S. Hrg. 110-694
FOCUS ON FUSION CENTERS: A PROGRESS REPORT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL,
AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS
AND INTEGRATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 17, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS
AND INTEGRATION
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas, Chairman
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN WARNER, Virginia
Kristin Sharp, Staff Director
Michael McBride, Minority Staff Director
Amanda Fox, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statement:
Page
Senator Pryor................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Captain Charles W. Rapp, Director, Maryland Coordination and
Analysis Center................................................ 2
Matthew Bettenhausen, Director, California Office of Homeland
Security....................................................... 4
Russell M. Porter, Director, State of Iowa Intelligence Fusion
Center......................................................... 7
Eileen R. Larence, Director, Homeland Security and Justice
Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office.................. 14
Jack Tomarchio, Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and
Analysis, U.S. Department of Homeland Security................. 16
Vance E. Hitch, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of
Justice........................................................ 19
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Bettenhausen, Mathew:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 35
Hitch, Vance E.:
Testimony.................................................... 19
Prepared statement........................................... 83
Larence, Eileen R.:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 57
Porter, Russell M.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 46
Rapp, Captain Charles W.:
Testimony.................................................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Tomarchio, Jack:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 75
APPENDIX
Questions and responses submitted for the Record from:
Mr. Rapp..................................................... 96
Mr. Bettenhausen............................................. 98
Mr. Porter................................................... 101
Mr. Tomarchio................................................ 103
FOCUS ON FUSION CENTERS: A PROGRESS REPORT
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and
Private Sector Preparedness and Integration,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark Pryor,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. I will go ahead and call the meeting to
order. I want to thank everyone for being here today.
You may not remember, but years ago there was a game show
called ``Beat the Clock.'' That is what we are doing today,
because the Senate is trying to schedule a series of votes that
will start at 3 or maybe 3:15 p.m.. So I am going to keep my
comments short, but if you all want to go ahead and take your
full 5 minutes on your opening, you can. I do not think we have
to keep it that short, but if you want to abbreviate that, that
is fine, too.
Let me welcome everyone here to the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on
State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.
This hearing is entitled ``Focus on Fusion Centers: A Progress
Report.'' We have a great witness list today that I am going to
introduce in just a moment. In this hearing we are trying to
assess the role of the Federal Government in coordinating with
and providing guidance to fusion centers. And for the general
public who may not know what a fusion center is, we are going
to be talking about that today because there are some different
definitions. Different States and communities have some nuances
within their fusion centers so they are not uniform or easy to
define. But basically fusion centers are a cooperation between
two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise, and
information with the goal of maximizing the ability to detect,
prevent, investigate, apprehend, and respond to criminal and
terrorist activity. I know that is a mouthful, but that is
generally what they do.
I would like to go ahead and introduce the first panel.
After introductions you may give your 5-minute opening
statements. Then I will have some questions. We may be joined
by other Senators.
First, let me welcome Captain Charles Rapp. He is the
Director of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center.
Captain Rapp is a 25-year veteran of the Baltimore County
Police Department. In addition to his current position, he has
held command positions as a precinct commander, criminal
investigations commander, and academy director. He will talk
about the day-to-day functions of a fusion center and baseline
capabilities.
Next, we will have Matt Bettenhausen, Homeland Security
Adviser, State of California. For the past 3 years, he has
served the State of California while concurrently acting as
Chairman of the National Governors' Association's Homeland
Security Advisory Council. Prior to that, he was DHS' first
Director of State and Territorial Coordination. He will be
looking at coordination and cooperation between State and
regional fusion centers, as well as how States can use fusion
centers to protect critical infrastructure.
And last, we will have Russell Porter. He is the Director
of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center. Mr. Porter has been
assigned to work criminal intelligence since 1984. In addition
to serving Iowa as Fusion Center Director and Chief of the
Intelligence Bureau, he also holds the chairmanship of the Law
Enforcement Intelligence Unit, the oldest law enforcement
intelligence organization in the country. Today he will talk
about the importance of prioritizing civil liberties and
privacy when conducting this type of analysis.
Captain Rapp, we will start with you.
TESTIMONY OF CAPTAIN CHARLES W. RAPP,\1\ DIRECTOR, MARYLAND
COORDINATION AND ANALYSIS CENTER
Mr. Rapp. Thank you, Chairman Pryor, and I would like to
thank you for inviting me to provide comments to you today. The
fusion center program I think is crucial to detecting terrorist
activity designed to jeopardize the safety of our citizens.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Rapp appears in the Appendix on
page 00.
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Obviously, my comments today are based on my experience
managing the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center (MCAC)
over the past 2 years. I have learned a great deal about the
intelligence community and the role fusion centers should play
in that process. The level of information available to State,
local, and tribal partners is unprecedented in volume. The flow
of this information is greatly improved. One of our greatest
challenges is to expeditiously process the profusion of
information to determine what is useful to our consumers. State
and local public safety officials require a great deal of
information on threats and the mechanics of the threats.
Managing the information flow is only one challenge for fusion
centers.
It is a highly dynamic process. We constantly adjust and
refine our procedures to ensure maximum information relevance
to our consumers. Local training for our analysts is key to
achieving this end. We must teach each analyst to more
efficiently glean any and all relevant data for their
consumers. Federal training programs can be beneficial, but
usually take an analyst away from the job for an extensive
period and are not necessarily geared to the local level. We
need to develop specialized training for State and local
analysts that can be completed in segments and/or using a
multifaceted method of instruction. It is also imperative that
we make our Federal partners understand that giving us access
to information does not necessarily equate to sharing
information.
Another facet of this process is to educate State and local
managers about what information they need and what they can
expect from the fusion centers. Many State and local managers
narrowly seek only tactical information, while ignoring a
broader strategic analysis that could benefit their agencies.
The intelligence cycle and the information they could receive
is still unclear to many of these decisionmakers.
Collection of information is another challenge for the
local jurisdictions. In Maryland we have gone to a regional
concept. We now have three regional centers that are operating
in more rural parts of the State. We hope to take those
regional centers and collect information locally which can
benefit the local partners of those regional centers and then
direct their information into the MCAC as a main hub of
information.
In the MCAC, we will be able to take that information and
use it with the participating agencies not only to see a better
threat picture for the entire State of Maryland, but also
hopefully to put information back to the local agencies, both
from the Federal Government and from our main center, that will
be beneficial to their jurisdictions.
The additional critical role that fusion centers are
fulfilling is a conduit to pass information quickly between
States so the information is available to first responders when
they need it. Fusion centers are poised to detect precursors to
terrorist activity. They allow for a vigorous exchange of
information on breaking events among first responders
nationwide. Shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois
University are recent examples. One of the first issues
addressed is establishing if there is a link to terrorism.
Obtaining and providing accurate information is essential to
the role of fusion centers, and fusion centers need to act as a
hub of information as well--places where information can be
reported and take the responsibility of passing it to the first
responders and others that need the information. Fusion centers
are sharing more time-sensitive information about organized
activities and gang-related activities more quickly than they
have in the past.
Our next largest challenge will be deciding what
information and capabilities a fusion center should provide.
Last year, I sat on a committee that developed a draft of
baseline capabilities for fusion centers. This draft was meant
to develop some core capacities and to provide some guidance as
to the capacities that the group thought would be important for
fusion centers to meet. The baseline capabilities were meant to
be obtainable by each center and provide some direction on
where they should develop. The criteria for the baseline
document was developed based on what would satisfy current gaps
and would benefit first responders with a statewide
information-sharing strategy. Some of the baseline capabilities
represent a challenge for many of the centers, including my
own, which has not met all of the baseline capabilities needs.
Once baseline capabilities are accepted and adopted, fusion
centers will know where to focus efforts to develop core
capacities. The next step will be funding the core capacities.
Once a measure has been developed, then the value of each
center can be assessed. However, without a consistent funding
stream some centers may never attain the core capabilities. My
own center depends on Homeland Security Grant Program Funds and
Urban Area Security Initiative Funds to operate the center.
