The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact by 1991 significantly altered the internationalenvironment. Transnational issues, (1) such as narcotics, terrorism,money laundering, economic espionage, and shipments of materials forweapons of mass destruction (WMD) have risen in importance, in some cases becoming more urgent than traditionalgeopolitical concerns. The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), George Tenet, in his annual assessment ofnationalsecurity challenges in February 2001, renewed the heavy emphasis on transnational issues that had characterizedhistestimony in previous years: The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving. State sponsored terrorism appears to have declined over the past five years, but transnational groups-with decentralizedleadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt-are emerging. We are seeing few centrally controlledoperations,and more acts initiated and executed at lower levels. (2) Long before attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in September 2001 galvanized American public opinion,observers noted that, among the American public, there was greater concern about international crime, especiallyto theextent that it can reach into the country, than about many other aspects of the current international environment. (3) Although the responsibilities of U.S. courts and law enforcement agencies have always included activities that occuroutside U.S. territorial borders, e.g. , smuggling, piracy, etc ., such activities have not usuallybeen considered in the samecategory as military threats posed by foreign countries that are the responsibilities of the State and DefenseDepartmentsand the Intelligence Community. Changed international realities have, however, led to a more expansiveinternational rolefor law enforcement agencies, combined with the employment of intelligence agencies--and the operational armsof theState and Defense Departments--in efforts to counter them. Thus, there has arisen, on one hand, the phenomenonofagencies charged with domestic law enforcement acquiring extensive overseas missions and, on the other,intelligenceagencies focusing on illegal activities in foreign countries. The evolution and intermingling of law enforcement and intelligence efforts have served to blur distinctions between lawand security policy that, in statutory principle and in administrative practice, have been kept separate and distinct. TheFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the nation's principal law enforcement agency, has attained a much moreprominentinternational role in recent years, assigning increased numbers of agents overseas to expand contacts with foreigngovernments and to acquire information about potential transnational threats. The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) andother intelligence agencies are devoting greatly increased resources to counterterrorism and counternarcoticsactivities. Asa CIA official has noted: Today, there is no clear primacy for either the law enforcement or intelligence communities in the realms of international terrorism, narcotics, proliferation (as well as, in some cases,counterintelligence). Still, the law enforcement and intelligence communities remain designed and operated infundamentally dissimilar manners, retaining different legal authorities, internal modes of organization, andgoverningparadigms. (4) There appear, in addition, to be few well-understood criteria for choosing the most appropriate approach in a givensituation, and also a sense among some policy analysts that ambitious law enforcement agency heads have not fullyappreciated the complexities of these threats in an international environment within which the United States mustprotectits national security interests. Beyond addressing the need for closer cooperation among law enforcement and intelligence agencies, however, lay largerand more complicated issues that some believe have not yet been fully considered. (5) Many observers continue to expressconcerns about the employment of intelligence agencies, using any number of surreptitious collection techniques,in layingthe groundwork for criminal proceedings. Such concerns are deeper and more serious than the diversion of finiteassetsfrom more traditional responsibilities. On the other hand, the decision to consider certain significant threats from outside U.S. borders as law enforcement matterspresumes that adequate legal channels, either in international law or in U.S. law, exist within which such concernscan beresolved. This presumption is, however, seriously questioned by those who believe that international law remainsin largemeasure ill-developed, and that the extraterritorial reach of domestic statutes is likely to remain distinctly limited. The useof law enforcement mechanisms against international threats may also imply that non-legal instruments, such asmilitaryforce or a covert action by an intelligence agency, are less important and can be deemphasized. Questioning thisassumption, observers argue that some important international outcomes are utterly unobtainable through judicialprocesses. In 1999, military force was deployed in support of international law enforcement. U.S. armed forces undertook air strikesas part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Serbian forces and other targets not only to halt thedestabilization ofother Balkan countries by Serbian attacks on Kosovar Albanians, but also to stop violations of international law,crimesagainst humanity occurring as part of a policy of "ethnic cleansing." According to President Clinton, the UnitedStates