SCOTT MACFARLANE:
00:00:17
The nation's top law-enforcement officer warned today of the growing threat of a strike inside the US from Iran sympathizers. Iran, of course, is a threat. They have been a threat, and they always will be a threat to our country.
SCOTT MACFARLANE:
00:00:31
But CBS News has learned agents at the FBI and the Department of Justice have warned supervisors they'd been pulled away from counterterrorism to focus on immigration enforcement, and there's been a purge of several top counterterror officials and dozens of experienced prosecutors in the Department of Justice in the opening months of President Trump's term. You weren't the only person who left the Department of Justice this year. No. I was one of dozens, probably hundreds.
SCOTT MACFARLANE:
00:00:56
Former National Security Division Attorney Brendan Ballou, who joined the agency in 2016, quit in January and says many of those fired were dismissed out of retribution for handling January 6 cases. When you lose the institutional memory from that, you're losing the experts that actually know how to respond to international crises.
SCOTT MACFARLANE:
00:01:17
CBS News has also learned FBI leadership directed an intensified focus of resources on counterterrorism but, at the same time, plans to cut more than 300 FBI agent positions and dozens more in the Department's National Security Division. This comes amid widespread departures at another key agency, the Department of Homeland Security, where 22-year-old Thomas Fugate, one year out of college, was hired to lead a key terror-prevention program. CBS News contributor Sam Vinograd was a former assistant secretary for counterterrorism. The Department of Homeland Security recently let go a significant amount of actual personnel in that office. So separate, apart from who's running it, you just don't have enough people physically working in that office right now, working in communities. The FBI and the US attorney general have defended upcoming staffing cuts, saying they plan to do more with less and are trying to thin out a bureaucracy here in Washington by shifting more of their agents into US communities, John and Maurice. Scott MacFarlane, thank you.
