It has been clear for
some time. Although the FBI has long been hailed as the nation's
premier law enforcement agency, the bureau in the last few years
has suffered through a series of blunders suggesting that its
actual effectiveness often does not meet the hype. The list of
problems is quite long: Waco, the flawed follow-up investigation
into what went wrong at Ruby Ridge, the documented short comings
in the Crime Lab, the uncovering of Robert Hanssen's traitorous
acts. And finally, the failure of the FBI to provide Timothy McVeigh
several thousand pages of documents. Then came the decision of
FBI director Louis Freeh to step down as director after service
for eight turbulent years. The editors of U.S. News decided the
time had come for a cover story on the FBI and Chitra Ragavan,
the magazine's Justice Department reporter, was given the assignment.
Supported with numerous interviews and comprehensive performance
data from TRAC, Ragavan developed a well-documented portrait of
a troubled agency.
