Today’s Must Read

Here’s another legacy for the Bush administration: plummeting fraud, identity theft, and civil rights investigations by the FBI.

The reason is plain: in the wake of 9/11, the administration ordered the FBI to reorganize with a heavy influence on counterterrorism. Hundreds of agents were reassigned, and many who weren’t were put on the beat anyway. Far fewer agents were left to handle other investigations.

When FBI Director Robert Mueller asked Attorney General John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales for help, he was rebuffed, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Says a former FBI assistant director: “We were told to do more with less.”

But, of course, they’ve done less with less. The P-I gives a rundown:

— Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 — a 34 percent drop.

— White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases — a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000….

— Civil rights investigations, which include hate crimes and police abuse, have continued a steady decline since the late 1990s. FBI agents pursued 65 percent fewer cases in 2005 than they did in 2000.

The result is not pretty:

“There’s a niche of fraudsters that are floating around unprosecuted,” said one recently retired top FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They are not going to jail. There is no law enforcement solution in sight.”…

By the time the bureau started putting together its fiscal 2007 budget in mid-2005, “we realized we were going to have to pull out of some areas — bank fraud, investment fraud, ID theft — cases that protect the financial infrastructure of the country,” [Dale Watson, who left in 2002 as the FBI’s executive assistant director over counterterrorism programs] said…

[FBI Assistant Director Chip Burrus] acknowledges that the bureau has reduced its efforts to fight fraud. He likened the FBI’s current fraud-enforcement policies — in which losses below $150,000 have little chance of being addressed — to “triage.” Even cases with losses approaching $500,000 are much less likely to be accepted for investigation than before 9/11, he said.

There is “no question” that America’s financial losses from frauds below $150,000 amount to billions a year, Burrus said. The top security official for a major American bank agreed, saying unprosecuted fraud losses easily total “multibillions.”

The whole thing is worth a read.