The bureau is struggling with rapid turnover among top officials and analysts. The disorder further weakens efforts at a post-9/11 makeover.
By Richard B. Schmitt Times Staff Writer
December 13, 2004
WASHINGTON — The rapid turnover of top-level managers and highly trained specialists since Sept. 11 is causing disorder within the FBI and undercutting its efforts to meet the mandate of Congress to dramatically expand its intelligence and counter-terrorism capabilities.
Its new intelligence arm, which is to form the core of a transformed FBI, is losing dozens of analysts who are supposed to connect the dots to protect the country from another terrorist attack.
All four members of the top management team announced by Director Robert S. Mueller III shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks have left their jobs — as have their successors. Some other officials have had three or even four jobs since the attacks.
Since Sept. 11, five people have held the bureau's top counter-terrorism job. Five others filled the top computer job within a 24-month period.
And more than 1,000 other senior FBI agents and officials are eligible for retirement, boding a further exodus of employees who form the agency's backbone. In figures provided recently to Congress, the FBI estimated that the number of top managers below the senior executive rank would decline by 16% — about 70 people — in the next year alone.
The rush to the exits partly stems from burnout caused by the intense pace and scrutiny that followed Sept. 11, officials say. It also reflects the growing post-9/11 demand for security expertise in other fields, which has lured dozens from the FBI to lucrative jobs.
One example: The head of the Los Angeles FBI field office left in January to become Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's head of homeland security, only to leave that job six months later for Walt Disney Co.
It also illustrates how the FBI, like many bureaucracies, is a graying institution. A surge of hiring in the 1970s, and the bureau's liberal retirement rules, are coming home to roost at an inauspicious time.
Many analysts are leaving for other parts of the U.S. intelligence community — wooed by fellow agencies like the CIA at a time when, in the view of groups such as the Sept. 11 commission, they should be cooperating with each other more than ever.
Until very recently, the FBI was losing nearly as many analysts to attrition and other causes as it had managed to hire with the post-Sept. 11 infusion of cash from Congress.
The turnover has led to a little-noted provision in the 2005 spending bill that President Bush signed Wednesday. It authorizes Mueller to offer unusually fat retention bonuses to key employees who might be threatening to leave.
Another provision authorizes Mueller to increase the bureau's mandatory retirement age to 65 in select cases, and to establish a "reserve service" of retirees who could be called back to work in an emergency without jeopardizing their pensions.
"The FBI is having difficulty retaining certain staff in critical senior management positions and other specialized positions," acknowledged a senior official on condition of anonymity. "Look at the counter-terrorism positions. You are lucky to get a year out of them."
Mueller, who was unavailable to comment, has told Congress he is losing "some very good, competent people" because he cannot afford to compete with private-sector salaries.
"But we've also lost them to CIA. We've lost them to [the Defense Intelligence Agency]. We've lost them to Homeland Security," he told a House appropriations subcommittee.
Turnover has been cited as a factor in the costly and long-delayed overhaul of the agency's creaky computer system. A Government Accountability Office report this year that criticized the upgrade efforts noted that the bureau had had five chief information officers in the preceding 24 months, and said that lack of "sustained management attention and leadership" had contributed to cost overruns and delays.
"I compare it to a professional football team that has five different head coaches in 24 months. There is not going to be much stability and focused, consistent direction to the team," said Randolph Hite, a GAO information technology specialist.
But the latest director has been in place for a year, which Hite said was a good sign.
The outflow of analysts — considered crucial to the bureau's attempt to create an intelligence service that focuses on preventing terrorist attacks rather than solving crimes — is especially worrisome.
The analysts specialize in sifting though intelligence information gathered from many sources and interpreting it to identify potential terrorism threats.
FBI documents provided to Congress showed that between Sept. 11 and last March, the bureau had hired 487 analysts. But the gains were largely offset because 361 analysts left for other jobs within the bureau or elsewhere.
This year, the bureau had planned on hiring 900 additional analysts, but officials appear to have scaled back their plans, in part because they have to fill vacancies left by the high attrition. Officials implied at a recent congressional hearing that they may add as few as 600.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the FBI has hired about 624 analysts, with "much fewer than 100" separations and departures, a spokeswoman said.
Recently, in an attempt to boost recruiting, the bureau dropped a requirement that candidates have a college degree. The bureau said that allowed it to hire qualified people with specialized skills but not necessarily a formal education.
"The FBI is training these analysts so they can go elsewhere," a person familiar with the hiring effort said on condition of anonymity. Other agencies and private firms are "poaching like crazy. They train these guys and they are skimmed off," the person added. The result is that "there has not been a significant inflow of analysts relative to the numbers they've said they want to get," the source said.
Advancement opportunities and the stature of analysts in the FBI have been limited compared with their counterparts at spy agencies like the CIA. And the FBI traditionally hasn't paid as well.
"Until recently, analyst positions at the FBI were viewed as pretty second-rate. If you were anybody who was anybody at the FBI, you were a special agent," said a congressional investigator familiar with the problem. "Analysts do not have the same cachet."
But it has been at the FBI's highest levels where the turnover has been starkest.
Some of the most sensitive top management posts are held by relative newcomers. Among others, the heads of finance, administration, criminal investigations and internal inspections have been in their jobs for less than a year. The bureau's office of strategic planning has been without a director for months.
The FBI argues that in some cases the musical chairs is healthy, in that it gives people a breadth of experience and brings a fresh eye to problems. But some are concerned that managers do not have time enough to learn their jobs before they move to their next assignments.
"Every time you call headquarters, a different guy at the desk would answer the phone. You would have to start everything all over again," said a former terrorism investigator.
"It is not just at that top level. It is at every level. Everybody is kind of in a state of flux all the time."
The turnover has been especially acute in the terrorism arena, where the bureau has run through a long line of distinguished executives in three years. Two — Dale Watson and Larry Mefford — had each been with the FBI since the late 1970s, and left for the private sector.
Each departure triggers a chain reaction. Bruce J. Gebhardt, the bureau's deputy director, left in October for the hotel and casino company MGM Mirage. He was replaced by John S. Pistole, the fourth counter-terrorism boss since Sept. 11, whose own promotion then led to the fifth.
"I grew up in the FBI and I am a flag-waver, but it takes a toll on you," said Gebhardt, a 30-year veteran whose father was a lifelong FBI man.
Other FBI executives have left in recent years for employers as diverse as the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and the Catholic Church.
Like other federal agencies, the FBI has offered bonuses to senior executives before. But the new bonuses are more lucrative — up to 50% of base pay — and appear to be available to more employees. According to the newly enacted legislation, they would be available to those of "unusually high or unique qualifications" whom Mueller deems "essential" and who are likely to leave without the incentive.
Some question whether the money will be enough, and fear that the departures from the FBI have just begun.
About 1,224 special agents, or about 10% of the agent workforce, are eligible to retire now, the FBI says. FBI rules enable people to retire with 20 years' service, and a less-generous retirement program under which most came into the FBI years ago gives them little financial incentive to stay. Many apparently are looking to make the leap, knowing they have a limited window of time when they are attractive to private industry.
"People are just hitting that 20-year mark. No one has quite reckoned with it," said a senior agent on condition of anonymity. "It is going to be like a break in the dike."
-- Eugene Vilensky evilensky at gmail.com