administration expanded into general investigations of foreign and domestic
intelligence by the Church and Pike committees.
1956 to 1971 against domestic organizations and, eventually, domestic dissi-
dents.The FBI had spied on a wide range of political figures, especially indi-
viduals whom Hoover wanted to discredit (notably the Reverend Martin
Luther King, Jr.), and had authorized unlawful wiretaps and surveillance.The
shock registered in public opinion polls, where the percentage of Americans
declaring a "highly favorable" view of the FBI dropped from 84 percent to 37
percent.The FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division was dissolved.
for even stronger regulation. In 1983,Attorney General William French Smith
revised the Levi guidelines to encourage closer investigation of potential ter-
rorism. He also loosened the rules governing authorization for investigations
and their duration. Still, his guidelines, like Levi's, took account of the reality
that suspicion of "terrorism," like suspicion of "subversion," could lead to mak-
ing individuals targets for investigation more because of their beliefs than
because of their acts. Smith's guidelines also took account of the reality that
potential terrorists were often members of extremist religious organizations and
that investigation of terrorism could cross the line separating state and
church.
authority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the host
country. Meanwhile, a task force headed by Vice President George H.W. Bush
had endorsed a concept already urged by Director of Central Intelligence
William Casey--a Counterterrorist Center, where the FBI, the CIA, and other
organizations could work together on international terrorism.While it was dis-
tinctly a CIA entity, the FBI detailed officials to work at the Center and
obtained leads that helped in the capture of persons wanted for trial in the
United States.
London to New York, which blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December
1988, killing 270 people. Initial evidence pointed to the government of Syria
and, later, Iran.The Counterterrorist Center reserved judgment on the perpe-
trators of the attack. Meanwhile, FBI technicians, working with U.K. security
services, gathered and analyzed the widely scattered fragments of the airliner.
In 1991, with the help of the Counterterrorist Center, they identified one small
fragment as part of a timing device--to the technicians, as distinctive as DNA.
It was a Libyan device.Together with other evidence, the FBI put together a