preview

U.s. Federal Law Enforcement Agencies

Better Essays

Terrorism has always existed in American policing, and while the groups committing these acts have changed, their intentions have not. Their intentions being to cause maximum fear and scare those who they target into doing and following their ideology. In the 1970’s and 1980’s in America, the main terrorist groups were associated with the environmental movement and race based groups, while other parts of the world were dealing with Islamic extremists, were committing terrorist acts across the Middle East without much intervention from the United States. In fact the group Al-Qaeda, who attacked the World Trade Centers in 1993 and 2001, found its roots in the 1980’s fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with weapons supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency. While the U.S. Federal Law Enforcement agencies knew of these groups, they underestimated the capabilities of lone wolf, small cell, and whole terrorist organizations. This was due to the fact that the Federal Law Enforcement agencies top priority was general crime such as organized crimes and white-collar crime. In the 1900’s and early 2000’s a series of events would bring a change in priorities for Federal Law Enforcement, namely the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), which was on the brink of being dissolved. “The Inspector General’s 2003 report stated that prior to 9/11, ‘the Bureau devoted significantly more special agent resources to traditional law enforcement activities such as white collar crime,

Get Access