FBI Now Puts Brainpower on a Par With Firepower

In a classroom at the FBI’s national training academy, new recruits are trying to connect the dots as part of a mock terrorism exercise. First they have to find them in the raw, sometimes murky, intelligence before them. Time is short and the stakes are high.

This is a different type of training; it focuses on stopping criminals like terrorists rather than chasing them after the fact.

But these are different kinds of recruits. They will not become FBI field agents, who come to this campus 30 miles south of Washington to hone their shooting skills and engage in cops-and-robbers exercises at a mock village that looks transported from a Hollywood back lot.

Rather, these are analysts who try to outthink their adversaries, and their training is strictly in the classroom.

Analysts “do not do the glamorous things,” said Patricia Boord, the FBI unit chief in charge of the College of Analytical Studies. “They do mostly intellectual exercises.”

Teamwork, communication and sifting of data -- connecting the dots -- are at the heart of a transformation the FBI is trying to undergo.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon two years ago, the storied agency was exposed as inept and ill-prepared. Congress and the public clamored for change.

In response, the bureau is redeploying agents into counterterrorism and working more closely with the CIA and other intelligence rivals. And it is struggling to create a mind-set that thinks harder and learns more from what it knows.

The rise of analysts at the FBI marks something of a revenge of the nerds. The new recruits are just as likely to have backgrounds in psychology or computer science as in military service or law enforcement, the traditional proving grounds for FBI special agents.

The current class includes a clinical psychologist who worked with at-risk teens and a recent law school graduate who finds the migration to intelligence stimulating, if a little “weird.”

The FBI’s cultural revolution is a work in progress, and few aspects are more important than the recruiting and training of analysts -- the technicians who mine data and alert policymakers.

Over the years, the bureau has employed hundreds of analysts, although mostly in supporting roles, helping investigators decipher the language of the mob from a wiretap or track down the source of a computer virus. In the post-Sept. 11 world, besides working to crack individual cases, they are helping prepare national threat assessments and participating in a joint venture with the CIA.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is talking up pay and advancement opportunities for analysts and has made a priority of having more of them. The bureau is aiming to have about 1,500 on board by the end of next year, compared with about 1,000 before the Sept. 11 attacks -- although when the buildup is complete, the agents will still outnumber them about 10 to 1.

“Once you have all the dots, then the analytical capability becomes crucial. Someone has to look at the picture and make sense out of it -- and not necessarily someone who works drug cases or white-collar crime cases,” said Richard L. Thornburgh, who helped analyze the progress of the FBI’s reorganization efforts this spring for the nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration.

“You need someone with a much larger worldview -- with language capabilities and cultural insights that have not traditionally abounded in the bureau,” said Thornburgh, who served as attorney general under former President Bush.

The FBI has tried to boost its ranks of analysts in the past -- notably after the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. But the efforts did not take root, according to the Thornburgh study, because the analytical staff was “poorly trained, had limited experience, lacked needed information and processing tools, and was easily diverted to operational support activities.”

The competition for hiring analysts these days, moreover, is red-hot because of demands from private industry and other government agencies to beef up their own security ranks.

Among the new analysts is Kevin Stromberg. He comes steeped in the subject, having spent years as an “imagery interpreter” studying pictures of the Mediterranean Sea, among other postings, as a civilian Navy employee. “Having been in the community for so long, I have enjoyed the diversity of the people here,” said Stromberg, who has been assigned to a unit that assesses terror-financing networks.

The College of Analytical Studies was launched after Sept. 11 to consolidate training efforts and handle a growing student body. It operates on something of a shoestring; it has two full-time instructors and relies on the CIA for teaching assistance and the Defense Intelligence Agency for some course materials.

The basic course lasts six weeks. The students are divided into classes of 24 each, and two classes are in progress at any given time. The curriculum ranges from a history of the FBI to courses on building computer-generated timelines or matrices that provide visual evidence of possible outcomes to a case. Hours are spent getting familiar with secret government computer databases.

One class focuses on a new software application known as the Analyst’s Notebook, which a British company originally made for Scotland Yard to help identify troublemakers at soccer matches as well as suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland.

The FBI has licensed the software since July 2001 and is using it to trace money-laundering schemes using bank records.

Other offerings include a four-hour course on the Constitution and two hours on ethics. Every student is given a copy of a book called “The Thinker’s Toolkit,” a problem-solving manual written by a former CIA analyst. Among the required reading is a section called “Why We Go Astray,” which discusses cultural bias and other issues.

The atmosphere is red, white and blue. In the main classroom, computer mouse pads bear the Stars and Stripes, and inspirational messages, such as “Initiative: Nothing can stop the power of persistence,” adorn the walls.

Teamwork is stressed. An award is given to the person who is considered the best “team player” at the end of the training.

The final exam, known as the comprehensive practical exercise, gives the students a chance to show what they’ve learned.

Five-member teams are given raw intelligence on a militant Palestinian group operating in Germany. Bomb makers have moved into the area. Agitating comments have been intercepted. Suspicious financing activity has been occurring. A “safe house” has been identified, and cell members have been noted coming and going.

The Germans have asked for help. “They have these little pieces of data. They have to put it together and tell us what is going on, who the key players are, and give us some recommendations for action,” said William Carter, a former Marine Corps intelligence specialist and a 15-year bureau veteran who is one of the head instructors. He notes that the scenario is based on real intelligence about groups looking to avenge the downing of an Iranian passenger jet by the Navy cruiser Vincennes over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

The students are given 24 hours to prepare a briefing, complete with charts and graphs mapping out the evidence and possible scenarios. Questions to supervisors are rewarded with more information.

To inject a dose of reality into the exercise, the staff also orchestrates a series of glitches. One team is momentarily set back after a custodian, at the direction of an instructor, pulls the plug on its PowerPoint presentation, and its members are forced to work from notes.

Instructors are also on the lookout for evidence of cultural bias in the way the students handle the information. Among the data is the fact that an Israeli handball team is planning a German tour. Some students dismiss the data and focus just on U.S. interests. That turns out to be a mistake: There is evidence that the would-be terrorists have made specific threats against U.S. and Israeli interests.

At the appointed hour, Team Hotel builds a seemingly powerful case for action. Plastic explosives have been smuggled into the country. A known bomb maker is in the region. Intercepted communications indicate imminent action. One intercept says the “medicine” is getting stronger. The group has prepared a series of flashy graphics including a “link chart” that shows ties among the plotters. The recommendation: Take down the safe house and round up several key individuals.

But they have a tough audience -- a panel of instructors posing as supervisors.

The group is pounded for not knowing more about the quantity of explosives detected or the backgrounds of one of the suspects and of three people who were seen carrying suitcases into a safe house. The supervisors were prepared to supply the information if the group had asked the right questions.

“We would think that with five people on the team, somebody would have stood up and said, ‘Wait a minute. We have loose ends,’ ” Carter said. “There was a big team breakdown here.” The students are later given what Boord describes as a “candid” private assessment.

A leader of the group, a former military police officer, tries vainly to defend the work. He makes the mistake of interrupting his mock superiors and is told to stand down.

Another member says that the group would have obtained additional details but that the tight schedule did not permit it.

But that’s the real world, one of the instructors responds, adding, “There is no time.”