Report Notes Gains by FBI Since 9/11, but Cites Weaknesses, Too - New York Times

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The J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the F.B.I., in Washington. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence-France Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. has made great strides since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, but urgently needs to improve its intelligence capabilities and hire more linguists to counter the rapidly evolving threats to the United States, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The report by the F.B.I. 9/11 Review Commission said that the bureau needed to enhance its ability to gain information from people and to analyze it, contending that the bureau lags “behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities.”

“This imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, from adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer hackers, and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates,” the report said.

The F.B.I. has enough linguists in its large offices, but they are in “short supply” throughout the rest of the country, the report said. Often, linguists use a virtual system to communicate remotely with agents and analysts working on cases.

“Hiring additional linguists and integrating them should be a high priority,” the report said.

While the 2004 report of the national 9/11 Commission and subsequent reviews called for major changes to the F.B.I., the report released Wednesday was much less critical. Rather than a rebuke, it amounts to a status-check on the F.B.I. transformation that began in 2001.

Today’s bureau bears little resemblance to that organization, and some of the areas cited for improvement are markedly better than they were years ago. For instance, the report was much less critical about the F.B.I.’s foreign language ability than previous reports were.

The review commission was created by Congress in 2014 to assess the bureau’s progress since the attacks. In particular, the panel examined how the F.B.I. had put into effect the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

“Many of the findings and recommendations in this report will not be new to the F.B.I.,” the latest report said. “The bureau is already taking steps to address them. In 2015, however, the F.B.I. faces an increasingly complicated and dangerous global threat environment that will demand an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is moving faster.”

The principal authors of the report were Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University; Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general; and Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana and former ambassador to India.

The report said that to improve its intelligence gathering and analysis, the F.B.I. needed a five year “top-down strategic plan.”

It did not put all of the blame on the F.B.I., though, adding that budget cuts had “severely hindered the F.B.I.’s intelligence and national security programs.”

The panel was particularly critical of how the F.B.I. treats its analysts. It said that “despite its stated intentions to address concerns from its analysts” the bureau does not regard them as a “professional work force” that needs to be continually trained and educated.

The F.B.I.’s director, James B. Comey, who took over in September 2013, has said that raising the profile of analysts is one of his chief priorities.

The F.B.I. is far better at sharing information throughout the government than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, the report said. But it needs to improve how it communicates with local law enforcement authorities and the private sector.

“Looking ahead, the F.B.I. will be increasingly dependent upon all domestic and foreign partnerships to succeed in its critical and growing national security missions — including against the rapidly evolving cyber and terrorist threats,” the report said.

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