HOMELAND SECURITY INTELLIGENCE AT A CROSSROADS: THE OFFICE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS' VISION FOR 2008
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING,
AND TERRORISM RISK ASSESSMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 26, 2008
__________
Serial No. 110-96
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
Loretta Sanchez, California Peter T. King, New York
Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Lamar Smith, Texas
Norman D. Dicks, Washington Christopher Shays, Connecticut
Jane Harman, California Mark E. Souder, Indiana
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Tom Davis, Virginia
Nita M. Lowey, New York Daniel E. Lungren, California
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Mike Rogers, Alabama
Columbia David G. Reichert, Washington
Zoe Lofgren, California Michael T. McCaul, Texas
Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Charles W. Dent, Pennsylvania
Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida
Islands Gus M. Bilirakis, Florida
Bob Etheridge, North Carolina David Davis, Tennessee
James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Henry Cuellar, Texas
Christopher P. Carney, Pennsylvania
Yvette D. Clarke, New York
Al Green, Texas
Ed Perlmutter, Colorado
Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Staff Director & General Counsel
Todd Gee, Chief Counsel
Michael Twinchek, Chief Clerk
Robert O'Connor, Minority Staff Director
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK
ASSESSMENT
Jane Harman, California, Chair
Norman D. Dicks, Washington David G. Reichert, Washington
James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Christopher Shays, Connecticut
Christopher P. Carney, Pennsylvania Charles W. Dent, Pennsylvania
Ed Perlmutter, Colorado Peter T. King, New York (Ex
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi (Ex Officio)
Officio)
Thomas M. Finan, Director and Counsel
Brandon Declet, Counsel
Natalie Nixon, Deputy Chief Clerk
Deron McElroy, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member
(II)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Statements
The Honorable Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress From the
State of California, and Chair, Subcommittee on Intelligence,
Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment............. 1
The Honorable David G. Reichert, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Washington, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee
on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk
Assessment..................................................... 2
Witnesses
Mr. Charles E. Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and
Analysis, Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 6
HOMELAND SECURITY INTELLIGENCE AT A CROSSROADS: THE OFFICE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS' VISION FOR 2008
----------
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and
Terrorism Risk Assessment,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 4:20 p.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Jane Harman [Chair
of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Harman, Carney, Perlmutter, and
Reichert.
Ms. Harman. The committee will come to order. We are
meeting today to receive testimony on ``Homeland Security
Intelligence at a Crossroads: The Office of Intelligence and
Analysis' Vision For 2008''.
Let me apologize to our audience and our witness for having
to reschedule this hearing and having to delay the classified
briefing which preceded this hearing. All of that was required
because of the House schedule. None of us on this subcommittee
sets the House schedule; and our apologies.
Our witness today is Under Secretary Charles Allen.
Charlie, we are here to discuss your priorities in the wake
of the President's budget request. But as you have been warned,
I want to discuss one of my priorities first in introducing the
hearing; and I believe it is a priority not just for me, but
for every Member of this subcommittee and, so far as I can
tell, for a huge number of the first responders that we talk to
around the country.
I&A is not a vacuum. Of all the agencies across the Federal
Government, DHS was the one Congress expected would make
breaking down stovepipes its No. 1 priority. As the National
Counterterrorism Center, the FBI and others have adjusted their
missions to do this, it still seems that your office in DHS is
too much of a stovepipe.
I&A's mandate in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was
straightforward: Find out the needs of State and locals and
then build an organization to meet them. Instead, as the CENTRA
report discussed in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear,
I&A is still struggling with this mission 2 years after you
came on board, Charlie. Some of your struggle, we believe, is
in the wrong direction. I have a major issue with I&A's endless
refusal, or let's call it ``delay,'' to build a robust ITACG
that includes a robust State, local and tribal presence that
all of us believe would help make the NCTC our national Fusion
Center a better processor of intelligence information.
Although you promised last year that your staff would make
a full effort to ensure the ITACG's success, and although you
told us you were proud to be leading the effort, you did not
have it going in a few weeks as you promised you would. When
little happened, Congress spelled out what the ITACG needed to
do in the legislation we recently passed, H.R. 1, the 9/11 Act
and in the joint explanatory statement that accompanied it. It
has been almost 7 months since the President signed the 9/11
Act into law, and we have seen since that there are continuing
obstacles in the ITACG's path.
Last summer at the tail end of the 9/11 bill negotiations,
you and former Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson came to my
office to make the case for why the ITACG should not be
included in our bill. You both explained that DHS had done so
much for State and locals, it wasn't necessary. We, to the
contrary, believed that you had not done enough and that it was
necessary. So we included it in our bill.
