Except
for a brief period in the wake of the Nixon Watergate scandal
in the mid 1970's, the actual enforcement priorities of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation have rarely been critically scrutinized
by Congress. But because the FBI has a finite number of investigators,
an enforcement effort aimed at dealing with one crime problem
necessarily means another problem will receive less attention.
This reality prompted the Senate Appropriations Committee, in
its report on FY 2001, to question the enforcement choices of
the FBI. Quoting Justice Department data obtained by TRAC, the
committee noted that about one half of the bureau's 1997 convictions
concerned crimes that mostly could have been handled by state
and local police agencies. "The FBI must resist the temptation
to spread itself so thin," the report said. "Instead, by focusing
on core missions [like national security, official corruption,
and organized crime], the FBI can maintain its reputation as a
premier law enforcement agency." The committee ordered the FBI
to report on the areas of crime that the FBI can appropriately
hand back to other agencies so it can focus on the bureau's true
responsibilities.
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