February 18, 2018

How Many Threats Can the FBI Evaluate on a Daily Basis?

FBI Director Christopher Wray.Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

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The FBI has taken a lot of criticism for failing to follow up on a warning about the teenager who killed 17 schoolchildren in Florida last Wednesday. Here’s the BBC’s report:

On 5 January a person close to the teenager contacted the FBI tipline to provide “information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behaviour, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting”, said an FBI press release….In 2016, the FBI received about 1,300 tips a day through its website, which is staffed around the clock by two dozen people. In addition to online tips, FBI field offices receive dozens of calls. About 100 of the tips are considered “actionable”.

This means that in January the FBI received something on the order of 50,000 tips. If they spend an average of, say, an hour on each one, that’s about 300 agents working full time doing nothing but investigating tips. Or, perhaps it means a thousand agents spending a quarter of their time on tips. Are they staffed to do that? What exactly is the protocol for responding to this tidal wave of tips?

But even that isn’t the real question. Suppose they had investigated Cruz more thoroughly. What could they have done? It’s not illegal to own a bunch of high-powered guns. It’s not illegal to rant on Twitter or Facebook. The FBI could have interviewed the guy, but unless he’s broken the law that’s about the end of it. It’s not clear to me what the FBI could have done here even if they had followed every protocol to the letter.

I’m genuinely curious about this. How well staffed is the FBI to handle tips? What can they do against a motivated attacker aside from an interview? To the extent that conservatives are using this failure as a handy excuse to attack FBI Director Christopher Wray, I don’t care what happened. These scattershot attempts to suck up to Donald Trump are too patently phony to worry about. But to the extent there might truly be something we can do better, I do care. Has anyone made any concrete suggestions on this score?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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