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US may set up MI5-style spy agency in security shake-up
By Toby Harnden in Washington - Filed: 31/10/2002

America is contemplating a radical overall of the FBI and the creation of a domestic spying organisation modelled on Britain's MI5, according to US intelligence sources. Tom Ridge, President George W Bush's director of homeland security, will hold talks in London next week focusing on the British experience of combating the IRA over more than three decades. He is due to meet Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of MI5, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the MI6 chief, known as "C", as well as David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and senior police officers at Scotland Yard. Officials from the Senate Intelligence Committee have already flown to London for talks with British security officials. "We have just generically taken a look at and will be looking at your domestic intelligence operation, your MI5. The FBI is the counterpart here. There are some practical lessons learned," Mr Ridge said in an interview. "We'll take a look at your anti-terrorism legislation - what you can and cannot do in relationship to people you suspect of terrorism. It's really a matter of a fairly systematic review of how you go about addressing the problem." Following the intelligence slips that failed to raise the alarm before the September 11 attacks, deep misgivings have grown in Washington about the FBI and CIA's ability to prevent future terrorist outrages. Senior Bush administration officials believe that the FBI's focus on law enforcement to the detriment of domestic intelligence-gathering has been a fatal flaw in America's defences against terrorism.

****I feel safer already****

posted by A Curmudgeon 6:42 AM