Soon, Army counterintelligence officials expect to have new authorities to search, execute warrants and make arrests off-post for national security or terrorism investigations.

The new law “allows all Army civilian [counterintelligence] agents to conduct searches, to execute warrants and to make arrests off of the installation, because that’s where the majority of our people live today,” Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., last week. 

The rules would bring Army counterintelligence agents in line with off-base enforcement rules that cover other military investigators who focus on criminal cases, like the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, or OSI. The Army Counterintelligence Command was stood up in 2021 with a one-star general at the helm and has nearly 3,000 counterintelligence agents, both civilians or soldiers. The new authorities are specific to the command’s civilian agents.

The new authorities will give counterintelligence agents the ability to investigate soldiers suspected of helping adversaries gain access to classified systems, selling secret military information on weapon systems, or attempting to take part in mass casualty events.

For instance, the authorities will give agents the ability to independently run forensics on a device to find information that would be part of the investigation “which would lead to the potential arrest,” Hale said. 

“It’s to enable protection of the Army and we will do it in any space that is out there,” said Scott Grovatt, regional Special Agent in Charge at Army Counterintelligence Command.

Since most of the personnel under investigation by the Army Counterintelligence Command live off base, the Army previously needed to partner with outside law enforcement authorities like the FBI or Army Criminal Investigation Division, CID to issue warrants or make arrests. With the new authorities, the command can do that independently.

The authority will also apply to digital investigations, similar to how FBI agents are allowed to go undercover in online chatrooms or social media spaces to thwart or entrap potential national security threats.

“We will have the full power,” just like other federal authorities “to investigate, arrest and prosecute in any venue or any platform that the adversary shows up on,” Grovatt said.

The new authorities for Army counterintelligence agents were written into US Code section 7377 by Congress in the fiscal year 2025 defense policy bill. A Congressional bill summary said the authority was previously only given to special agents from the Army’s CID, Air Force OSI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Since the counterintelligence command was stood up, agents have been part of 25 arrests and carried out more than 650 national security investigations. The Army also has its counterintelligence agents supporting the U.S.-Mexico border mission as well as U.S. Northern Command, officials said.

“We really wanted to expand authorities to enable agents to get after the adversary qu