Eric Holder

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday told a panel studying the financial crisis that combating white-collar crimes is "a real priority" for the government, even if it bumps up against another urgent mission, combating terrorism.

Holder told the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that the FBI is investigating more than 2,800 mortgage fraud cases, up almost 400 percent from five years ago, and he hopes to have 50 new FBI agents and 155 new attorneys working financial-crimes cases in the coming year.

Still, Holder said, "our resources, even given those additions, are relatively limited, and these cases are complex ones. They take time and money in order to bring to fruition."

Commission Chairman Phil Angelides asked Holder if the diversion of 500 investigators from financial crimes to terrorist activities since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and recent terrorism threats makes it harder for the Justice Department to investigate financial crimes.

Holder said moving investigative resources to national security is understandable and suggested the need to expand terrorism-related investigations wasn't stopping the Justice Department from making "fighting white-collar crime a real priority."

Angelides, a Democrat and former California state treasurer, grilled Holder on a Sept. 4, 2004, warning from a top FBI official about "an epidemic of mortgage fraud coursing across this country" and the dire crisis that could occur if it were left unchecked. That was four years before the financial meltdown on Wall Street that led to the collapse of some of the nation's largest financial institutions and to unprecedented government bailouts for the survivors.

Holder said he wasn't aware of the warning but would check into it.