The next step is using the core capacities to develop the
operational components within the States. Baseline capabilities
require a statewide threat assessment listing vulnerabilities
and gaps from which prioritized collection requirements can be
derived. Once the centers develop the prioritized information
needs, they can clearly communicate that to collectors.
Collectors will then report back to the fusion centers
enhancing the capacity of the State to detect potential
precursors to terrorist activity. This should then be the focal
point for Federal agencies to synthesize their intelligence
with any intelligence gathered on a local level. This is not
happening. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces have been
reluctant to integrate fusion centers into their intelligence-
gathering operations. Instead, they continue to rely on State
and local task force members to relay information to their
agencies. This compartmentalization of information gathering
and sharing is counterproductive and counterintuitive to the
fusion center concept. Without the full cooperation of our
intelligence-gathering agencies, the effectiveness of our
fusion centers and thereby the safety of our citizens will
always be compromised.
We have made many strides in developing linkages to Federal
information streams. The Department of Homeland Security,
Intelligence and Analysis Division, headed by Under Secretary
Charles Allen, is proactively moving forward. Over the past 2
years, we have developed the Homeland Security Information
Network State and Local Intelligence Portal Community of
Interest, known as HS SLIC, which has become a vital link and
extremely beneficial tool for fusion centers. The advisory
board, with one representative from each State, approves
membership to the portal which ensures data is being shared
with appropriate audiences. The connectivity of the States
within this portal is very effective and allows members to
exchange information within a secure environment.
In addition, that advisory board has been called by Mr.
Allen to offer perspectives to him on the information flow from
the State and local governments to the Federal Government, and
that has been an open dialogue which has been very beneficial
for the States.
With time running down, I am going to cut off there, but I
would be happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Mr. Bettenhausen.
TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW BETTENHAUSEN,\1\ DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA
OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Bettenhausen. Thank you, Senator Pryor, and we
appreciate your interest in this as well as your leadership in
making America a safer, better prepared Nation, and I
appreciate the opportunity to be here on behalf of Governor
Schwarzenegger and the National Governors' Association.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Bettenhausen appears in the
Appendix on page 29.
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Because this is also informational, I would like to share a
couple stories with you to demonstrate why terrorism prevention
is everybody's business.
Prior to September 11, 2001, the view was that terrorism
prevention and prosecution was exclusively a Federal function.
And it was. The FBI had the exclusive jurisdiction over
domestically--CIA and some of the other intelligence
community--and foreign. And we had set up a number of walls and
barriers to that. And I have spent most of my career as a
Federal prosecutor, but I have also spent probably more than
anybody else as a State Homeland Security Adviser, both in
California and previously in Illinois.
But the example that I like to use is Timothy McVeigh in
1995. When that Oklahoma City bombing happened, the initial
part of that investigation moved to Chicago because the Federal
building had been bombed there but, more importantly, at the
time the two reservation systems for the United States, Sabre
and Apollo, were located in Chicago. And we, as a Federal
Government, were then looking to the international connections
to terrorism with that tragic bombing incident. And while we,
as a Federal Government, were busying ourselves looking for
that international connection to terrorism, there was a trooper
who was out doing his day-in and day-out job who pulled over an
individual for a loose license plate. And because he knew
something was not right, he held that individual. We
subsequently realized that Timothy McVeigh, that individual he
held, was the perpetrator of that and changed the entire course
of that investigation.
Moving further along, in 1996, Eric Rudolph, the bomber of
abortion clinics and the 1996 Olympics, again was the subject
of a wide-ranging Federal manhunt for nearly 6 years--over 5
years. Eric Rudolph was brought to justice by a rookie cop on
routine patrol while he was dumpster diving behind a grocery
store.
What those two examples illustrate is the importance of
local law enforcement. They are our eyes and ears that are out
there. The combating terrorism and terrorism prevention is not
just about the intel community and the Federal Government. In
fact, until we fully entrust, empower, and enlist our local
first preventers and first responders, we are not going to have
a truly effective terrorism prevention program. They are the
ones who can collect the dots so that they can be connected.
This is not just about international terrorism, but situations
like we have also had in California. Day-in and day-out crimes
can lead to these kinds of cells, and we saw that in
California--in the Los Angeles area--a series of convenience
store and gas station robberies that just were connected, but
little did we know had a huge connection to a cell that was
intending on bombing LAX, synagogues, military recruiting
stations, and National Guard depots, which was well along in
their operational planning. But it was because we had taken the
time to train individual officers on terrorism awareness that
when we executed the search warrant on those apartments, rather
than pass over jihadi material while they were looking for
proceeds, the guns, and other evidence of the robbery, they
knew that they had something more. And what ensued then was a
model of Federal, State, county, and local law enforcement
cooperation to dismantle and prosecute that cell, which will be
going to trial this year.
And when I say terrorism prevention is no longer just a
Federal responsibility, it is everybody's business. We
frequently talk about the public's responsibility to be
prepared. But also, if they see something unusual, say
something. And the Fort Dix Six case was a perfect example of
that where an individual citizen working at a Circuit City
where the terrorists presented their training video on how they
might attack Fort Dix recognized that something was not right.
And the actions of that individual citizen resulted in, again,
another cooperative joint investigation that brought down a
cell and protected the military folks at Fort Dix.
So this is what is important about making sure that we
enlist, entrust, and empower our local law enforcement and
other first responders. This includes fire as well. And that is
the importance of these fusion centers. It is bringing people
together.
The captain just talked about the fact about access. One of
the things that we just have not gotten around to since
September 11, 2001, is stovepiping of information. The beauty
of fusion centers is that you can bring people in who have
access to their databases and can then cooperate and work
together and break down these barriers that exist and also
ensure cooperation and coordination of effort. Terrorism
prevention is not just about prosecution. It is about
protecting. It is also about interdicting and stopping
something from happening. So it is not just simply a law
enforcement prosecutorial function.
So our fusion centers need to be focused on all crime
because we know terrorists use all crimes, from credit card
fraud to the robberies we saw in Los Angeles, to finance their
operations. They also need to be all-hazards, and when I say
``all-hazards,'' we need to be looking at the consequences that
can happen because we are not going to be 100 percent
successful. We cannot bat a thousand. But we also know that we
are--in California and throughout the Nation, there is
earthquake risk, there are tornadoes, there are tsunamis, there
are hurricanes that we also have to be prepared for. And so in
that all-hazard perspective and what you also asked me to
address is the idea that we also need to enlist the private
sector and that these fusion centers must also have an
infrastructure protection role. And that is critical because we
need to be able, as we better share information on the
international risk and our threats, vulnerabilities, and
consequences, we need to be able to match that up in terms of
what we need to then look at better protect in terms of the
critical infrastructure because we know al Qaeda's interest is
in killing a lot of American citizens as well as disrupting our
way of life. And that includes attacking our infrastructure,
whether it is oil pipelines, what makes our country great and
our economy moving.
So the idea of integrating infrastructure protection into
that is an essential need, and that is what we have done in
California by creating a State Terrorism Threat Assessment
System that has a State fusion center at the top to coordinate
across the State and then four regional fusion centers, again,
driving this bottom up so that we have better information
sharing.
I see that my time is up, and we look forward to your
questions.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Mr. Porter.
TESTIMONY OF RUSSELL M. PORTER,\1\ DIRECTOR, STATE OF IOWA
INTELLIGENCE FUSION CENTER
Mr. Porter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am especially
pleased to be here with two of my contemporaries, Mr.
Bettenhausen and Mr. Rapp, and I appreciate the Subcommittee's
interest in this topic.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Porter appears in the Appendix on
page 46.
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I want to offer just two points: First, a brief overview
about fusion centers and their progress; and, second, some
remarks about a key priority that has been established by
local, tribal, State, and Federal Governments as we have moved
forward together.
I appreciate your acknowledgment in my introduction about
my 30 years of experience in law enforcement, 24 of which have
been in the criminal intelligence business, much of which has
been spent on advocating for the protection of privacy and
civil liberties, and I am involved in a host of groups
nationally that are advocating for this on behalf of fusion
centers and to help ensure that we are successful in that area.
