Wait, what? [FBI Edition]
As long as I've been around, the FBI has been about law enforcement. So imagine my shock when I read today that the Bureau has recently completely dropped "law enforcement" from its mission statement, instead replacing it with the vague category "national security".
Image credit: The Cable at foreignpolicy.com
"When our mission changed after 9/11, our fact sheet changed to reflect that," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told Foreign Policy. He noted that the FBI's website has long-emphasized the agency's national security focus. "We rank our top 10 priorities and CT [counterterrorism] is first, counterintel is second, cyber is third," he said. "So it is certainly accurate to say our primary function is national security."
Not that there's anything wrong with National Security (at least, as a general principle), but don't we already have the NSA, the CIA and DHS for that? So we're now running four agencies with similar mission statements? Isn't "law enforcement" already part of national security?
Anyway, apparently enforcing laws is no longer the FBI's primary function.
Wait, what?