wasinvolved in Operation Allied Force because we have "a moral responsibility to oppose crimes against humanity andmassethnic and religious killing and cleansing where we can." (6) There is little question that the lines currently dividing law enforcement and security issues are blurred. In severalinstances, different approaches to transnational issues appear to some observers to have been confused andcounterproductive. Especially worrisome in this regard was the FBI's withholding information regarding illegalChinesepolitical contributions from the Secretary of State prior to an official visit to Beijing in 1997, and sharp divisionsover U.S.support for certain dissident Iraqi groups in the mid-1990s among law enforcement and intelligence agencies thatmay havecontributed to their violent suppression by forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 caused considerable discussion of therelationship between law enforcement and national security agencies, including the Intelligence Community. Someobservers argued that inadequate exchanges of information among agencies may have contributed to a failure to gainadvance warning of the attack. (7) A variety of viewswas expressed on the best way to deal with those who planned andsupported the attacks, but it was rapidly decided by the Bush Administration that a military attack (supported bycovertintelligence forces) on the Al Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan was the best response, an approach that gainedwidesupport among the American public. Anti-terrorism legislation enacted in October 2001 included provisionsfacilitatinginformation sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Given the clear possibility that the international role of law enforcement agencies will continue to grow,observers believethat greater consideration should be given to making less ambiguous distinctions between law enforcement andsecuritypolicy and to the relationships between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. As one journalistic account oftheevolving relationship between the two communities concluded: [Coordination] sounds simple in concept. In reality, it is likely to prove very difficult, challenging constitutional limits on domestic law-enforcement activity while drawing intelligence officersevercloser to proceedings that could compromise sources and methods of intelligence collection. The momentum isclearlyheaded toward something like a merger between the two worlds. It is dismaying that this move to reinvent the relationship between spies and federal agents took place with virtually no meaningful public debate and little journalisticscrutiny. (8) Congress may choose to concern itself with the broad contours of intelligence cooperation with law enforcement. Congressauthorizes the various instrumentalities of U.S. policy, appropriates funds, and conducts oversight. The ways thatCongressfunds and oversees law enforcement and intelligence agencies may not, however, be optimized to support theirevolvingand overlapping missions in the post-Cold War world. Congress has reviewed the coordinative mechanisms thathave beenestablished, but has not provided them with statutory charters. Oversight of law enforcement, foreign policy, and intelligence is largely undertaken by different sets of committees withdisparate agendas. Oversight of the State Department is conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee andtheHouse International Relations Committee. Intelligence activities (including those of the FBI) are overseen by theSenateSelect Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Since thepreponderance ofintelligence activities are undertaken by Defense Department agencies, there is also a certain amount of concurrentjurisdiction shared with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Law enforcement efforts are overseenprimarily by the two Judiciary Committees. Appropriations Committees also have jurisdiction, but diplomatic, lawenforcement, defense, and intelligence efforts are handled by different sub-committees in both the Senate and theHouse ofRepresentatives. Given the different oversight responsibilities, it is difficult, at best, to provide seamless oversight of intelligence and lawenforcement activities abroad. The jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committees is very wide, encompassing manydomesticissues, including abortion and immigration and, in the Senate, confirmation of Federal judges; for a variety ofreasons, therehave been no regular reauthorizations of Justice Department programs since FY1980. (9) On the other hand, the Intelligenceand Armed Services Committees often focus on procurement of advanced technologies and the links betweenintelligenceand the military services rather than on operational practices. In addition, neither the Intelligence nor the JudiciaryCommittees usually deal directly with questions of foreign policy that are the province of the Senate ForeignRelationsCommittee and the House International Relations Committee. In situations in which law enforcement, military, diplomatic, and intelligence efforts are closely related, significantchallenges to effective congressional oversight may arise given the disparate concerns of several committees andtheexecutive branch's understandable tendency to maximize flexibility in employing different instruments underdifferentcircumstances. Possible new approaches to oversight could include joint hearings or even the eventualestablishment ofselect or joint committees. More difficult would be further changes in statutes that affect cooperation between law enforcement and intelligenceagencies.