On the eve of Mr. Jackson's retirement, he promised that he
would sign the memorandum of agreement that had to do with
agency cooperation with the ITACG. At the last minute, the last
evening he was at work at DHS, he inserted, or you inserted,
some addenda to the agreement which the other agencies signed
on to which did two things.
First, it made clear that DHS could control the information
it disseminates. No one has ever argued with that, but that had
to be added. But second, it just complicated, so I understand,
the process of getting people full-time into the ITACG.
The ITACG is not going to go away; and I want to say, in
friendship and partnership, that this committee will continue
to insist that we build a robust presence of State and locals
and tribals as part of our national fusion effort. It is
valuable because they bring value. It is also valuable because
they can learn from the reading of the intelligence information
that the NCTC has, that way, we will have fewer false alarms at
the local level and that way we will have better products at
the local level.
So as we discuss your mission, which I am eager to do, and
as we have been briefed on some additional budget requirements
you have--budget numbers are classified, so we won't discuss
them--I just want to be clear that my priority is learning how
you are going to be a better partner with the other Federal
agencies in this effort to fully share information with our
local communities, so that they know what to look for and what
to do, and they are capable of preventing the next attack,
which is, after all, a goal we all share.
I now yield for an opening statement to the Ranking Member.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome, Mr. Allen,
once again. Thank you for coming before us this week.
Some of my comments will also touch on some of the things
that the Chair has already touched on. We are here to hear a
little bit about your plan for different dollar figures and
your outlook for the year. But I, as you know, in my previous
life as a local law enforcement officer and sheriff in the
Seattle area, am really interested in how these plans and
programs come together and translate into results for, you
know, the cops on the street and the front lines, who are on
the front lines in our community.
For example, State and localities around the Nation have
formed fusion centers, which we all agree are great things; and
they are growing and improving, and their job is to bring
together information on crimes and terrorism so that they might
be better able to prevent a terrorist attack.
These fusion centers also help analysts recognize patterns
in crime that may indicate precursors of terrorist activity, as
we saw in the case that we examined in Torrance. I understand
that the Department of Homeland Security has plans to send
additional analysts--in Seattle we do have one, and we
appreciate his support--out to other States and local fusion
centers; and we would like to hear how your budget would
accomplish this.
I think we have talked about this topic before in some of
our other hearings. That is one important point I hope you
address in your opening comments.
Additionally, this morning there was a story in The Wall
Street Journal about an internal report on fusion centers and
information sharing at the Department; and I hope that you will
address that issue in your opening comments. You have very
strong support for your Fusion Center initiative from this
subcommittee, and we would like to help you and our State and
local fusion centers accomplish the goal of protecting this
Nation from harm.
You also have responsibility to provide intelligence
support to a wide range of communities, including the border,
port, transportation and private sectors. We would like to hear
how in this budget this will allow you to accomplish that wide-
ranging mission.
Recently, I asked Secretary Chertoff, when he appeared
before the full committee, about what is being done to help
secure the northern borders. So we are interested in that, of
course, from Washington State's perspective. I believe it is
essential that our port and border officials, transportation
authorities and others receive robust intelligence support from
the Department.
Finally, I hope that you touch upon some of your expanded
work in the area of open source intelligence, which creates
products that can be easily shared and at an unclassified
level. As you know, we are very interested in the issue of
overclassification; and it seems to me that a big piece of
combating overclassification is to consciously create as many
unclassified intel products as possible, and open source is a
big part of that fact.
Mr. Allen, we once again welcome you and your testimony on
how the Office of Intelligence and Analysis is working to
strengthen our Nation's intelligence community and secure our
homeland.
I yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. I thank the Ranking Member.
Other Members of the subcommittee are reminded that under
committee rules, opening statements may be submitted for the
record.
Our first and only witness, Under Secretary Charles Allen,
is the Department's chief intelligence officer.
By the way, Charlie, congratulations on your promotion to
under secretary. We all supported that idea, and we think it is
a great credit to you.
Under your lead, the Department's intelligence work through
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis--and you focused on
improving the analysis and sharing of terrorist threat
information. You are responsible for ensuring that information
is gathered from the Department component intelligence units as
well as Federal, State, local, tribal and private sector
partners, and it is your job to ensure that this information is
fused with intelligence from other parts of the intelligence
community to produce analytic products and services for the
Department's customers.