In my 25 years of law enforcement intelligence experience,
I would say that fusion centers have emerged as what may be the
most significant change in the structural landscape of criminal
intelligence in at least the past 25 years. Overall, we have
seen significant, but incremental, progress in many areas of
information sharing, such as the issuance of national security
clearances at unprecedented levels and access to information
previously unavailable to local and State officials:
Collocation of personnel from all levels of government at the
Joint Terrorism Task Forces and other locations, establishment
of the Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group
(ITACG), and recurring policy-level meetings with local,
tribal, State, and Federal officials through the Criminal
Intelligence Coordinating Council, the ITACG Advisory Council,
and other groups. Each of those has served to improve our
information sharing, and while acknowledging the progress, we
recognize that there is considerable work yet to be
accomplished, and a continued sense of urgency, I think, will
help us all maintain the momentum.
But as we establish this national, integrated network of
fusion centers and as we work to strengthen our information-
sharing capabilities, I think it is important to put first
things first. And a key priority that has emerged as fusion
centers have been developed is emphasizing the importance of
systemic and institutional protections for privacy and civil
liberties protections.
In looking at the history of this type of work in the
United States, it is one of the key areas that could pose a
downfall if we do not give it the priority that it deserves,
and let me give a brief history, if I may.
The 1960s, as we all know, were a period of turbulence and
unrest. We saw reported crime rise dramatically, and we saw
outbreaks of civil disorder. Federal commissions and agencies
advocated that local and State law enforcement agencies develop
intelligence capabilities. In 1967, the President's Crime
Commission urged every major city police department to have an
intelligence unit. In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on
Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission, recommended that police
agencies establish an intelligence system. In 1968, the
creation of LEAA, the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration, provided funding and technical support from
LEIA to establish some of these intelligence systems. And
finally, in 1973, the National Advisory Committee on Criminal
Justice Standards and Goals recommended that every police
agency and every State establish and maintain the capability to
gather and disseminate information. In fact, they recommended
that every State establish a central gathering, analysis, and
storage capability.
We are starting to see much of that history again. We are
reliving it at this time. However, unlike the 1960s and 1970s,
when we experienced a pattern of violations of privacy and
civil liberties in our history and in our practices, we are
taking steps to try and prevent that from occurring by
establishing and institutionalizing the strongest possible
protections for privacy and civil liberties. And, in fact, I
would market as a bright spot, as a star, the coordination
among levels of government with respect to this particular
issue. Rather than separately delivering training and technical
assistance to fusion centers, the Federal partners that we
have--in particular, the Department of Homeland Security, the
Department of Justice, with support from the Program Manager's
Office at the Information Sharing Environment, and the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI, through
support from Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative--
have combined their training and technical assistance in this
area to deliver it to every fusion center in the country at the
beginning of this process of establishing this national
integrated network of fusion centers.
And so as with other important issues surrounding the
establishment of fusion centers, there is much more work to do
in this area, but it is one of the bright spots in our progress
with fusion centers. And on behalf of my colleagues with whom I
work at all levels of government, I appreciate the opportunity
to have appeared here today. Thank you for your time, and I
look forward to any questions you may have.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. I want to thank all of you for
your service and for your testimony this morning. What do each
of you see as the most important contribution that fusion
centers are making or can make to safety and security? What is
the most important thing? Do you want to go ahead and start,
Mr. Rapp?
Mr. Rapp. Sure. Thank you, Senator. I think probably the
most important thing that we find is they are sharing
information between States more quickly. We are taking a lot of
information that previously would not have been necessarily
available to other law enforcement agencies and sending that
information out, crossing jurisdictions so you no longer have
those boundaries.
The other thing I think is important is we are taking
Federal law enforcement information, and we are blending that
with local information to make sure the beat cop has
information from all the Federal agencies, such as ICE or FBI,
information passed down to the street level. I think that is
one of the key things I have never seen in my career, and that
is working now.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Following on, I agree wholeheartedly with
that, and it is about leveraging the resources. Look, there are
only tens of thousands of Federal law enforcement--sworn law
enforcement agencies. There are over 800,000 law enforcement
agencies sworn at the State and local level. And, again, if we
fully enlist with them by providing them the education and
information that they need so that they can have terrorism
awareness training, this is a key to prevention in this
country.
I think the other key idea about this is, look, we are
never--it is difficult. It was a sea change for Federal
agencies in terms of cooperating and providing information,
breaking down the walls, even within the Department of Justice,
that the counterterrorism folks could not talk with the
criminal investigation people. So breaking down these walls by
actually having Federal partners, State partners, county and
local working together at that level, it breaks those walls
down. There is a lot of bureaucracy that tends to get built up,
and it is very hard to change the business process out here in
DC. But in the field, where the rubber meets the road, that is
the advantage that these fusion centers bring. And just tying
it in a little bit more, though, with everyday hazards, having
people thinking in advance and what we are doing in terms of
infrastructure protection, in terms of what is critical
infrastructure, what are the cascading effects, how are we
going to protect this, and how would we respond, whether it is
an earthquake that knocks down a building or whether it is
another criminal act of man, such as Timothy McVeigh, how are
we going to respond to save lives and property first, as our
first priority, but how do we help them by understanding what
is there and what is critical to prevent it from becoming a
bigger incident, and how do we quickly recover.
Senator Pryor. Mr. Porter.
Mr. Porter. From my perspective, fusion centers are about
knowing your environment. For people who manage resources and
have stewardship over resources or who must be involved in
helping allocate those resources or change security posture, we
have to understand the threat environment that exists out
there, which comes from sharing information, but that then
better allows one to leverage resources. So it is about
reducing uncertainty, reducing or preventing strategic surprise
and hopefully tactical surprise; and when you are homeland
security adviser or public safety commissioner with resources
to allocate, you want to make sure that you direct them in the
right place based on knowing your environment.
Senator Pryor. All three of you have touched on
information. You have said it in different ways and talked
about different aspects of it. But, Mr. Bettenhausen, in your
opening statement, you mentioned the traditional problem of
stovepiping. I am curious about your thoughts, and the panel's
thoughts, on the progress we are making with regard to breaking
down the stovepipes. You have all talked about how important it
is to share information. As I understand it, you all have
access to lots and lots and lots of different databases, some
Federal, some otherwise. And are you able to, first, access all
the information you need? And, second, are you able to analyze
it and understand it and actually use it to help?
Mr. Bettenhausen. It is a work in progress. We have made
progress. I think all of us at the Federal, State, and local
level are a little frustrated, 7 years after September 11,
2001, that there still are things that need to be improved. But
we are making good progress. Having embedded DHS analysts in
our fusion centers, having the FBI there, having State and
local representatives at the National Counterterrorism Center
is key because part of the problem is that there is a
disconnect. They do not understand at the Federal level and at
the traditional international community. They hear us yapping
all the time that we have information needs and information
requirements. But what they are missing is that we are also
intel and information producers that you need this information
to analyze as well.
I do continue to get frustrated. I mean, we start off on a
lot of different pilots that the Federal Government throws out
there that are creating new and additional stovepipes, and we
are not breaking them down and consolidating them. But the
fusion center helps, though, and also can, in essence, do some
privacy and civil liberty protection because you bring people
who have access to those databases. You ensure the measures
that they have in place about who has appropriate access to it.
But everybody has access to it by being together, working
together in a fusion center. But it still troubles me.
One of the ways that we came around to get around this is
because--and this is the same problem for the private sector,
and it is the same for law enforcement. Do you want me to get
my terrorism information from law enforcement online, HISN
online, ATAC's, all of the groups of different places that you
could be going? I cannot have terrorism liaison officers and
people who have this responsible in the field have to remember
their passwords and go onto 17 different sites to search for
information. Again, access to the information is not the same
as sharing information.
One of the ways that we overcame that in California is we
created CalJRIES, and what we do as a State with our partners
at DOJ and the Highway Patrol is we visit all of those sites
and pull out the relevant counterterrorism information that we
want shared with our law enforcement officers and our terrorism
liaison officers so that they have a one-stop shop. But the
stovepiping continues, and I am afraid the factory is still
open here in DC.
