Justice Dept. to Tighten Focus on Terrorism

The Bush administration on Thursday launched a sweeping “wartime reorganization” aimed at making counter-terrorism the dominant priority of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies--even at the expense of other traditional operations.

Ten percent of Justice Department headquarters staff members will be reassigned to “front-line” field offices nationwide; funding will be transferred from nonessential operations to counter-terrorism; and intelligence operations that had been under the Pentagon’s control may be consolidated within the CIA, federal officials said.

The “blueprint for change” that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft unveiled before 300 employees was as striking for what Ashcroft didn’t say as for what he did. In assessing the Justice Department over the next five years, the attorney general didn’t spell out how specific agencies would be affected and made virtually no mention of drug enforcement, civil rights, antitrust, organized crime, white-collar crime or other law enforcement concerns that for generations have been at the core of the department’s mission.

“We cannot do everything we once did because lives now depend on us doing a few things very well,” Ashcroft said. He called for “rebuilding and remaking the department” with one overriding goal in mind: “the preservation of American lives and liberty.”

In addition, the Justice Department has expanded its authority to listen in on jailhouse conversations, without a court order, between lawyers and their clients in federal custody. This includes people who have been detained but not yet charged with a crime, if it is deemed necessary to prevent acts of terrorism.

The department’s reorganization, as outlined by Ashcroft, emphasizes overall changes in priorities and staffing. Department officials did not address Thursday how specific agencies, such as the FBI, would be reorganized or how agencies within the department would coordinate their work.

Even before Sept. 11, Ashcroft’s deputies had begun working to improve cooperation between the FBI and the Justice Department’s criminal prosecutors. And in response to criticism since the terrorist attacks, bureau officials said in recent days that the FBI would work more closely with local and state law enforcement agencies.

Ashcroft’s plan brought into sharper focus a message that the administration has been delivering with increasing urgency: After Sept. 11, the fight against domestic terrorism supersedes all else.

Even sacrosanct law enforcement priorities such as gathering evidence for criminal prosecutions will take a back seat, Ashcroft said. The Justice Department “must shift its primary focus from investigating and prosecuting past crimes to identifying threats of future terrorist attacks, preventing them from happening and punishing would-be perpetrators for their plans of terror,” he wrote Thursday in a memo to department chiefs.

Toward that end, the Justice Department has arrested nearly 1,200 people since Sept. 11 in connection with its wide-ranging terrorism investigation, a roundup that has drawn fire from many civil rights groups.

The Justice Department’s plan to listen to attorney-client conversations drew more fire.

“The reason why our entire judicial system is the envy of the world is that it is based on protecting the rights of the accused and particularly the rights of the guilty,” said Constance Rice, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney. “ . . . This would take a meat ax to that fundamental protection.”

The rule, which was published last week in the Federal Register, furthers the ability of the government to eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations if the attorney general certifies “that reasonable suspicion exists to believe that an inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to facilitate acts of terrorism.”

It expands the definition of “inmate” to cover anyone “held as witnesses, detainees or otherwise” by federal authorities, including the U.S. Marshals and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It would apply to about 100 people now in federal custody who are deemed a risk to national security, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“It’s not only an outrageous invasion of privacy, it is also impractical,” said Harland W. Braun, a noted Los Angeles criminal defense attorney. “How do you have a trial if the lawyer-client privilege has been violated? It may be unconstitutional, but worse, it’s stupid, because it will not resolve anything specifically.”

Ashcroft’s Justice Department reorganization plan, which at least partly will require legislative approval, drew mixed reviews from Congress.

Some officials praised the department’s exhaustive attention to counter-terrorism. Others questioned whether the pendulum might be swinging too far away from other law enforcement responsibilities.

“If counter-terrorism comes at the exclusion of other things, there would certainly be concern,” said one senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Too little is known right now about what the attorney general has in mind.”

Several lawmakers called on the Justice Department to broaden the reorganization.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that reorganizing the department alone “won’t alter the prevailing culture of arrogance at the FBI. Ending that culture will require real, concrete measures of improvement,” he said, including ensuring that the bureau shares information with local law enforcement agencies.

Counter-terrorism legislation signed into law by President Bush last month gave the Justice Department broader powers to spy on and investigate terrorism suspects, and department lawyers have already begun providing the FBI with intelligence information on terrorism--off-limits in previous criminal probes--to build criminal cases. Ashcroft said authorities must now use their expanded powers to combat “a calculated, malignant and devastating evil [that] has arisen in our world.”

Senior Justice Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, characterized Ashcroft’s reorganization plan as an acknowledgment that federal authorities must do a better job of responding to the threats posed by both domestic and foreign terrorists.

“Events like Sept. 11 showed that we need to refocus. We need to rethink our responsibilities to the American people,” one senior official said.

Nonetheless, Ashcroft declared that “America has emerged victorious” in the opening battle of its war against terrorism. He said that, although people should remain on heightened alert, he is satisfied that the immediate threats that prompted him to issue two extraordinary nationwide terror alerts last month have passed without incident.

Ashcroft said the Justice Department, which employs 126,000 people, plans to redeploy 10% of its staff at main headquarters in Washington to field offices across the country. “The war on terrorism will be fought not in Washington but in the field, by agents, prosecutors, investigators and analysts,” he said.

Another plan in the works by a presidential commission would also mean wide-ranging changes in the fight against terrorism, giving the head of the CIA authority over intelligence duties that are now overseen by the Pentagon, officials said Thursday.

Under that plan, which is to be presented to the White House in coming weeks, the CIA director would assume control of the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the plan would help solve a decades-old “architectural flaw” that makes the CIA director chiefly responsible for national intelligence but gives much of the funding and oversight to the Pentagon.

The CIA is believed to have direct funding authority over about 10% of the $30 billion that the nation spends on intelligence each year. The precise amount of the agency’s budget is not made public because it is considered a matter of national security.

Pentagon officials did not comment Thursday on reports of the proposed restructuring, but many others predicted a fight over the issue in Congress.

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Times staff writers Bob Drogin and Greg Miller in Washington, and John L. Mitchell in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.