The real "Deadbeats" - Congress & former President William Jefferson Clinton

~ Meet the Press (Transcript from Sunday, October 16, 2005) ~

Tim Russert's conversation with former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Charles Grassley, Republican, said you had plenty of money and he cites the comments you made before Congress in May of 2001, where you say, "We received the human, technical and financial resources needed to keep the FBI at the cutting edge of investigations. ...Over the nearly eight years that I have been Director, Congress has increased the FBI's budget by more than $1.27 billion...That is a 58% increase ..."

You could have asked Congress to redeploy people to cover terrorism rather than some other areas, but you didn't.

MR. FREEH: Well, look, on the budget--and the budget is a very interesting and a very arcane process, as you know, here in Washington--I doubled the number of agents that were working in counterterrorism in my period. I tripled our resources. I was very thankful for those resources; I still am. But that wasn't any way to fight a war. The FBI today has 1,400 more agents than it had when I left office, 1,400 more agents. And the priority that counterterrorism has taken on for the FBI, which is appropriate, takes resources from civil rights cases, from white collar crime cases, from public corruption cases. And I couldn't move people around as I wanted to.

When Congress appropriates resources, it tells us "OK, you've got 100 new agents for health care. You've got 25 new agents for deadbeat dads cases," believe it or not. It's very programmed and we have very, very little discretion. One of the recommendations I made to the 9/11 Commission, give the FBI director and the attorney general the discretion to move resources around as necessary. We've never had that.