Long Arms of the Law  Ever Bigger FBI Flails at the Enemy Within
Last week, even as FBI leaders were forced to publicly admit
they hadn't read their own agents' warnings about the
possibility of Osama bin Laden's operatives flying a plane into
the World Trade Center, they were busily expanding their empire.
The Bureau is setting up a supersquad and over the next 18
months will hire 1600-plus employees, some of them analysts
fluent in Middle Eastern languages.  (Of course, if Cheney knows
what he's talking about, we'll be dead by the time they all have
desks.)  This widening reach is particularly ironic, since Bush
and Attorney General John Ashcroft have crafted a domestic
policy based on reducing the bureaucracy and returning power to
the states. In this instance, Ashcroft is building an ever
bigger, more centralized, and more powerful federal police
force. This flies in the face of all the conservative rhetoric
about local control, and worse, offers America no real
protection.  The Bureau's origins trace b