Report: FBI Analyst Jobs Remain Vacant

Rapid Turnover Highlights Bureau's Post-9/11 Struggle

Nearly one-third of the FBI's intelligence analyst jobs remained unfilled last year because of rapid turnover and other problems, underscoring the bureau's continuing struggle to remake itself into a counterterrorism agency since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report released yesterday.

An audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that many newly hired analysts -- who have been billed as a centerpiece of the FBI's new mandate -- spent much of their time on clerical duties such as "escort, trash and phone duty." The newer and more qualified an analyst was, the report found, the more likely he or she was to be unhappy with the job.

The FBI said in a statement that the findings did not account for recent reforms and that "the FBI has made significant strides in increasing our analytical cadre." Officials also said the bureau hopes to meet its hiring goal of 880 new analysts by the end of this year.

The findings are the latest in a series of gloomy assessments of the FBI, which has struggled with high turnover, hiring difficulties, cost overruns and other problems as it attempts to shift its focus to counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

The bureau also came under serious criticism yesterday from one of the leaders of the president's commission on intelligence, retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman, who said the FBI and the Justice Department were dragging their feet on counterterrorism reforms.

The commission has recommended that the FBI bring together its terrorism and intelligence functions under the umbrella of a new national security service. But during a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute here, Silberman said the FBI and the Justice Department have put up the "fiercest resistance" to the idea.

He warned that without changes, the FBI may have to be supplanted by a separate domestic intelligence agency akin to Britain's MI5. The FBI has strongly resisted similar proposals in the past.

"If the bureau does not reform and not set up the national security service linked to the rest of the intelligence community, I will go along with those who say we need a separate MI5-type of organization," Silberman said.

In the three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI expanded its analyst corps from 1,023 to 1,403, an increase of 37 percent, the inspector general's audit found. But the report also noted that 291 analysts had left their positions during the same time period, and that most of those had abandoned the FBI.

Among other problems, Fine's investigators found that the FBI has made only "slow progress" in creating a high-quality training program for analysts and that the curriculum offered from 2002 to 2004 was so poorly received that it had to be revamped.

The report also documented numerous instances in which analysts were made to perform work that one called "demeaning." One veteran intelligence analyst who went to the bureau from another agency spent a week watching workers do a repair job, while another analyst at a small field office was required to work nights and weekends operating the telephone switchboard.

Some analysts appear to be viewed as assistants to regular FBI agents, who ask them to perform Internet searches and other basic research, the audit found. "A lot of my job doesn't require a college education," one analyst told investigators.

Fine said in a statement that although "the FBI has made significant progress . . . more can and should be done to improve the hiring, training and retention of FBI analysts."

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a Judiciary Committee member and frequent critic of the FBI, said in a statement that the FBI "still has a long way to go" in building a competent intelligence program.

"The fact that these experts who are supposed to be analyzing terrorist information are taking out the trash or answering phones 50 percent of the time doesn't seem to be a good use of anybody's talents in helping the FBI reach the highest standards," Grassley said. "Little more than a dent has been made in the FBI's analytical program in the 3 1/2 years since September 11."

In its statement, the FBI said it had made progress and that "the FBI's efforts are to ensure an integrated intelligence service that leverages our traditional law enforcement efforts while ensuring that no walls exist between collectors, analysts and those who must act upon intelligence information."

But some experts continue to raise questions about whether the FBI is suited to the job. Appearing alongside Silberman yesterday, Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit said he believed that crime fighting, rather than intelligence work, "will always be dominant" in the bureau.

Although law enforcement is "easily graded and important for careers," Posner said, intelligence work is more difficult to measure. He also said the decentralized nature of the FBI does not lend itself well to battling global terrorist networks.

As a result, Posner said, there is "really a deep dog and cat incompatibility between criminal and intelligence activities."