Senator Pryor. Do you have a comment, Mr. Porter?
Mr. Porter. Yes, if I may just very briefly. The Global
Justice Information Sharing Initiative, which is a Federal
advisory committee for the Department of Justice, has done some
great work in terms of trying to address some of these
stovepipes. One of the projects they have underway is called
the Global Federated Identity and Privilege Management
Initiative, and that is one which will help address some of
these stovepipes when that gets rolled out with more people
engaged in that.
Senator Pryor. OK.
Mr. Rapp. A quick comment, Senator. Just looking at the
Federal picture, there has been a great deal of information
flow. We have some products in the center, like the Homeland
Security Data Network, which is the secret-level environment,
but we have a lot of access to that. We still have some battles
we need to fight because there is a lot of information on
there, and we cannot search that portal yet because DOD does
not allow us access to search that portal. DHS has taken that
fight with DOD, but we are still talking about it, a year after
it was introduced to the center.
The second thing I think we are really missing with the
FBI, the FBI in Baltimore covers Baltimore and Delaware. They
have about 200 agents in their office. We have just in the
Baltimore metro area over 5,000 cops. They are starting an
initiative where they are going to go out and look to try and
develop sources on the street. We already have developed
sources on the street that could benefit them. The problem is
they still see the JTTF as information that should not be
shared with the locals. And they can share it specifically
through the fusion centers so it does not get broadcast out to
a number of people.
But those are the issues I think we need to work on because
I think we are missing some of the local components or the
street-level components that need to go back into the Federal
intelligence communities.
Senator Pryor. Some of that sounds a little cultural.
Let me ask, Captain Rapp, a few practical questions about
fusion centers. In a fusion center, who is the decisionmaker?
If decisions have to be made and it is this shared environment,
who actually has the final call?
Mr. Rapp. In our fusion center, which is maybe a little bit
different than the others, but, I mean, typical chain of
command, the director would make the call if there is
information that needs to get out. If there is a dispute
between us and the Federal agencies, we also have the Anti-
Terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC) for the U.S. Attorney's
Office. And we have a U.S. Attorney that sits as Chairman of
that Council. So if it comes to butting heads between whether
we disseminate information or not, or get it, we can always use
the U.S. Attorney as a neutral party to decide because they are
the ones that prosecute the cases as well.
Senator Pryor. Is that how you all do it?
Mr. Bettenhausen. That is true, but the ideal should be
that nobody has ownership of the fusion center. I mean, you
have a director and you have leadership. But it should be how
we respond to disasters, the incident command and unified
command that everybody should feel a part of ownership. And so
in the ideal world, the director does not have to make that
decision. You come to consensus. The director does have the
final call, but the difficulty is that oftentimes, in each of
our fusion centers, they are different. One is FBI; mostly it
is local law enforcement. We have great leaders running our
fusion centers. But they do not make the call. If it is
originator controlled coming from Washington, DC--and that can
be very frustrating if we think that this is a timely piece of
information that gets to come out. We don't get to make that
need-to-know call, and we have to go back up and fight the
chain further above us. Then it is beyond just the director at
the fusion center.
Senator Pryor. Right. One of my colleagues in the House,
Jane Harman, said not long ago that she feels like there should
be an association of State fusion centers to help advocate and
help educate. Do you all agree with Representative Harman on
that?
Mr. Bettenhausen. We do, and, in fact, we just had a huge
conference, a nationwide conference in San Francisco, where we
brought all of the fusion centers together. We have talked
about it here, too, that this bottom-up approach, we are
producing and having better information on local incidents that
could have national implication or much better sharing State to
State. At some point I think the Feds are going to see much
more of the value in the fusion centers in terms of how much
information we are generating and sharing.
The Nation has broken off into regions. We are also
cooperating in regions and, for example, for California, we
also have States of interest where we share, for example, with
Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, the Southern border, that we
are also meeting and interconnecting our fusion centers.
So in terms of the--the national conference brings us all
together, and then we have these regional working groups from
the Western to the Northeast, the Southeast, and the Midwest in
terms of having these fusion centers working together. But on a
day-in/day-out basis, these fusion centers are connecting up on
their own.
Mr. Porter. Mr. Chairman, since that conference there has
been considerable interest expressed from fusion center
directors through the contacts that I have in these various
organizations about trying to move forward with such a
consortium or such a gathering as a way of trying to have a
consolidated voice and being able to communicate on issues
quickly and in an agile kind of way when there are questions
that rise up about, what is happening out in the fusion center
domain.
Senator Pryor. OK. All three of you have positive
experiences with fusion centers, and you feel like they are
good. I assume you all believe in the concept, and we all
recognize there are issues and challenges but, still, great
concept, doing great things. If you are sitting in my chair
here, how do you measure success? How do we know that these
really are doing great things? I know there is a lot of
anecdotal evidence of it, but how do we measure success?
Mr. Bettenhausen. That is one of the difficult things
because if nothing happens, you are proving the negative. And
so there are a lot of things in terms of the--it is not just
anecdotal. When you look at the prosecutions, such as the JIS
case in California that involved prison radicalization and an
operational cell in Los Angeles, or the Fort Dix, those things
have been interdicted, and the work of the fusion centers has
helped in that.
In terms of the analysis that is being done, it is hard and
it is a mistake that we only go down the route of prosecutions
being the numbers that we count. And that is what FBI Director
Mueller has talked about. The sea change that we have to have
is that prevention is the key, not prosecution. And you are
always going to have--I have thought about this a lot in terms
of the metrics that you try to put on top of this. It is
difficult because you cannot tell sometimes if you are a
success.
But as we get more reporting, for example, on suspicious
incident reporting, if terrorists are targeting a site, there
is going to be planning, there is going to be targeting, there
is going to be operational surveillance. And they also look at
this, if the security posture changes, they look elsewhere. But
you are never going to know that until you ultimately unravel
one of these things. But the more information that we get in
collecting suspicious activity reporting--which is a metric.
How much more are we hearing from our chemical plants about
surveillance? How much more are we hearing from other pieces of
key infrastructure about surveillance so that we can look? And
do we have a rise off the baseline? And that type of reporting
is one way that you could have a metric, but the true success
is nothing happening, and then that is a very difficult thing
to measure.
Senator Pryor. Right. Let me ask, Mr. Porter, if I may,
about privacy. When I think about the information a fusion
center has, it is a very impressive amount of information. You
can pull together, things like cell phone numbers, insurance
claims, driver's license information, photos, and, you can
really collect a lot of information on people. And that ability
invites abuse, and I know that is one of the things you have
focused on over the last several years. Furthermore, if we are
not very careful with that information, it could get into the
wrong hands.
So let me ask about privacy. As I understand it, maybe a
little less than half, maybe around a third of the fusion
centers around the country have submitted privacy plans? Do you
know?
Mr. Porter. I think that is--all of them are in the process
of doing that, but I think there are about--more than 20, but I
cannot cite the specific number as of today.
Senator Pryor. OK. So tell me what these privacy plans will
be and why we have them and what safeguards we are putting in
place to make sure the information is not wrongly used or falls
into the wrong hands.
Mr. Porter. Sure. Great question, and, again, a critically
important issue. I appreciate your interest in it.
First of all, in terms of the types of information that you
mentioned, there are certainly times when I use my cell phone
and list it on, say, a voter registration record or some other
type of record where it gets into the public domain and it is
available to others. And so much of that information that a
fusion center may have access to is something that law
enforcement agencies have access for years in investigating
crime. But that becomes a key point, is the criminal
predication, that is what launches an inquiry or a gathering of
information.
When agencies are adhering to 28 C.F.R. Part 23 in the Code
of Federal Regulations, the regulations that govern criminal
intelligence systems and the operating policies for those
systems, there is a requirement that at least for the storage
of information that it meet the level of reasonable suspicion.
And civil liberties advocates have been very satisfied and
supportive of that standard. And that is a threshold that is
key in these privacy policies and civil liberties protections
policies that they adhere to that.
