A Review of FBI Security Programs

On October 3, 2001, an Electronic Communication (EC), approved by the Deputy
Director and five other senior officials, was sent from the Director’s office to all FBI
Divisions. This EC, titled “Restricting Cases in ACS,” reinforced long standing policy that
all cases must be entered into ACS, and it fundamentally changed policy by mandating that
no case be restricted by designation or deliberately not uploaded without approval of an
Assistant Director.
To explain this policy change, the EC noted that case file restrictions had hampered
PENTTBOM, the international investigation of the terrorist attacks. Apparently, agents
assigned to pursue leads in PENTTBOM had been frustrated by restrictions limiting access
to potentially relevant case files, and FBI senior management had determined that the agents’
frustration was well grounded.
This EC was soon followed by another, dated October 10, 2001, declaring that, on the
evening of October 10, the FBI’s Information Resources Division would remove certain ACS
case restrictions. Pursuant to the new policy, three case classifications that had been
automatically restricted as P cases lost this default protection, leaving eight P case
classifications. The list of O restricted case classifications was reduced to six. Sixteen
previously defaulted O case classifications lost that protection, including domestic security,
hostage taking, and international terrorist investigations. Existing and new cases falling
within the remaining eight P and six O case classifications would remain restricted.
However, all existing cases not falling within these classifications would lose their
restrictions that evening, unless an Assistant Director decided otherwise. The new policy
affects not only cases previously entitled to default restrictions, but also cases that agents had
opened or would otherwise open with designated restrictions. Thus, ACS users were given
less than a day to learn about the EC, review restrictions on their cases, and solicit approval
from a Headquarters Assistant Director to maintain restrictions on particular cases.
The decision to loosen ACS restrictions was made essentially without the involvement
of the Security Countermeasures Branch, the Bureau’s security apparatus.
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