Agencies Seek Update in Wiretap Access

The suspects were on the move. And the Feds could not keep up.

The action stretched from Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles to Columbus Avenue here in Manhattan. The crimes involved foreign intrigue, laundered money, illegal drug proceeds, even a kidnapping. Those involved included a rabbi, several lawyers, a diplomat in Los Angeles, even a New York police officer with a million in cash stashed inside his locker at a Bronx police station.

FBI agents were trying to track their movements on both coasts. But progress was slow. The agents had no legitimate way of planting roving wiretaps on the vast network of cellular phones, car phones, beepers and other electronic communication equipment used by their targets.

For two years the case wore on. By the time federal indictments were unsealed in New York, almost two dozen defendants stood accused of shuffling around tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from Colombian drug deals. But looking back on it today, federal law enforcement officials consider the chase almost ridiculous.

“Doing surveillance is always very difficult,” said one special agent in New York involved in this investigation and many others. “If they see you, the whole investigation is over. But they can’t see you on the telephone.” Nevertheless, that is the one kind of surveillance agents often can’t do.

From street agents to the seat of judicial power in Washington, federal law enforcement officials are preparing a major push this coming year to broaden legal authority to wiretap telephones in criminal cases. Specifically, they want the right to put electronic bugs not only on fixed locations--such as an office or home telephone--but also on the mobile communication technology used by the suspects they are pursuing.

Opposing their request are many conservative congressional Republicans and wireless industry executives who warn that expanded FBI powers will lead to more federal intrusion into the lives of private citizens.

Similar legislation was shot down in the last session of Congress, even in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing and the subsequent concern about adequate anti-terrorism methods.

But law enforcement authorities intend to come back this time with a more intensive public campaign, including an unusual, up-front role for an agent: the FBI official directing the investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800, James K. Kallstrom.

“We’re going to push this harder, and we’ll just have to talk about it more,” Kallstrom said in an interview. “Because the more we do talk about it, the more people are going to realize that it is reasonable and that it is something we need.”

The effort promises to produce one of the louder political collisions of the congressional session: between a law enforcement community that wields the potent crime issue and Republican conservatives who dominate the House and can usually claim law enforcement as an ally.

The goal, said House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), “is not to allow terrorists to pressure us to suspend the liberties that make this country great. We should not have a rush of activity designed to make people feel good,” he said. “We want to be helpful, but in a way that’s effective.”

But Kallstrom, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh insist that the current system involves chasing modern, mobile criminals and terrorists with 1960s tools.

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To make their argument this time around, FBI officials are taking the unusual step of outlining the kind of cases they say are being hampered because the criminals’ communications are mobile while the agents’ eavesdropping is still stationary.

Here in New York, they said, agents are tracking a drug dealer they believe is responsible for several murders. He has eluded the FBI by using his knack for “cloning phones”--every three days or so reprogramming cellular phones with other private numbers and then carrying out his drug transactions.

“He changes his number 10 times a month, and he does all his business on his phone,” said one agent. “The reason he does it is because he’s never been caught. And he knows nobody else who has been caught. And he will keep on doing it.

“So while we’re trying to keep up, he’s killing people.”

Under the proposal backed by the Justice Department, the government, upon obtaining a court order, would be able to identify the location of a cell phone or other elaborate mobile communication device within half a second, be able to monitor a conversation instantly and then pick it up again if the suspects change phones. Investigators could tap into mobile phones, voice mail, conference calls and other wireless equipment.

In the Los Angeles-to-New York drug money laundering case that ended in 1994, agents say the investigation could have been completed in about half the time if they were operating at the same technological level as the suspects.

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But they said they had trouble keeping up as the suspects communicated via cell phones and hip-side beepers. Money pickups and drop-offs were occurring around Los Angeles often before the agents knew about them, they said.

“Finally somebody now has to stand up and say this is all way, way, way out of whack,” one New York agent said.

Past moves to expand federal wiretap authority have met with controversy. Electronic eavesdropping was first used extensively in the days before America’s entry into World War II, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the FBI to check on possible subversive activities at home.

But the 1950s brought an era of Hollywood celebrities and others who were blacklisted as Communist-leaning traitors based on information gleaned from FBI taps. The 1960s saw new targets: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., extremist groups, Vietnam War protesters.

The Supreme Court declared all wiretapping illegal in 1967. A year later, Congress legalized the technique as long as the FBI obtained court approval. In the last eight years, no federal judge has turned down a proper request for federal eavesdropping.

After the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, law enforcement officials assumed that Congress would approve the wiretap authority they were seeking. They were taken aback when the measure died and say they will mount a much larger effort behind it this time.

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The likelihood of success is difficult to predict. Conservative opponents say they want assurances that privacy rights would be safeguarded. The Telecommunications Industry Assn., meeting in Los Angeles in September, also voted to oppose government-sponsored technology that would enable the FBI to conduct the roving surveillance. The group also worried about the intrusion of big government in private lives, members said.

But recently, Reno made it clear that she and other Clinton administration officials will work to overcome the opposition.

“People must understand that we are not trying to expand wiretap authority,” Reno said. “We are trying to keep up with modern technology. The next years in law enforcement are going to present some extraordinary challenges in terms of the requirements upon law enforcement to keep up with modern technology, to develop a capacity to respond to computer crime, to track drug dealers with a sophisticated communications system.”