns drawn, between a Customs agent and a local policeman. [2]

Turf consciousness is not the only problem. Observers say that a lack of effective communication between agencies can often mean that they are not even aware that others are conducting similar research projects.

To reduce such bungling, the State Department's Technical Support Working Group meets with the Policy Coordinating Committee on Terrorism, an interagency group. Since 1990, when the working group began coordinating research and development programs among all counterterrorism agencies, it has reduced the duplication of efforts. The group has, for example, pooled several projects, once conducted independently by different agencies, to develop high-energy gamma ray equipment used in detecting explosives, weapons or narcotics in cargo containers. [3]

Any efficient campaign against terrorism has to start with information on the many international and domestic groups that have conducted or threatened to carry out terrorist acts in the past. A key source of this information is the so-called TECSII data base, managed jointly by the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), to identify individuals who have raised the suspicions of agents at ports of entry into the United States because of their involvement with contraband as well as suspicious travel patterns revealed on their passports.

When the source of terrorism is foreign, as the vast majority of anti-American attacks have been, the problem of coordinating forensic research, criminal investigation and prosecution multiplies. However, there has been effective international collaboration in the area of counterterrorism technology research. Under the direction of the FAA, for example, scientists at the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel are developing nuclear resonance absorption technology to help detect explosives. [4]