Training for Terrorism
The FBI Begins to Shift Priorities in Wake of Sept. 11 Attacks

Listen to John McChesney's story.

An FBI trainee holds a shotgun on a suspect in a mock kidnapping exercise on the bureau's campus in Quantico, Va. Photo: Josh Rogosin, NPR

Jan. 2, 2002 -- When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a "wartime reorganization" of the Justice Department and its chief investigative arm, the FBI, he made it clear that the post-Sept. 11 bureau will focus more on the prevention of terrorist attacks than on solving bank robberies and white-collar crime.

To see how this wartime mandate has changed the FBI's mission and training, NPR's John McChesney recently visited the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. For All Things Considered, McChesney reports on what he found: A bureau on a crash course to address the challenge of international terrorism.

But, McChesney reports, it will be no small matter to change the focus, scope and mission of an agency as large and tradition-bound as the FBI, which employs more than 11,000 Special Agents and 16,000 support staffers.

FBI agent trainees listen to their instructor as he plots out the next exercise on the firing range. Photo: Josh Rogosin, NPR

Kathleen McChesney (no relation to NPR's McChesney) is the new director of the academy, and also the highest-ranking woman in the FBI. A soft-spoken person with a tough-cop reputation, she confirms that since Sept. 11, the number of FBI job applicants has increased sharply.

"The types of people we used to see were former military, former law enforcement," director McChesney says. "Now we see a wider variety of applicants, more people with computer backgrounds, language and international relations, backgrounds in education specialties." The FBI Academy sprawls through the woods at Quantico, about an hour south of Washington, D.C. At any given time, roughly 1,000 students are enrolled there, in an intensive 16-week course offered for local law enforcement officers and some foreign police as well as for the bureau's own agents.

One of the kidnapping suspects in Hogan's Alley is surrounded. The "bad guys" are actors, but the lessons they teach are real. Photo: Josh Rogosin, NPR

During basic training, all students -- many of whom have never touched a gun -- must qualify with pistols, shotguns, and submachine guns. More time is spent here on firearms training than on any other subject, a total of 114 hours of instruction. One veteran instructor says that when he joined up 22 years ago, an FBI gun battle was highly unusual, but today's FBI faces a gunfight nearly every week.

During their training, students take to the books for courses in law, investigative techniques and national security issues. They also try to solve simulated cases of major crimes using a realistic, full-scale town on the Quantico campus called Hogan's Alley.

For example: In a simulation of a kidnapping, the "bad guys" are actors and the scenarios come complete with a kidnap victim, a ransom drop and eventual arrests. Some scenarios unfold like a mystery novel -- a so-called "integrated case" -- and are considered probably the most important part of an agent's training.

NPR producer Amy Walters tests her markmanship skills at one of Quantico's indoor firing ranges. Photo: Josh Rogosin, NPR

At a recent training excercise, agents practiced dealing with a domestic terrorism case involving a Montana militia group. More than three months after Sept. 11, the academy still used that domestic terrorism scenario for training, but Kathleen McChesney says it soon will be replaced: "We are in the process of changing... to an international terrorism-based case."

Some contend the FBI Academy isn't moving fast enough. Bob Blitzer, the former head of the FBI's counterterrorism task force, says if he were in McChesney's shoes, he would nearly double the amount of time devoted to counterterrorism training. In Blitzer's view, "What has happened post-Sept. 11 is just the realization that more has to be done."

Search for more NPR coverage on the FBI.

Other Resources

• Official FBI Web site.

• The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) monitors the FBI and other government law enforcement agencies.