Keeping Federal Employees Safe

Agencies across government are banding together to fight terrorism that has often targeted federal employees, a trio of senior law enforcement officials told Congress on Tuesday.

Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director-designate George Tenet described how federal agencies are joining forces on counterterrorism measures to prevent attacks against U.S. citizens and government installations.

Reno said representatives of 16 agencies staff the FBI-led domestic counterterrorism center.

"With the integration of the capabilities of these agencies, the FBI can now conduct real-time analysis and processing of information with the goal of detecting and preventing acts of terrorism," Reno said.

Interagency coordination has prevented terrorist attacks against government facilities in the past six months, the officials said. Recently, a group planning to blow up an FBI center in West Virginia were arrested before they attacked, Freeh said. The CIA has worked with the State Department and the FBI to prevent bombings at two U.S. embassies overseas, Tenet said.

Threats against government facilities within the U.S. are on the rise as militant individuals and groups increasingly see the federal government as an enemy.

"We are looking here [at] various individuals, as well as organizations, some having an ideology which suspects government, and particularly the federal government, of world-order conspiracies; individuals who, for various reasons, have organized themselves against the United States," Freeh said.

Tenet said that international terrorists are also a greater threat to domestic government facilities because they are "extending their geographic reach around the world, including the United States."

Combating threats from within the U.S. and abroad requires coordination among agencies that may not typically interact. The broad range of threats--from chemical to nuclear to technological--and the need to address those threats around the world mean policy agencies like the State Department must work with law enforcement agencies like the FBI and intelligence agencies like the CIA.

Agencies must also work together because threats against their employees do not fall into neat jurisdictional lines. For example, the FBI has put an individual responsible for killing two CIA employees outside the CIA's headquarters on its Ten Most Wanted List. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, the Department of Justice, the General Services Administration and other agencies have been looking at ways to protect federal facilities.

Reno said counterterrorism measures must be continually updated and improved to maintain safety.

"It requires the continuing efforts of participating agencies to perfect their operations and maintain their readiness," Reno said.

Counterterrorism efforts within and among various agencies include:

• The FBI, the Defense Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Public Health Service and the Bureau of Justice Assistance provide weapons-of-mass-destruction training to state and local emergency response teams.
• The State Department is leading an effort to work with foreign governments to fight terrorism.
• The Defense and Justice Departments are coordinating efforts to counter chemical, nuclear and biological threats.
• The CIA's international counterterrorism center involves 11 other agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Secret Service and the State Department.
• A new Terrorism Warning Group has been created to alert senior civilian and military leaders of terrorist threats or when a terrorist act occurs.
• The CIA works with the Secret Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service on security countermeasures and on keeping terrorists out of the United States.