FBI Going Global

With his agents fresh off a series of successes in the African embassy investigations, FBI Director Louie Freeh is in Europe this week pushing to expand the bureau's global reach even further. CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports from Washington.

On Monday Freeh was in Budapest to address the International Law Enforcement Academy and meet with Hungarian police chiefs. Later he would travel to Helsinki for another round of meetings. Afterwards in Greece, Freeh will repeat the same message: if terrorists and criminals are uniting...then so should we.

"To be successful against them, police have to be as organized. We have to be as willing to cooperate with each other as the criminal elements cooperate with each other" says Freeh.

Freeh has aggressively expanded the FBI's overseas bureaus from little more than a dozen in 1985 to 32 today. Negotiations are now underway to open one in Beijing as well.

He has also loaned agents to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia to help solve an assassination attempt against President Eduard Shevardnadze. He is actively recruiting foreign police officers to attend the FBI Academy in Quantico which is the role model for the one in Budapest.

If anything the embassy bombings in Africa are expected to only accelerate the bureau's plans to go global.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing if there was anything he needed, Freeh replied that his agents had been delayed in getting into Africa by the lack of military aircraft dedicated solely to law enforcement.

We could sure use a plane or two of our own, the director said, and the members of Congress seemed to agree.

Reported By Jim Stewart