There are certainly times, however, when fusion centers are
receiving information that does not rise to the level of
reasonable suspicion, and so through the Criminal Intelligence
Coordinating Council, we have drafted a tips and leads policy
paper that identifies this issue as one that we need to get our
hands around as we receive this information, what is the right
way to deal with it and what is the best way to deal with it?
So there are still some challenges there. Those privacy and
civil liberties policy templates were developed from a broad
array of people across not only the justice system but people
that are civil liberties advocates and provided input into
those to make sure we have in that framework issues that relate
to data aggregation and ensuring that when you bring data from
multiple sources together, you are not mixing data about Person
A and Person B and causing some erroneous information to take
place. That policy addresses things like that.
Senator Pryor. Great. Well, listen, I want to thank the
first panel. You all have been spectacular. Unfortunately, we
are going to have to close this panel because we are going to
be voting in 30 minutes or so. If I could ask you all to
relinquish your seats and let the second panel come forward.
What we will do here as a matter of logistics, we will
allow any Senators on the Subcommittee to submit questions in
writing. We will leave the record open for 2 weeks, so it is
possible you all will get some written questions from various
Subcommittee Members.
Mr. Bettenhausen. I also did want to thank you and the
Chairs of the overall Homeland Security Committees, both in the
Senate and in the House, for their support for fusion centers
and the legislation that you put to allow our Federal grant
funds to be used for personnel. We are still struggling with
U.S. DHS to allow that sustainment funding for these critical
positions that are also leveraged by our State and local people
serving there. So we appreciate your support on that. Thank
you.
Senator Pryor. You are more than welcome. Thank you.
While the second panel is coming up, I will go ahead and
introduce them like I did the first panel. First will be Eileen
Larence. She is Director of Homeland Security and Justice for
GAO. She joined GAO in 1979 and has managed reviews on Federal
programs ranging from defense and intelligence systems to
hazardous waste cleanup.
Next we will have Jack Tomarchio, and he is Deputy Under
Secretary of Operations at the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to
joining DHS in 2005, he was a national security lawyer in
private practice.
And third will be Van Hitch. He is the Chief Information
Officer at DOJ and DOJ's representative to the National
Information Sharing Council. He has an M.A. in systems
management, a B.A. in physics, and has served also in the Navy.
I want to welcome all of you, and, Ms. Larence, go ahead.
TESTIMONY OF EILEEN R. LARENCE,\1\ DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY
AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Larence. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to
discuss GAO's work on State and local fusion centers, what they
are, challenges they face, and Federal support to date.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Larence appears in the Appendix
on page 57.
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After September 11, 2001, States and major urban and
regional areas realized they needed their own capability to
collect, analyze, and share terrorism information and created
fusion centers. They typically include personnel from State,
local, and Federal law enforcement and homeland security
entities; in some cases, emergency responders, the National
Guard, and the private sector. The Federal Government provides
centers information and access to numerous systems and sources
of data and is creating a national network of centers to
enhance sharing.
Most recently, the Congress in the 9/11 Commission Act and
the Administration in the National Strategy for Information
Sharing called for Federal support to centers through grants,
technology, training, and other means.
Last fall, we reported that, based on our interviews with
center directors in 58 State and select urban areas and our
visits to numerous centers, we learned three things: One,
centers vary widely; two, Federal help is addressing but has
not fully resolved their challenges; and, three, centers are
concerned about Federal commitment to sustaining them over the
long term.
To elaborate, we learned that most centers were considered
operational, but this ranged from having 5 to 80 personnel and
from a few to 20 member agencies. Most centers are relatively
new, open since January 2004. Forty-one said they focused not
only on terrorism but also on all crimes or all hazards because
they recognized crime can be a precursor to terrorism and this
broader focus brings more partners and more resources to the
table.
Law enforcement entities led most centers, and 12 were
collocated with FBI field units, such as Joint Terrorism Task
Forces. Centers provide intelligence products ranging from
alerts and bulletins to in-depth reports. They take tips from
the public and share them with Federal agencies as appropriate.
Centers identified five major challenges that Federal
support to date is to address, but they are not yet fully
resolved. First, some centers said they have to access too many
systems and get too much information that can be redundant and
not useful, bogging down our analysts. Justice and Homeland
Security provide centers access to classified and unclassified
systems and networks. The agencies report they are trying to
better define centers' information requirements, issue joint
products, and solicit feedback on the usefulness of information
provided. GAO has not yet assessed these efforts.
A Federal working group was also supposed to review ways to
streamline access to some systems, and the new Interagency
Threat Assessment and Coordination Group, made permanent in the
9/11 Act, is to ensure threat information is coordinated across
Federal agencies before it is disseminated. But the group has
had start-up problems. Continued oversight of these issues
would be helpful.
Second, some centers say they need more security
clearances. It takes too long to get them, and agencies do not
always honor each other's clearances, despite mandates to do
so. Justice and Homeland Security continue to provide
clearances and to reduce processing time, but were not aware of
addressing the issue of honoring each other's clearances at the
time of our review. Again, oversight could help here as well.
Third, a number of centers want more specific operational
how-to guidance and had challenges finding training for their
analysts. Justice and Homeland Security issued fusion center
guidelines and, more recently, draft baseline capabilities that
outline operational standards centers should achieve. This
helps but may not provide the detailed how-to operational steps
some centers still need. Agencies are also providing courses,
grant funds, and training technical assistance, but centers
would like more help with standardized curricula for their
analysts and perhaps a certification process.
Fourth, some centers say that it is tough for partner
agencies to afford to detail staff, an important source of
personnel for centers, and to find, attract, and competitively
pay analysts to keep them. The FBI has provided at least 200
personnel across most centers to date, and Homeland Security
has personnel in 23 centers. But they still worry about meeting
long-term staffing needs.
Finally, a number of centers are concerned about sustaining
operations long term. Some say it is tough to compete for State
funds and that the Federal grant process is complex,
restricted, uncertain, and decreasing. Homeland Security has
provided grants for fusion-related activities, expanded
allowable costs, and gave centers more time to spend funds. But
some centers worry about restrictions, such as 2-year limits on
funds for analysts, and whether funds will be available long
term.
We recommended that the Federal Government articulate the
role it expects to play in centers, especially in sustaining
them. The recent National Strategy in the 9/11 Act addressed
the Federal role and also stated that the government will help
to sustain centers, but how or to what extent must still be
answered.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks, and I would be
happy to answer any questions.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Mr. Tomarchio.
TESTIMONY OF JACK TOMARCHIO,\1\ DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR
INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Tomarchio. Thank you, Senator Pryor, for the
opportunity to come before you today to talk about the progress
fusion centers have made in the last 3 years. I hope my
testimony helps this Subcommittee in its continuing efforts to
assist the States and the major urban areas in the development
and continuing improvement of these centers. In addition to my
oral statement, I ask that my written statement, previously
provided your staff, be incorporated into the record today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Tomarchio appears in the Appendix
on page 75.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first and most important piece of progress I have for
you today is that DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis now
has 23 of its officers deployed and serving in fusion centers
around the country. These officers have become the pathfinders
for the way the Federal Government shares information and
intelligence with its State, local, and tribal partners. These
talented men and women are using their varied experiences and
skills as intelligence professionals to provide their other
Federal, State, local, and tribal partners with the information
they need to keep America safe--and connected. Those very same
skills allow them to cull the best of what the fusion centers
are collecting and analyzing information and seeing that this
information gets to where it needs to go. This has never been
done before, and this is why Secretary Chertoff, Under
Secretary Charlie Allen, and I are proud of these officers and
what they have accomplished in such a relatively short period
of time.
Please don't take just my word for this record of
achievement. When I was at the Fusion Center Conference in San
Francisco in February, I was gratified by the number of State
and local officials who came up to me and to Under Secretary
Allen to voice their unsolicited praise for the work our
officers are doing. I have no doubt that you will find the same
reactions when you talk to your State's homeland security
advisers and local law enforcement and public safety officials.
Secretary Chertoff, Under Secretary Allen, and I have
committed the Department to increase the number of these
officers by the end of this fiscal year and provide them with
all the tools that they need to succeed in their collective
mission to prevent, protect, and respond to any threat or
hazard that America faces.
