Barr to Detail Plan to Shift FBI Resources

Atty. Gen. William P. Barr will announce today the largest reallocation of FBI resources in history, moving hundreds of agents now assigned to counterespionage work to violent crime units across the country, The Times has learned.

The action will include setting up special task forces of FBI agents and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents to work with local police in pursuing gangs in several cities, particularly Los Angeles, law enforcement sources said.

No area is experiencing more gang-related violence than Los Angeles County, where gang-related deaths had passed a record 700-mark at the end of December. More than at any other time, the turf wars in the county revolve around drugs. A drug raid by authorities in Los Angeles on Wednesday revealed that many gangs have established direct ties with Colombian cocaine dealers.

Barr has made federal action against violent crime, which usually falls within the jurisdiction of state and local authorities, one of his major priorities since being confirmed as attorney general Nov. 20.

The shift also reflects the sharply altered nature of foreign counterintelligence in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduced threat from former Soviet satellite states, Administration sources said.

“We’ll be moving some of those agents who spend their time sitting in cars outside embassies watching who comes and goes to fighting crime, which is why they joined the FBI,” one government source said.

Another source added, however, that despite the decision to shift more than 300 agents from counterintelligence--roughly one-fifth of those assigned to such tasks--the FBI still considers foreign espionage, both economic and military, a priority.

The FBI employs about 10,350 agents.

The move is being made after an FBI study of the bureau’s resources that was requested by Barr.

The newly assigned agents will investigate “gang- and drug-related violence,” one source said. “When you separate gangs and drugs from violent crime, it doesn’t leave a lot,” he said, estimating that “well over half” of the nation’s violent crime “has something to do with drugs.”

The involvement of the Treasury Department’s ATF agents signals an attempt to end a turf war over federal jurisdiction involving gangs that broke out about a year ago in an exchange of sharply worded correspondence between FBI Director William S. Sessions and ATF Director Stephen E. Higgins. Both Sessions and Higgins are expected to take part in today’s announcement.

In a recent interview, Barr said he recognized that battling violent crime is “principally a state and local responsibility,” because more than 95% of the violations fall within their jurisdiction. But he contended that the federal government “can play a leadership role and have a real impact.”

FBI offices in several cities already have special violent crime task forces working in cooperation with local police. They include Washington, Miami, Newark, New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas.

But the reassignment that Barr will announce marks a broader attack, directed from Washington, and will elevate the priority that special agents in charge of FBI offices in other gang-plagued cities will assign to the work, a law enforcement source said. Other than Los Angeles, the names of the cities to be included in the new program were unavailable Wednesday.