Law Enforcement Critiqued Regarding Predators Of Children

F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Are Faulted Over Child Predators on Web

As much as we all abhor pedophiles and their ability to use Internet and telecommunication resources to prey on children, we have to approach the problem with some methods and rationale that do not throw the baby out with the bath water. We all want these criminals locked up. We all want our children to be safe... But we do not want our rights thrown away in the process, nor do we want our government to act irresponsibly in the process. But when they do investigate, and arrest, we want them to do it with all due efficiency, creating a locked-down case where no doubts about the guilt are in the air.

Lawmakers from both parties continued on Thursday to question the commitment of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to halting the online exploitation of children. They also accused the agencies of failing to provide major witnesses for a Congressional investigation into the matter.

House members voiced their protest before and after testimony on the second day of hearings of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, part of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The tenor of the hearings, which focused on law enforcement efforts to capture online predators and rescue child victims, signaled that a showdown might be imminent.

"We keep trying to cooperate with the Justice Department and the F.B.I.," said Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, the chairman of the full committee.

Speaking directly to William W. Mercer, a United States attorney for Montana who testified at the hearings, Mr. Barton said: "You folks seem bound and determined to be as uncooperative as possible. I'm going to call the attorney general one more time, and we had better get the people we want to testify."

Mr. Mercer testified that the caseload of the child exploitation section had increased 445 percent in the last four years, adding that federal prosecutions of child pornography and abuse cases increased to more than 1,500 cases last year from 344 in 1995.

"The attorney general himself," he said, "has made very clear his and the department's commitment to protecting children from sexual exploitation over the Internet." The urgency of the hearings, where witnesses from agencies including the Phoenix police, the Postal Inspection Service and the Department of Homeland Security testified, was underscored by the arrest on Tuesday of a Homeland Security spokesman, Brian J. Doyle, on charges of using the Internet to try to seduce a Florida detective posing as a teenager.

Officials on hand to testify, including James Plitt, chief of the Cyber Crimes Center for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, said arrests of federal employees had come as no surprise to them.

The hearing followed testimony on Tuesday by Justin Berry, a teenager who was molested by online predators. Kurt Eichenwald, a reporter for The New York Times, chronicled Mr. Berry's experience in an article in December that spurred the Congressional investigation.

Citing Mr. Berry's testimony that he had no faith in the Justice Department's efforts to act on information he had provided to them, Representative Edward Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, asked, "Why has it taken so long for the department to act and rescue children in imminent danger of being molested?"

Mr. Whitfield also asked why certain witnesses, including Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity section, and Raul Roldan, chief of the F.B.I.'s Cyber Crimes section, who appeared on television news programs Thursday morning, did "not have time for us."