President Donald Trump’s surge of federal law enforcement into Washington, D.C., is exposing the FBI’s fleet of unmarked cars, potentially risking its ability to do its most sensitive national security and surveillance work, nine current and former employees of the bureau warned.
The surge, which the White House has said is meant to crack down on violent crime but has featured many arrests for minor offenses, could make it harder for the FBI to combat violent criminal gangs, foreign intelligence services and drug traffickers, said the current and former employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
As part of the surge, FBI agents who normally conduct their investigative work out of the spotlight are now more involved in routine police work in Washington, appearing in high-profile areas dressed in tactical gear and emerging from unmarked cars, with the unintended effect of potentially identifying those vehicles to surveillance targets.
As the Republican president publicly muses about expanding his crackdown into cities such as Chicago and Baltimore, the employees said they are urging leadership not to continue to expose more vehicles in this way.
“Every time you see us getting out of covert cars wearing our FBI vests that car is burned,” said one of eight current FBI employees who spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“We can’t use these cars to go undercover, we can’t use them to surveil narcotraffickers and fentanyl suppliers or Russian or Chinese spies or use them to go after violent criminal gangs or terrorists,” said a second current FBI employee.
An FBI spokesman denied the current employees’ assertions.
“The claims in this story represents a basic misunderstanding of how FBI security protocol works — the Bureau takes multiple safeguards to protect agents in the field against threats so they can continue doing their great work protecting the American people,” Ben Williamson, assistant director of the FBI public affairs office said in an email.
“FBI leadership hasn’t received any of the concerns alleged here, and anyone who did have a good faith concern would approach leaders at headquarters or our Washington Field Office rather than laundering bizarre claims through the press.”
The White House referred questions to the FBI.
The use of as many as 1,000 FBI unmarked vehicles in Washington during highly public scenes comes amid an already heightened threat to law enforcement from cartels, gangs and hostile nations who actively seek to identify agents and their vehicles, the current and former FBI employees said.
Leave a Reply