I am happy to report that one of those tools, the Homeland
Security Data Network (HSDN), is now deployed in 19 fusion
centers. HSDN, as you know, allows access to the National
Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC, online, a classified portal
that maintains the most current terrorism-related information
at the secret level. HSDN also provides the fusion centers--and
through them the States--with a window into the national
intelligence community that they can use for their own
information needs.
Another progress report I am happy to deliver is one on
security clearances. When I arrived at DHS from the private
sector 2\1/2\ years ago, the wait time to receive a security
clearance at the secret level was almost 2 years, and the
backlog was enormous. Thanks to the efforts of DHS' Office of
Intelligence Analysis and its Office of Security, we have
dramatically reduced the amount of time it takes to grant those
clearances and nearly eliminated the backlog. The FBI has also
played an integral role in reducing this backlog over the past
2 years, especially by working to establish a reciprocal
clearance process whereby security clearances for fusion center
personnel are recognized by both agencies, regardless of which
agency issued the clearance.
The fusion center program is yielding substantial returns
on investment. In the past 6 weeks, information from two of the
centers has been passed to a key international partner in the
war on terrorism, who then opened cases after receiving this
information. DHS received a letter expressing that country's
gratitude for the information. In another case, information
fused at a center in the Midwest was briefed to the President
in the President's Daily Brief--a first for a fusion center.
This information would not have been gleaned without State and
local participation in the process, and it illustrates the
importance of the centers to the Federal Government.
However, while successful thus far, there is still much
work to do in the creation of policies and procedures that
ensure a predictable and uniform approach on how we interact
within these centers. The State and Local Program Office within
DHS will work hard over the next year to solidify our program
and bring certainty to that relationship.
I have given you these progress highlights. Now let me
provide some additional context as to how far we have come in
the last couple of years and some of the significant changes
and challenges that await us as we move forward to better
prepare the American people for the threats that they face.
Working with our colleagues in the Department of Justice,
we undertook the challenge of creating the Fusion Center
Guidelines. These guidelines, which complement the President's
National Strategy for Information Sharing, were an important
first step in formalizing the Federal Government's relationship
with State and local fusion centers. To assist the States and
urban areas in meeting their intelligence and information
needs, DHS created a Program Office within I&A to work
specifically with the fusion centers as they begin to develop
and grow.
Within I&A itself, we have developed an excellent
analytical support to our customers. The Analytical and
Production Division, A&P, provides support specifically
dedicated to Critical Infrastructure Protection Assessment,
CBRNE, Borders, Radicalization, and Demographics. Each of these
divisions has developed an analytical relationship with their
State and local peers. As a result of these relationships, we
have seen a tremendous growth in the number of analytical
products, sometimes carrying the seals of four and five
partners.
To foster collaboration and share best practices and
lessons learned within the fusion center network, DHS sponsors
the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of
Interest, HS SLIC, a virtual community of intelligence analysts
from across the country--currently, 1,000 members from 42
States and the District of Columbia, as well as six Federal
departments. Through the HS SLIC, intelligence analysts across
the country collaborate via weekly threat conference calls,
analytic conferences, and a secure Web portal for intelligence
information sharing at the sensitive-but-unclassified level.
I see I am now out of time, but let me just say this in
conclusion. The fusion centers are a new and important tool to
keeping our Nation safe. They have made exponential progress in
the past few years to accomplish that mission. There are still
many challenges left to ensure that these centers live up to
their full potential. The DHS, together with our colleagues at
the Department of Justice, are committed to working with the
Congress and with the thousands of State and local law
enforcement officers, firefighters, public health officials,
and other first responders to ensure that the security of our
Nation and its citizens is safeguarded.
Thank you, sir.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
We will leave the record open--excuse me. We will allow
your written statements to be part of the record. That is
something that we will clean up here at the end, but certainly
your written statements are part of the record.
Mr. Hitch.
TESTIMONY OF VANCE E. HITCH,\1\ CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Hitch. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very
much for the invitation to speak to you today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hitch appears in the Appendix on
page 83.
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On October 31, 2007, the President issued and released the
National Strategy for Information Sharing which basically
describes the vision and road map for how the various
components of the Federal Government will work with State,
local, and tribal, as well as private sector officials across
the Nation. As both the Chief Information Officer and the
Information Sharing Council representative for the Department
of Justice, I am very proud to discuss the accomplishments of
the Department in the area of fusion center support. This is
truly a departmental effort. I am really here representing many
offices, not only the Office of the CIO, the Bureau of Justice
Assistance, the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties, the
Executive Office of the U.S. Attorneys, and, of course, the
FBI.
The FBI is really our front line for direct operational
support to the fusion centers, as you have heard in some of the
other testimonies. But the other DOJ law enforcement offices
also make contributions on a daily basis to the fusion centers.
Today, I will highlight some of the Department's efforts to
implement the National Strategy for Information Sharing as well
as the intent of Congress per the 9/11 Act.
As an instrumental partner in all of this is the Attorney
General's Advisory Committee, which you have heard a little bit
about today, called Global. BJA started the Global Justice
Information Sharing Initiative and its subgroup, the Criminal
Intelligence Coordinating Council, over 8 years ago. And that
was before September 11, 2001. And the CICC has not only
nurtured the idea, the framework, and developed guidelines for
fusion centers, but also it has worked to ensure that these
fusion centers are successful in their stated missions.
We are preparing to release, as you have heard, new fusion
center baseline standards in May 2008, which will serve as the
foundational elements for integrating fusion centers into the
Information Sharing Environment, measuring success and
facilitating ongoing operations. Much of the progress we have
made can be credited to Ambassador Ted McNamara in his role as
Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment. He has
brought the agencies together to make this network of fusion
centers a reality. We coordinate all of our fusion center
efforts, along with DHS and DNI, via the National Fusion Center
Coordinating Group, which has representation within DOJ among
four of our offices. The NFCCG has helped move the ball forward
by getting Federal officials to agree to plans while also
pulling the local representatives together to prioritize their
needs.
While many of these fusion centers play a key role in
preventing terrorist activities, I cannot overemphasize the
valuable role they can and do play in reducing all types of
crime. These fusion centers play an important role in
protecting their communities by fostering something we call
information-led policing efforts and focusing resources on the
biggest local problems.
Fusion centers, as you know, first sprang up after
September 11, 2001, as a mechanism to coordinate and share
information among jurisdictions. Their main value-add is
putting people and information together to connect the dots.
Fusion centers are critical to helping solve interstate and
national crime, such as drug or gun trafficking. My office, on
behalf of the Deputy Attorney General, plans and coordinates
the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Plan, which I developed
in the year 2004. We are now beginning to see the benefits of
this plan as we roll out sharing solutions across the country.
I could talk for a long time about that, but we will refer
this Subcommittee to my OCIO website and also a website called
NIEM for further technology information.
My colleague from DHS has discussed the sharing of
classified information and the necessary safeguards and
protections that must be employed. With regard to sensitive-
but-unclassified information, where really the bulk of
information sharing can and should occur, we have worked very
closely with the DHS element of ICE to make our approach both
joint and seamless to the State and locals.
Also, fusion centers operate under a multitude of
regulatory frameworks intended to ensure that information is
handled in a way that protects both the privacy and the legal
rights of Americans. Fusion centers are owned and operated by
State and local governments, and they are required to comply
not only with State and local laws but also Federal laws.
Also, grants awarded by both DOJ and DHS in 2007 included
conditional language that mandated the use of the National
Information Exchange Model (NIEM), for all technology projects
to assure that they will be interoperable and be able to share
information. This is significant for two reasons in that it
validated the use of NIEM and it also illustrates that DHS and
DOJ are basically on the same page on technical issues.
In conclusion, I would like to leave this Subcommittee with
one final thought. Validating a negative is just as important
as proving a positive. Said differently, building an integrated
network of fusion centers will enable local decisionmakers to
quickly know if an event is either local or national in scope.
