FBI Says It Has Ceded Drug Busts to DEA
Chris Swecker, the Assistant Director of the FBI's criminal division, says now it would take "a cartel" to get the FBI involved in a drug bust. The agency, Swecker says, has shifted to terrorism.
Drug crimes largely have been ceded to the Drug Enforcement Agency, while the U.S. Marshals Service now apprehends all but the most violent fugitives. Investigation of bank robberies, once a signature FBI duty, and large swaths of white-collar crime are also largely off the bureau's to-do list.
What's left? Public corruption, civil rights violations, organized crime - including gangs, major white-collar crime and certain kinds of violent offenses. The rationale is simple: The bureau now focuses on crime that might shed light on terror or that no other law enforcement agency can pursue.
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