Crisis spurs FBI to enlist intelligence resources to create a master database of missing Native Americans
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is increasingly stepping into the role of the “detective” in a crisis in the nation’s history.
The bureau has established a database of missing Native Americans that was developed around one of its most startling intelligence findings and used in one of the nation’s most successful operations.
The FBI has created its own version of what former FBI agent John Douglas would refer to as a “missing native” database, and will use it to search through data for potentially missing indigenous Americans.
The case of the Amache-Leupp family, of Utah, has led to a growing national debate over the FBI’s involvement in the case of missing indigenous Americans.
The FBI has said that it is still in the process of developing the database and has not yet made any information public. The bureau, though, has said that it will be “actively involved” when the databases is finally finished.
“We’re going to be actively involved and working with them” to develop the database, Director Comey said in a recent interview with PBS. “… We’ll have an active, active role. Now, how active it will be, I’ll let you know in terms of a couple of weeks.”
The database is not the product of the bureau, the Utah-based FBI office (FBI-UT) or the Salt Lake Tribune. It was created by the FBI, with assistance from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Intelligence (FBI-IA) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The FBI has been searching for decades, using traditional methods, through their own “Missing Persons” data base to find an indigenous missing person. In the case of the Amache-Leupp family, the FBI found that the mother and baby were likely missing