Rebooting The Bureau

epartment store clerks and elementary school students use more sophisticated technology to swipe credit cards and surf the Internet than FBI agents use to fight terrorism in the United States.

If you own a personal computer, or use one in your office, you can get a sense of what it's been like for FBI agents over the past decade. First, disconnect the computer from the Internet. This will keep you from accessing the Web and sending or receiving e-mails. Now, throw the computer away. It's far more modern than anything FBI personnel have used for years. Throw out the mouse, too. Replace everything with a machine that was manufactured in the 1980s, recognizable by its black background and flashing green cursor, and by the delay of a second or so before typed characters appear on the screen. You're not completely unequipped as you investigate criminals and break up international terrorism rings. You still have the telephone. And you have limited access to the FBI's dozens of different databases of investigative information. But they're so old and hard to use that most agents have just stopped trying. And they're not linked together. So, if you want to search them all, you'll have to do so one by one.

Over the past five years, FBI leaders have struggled to devise a plan to bring the bureau out of the technological Dark Ages. The present iteration of that plan, known as the Trilogy project, is the bureau's most visible and, perhaps, most important step toward creating the kind of basic technology environment that most people take for granted. In carrying out the plan, FBI officials have had to battle their own senior leaders and Congress. The story of Trilogy, as well as the FBI's previous attempts to modernize technology, expose the weak management and isolationism that have characterized the bureau since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Those failings have led lawmakers and critics to question whether the agency is up to leading the fight against terrorism in the United States.

Through the Cracks

The FBI has no clear idea of the quantity or quality of its technology. Officials have only a partial inventory. Bob Dies, FBI chief information officer from 2000 to 2002, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2001 that more than 13,000 of the FBI's desktop computers were between four and eight years old and couldn't run commonly used software. "This means that many agents accessing FBI data cannot use basic 'ease of use' features that your teenagers have enjoyed for years, such as using a mouse to move around the screen," Dies told the senators. "The productivity loss and frustration that result are enormous."

Dies also testified that while the FBI has an internal data network, most field offices connect to it at speeds slower than the Internet connections many people have in their homes. Agents cannot electronically store most investigative information in any of the FBI's dozens of databases, he said. Not only must they take interview notes on paper and retype them to enter them into a database, but they must store associated documents or photographs in manila folders because the FBI doesn't have the equipment to scan images into its databases.

The FBI has embarked on several technology projects over the past 10 years. Some, such as an electronic fingerprint repository, have succeeded. But in all that time, FBI officials have failed to address the most basic needs of their agents. And even the most successful FBI innovations have been fundamentally flawed. The fingerprint database, for example, isn't linked to similar databases at other agencies, and thus can't cross-check identities. In addition, access to the technology is restricted to FBI personnel.

Technology leadership at the bureau has been spotty to nonexistent. That is because the bureau's senior leaders have failed to recognize technology's potential for improving law enforcement, says a former staff member of the commission headed by former bureau Director William Webster.

In 1997, bureau managers crafted a plan called the Information Sharing Initiative, which promised to provide new computers and data networks, to deliver analytical software tools that could search the FBI's databases for specific information and, most importantly, to establish a plan for sharing information among FBI field offices and, possibly, with other law enforcement agencies. For years, lawmakers and FBI managers bickered over how best to execute the initiative. When lawmakers finally appropriated the first funds for the initiative and told the bureau to devise a plan, they forbade the FBI from enacting it without their approval, says Mark Tanner, the FBI's information resource manager. Bureau managers wanted to modernize systems in phases throughout the agency, but Congress told them to focus on a single region, or perhaps a group of the largest field offices, and upgrade those systems first. Tanner says officials objected to that approach because the bureau would have been saddled with two different infrastructures, one old and one new. The offices with the older computers would have been isolated, he says.

Bureau officials argued their case. Congress rejected their proposal and demanded a new approach. The tug of war killed the initiative. As a result, a logical approach to upgrading FBI systems never emerged. "They never got around to doing it the right way. . . . It just sort of became this 'thing,'" says the former Webster commission staff member, who asked to remain anonymous.