Just recently, here in the Nation's capital, we had two
current examples, with the Pope's visit and the recent food
poisoning scare at Reagan National Airport. State and Federal
officials worked together to create an excellent threat
assessment for the Holy Father as he traveled from Maryland to
DC to New York, and on April 3, the fusion centers were able to
quickly respond to an event that initially caused alarm and
identify it as non-terrorist so that counterterrorism and law
enforcement forces were not mobilized for an isolated bad-fish
issue at a local hotel.
We, in the Federal Government, must empower the fusion
centers, leverage them, and help them build their capabilities.
There is much work to be done, but we have made a lot of
progress so far and look forward to providing Congress with
updates on our progress.
Thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, and I thank all of you for your
testimony and your statements.
Let me start with you, Ms. Larence. Your GAO report, which
I believe was dated October of last year, roughly 6 months ago.
Are you aware of anything that has changed in the last 6 months
that you might want to update your report?
Ms. Larence. No, sir. We did do some basic updating with
both the Departments and the recent legislation that came out,
the National Strategy that came out since our report was
updated. And we also had staff in the National Fusion Center
Conference recently in March that helped us to make sure that
the issues that we were talking about were still relevant.
Senator Pryor. Ms. Larence, you have been able to look at
these fusion centers objectively. As I understand it, you have
identified a number of things that are very promising and very
positive, and then you have identified some areas where they
have their challenges and they need to resolve those and
improve, etc.
You are probably the most objective person in the room
about this. What do you think the next step for these fusion
centers is? What are the areas where they really need to focus
to take the concept of fusion center where it is really
achieving the objective?
Ms. Larence. I think they have a couple of issues to deal
with. One, as we mentioned, the centers vary tremendously. If
you have been to New York City's center, it is the gold
standard for fusion centers. I am not suggesting that all
centers have those capabilities, but there are other centers
that are just in the planning phases. And so some centers still
need basic help to maintain this baseline level of capability,
and they need help developing their fusion process and
developing analysts that have the capabilities to do the work
that they need to do on the information.
I think, second, the biggest concern, since a lot of the
centers--not all of them, because some of them are well funded
through their State partners, but some of the centers are very
concerned about their ability to sustain operations long term.
Some are very dependent on Federal grants, but there are time
limits to those grants, and they are concerned about being able
to compete for State funds if Federal grants do dry up.
So I think funding and building analytical capabilities are
probably two of the most important pieces that they are facing.
Senator Pryor. All right. Let me ask about that grant piece
because I have heard from some local officials that it is hard
for them to really plan for the future if they are not certain
about their funding sources.
Do you have a recommendation on what the Congress or the
Federal agencies should do to make sure that these local fusion
centers can plan?
Ms. Larence. Well, I think our recommendation put on the
table the policy call that the Federal Government needs to
decide whether it wants to be sort of more of a weed-and-seed
program, so they provide initial funding to get these centers
started, but then the centers really need to develop some other
mechanisms to sustain operations over the long term; or if the
Federal Government is building a national network of centers,
relying on these centers, asking them to meet baseline
capabilities, then does the Federal Government feel an
obligation to be able to continue to fund these centers over
the long term? So I think that is probably the policy trade-off
call there, sir.
Senator Pryor. I see. Let me ask our two Federal agency
witnesses about the issue of funding these centers long term. I
know to some extent that is a Congressional question, but it
also is an agency departmental question as well.
Do you think that we should make a long-term commitment to
funding these fusion centers. Let me start with you, Mr.
Tomarchio.
Mr. Tomarchio. Senator Pryor, I think that would be a well-
reasoned consideration by the Federal Government. We see about
58 fusion centers that are up and running right now. As Ms.
Larence said, they are in various stages of maturity. Some are
very robust. Others are really just getting their sea legs. But
the problems that we see across the full spectrum of the fusion
centers are, I think, fairly consistent. There are training
issues, and there are issues of connectivity and certainly
issues of sustainability. And I know when we were at the
National Fusion Center Conference in San Francisco, I spoke to
a number of folks from around the country, and several of the
fusion centers felt that they were living on borrowed time. And
if you can imagine a dark black map of the United States with a
light in the different States that have the fusion centers. I
think it is not beyond the pale that within a certain period of
time, you will see lights blinking out. And I think we need to
recognize that because the advancements that we have made and
that have been made by the State and locals within the fusion
centers and their interrelationship with the Federal Government
and the intelligence community and the Federal law enforcement
community have been, I think, very admirable. And for us to go
back to square one and say, well, that was a great idea but we
have a funding issue and, I am sorry, it is not going to work,
I think that would be a disservice not only to the country, but
it would certainly be a disservice to the dedicated folks that
work in the State and local fusion centers around the country.
So I think it is a very prudent approach for, I think, the
Congress to take a real hard look at that as a possible
solution.
Senator Pryor. OK. Did you have anything you wanted to add
to that, Mr. Hitch?
Mr. Hitch. Yes. I agree with that very much. I think fusion
centers have been and will continue to be a prudent investment
in public safety. I think that it should be a joint investment,
however, not fully funded by the Federal Government but
certainly a significant share in funding by the Federal
Government, but also State and local, because of the point that
I made earlier how important fusion centers are to the solving
of local crime and cross-border crime and so forth. And, also,
the fact that while we are developing standards across the
board and there are certain things that we want of every fusion
center, each fusion center has to be customized, to some
extent, to its local environment. A fusion center for Delaware
is going to be very different from a fusion center for
California.
But I do think we owe them a horizon of funding so that
they know what to expect and, therefore, they can plan because
I think they think it is a good idea, too. So I think we all
think it is a good idea, but without a funding horizon and an
expectation of what they will get, they cannot really plan.
Senator Pryor. I am glad you mentioned this idea that each
fusion center should be customized to the locality where they
are because that does make sense. But it also does raise an
administrative question from the Federal end because they may
be so different that, if you are not careful, they may not be
meeting the objectives that the Federal Government has for
them. The Federal Government has an interest in the State and
local law enforcement being very effective, and I think
everybody agrees with that. But, still, there are other Federal
objectives that some of these may not meet.
So do you think we should have a set of standard criteria
for all of them? Or do you think it really should be a fusion-
center-by-fusion-center analysis for the Federal Government?
Mr. Hitch. Well, I believe that there are standards that
all of them should meet, and, in fact, as Mr. Porter mentioned
in the last panel, there is a set of what we call baseline
standards that are being developed right now by Global, which
is the group that I mentioned earlier that is supported by the
Department of Justice. They are working with the fusion center
heads to develop performance criteria and baseline capabilities
that any fusion center should do. That does not mean that they
are all going to look alike. It is not a cookie cutter. But it
does give some baseline capabilities and some measures of
success so that we know when they are doing their job.
Senator Pryor. Have you all had the experience yet where
one of these fusion center's objectives really are at odds with
your objectives? Have you run across that situation yet?
Mr. Hitch. I have not run into that situation. They all
seem to be welcoming of the support that we, as a Department,
have given them. They all appreciate the work that Global has
done and the ongoing work that they have done, and certainly
the FBI and its tremendous ongoing presence in their
facilities.
That does not mean there will not be operational issues
that have to be worked out. But I think in general the
congruence of objectives is pretty good.
Senator Pryor. Did you want to comment on that, Mr.
Tomarchio?
Mr. Tomarchio. I would concur with that, Senator. I have
had no experience where we have been at odds with any of the
fusion centers, and I have been to about 32 of these centers
around the country. And these people really want to do the
right thing for their communities, and they are working very
hard to provide the level of protection that they think that
they are mandated to do. So we have had no issues.
Senator Pryor. Yes, that has been my experience as well. I
have not heard about problems in that regard, but I wanted to
see if you all were hearing any.
Let me also ask, Mr. Tomarchio, it is really the same
question I asked the previous panel, and all of you have sort
of touched on this already. But, Mr. Tomarchio, how do you
measure success with these fusion centers? You talked about
objective criteria. I think, Ms. Larence, you talked about
having standards and criteria, etc. So how do we measure
success? How do we know that they are really effective and that
they are worthwhile and that they are really doing the job out
there?
Mr. Tomarchio. Certainly. There are a couple of metrics
that I like to look at.
