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Psst, information tips on the rise from public to FBI

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Cynthia Stanton never knows what looms when she takes her first look into the computer queue of FBI tips awaiting her attention.

Perhaps it's the key to a terrorism case — or perhaps not.

"'I saw Osama bin Laden driving a cab in Brooklyn,' I got that once," Stanton says. He wasn't.

Stanton is a technical information specialist in the FBI counterterrorism division that fields public tips via a form on the FBI's website. She investigates more than 100 a day.

The FBI's Public Access Center Unit opened in September 2001 — in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks — to collect and vet terrorism tips from the public.

The FBI expects to receive its 2 millionth tip this month. After tapering off in the years after the attacks, tips are increasing to the highest level since 2002.

The public submitted 212,384 tips as of Aug. 14, on par with 2002, when 375,893 tips came in, FBI records show. Tips can be filed online at tips.fbi.gov.

Many go nowhere and fewer than a third involve terrorism, but FBI agents run down every lead — an average of 815 a day, says John O'Neill, assistant section chief for the FBI's National Threat Center.

"We take them all seriously," he says. "It's the one that you don't take seriously that becomes the 9/11."

Analysts, supervised by FBI special agents, read every tip and conduct a preliminary investigation. They pass legitimate tips to FBI agents in field offices or to local, state and international police. Tips in other languages are translated by the FBI's language unit.

Looking for puzzle pieces

Numbers spike with publicity, O'Neill says. An Oprah segment on child predators spurred a flurry of activity. He credits the steady rise this year to growing public interest in news events, such as the upcoming presidential election and the Olympics.

"When you have two candidates talking about terrorism, then you have the public thinking about terrorism again," he says.

Terrorist attacks elsewhere, such as the London subway bombing, also generate more tips, says Martin Ficke, a retired special-agent-in-charge for Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York City.

The 9/11 Commission found that intelligence and law enforcement agencies did not connect the dots that would have linked the terrorists to one another and to the hijacking plot, Ficke says.

"The government wants that little piece of information. When in doubt, call it in," he says. "It may be the one piece of the puzzle that the investigator needs."

Many tips come from estranged spouses, spurned lovers or disgruntled neighbors seeking revenge. Some people submit gibberish or merely forward newspaper articles.

Other times, Stanton and her colleagues come across a genuine crime tip or terrorism lead. They have conducted preliminary investigations on bomb and massacre threats at schools, drug dealing and identity-theft rings, says Bret Bruchok, chief of the Public Access Center.

"Quite a few aren't federal crimes, but they are crimes nonetheless," he says.

Bizarre, but still credible

The center employs 25 people who work in round-the-clock shifts. It costs $600,000 a year to maintain the website and the computer system that tracks the tips, FBI spokesman Special Agent Jason Pack says.

O'Neill says agents never know when they're going to get "that one tip that's going to lead to something like the Lackawanna 6" — an alleged sleeper cell of six Yemeni immigrants who lived in Lackawanna, N.Y. An anonymous letter to the FBI prompted an investigation. The immigrants admitted to training in al-Qaeda camps and eventually were convicted of supporting terrorism.

About 2% of the tips have investigative value, O'Neill says.

One recent morning, Stanton fielded a report about illegal gun dealing in a London, Ontario, neighborhood. Although the tip came from a Canadian, Stanton ran her basic checks on the informant and the tip and flagged it as worthy for Canadian police.

Supervisory Special Agent Daniel Panicoe checked out leads on mortgage fraud, false Social Security numbers allegedly used for immigration fraud and a report of someone taking photos near a Baltimore train line.

Some false or bizarre tips still lead to criminal charges. One man posted his diatribe against a hard-rock group on the site.

"I am going to kill the rock band Korn … soon and you had better watch them," he wrote in September. "I will kill their wives and go to jail happy knowing that I slit their throats."

He included his name and contact information. Agents investigated. On Feb. 15, Adrian McCoy, 23, of Sacramento, pleaded guilty to making interstate threats. Sentencing is scheduled Sept. 19; he faces up to five years in prison.

Stanton doesn't mind unusual or false leads. "We exist to prevent the next Sept. 11," she says.