The bureau eventually redrafted the initiative and gave it a new name: Trilogy. Trilogy addressed some of the same key areas as its predecessor. It called for new desktop computers, networks and servers. It included a common e-mail system and a plan to move to the Web the five computer programs that agents most often use in their investigations. The bureau uses more than 150 applications, including payroll processing and administrative systems.

But Trilogy left out the critical data-searching software and information sharing components the first initiative had included. That omission would seriously damage the bureau's public image. Last spring, after revelations that field agents in Minneapolis and Phoenix-unbeknownst to each other-were simultaneously investigating suspected terrorists, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that communications had broken down. He lamented that agents had no way to search databases for multiple keywords to turn up leads and documents to assist them in an investigation. They couldn't generate detailed analyses of the data they did have because they lacked the necessary software. And the bureau had no way to disseminate information over a network to other agencies or to its own personnel, Mueller said.

Lost Chances

As its name implies, Trilogy has three phases. The first phase, installing new desktop computers with a common e-mail system, was launched in 2001 and is under way now, Tanner says. The bureau still needs to complete the second and third phases, which include upgrading, replacing and, in some cases, installing data networks; installing more servers; and putting investigative programs on the Web. Today, there are no electronic connections among those programs, which include the automated case support system. Built from 1980s technology, the system is supposed to house documents and notes from FBI investigations. But it doesn't connect to the Internet and is so hard to use that the FBI has developed 42 additional systems to replace it, each of which has to be checked any time agents search for information. FBI officials blamed the system for the loss of more than 4,000 documents related to the criminal prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., and executed last year. Many agents have stopped using the system altogether.

The Sept. 11 attacks and public exposure of the FBI's decrepit technology caused Mueller to accelerate Trilogy, but it won't be completed much sooner than planned. Mueller has set December 2003 as a new deadline, just six months earlier than the original target date. The total price tag for Trilogy is estimated to be $379 million.

Trilogy isn't the only FBI technology project funded by Congress. Legislators have given the bureau more than $1.7 billion for technology enhancements or installations over the past 10 years. At a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary in May 2001, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., enumerated some of the programs Congress has funded over the past decade: $67 million for the automated case support system; $100 million for Trilogy last fiscal year; $640 million for the bureau's electronic fingerprint database; $200 million for the National Crime Information Center, a master criminal records database that state and local police can query; and $25 million to analyze wiretap information. Rogers told then-Director Freeh, who was testifying before the subcommittee, that Congress had "lavished the FBI with money. . . . But the one area where we've had difficulty is the computers and the data information system. It's not a money problem, and we've been over this time and time again."

FBI leaders knew this better than anyone, and saw how desperate agents were for the modern tools most businesses in the Untied States take for granted. Freeh was as knowledgeable about the FBI's shortcomings as those appealing to him to fix the problem. "Repeatedly, Freeh was told by people in the bureau that they needed to upgrade [the technology]," says Ronald Kessler, who wrote the exhaustive history The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (St. Martin's Press, 2002). Freeh "made it clear that he wasn't interested in technology." Nevertheless, members of the same congressional committees that now deride the FBI for its poor management and technological callowness ignored Freeh's indifference to technology when they roundly supported him as an effective manager.

A personal friend of Freeh's with firsthand knowledge about technology troubles at the bureau places some blame on Congress. For years, FBI directors have responded to lawmakers whose loud orders to fight crime caused the bureau to divert resources from technology and other projects to "whatever the crime du jour was," says the source, who asked not to be named. "[Freeh] told me that every time there was a sound bite by a powerful congressman or senator saying, 'We need to devote more attention to car jacking,' for example, someone in the bureau would call a press conference and transfer 400 agents. Although [there were] voices crying in the wild saying we need a much more sophisticated and secure [technology] system, the bureau was always being pulled in different directions."

Lawmakers have reacted with shock and amazement that FBI leaders allowed technology to wither for so long. But their disbelief seems disingenuous considering that Congress has closely overseen Trilogy and other technology programs at the FBI.

Despite Freeh's apparent lack of interest in modernizing the bureau, lawmakers in both parties praised him as a progressive thinker. "Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who headed the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Freeh 'one of the best directors to serve the American people,'" Kessler writes. "Sen. [Patrick] Leahy [D-Vt.] . . . praised Freeh by saying his legacy was 'an updated attitude appropriate to 21st century law enforcement.' No matter how bad things got, Freeh could do no wrong."

