Kansas City, Mo. — About 26 FBI agents and local police officers are tracking terrorism leads as part of a full-time task force announced Friday.
The task force covers Kansas and western Missouri, with officers based in Kansas City, Jefferson City and Springfield in Missouri and Garden City, Salina, Topeka and Wichita in Kansas.
The task force, which began gathering at the FBI's Kansas City office during the past two weeks, will begin by sifting some of the 200,000 terrorism-related leads that poured in after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza said. The task force will also deal with any new terrorist attacks, Lanza said.
FBI agents dealt with the most promising leads immediately after Sept. 11, but other leads that were promising, but not pressing, were set aside, Lanza said.
The task force includes officers from the highway patrols in both states; police from Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas City, Kan.; and Overland Park, Kan.; the Kansas Bureau of Investigation; the U.S. Postal Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Many of those agencies sent officers to work full time at the FBI's Kansas City office, Lanza said.
"The various agencies were more than willing to supply the personnel that were involved," Lanza said.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol has its own task force of six officers around the state, said Lt. Tim Hull.
Hull said the patrol has made an open-ended commitment to providing officers for investigating terrorism leads.
"It's probably going to be around awhile," he said.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.