Without objection, Under Secretary Allen's full statement
will be inserted in the record. I now ask you to summarize your
statement in 5 minutes, and then we will ask you questions.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES E. ALLEN, UNDER SECRETARY FOR INTELLIGENCE
AND ANALYSIS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Chair Harman and Ranking Member
Reichert and other Members of the committee.
I really would like to talk about the progress we have made
in building a strong and unified DHS Intelligence enterprise
and the challenges that we face in the days ahead. I hope in
the question-and-answer period to answer fully all your
questions and all your observations.
The DHS community of intelligence professionals, which I
described to you last year, continues to develop and expand.
Over the last 12 months, we have further increased our
productive and collaborative relationship with traditional
intelligence community professionals as well as those at the
State, local and tribal areas--as well, operational and law
enforcement individuals.
All members of this community, as you pointed out in your
comments, Chair Harman, are essential to the success of DHS
intelligence, given the very decentralized and complex threat
that we face today. You are right, with the passage of the 9/11
Act, I do have the responsibility now to integrate and
synchronize the activities of the intelligence offices of the
operating components, as well as my own office.
I do appreciate the elevation of this position to under
secretary, something which I think will be vital to my
successor. The President's fiscal year 2009 budget request
provides funding that will allow my office to bolster and to
sustain its core missions and further the overall integration.
Let me just talk briefly on why your support is so
essential. DHS Intelligence requirements, collection,
dissemination capabilities grew significantly over the last
year. For example, we increased the production of homeland
intelligence reports from 2,000 to nearly 3,100 reports. These
unevaluated reports provide intelligence and homeland security
communities with a trove of information that, in the previous
year, went unharvested.
The fiscal year 2009 budget will allow me to hire
additional personnel to support the acquisition report and
reporting of unevaluated DHS component information of
intelligence value to not only Federal, but State, local,
tribal as well as the private sector.
To accomplish your mandate to integrate intelligence, I am
planning to create a Homeland Security Intelligence Program.
This will be a DHS program similar in structure to the Director
of National Intelligence's National Intelligence Program, or
NIP. It will encompass the resource planning and budgeting
activities of all members of DHS Intelligence.
I have already established a Homeland Security Intelligence
Council, providing a venue for all DHS Intelligence leaders to
discuss issues and to make collective decisions consequent for
DHS Intelligence. An integrated enterprise, both within DHS and
including our external partners, can only be built upon a
robust common training program which we now have under way.
However, we will require additional funding in order to sustain
this program in the coming year.
In getting to your comments in particular, my office leads
information-sharing efforts across DHS. In addition to our
departmental responsibilities to implement the information-
sharing environment, we are leading the Interagency Threat
Assessment Coordination Group, the ITAC-G, at the National
Counterterrorism Center to ensure that non-Federal stakeholders
are provided tailored and federally coordinated perspectives on
time-sensitive threats that would have a potential impact upon
the safety of the homeland. The ITAC-G has achieved operating
capability, and I will be pleased in the question-and-answer
period to respond fully to your questions and to your comments.
In the past year, my office has, in fact, made significant
progress at enhancing our support to State and local. The
internal DHS report cited an article in The Wall Street Journal
today that is something that I really want to comment on in
more specific ways. This study, which is internal, which I just
received last week, is good government; and I would like to
correct the record. The internal report was simply a study that
reflects the progress we have made.
Here is the story of reality: I commissioned this report
about 6 months ago precisely to get at the unvarnished,
unfettered truth from the State and locals as to what was
working and what was not working. The pilot program was
designed to determine exactly what information and intelligence
State and locals needed from DHS and the intelligence
community. Finally, the pilot was designed to determine how DHS
could assist State and locals with the vital process of
exploiting open source information in support of their unique
missions.
But the process did not stop there. I instructed my office
to put in place immediately measures to address shortcomings as
they were uncovered. For example, we have improved the quality
and timeliness of our responsiveness to the pilot Fusion Center
request for information from weeks to days.
Today, more than 85 percent of these were returned to State
and local with answers within the deadline that they had set at
the State level. Information needs at the pilot sites have been
determined, and Fusion Center leaderships tell us that the
information provided against these needs will significantly
enhance their individual missions. These needs will now form
the basis for information and intelligence analysis provided to
these locations in the year ahead. The open source needs that
Congressman Reichert spoke about of the pilot States have been
determined and training has been provided to three of the
States.
The leadership of these fusion centers has described our
assistance in this area as a grand slam home run. We will
provide the same training and assistance in open source to the
remaining fusion centers Nation-wide.
