FBI Hire to Direct Spy Operation

The FBI has hired a top National Security Agency official to head its intelligence unit, highlighting efforts to strengthen the bureau’s role as a domestic spy agency, officials announced Thursday.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said Maureen Baginski, head of the high-tech cryptologic unit at the NSA, will fill a new FBI position, executive assistant director for intelligence, joining a handful of senior advisors to Mueller.

The appointment is part of an ongoing effort by the FBI to transform itself into a high-tech intelligence-gathering force from its historic role as federal law enforcement’s main cop on the beat. The agency was criticized after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for allegedly missing warning signs, including failing to recognize information about potential terrorists that was in its possession.

The new role has raised concerns among civil rights groups and defense lawyers, who fear the FBI will use its expanded powers to snoop on ordinary citizens.

The intelligence office will rely heavily on technology to collect, analyze and share information on terrorists with other agencies, including state and local law enforcement. Mueller is also establishing intelligence units in each of the bureau’s 56 field offices and appointing senior officials in those offices to oversee local intelligence efforts.

The intelligence upgrade has been a work in progress. In May, Mueller named Mark Miller, a 20-year CIA veteran and one of its top analysts, to head a new intelligence office within the bureau’s counter-terrorism division.

Miller will continue as a senior official in the counter-terrorism division, but Baginski will run the intelligence office on a bureau-wide basis, an FBI spokesman said. The spokesman said that Miller has taken on a growing role in the anti-terrorism fight, but that he will continue to work closely with intelligence matters.

On Thursday, Mueller also named Steven C. McCraw, head of the FBI’s San Antonio field office, as Baginski’s second-in-command. McCraw also previously headed up the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which tightened immigration policies after Sept. 11 in a bid to prevent terrorists from entering the United States.

Baginski joined the NSA in 1979 as a Russian language instructor. She headed the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, a major cog in the agency’s global eavesdropping operations.