New FBI boss in LV asks for more agents

Keith Paul

Monday, June 3, 2002 | 9:50 a.m.

The new head of the FBI's Las Vegas office is asking for more agents as a part of a shift of resources within the agency nationwide.

In addition, Special Agent in Charge Ellen Knowlton said, the attorney general's expanded guidelines for monitoring the World Wide Web and political, religious and public gatherings for homeland security could be used locally for intelligence gathering.

Knowlton, who started as the Las Vegas office's top agent last week, said she has just begun to determine where the shift in agents will occur. Nationwide, FBI offices are moving their priorities away from traditional law enforcement to counterterrorism.

"We will do what needs to be done for this state," she said. She noted that other law enforcement agencies investigate some of the same crimes the FBI does, and "and it would have a minimal impact on them should we have to reduce resources."

Local agents may also be allowed to do what for years they were forbidden to do by guidelines in intelligence gathering -- going to public meetings.

Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said FBI agents peering in on citizens in the name of homeland defense is just what the FBI did during antiwar protests and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, building files on leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.

"I am quite sure that it is going to happen here and everywhere," he said. "It is getting back to Big Brother is watching you."

Lichtenstein said the FBI has proven over the years in public blunders that it does not have the oversight in place to ensure agents do not go too far in monitoring legal activities of the public.

"We're not talking about illegal activity, but having our taxpayer money spent by the government to spy on us," he said. "That is something that offends the sense of individual freedom that we say we are fighting for."

Knowlton said agents will not be attending public meetings to spy on residents, but there may be occasions when agents do attend public meetings.

"We will always safeguard and protect people's rights," she said.

Knowlton said there are certain "peculiarities" about the Las Vegas Valley, and the FBI is determining "where could terrorist or others exploit our vulnerabilities."

She would not say which locations could be specific targets.

Agents are also continuing to investigate why five of the Sept. 11 terrorists were in Las Vegas and stayed at various low-end motels months before the attacks.