Shortly after the terrorist attacks of last September 11, NDAA President Meenan sent a message of support to President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft, and offered the assistance of this association and of America’s local prosecutors. The attorney general and FBI Director Robert Mueller responded and have provided the broad outlines of what kind of assistance they have in mind. It will be significant.

At a subsequent meeting of the Executive Working Group—which consists of top-level Justice Department officials and representatives of NDAA and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) who meet several times a year to discuss policy issues—Attorney General Ashcroft described the changes of emphasis he has ordered in the department’s mission generated by the events of September 11. Henceforth, he declared, the primary mission of federal prosecutors, FBI agents and immigration officers will be to thwart future terrorist attacks.

“While terrorism threatens our future,” he said, “we cannot live in the past. We must focus on our core mission and responsibilities, understanding that the department will not be all things to all people. We cannot do everything we once did, because lives now depend on doing a few things well.”

These “few things” involve hunting down terrorists in the United States. One example of the FBI’s new emphasis: The agency is currently conducting more than 150 separate investigations of groups and individuals in the United States with possible ties to Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist organization.

Director Mueller is already restructuring the FBI to strengthen its ability to fight terrorism and cybercrime and improve its internal security and intelligence gathering capability. The next phase of the restructuring will reportedly involve FBI field offices backing off certain investigations, such as drug crimes, carjacking and possibly even bank robberies. These would be turned over to local prosecutors and police. Director Mueller has said he first wants to assess whether local law enforcement or other federal agencies can take over these duties. To this end, he has added a section to work with local law enforcement officials.

So while the extent of the impact on local prosecutors won’t be known until DOJ’s master plan is implemented some time this year, the intention and direction are clear. As the Justice Department devotes more of its efforts to counter-terrorism, local prosecutors will be called upon to take over more investigations and prosecutions that heretofore have been federal cases.

We welcome this challenge and opportunity to support the federal anti-terrorism efforts in a way that will enable DOJ and especially the FBI to concentrate their resources on these efforts. Local prosecutors are already handling 95 percent of the criminal cases in this country, and adding the types of cases that are being considered would be a natural extension of their traditional mission.

Ironically there’s a big plus in all this for local prosecutors.

With the Justice Department, and especially the FBI, devoting most of their resources to counter-terrorism and planning to shift some of their responsibilities to local law enforcement, we have good reason to hope that the congressional trend toward federalization of some local crimes has ended, at least for now, in favor of “localization” of some federal crimes.