New York: American intelligence agency FBI is struggling to find enough agents and resources to investigate criminal wrongdoing tied to the countrys economic crisis, a media report said on Sunday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation slashed its criminal investigative work force to expand its national security role after the September 11 attacks, shifting more than 1,800 agents, or nearly one-third of all agents in criminal programmes, to terrorism and intelligence duties, a report published in New York Times said.

Citing current and former bureau officials, the paper said that the cutbacks have left the bureau seriously exposed in investigating areas like white-collar crime, which has taken on urgent importance in recent weeks because of the nations economic woes.

The pressure on the intelligence agency, it said, has recently increased with the disclosure of criminal investigations into some of the largest players in the financial collapse, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The FBI is planning to double the number of agents working financial crimes by reassigning several hundred agents amid a mood of national alarm. But some people inside and out of the Justice Department wonder where the agents will come from and whether they will be enough.

So depleted are the ranks of the FBIs white-collar investigators that executives in the private sector say they have had difficulty attracting the Bureaus attention in cases involving possible frauds of millions of dollars, it added.

Since 2004,the report said, FBI officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish the ranks of agents handling non-terrorism investigations, according to records and interviews.

But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused on counterterrorism.

Citing previously undisclosed internal FBI data, the paper aid the cutbacks have been particularly severe in staffing for investigations into white-collar crimes like mortgage fraud, with a loss of 625 agents, or 36 per cent of its 2001 levels.

Over all, the number of criminal cases that the FBI has brought to federal prosecutors including a wide range of crimes like drug trafficking and violent crime dropped 26 per cent in the last seven years, going from 11,029 cases to 8,187,Justice Department data showed.

Source : DNA