Week 9 Readings and Videos
Attorney General Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations
Valerie Caproni
General Counsel
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Statement Before the Senate Select Committee on IntelligenceWashington, DC
September 23, 2008
Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman Bond, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the Attorney General’s Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations. We believe that these guidelines will help the FBI continue its transformation from the preeminent law enforcement agency in the United States to a domestic intelligence agency that has a national security mission and law enforcement mission.
The new guidelines provide more uniform, clear, and straightforward rules for the FBI’s operations. They are the culmination of prior efforts to revise the FBI’s operating rules in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. They are consistent with and help implement the recommendations of several distinguished panels for the FBI to coordinate national security and criminal investigation activities and to improve its intelligence collection and analytical capabilities.
These guidelines will protect privacy rights and civil liberties, will provide for meaningful oversight and compliance, and will be largely unclassified. Consequently, the public will have ready access in a single document to the basic body of operating rules for FBI activities within the United States. The guidelines will take the place of five existing sets of guidelines that separately address, among other matters, criminal investigations, national security investigations, and foreign intelligence collection. They are set to take effect on October 1, 2008.
We have greatly appreciated the interest of this Committee and others in these guidelines. Over the past six weeks, we have made a draft of the guidelines available for review to the Members and staff of this Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee. We have provided briefings (and made the draft guidelines available for review) to a wide range of interested individuals and groups, including Congressional staff, public interest groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Council (ADC) to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and a broad set of press organizations. The dialogue between the Department and these individuals and groups has been, in our view, both unprecedented and very constructive. We have appreciated the opportunity to explain why we undertook this consolidation, and we are amending the draft guidelines to reflect feedback that we have received.
I. Purpose of the Consolidation Effort
Approximately 18 months ago, the FBI requested that the Attorney General consider combining three basic sets of guidelines—the General Crimes Guidelines, which were promulgated in 2002, the National Secu