Yet, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in June, after Freeh had left the bureau, Leahy criticized the FBI for not having the technology to search through its databases for keywords, such as "aviation schools" or "pilot training," in order to find documents that might have alerted agents to the presence in the country of suspected terrorists who were training to fly commercial aircraft in preparation for the Sept. 11 attacks. "That is something a number of us on this committee have been urging the FBI to do for years," Leahy told Mueller, "long before you came there. And I really think it's . . . very much of an Achilles' heel that you can't do the kind of things that all of us are used to doing on our computers if we're looking for the best buy on an airplane ticket or something we want to purchase."

Weak Foundation

Since Sept. 11, the FBI has been criticized mostly for not sharing investigative information with other agencies and among its own field offices. Cultural and legal barriers have kept those interactions from happening for decades. The FBI is known for its territorial practices and for not wanting to reveal its investigative methods and sources. Also, regulations prevent intelligence agencies from sharing some information with FBI agents.

Critics have told the FBI to change its ways by using sharing technologies, such as open networks and accessible databases. But building such an accessible system for tens of thousands of users isn't a simple matter of flipping a switch. Information sharing "is more complex to do," Tanner says. To share information, the bureau has to build a modern infrastructure that can support all the various technologies and applications that would let agents pull information out of a database or securely disseminate it over a network. That infrastructure is the foundation the FBI lacks.

Bureau officials doubt that Trilogy will transform the FBI into a modern organization. Even when Mueller compressed the program's time frame, "everyone knew . . . you still weren't going to have a system that was state of the art," says the former Webster commission staff member. Because Trilogy has been tweaked so many times, it has produced a less than adequate technology plan to fix all the bureau's problems.

Tanner says that one of Trilogy's main goals, putting the FBI's five most commonly used investigative applications online, is a worthwhile expense. Right now, agents underuse those tools because they are cumbersome and disconnected. But there is still no firm plan for sharing information electronically with other agencies. Even the FBI'snew Office of Intelligence, a cooperative effort with the CIA to collect and analyze information about terrorists, is equipped with technologies no more sophisticated than what most agents have,Tanner says.

It's also questionable whether the data in myriad FBI repositories is really worth sharing. Because agents have had to type in their notes, they've often shortened them or edited what they put into the bureau's databases. As a result, the information is incomplete, and finding it is difficult.

The limited search capabilities of the systems only let agents comb the databases for single words and names, not groups of words. And they must search each database individually, because none of them are interconnected.

Tanner says that under the Trilogy program, the FBI will create "multimedia electronic case files" that contain full text, images and, in some cases, sound and video recordings. The hope is that once the main investigative applications are connected, and when the information they contain is more complete, agents will use the technology more.

Numerous critics outside the bureau say the Trilogy project isn't secure enough. "We came to the conclusion that if [the FBI] were given all of the money they needed [to upgrade their systems] and implemented all the changes they had proposed. . . it would still be a highly vulnerable system," says the former Webster commission staff member.

The Key to Failure

Neither Trilogy, nor any other technology-related undertaking, will solve the bureau's systemic problems with managing technology. People who have led massive agency modernization programs such as those at the Internal Revenue Service and the National Security Agency say technology, deadlines and dollars are less important to success than is persuading leaders and employees to break old habits and learn how to do their daily business in different ways.

Most important is strong management. When leadership is weak and turnover is frequent, as has been the case at the FBI, modernization stalls, and nothing changes.

Tanner says that involvement and support from the director will be very important to Trilogy's success. He says that Mueller's belief in the plan is stronger than was Freeh's. "[Mueller is] more aware of technology and more [technology-]literate than Director Freeh was," he says.

Now, Mueller must replace a crippled infrastructure, wipe out a habit of isolationism that has lingered since the reign of Hoover and protect his agency's position as the bureau begins working more closely with the CIA and an emerging Homeland Security Department.

Throughout that struggle, FBI leaders may find that public opinion is their toughest adversary. As the former Webster commission staff member says, "Hoover was good at public relations. But his heirs were inattentive to technology. The bureau is paying the price in public shock and dismay."