Cutbacks hamper FBI investigations of financial crimes

Seattle Times by Eric Lichtblau, David Johnston, Ron Nixon | Oct. 21, 2008 (News Report)
The FBI is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the country's economic crisis

The bureau slashed its criminal-investigative work force to expand its national-security role after the Sept. 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programs, to terrorism and intelligence duties.

Current and former officials say the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas such as white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance in recent weeks because of ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

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Subjects: U.S., Politics, Business
Topics: Law Enforcement, FBI, Bush Administration, Finance, U.S. Economy
Member Tags: white collar crime
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Posted by: Posted by Dwight Rousu - Oct 21, 2008 - 1:57 AM PDT
Reviewed by: Dwight Rousu (review), Aaron Foster (review), Marsha Iverson (review), courtney maglaras (review), Raechel Prosser (review)
Edit Lock: This story can be edited
Edited by: Dwight Rousu - Oct 21, 2008 - 1:57 AM PDT
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4.6
 by Marsha Iverson - Oct. 21, 2008

In case you don't have enough to worry about already, this report will help fill any gaps. It seems that federal budget priorities didn't include maintaining adequate investigative staff to track, document and prosecute white collar crime. This might not seem too alarming until you begin to seek connections between the absence of oversight and scrutiny of financial transactions to today's corporate financial collapse. This story will become an interesting link in retrospect, as the ... More »

The follow-up piece I'd like to see would be a parallel report on the effectiveness of FBI attention on national security. While white collar crime ... More »

“Clearly, we have felt the effects of moving resources from criminal investigations to national security,” said the FBI’s assistant director, John ... More »

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4.3
 by Dwight Rousu - Oct. 21, 2008

The story describes the shorthanded FBI situation due to so many agents having been diverted in anti-terrorism assignments, but seems to be light in pointing fingers as to why that happened. Senator Murray has been fighting dilution of the FBI crime units for quite a while.

I could easily suspect that the bushies diverted the FBI out of white collar crime investigation to protect their core constituency, the fat cats on ... More »

Dwight posted this story.
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4.3
 by courtney maglaras - Oct. 21, 2008
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4.2
 by Raechel Prosser - Oct. 22, 2008
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3.9
 by Aaron Foster - Oct. 21, 2008

It jumps around quite a bit and isn't that captivating.

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