Page 157 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

F-Kushner.qxd 30-10-02 10:04 AM Page 132

132———Federal Bureau of Investigation

Kingdom issued the fatwa, saying McNally had crimes, including terrorism, that involve transgression
insulted Jesus, who is a prophet in the Koran. The of federal law. (A very few, specific federal crimes are
fatwa was signed by Omar Bakri Muhammad, an investigated by other agencies, for example, tax eva-
extremist cleric and a judge of the U.K. shari’a court. sion is the responsibility of the Internal Revenue
During the Gulf War, Sheikh Muhammad had Service.) The bureau is part of the U.S. Department of
issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of former Justice; the bureau director is appointed by the attorney
British prime minister John Major. Sheikh Muhammad general. The FBI employs almost 28,000 people,
said, “The fatwa is to express the Islamic point of 11,000 of whom are special agents. Its headquarters in
view that those who are insulting to Allah and the Washington, D.C., develops policy and provides sup-
Messengers of God must understand it is a crime.” port to the 56 field offices and 400 satellite offices
Perhaps the best-known recent fatwa was the within the United States, and the 44 posts abroad
proclamation by Osama bin Laden and four other headed by legal attaches (“legats”).
fundamentalist figures, two from Egypt, and one each The FBI was reorganized in late 2001 in response
from Bangladesh and Pakistan, on February 23, 1998. to a perceived need to concentrate on counterterrorism
That fatwa, issued in the name of the International in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on
Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders called the World Trade Center in New York City and the
for Muslims to “kill the Americans and their allies— Pentagon near Washington, D.C. Four executive assis-
civilians and military,” calling it an “individual duty tant directors, each in charge of one of the four major
for every Muslim who can do it in any country in branches of the bureau, now report directly to the
which it is possible to do it.” That fatwa has since been deputy director and director of the FBI. These four
used by various Islamic extremist groups around the are responsible for the bureau’s work in criminal
world to justify attacks on military and civilian targets. investigations, counterterrorism/counterintelligence,
law enforcement services, and administration. Dale
See also AL QAEDA; OSAMA BIN LADEN; STATE-SPONSORED
Watson was appointed to the post of executive assis-
TERRORISM
tant director for counterterrorism/counterintelligence,
Further Reading a newly created position, in December 2001.
The FBI began in 1908, when Attorney General
Appignanesi, Lisa, and Sara Maitland, eds. The Rushdie Charles Bonaparte hired 10 former Secret Service
File. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990. agents as investigators for the Department of Justice.
Levy, Leonard Williams. Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against These detectives were to confine themselves to inves-
the Sacred, From Moses to Salman Rushdie. Chapel Hill: tigating violations of antitrust, postal, and banking
University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Mozaffari, Mehdi. Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy. laws, and crimes targeting the federal government. The
Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1998. passage of the Mann Act (1910) and Dyer Act (1919)
Rushdie, Salman. Satanic Verses. New York: Picador USA, broadened its mission to investigating prostitution
2000. and motor vehicle theft. The World War I-inspired
Ruthven, Malise. A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Espionage Act (1917) and Sedition Act (1918) further
Rage of Islam. London: Chatto & Windus, 1991. broadened the bureau’s mandate. In 1919, following a
series of attempted anarchist bombings, the bureau
under Director William Flynn embarked on an antirad-
FBI. See FEDERAL BUREAU OF ical campaign, investigating suspected communists,
INVESTIGATION. anarchists, and foreign-born agitators. Hundreds of
suspected revolutionaries were subsequently deported
under the 1917 and 1918 Immigration Acts. By 1920,
more than 500 special agents were working at the
FEDERAL BUREAU OF bureau, with roughly the same number of support staff.
INVESTIGATION Bureau investigations of dissenters within the
United States continued throughout the early 1920s.
Trade union and civil rights activists and political rad-
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the icals were all monitored. The FBI kept close watch on
U.S. government agency responsible for investigating both the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the National