First of all, I think that the amount of information that
is being passed between fusion centers and the Federal
Government and the Federal intelligence community, it is good
and valuable information. And one of the things that we were
concerned about was that we did not want to just have
information passing for the sake of passing information. We
wanted to make sure that the information was relevant, was
important, and resulted in actionable intelligence. And we are
seeing that. We are seeing good products.
We are also seeing a great understanding of what the
requirements are at the State and local level from the
intelligence community, and they are learning what our
requirements are of them. And what we are seeing is we are
learning about things that happened at the local level that
within the Beltway we do not see. You can put a bunch of
analysts at the FBI or the DHS to look at the issue of prison
radicalization in Illinois. But the persons that are going to
know what the situation is with prison radicalization in
Illinois are the folks in Illinois. And we are seeing that
information filter up to the Beltway and to the community, and
that is important.
I think also, as I think Mr. Bettenhausen said, the idea of
proving a negative is important, too. I can give you a case in
point. A year ago yesterday, we had the tragedy at Virginia
Tech, and when that happened, the Virginia Fusion Center within
minutes of getting the information, they made a determination,
they put out horizontally to other fusion centers around the
country that this is an isolated activity of a deranged
individual; there is no nexus to terrorism, and there is no
need for all the colleges and universities around the country
to go to Def-Con 1 because there was a possible raft of these
shootings. And that was done very quickly. They were able to
spin down concern, and that in itself is important.
So I think that you see situations like that--that is a
metric of success for me.
Senator Pryor. Did you want to add something to that?
Mr. Hitch. I was just nodding my head because I agree with
what he was saying. One of the things--this is a challenge,
obviously. Ultimately, we want to find success stories, and we
want to find things that were prevented. And that is the gold
standard. There is nothing that will really live up to that.
But, as an IT guy, one of the things that we try to build
into our systems is logs and things that will measure the
amount of activity and the amount of what in law enforcement is
called deconflictions. When you are interested in something and
you then get in contact with another law enforcement officer
from a completely different jurisdiction, perhaps across the
country because of the information that you found--and we log
that stuff in. We ask for feedback as part of the information
systems process so that we can begin getting real measures of
success as an intermediate level, below the gold standard, but
certainly something that would let us know that there is a lot
of activity and there is a lot of good dialogue that is
happening.
Senator Pryor. OK, great. Mr. Tomarchio, let me ask you
about a very specific fiscal year 2008 DHS grant issue. Fiscal
year 2008 DHS grant guidance apparently restricts how DHS
grants to State and local fusion centers can be spent in ways
that contradict congressional intent. Specifically, the
guidance limits spending on fusion center maintenance and
sustainment.
Does DHS have any plan to fix the problem by changing the
guidance? Do you know anything about that?
Mr. Tomarchio. I do know a little bit, probably enough to
get me in trouble. I know that one of the things that we do at
the Department, especially with regard to our folks that deal
with the grants, is we really try to listen to the needs of the
folks in the fusion centers. And, nothing is etched in stone,
and we are trying to take their input with regard to what their
needs are.
Now, for example, bricks and mortar, which I think that
refers to, is right now--grant money for bricks and mortar is
prohibited. We have talked to some fusion centers that have
some real bricks-and-mortar problems that right now fall
outside of our guidelines.
We will look at that, and we will see if that, for whatever
reason, needs to be adapted or changed. So, we realize this is
a very dynamic and changing process and that this whole fusion
center stuff is like building an airplane while in flight. So
we are not trying to close our minds to saying, sorry, that is
just verboten, we are not going to do that. At the same time,
we have to--obviously, we cannot say yes to everyone.
So everything is always being looked at, Senator, and I
think we are trying the best that we can to try and meet their
requirements, with also keeping in mind our fiscal and our
monetary restraints.
Senator Pryor. Good. Well, let's continue to talk about
that because it appears that Congress had one intent, maybe the
grant guidelines say something a little differently. But let's
keep watching that and see if we can make sure that we are all
on the same page there.
Let me also ask our two agency witnesses here, you both
have talked about how fusion centers are a relatively new
concept, and how they are growing, and how they differ from
center to center. You mentioned it is like trying to build an
airplane while you are in flight. I know that you all have
spent a lot of time on these fusion centers. What do you hope
to achieve with them over the next year? Obviously, we are
talking about crime prevention and terrorism prevention, but in
terms of the fusion centers themselves, what would you like to
see accomplished over the next 12 months? In other words, tell
us what your goals might be and what we might be looking for
over the next 12 months to make sure these are up and running
and effective.
Mr. Tomarchio. I think one of the biggest and most
important challenges that we face and one thing I would like to
see us do more of and maybe do it better is to tackle the issue
of training. I know that Captain Rapp spoke a little bit about
that.
I think as a result of the fact that we are melding two
cultures, we are melding a law enforcement and criminal
intelligence culture with an intelligence culture. And as I
think Captain Rapp said, there are instances where folks in the
fusion centers do not understand the Federal intelligence
community, they do not understand the intelligence cycle. And I
think what we need to do collectively, both the Federal
Government, the State and locals, is to ensure that we can
raise the amount of training and awareness in the fusion
centers of what needs to be done.
The folks that I have met in the fusion centers are
incredibly motivated to do the right thing. They need the tools
and they need the training to do that. And I think that that is
one of the biggest priorities that I think we have to have. We
have to be able to get mobile training teams out to the
centers. We have to be able to bring in folks from the centers
to come to DHS or come to the FBI to receive training. There
are numerous courses out there that exist that would be
beneficial to these folks.
Now, the problem that we understand is that it is difficult
if you are a police officer or if you are a watch commander in
a fusion center to send one of your best analysts to Washington
for 8 weeks to go to CIA University and receive an analyst
course. We realize that is a difficulty. We have to find a way
to bring that knowledge to them, whether it is through online
training, whether it is through train the trainer. I think we
have to start looking at that, and we are doing that. But I
think that is a very important challenge for us and I think one
that will be met, but, again, it is an ongoing job.
Senator Pryor. All right. Do you want to comment, Mr.
Hitch?
Mr. Hitch. I certainly agree on the training and also
technical assistance. One of the things that was mentioned
earlier about these annual fusion center meetings that are
held, the recent one in San Francisco, it shows the tremendous
demand for the information that is being provided by both DHS
and DOJ. There were people who could not sign up; there just
was not enough room for them. We had a huge audience, and I
expect that to continue.
Another thing is, anecdotally you still hear about some
organizational issues because this is new and cultures need
changing. And I think the agreements are there, the President's
information-sharing plan is clear, but yet that does not mean
that it works out very smoothly every single day. And that is
what I would like to see happen; as issues happen, I think we
need to resolve them because our guidance is clear. So I would
like to see that. That is really more of a smooth working
machine as opposed to organizations that are in a start-up
mode.
Senator Pryor. Great. And I assume there will be some new
fusion centers coming online. I know my home State of Arkansas
is in the process of setting one of those up. I do not know if
they have made final decisions or not. And I am sure other
States and regions are doing that.
Well, listen, I want to thank you all for being here and
being part of this panel. And, Ms. Larence, I understand that
this is your second time before the Subcommittee. Is that
right?
Ms. Larence. It is, sir.
Senator Pryor. And you win the prize because we haven't
ever had the same witness twice. [Laughter.]
Ms. Larence. Thank you.
Senator Pryor. And we are going to hold a hearing next year
for you to come to.
Ms. Larence. It is a deal.
Senator Pryor. Based on one of your GAO reports, just give
us any ideas and we will have a hearing--no, I am teasing about
that. But thank you. It is great to have you back and great to
have our witnesses here. And like I said a few moments ago, we
are going to leave the record open for 2 weeks. We are going to
include all of your prepared written statements. If you have
charts or anything else we can include those in the record.
I want to thank you for your time and your preparation, and
once more thank you all for being here today. But even more
importantly, thank you for doing what you do because you all
are making a difference, and we appreciate it very much. The
good news is I am going to be able to get over and get those
votes cast in a few minutes.
So, with that, I will adjourn the hearing. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:23 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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