The Honorable Paul A. Price
Assistant Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General
Evaluation and Inspection Division
Department of Justice
Suite 6100
1425 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
RE: OIG Recommendation 14
Dear Mr. Price:
This letter is in response to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) review of the “Federal Bureau of Prisons' Monitoring of Mail for High-Risk Inmates”, A-2005-006, specifically recommendation number 14. This recommendation states "The FBI should continue to develop and reinforce procedures for interacting with the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) regarding international terrorist inmates, including monitoring of inmates, intelligence gathering, and sharing information and intelligence." The FBI agrees with this recommendation and will continue to develop procedures regarding information sharing with BOP.
In February 2003, the FBI, working through the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), developed the Correctional Intelligence Initiative (CII). This program was established to interface with the BOP, as well as all state, local, territorial, tribal and privatized correctional facilities regarding international terrorist inmates. The CII facilitates the coordination of terrorism matters between the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) and all correctional agencies through the exchange of intelligence information between the participating agencies.
As part of the CII program, each FBI field office has a CII coordinator who cultivates partnerships between the FBI and all correctional agencies. These partnerships have allowed the FBI to detect, deter, and disrupt efforts by terrorist or extremist groups to radicalize or recruit among inmate populations.
The NJTTF continues to actively expand and reinforce this program by consistently providing CII training materials, intelligence products, and reference resources to CII coordinators in every FBI field office. These materials are used by CII coordinators when training personnel from correctional agencies. In addition, the NJTTF provides regional training seminars to JTTF personnel and to personnel from various correctional facilities to increase situational awareness regarding the CII program. This training includes providing a set of universal countermeasures designed to detect and prevent prison radicalization. The NJTTF routinely issues guidance to field through the dissemination of communications to further this program.
Interaction between BOP and FBI involves comprehensive immersion of assigned BOP staff to Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) as well as the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF). These BOP representatives are granted full access to FBI Counterterrorism resources, information systems, and infrastructures. In return, BOP provides the FBI with vast amounts of intelligence information concerning inmates.
In summary, the FBI has procedures in place to interact not only with BOP, but all state and local correctional facilities. The FBI will continue to expand and emphasize this successful existing program.
| Sincerely,
[signed]
Joseph Billy
Acting Assistant Director
Counterterrorism Division |
|