WASHINGTON - The FBI has made strong progress in reinventing itself since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but doubts remain over its long-term ability to balance terrorism investigations with its traditional crime-fighting duties, two major reports concluded yesterday.
Among the chief concerns, the reports said, are the FBI's overhaul of its outdated technology systems, its ability to share terror intelligence with other agencies and its commitment to fully investigate nonterrorism crimes such as drugs and white-collar crime.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a report to a House subcommittee that it "is encouraged by the progress that the FBI has made in some areas in the past year, but a number of major challenges remain."
That optimistic-but-cautious tone was echoed by a second report delivered to Congress by the National Academy of Public Administration. Together, the two studies represented the most comprehensive progress report to date on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's efforts to remake itself into a front line of defense against terrorism.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the bureau was widely criticized for its failure to pick up on potential warning signs in the months before the hijackings.
Some critics have suggested the creation of a new agency for counterterrorism and domestic intelligence, but the Bush administration has resisted that idea. Instead, the administration has made it a priority to turn the bureau into an agency devoted to preventing attacks, rather than simply solving crimes that have occurred.
"We cannot afford another September 11, and that requires a sea change" in priorities and tactics, Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the bureau, said at yesterday's hearing.
Mueller drew strong praise from Republicans and Democrats at the hearing, as did the authors of both reports and the president of the FBI agents' association.
Dick Thornburgh, the former attorney general who led the National Academy of Public Administration's study, said that Mueller had succeeded in "instilling a new sense of mission and dedication" at the bureau.
Mueller noted as important advances the restructuring of the bureau's administration as well as its redeployment of more than 500 criminal agents to counterterrorism and another 167 agents to counterintelligence. The bureau has more than 11,000 agents.
But several lawmakers questioned whether that shift had taken too great a toll in fighting traditional crimes.
The General Accounting Office study found that drug enforcement by the FBI had "diminished significantly," with a drop of about 15 percent in 2002 and 2003 in criminal referrals and prosecutions.