In summary, our Fusion Center partners have repeatedly told
us of improvements that they have found in our support and
their confidence that we, together, are on the right track. The
success of our endeavors I think is summed up in an excerpt
from a 28 January 2008 letter sent to Secretary Chertoff by Los
Angeles Chief of Police William Bratton following the
production of a DHS-FBI joint regional bulletin addressing both
the concerns over an upcoming anti-Islam Dutch film. In that
letter, Chief Bratton wrote, ``I would like to personally thank
DHS and, specifically, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
for taking our partnership to the next level, and look forward
to reading future joint intelligence products that highlight
our shared interests as we work to protect and secure
America.''
The President's fiscal year 2009 budget provides us the
additional funds to handle a whole range of initiatives that
have been given to us by the Secretary and by the DNI.
I want to convey to you my sense of commitment and mission
to ensure that we have in DHS the capability to address all
threats to the homeland. This budget request will continue the
process of integrating DHS Intelligence, as you mandate it, and
will enhance our departmental capabilities to address the
threats outlined in the President's National Strategy for
Homeland Security. Our success depends on our ability to work
together at all levels of government while not losing sight of
the public's privacy and civil liberties that we must protect.
The threats to our homeland from extremism and other
threats are very serious. I need your strong support for the
initiatives I have set forth. I look forward to your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Allen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles E. Allen
February 14, 2008
introduction
Chair Harman, Ranking Member Reichert, and Members of the
subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
to discuss the President's fiscal year 2009 budget for the DHS Office
of Intelligence and Analysis.
I testify before you today to speak to the progress that we have
made in building a strong DHS Intelligence Enterprise as well as the
challenges we face in the days ahead. As you know, the intelligence
mission of my office flows directly from the mission of the Department
itself. The mission of my office is clear--it is to identify and assess
transnational and domestic threats to homeland security. We provide
anticipatory, proactive, and actionable intelligence to support the
Department; State, local, tribal, and private sector customers; and the
intelligence community. The most critical and overarching threat to the
homeland remains terrorism--transnational and domestic--and much of the
IC's resources are devoted to this issue. I believe, however, that my
office adds unique value by viewing terrorism through the prism of
threats to the homeland. This holistic perspective allows us to make
connections--if and where they exist--between terrorism and other
illicit transnational criminal activities. Moreover, these other
illicit activities often constitute serious threats to the homeland,
and we must address these as well to support our departmental mission
and to help secure the Nation.
Last year, we developed our first annual integrated DHS
Intelligence Enterprise research plan. This drove our flagship
publication--the seminal Homeland Security Threat Assessment--of which
I am very proud. This assessment represents the analytical judgments of
DHS writ large and assesses the major threats to the homeland for which
the U.S. Government must prepare and to which it must respond. The
assessment looks out to 2010 and will be updated annually. Moreover, it
provides us an important analytic framework by which we can identify
and prioritize our gaps in knowledge and understanding of homeland
threats.
Further, this Enterprise research plan is part of an effort that
includes development and publication of monthly Enterprise production
plans; collaborative identification of priority collection gaps;
coordinated efforts to harvest and extract information of intelligence
value, and dissemination of unique DHS intelligence reporting to both
our traditional and non-traditional customers; and Enterprise efforts
to establish common tradecraft standards based on those delineated by
the DNI. Collectively, these efforts demonstrate the significant
capabilities a unified DHS Intelligence Enterprise can bring to bear
against the threats facing our homeland.
the office of intelligence and analysis
The principal threats we face today are borderless, global,
decentralized, and more dynamic and volatile than ever before. Within
the DHS Intelligence Enterprise context, the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis continues to build its core capabilities while concurrently
assessing and proactively staging the capabilities needed to transform
DHS intelligence--to bring our resources, systems, capabilities, and
knowledge base into alignment with longstanding and mature intelligence
community organizations. This two-pronged effort requires resolve and
careful timing, but I am convinced we have made significant progress.
We have created an intelligence program that is attuned to fluctuations
in the homeland security environment and one that is working
synergistically across the Department to counter the threats faced by
our country.
Enhancing Analytic Focus, Quality, and Collaboration
Since its inception, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has
focused on building its core capacities to deliver high quality
intelligence. We worked through the challenges of standing up a new
organization with a highly diverse and committed workforce. Within the
organization, we have defined, established, and integrated the
``Homeland Security intelligence'' mission, our unique approach to
intelligence, and our knowledge and understanding of widely diverse
traditional and non-traditional customer requirements.
Last year I realigned the Office of Intelligence and Analysis'
analytic resources into five elements to focus on the principal threats
to the homeland. In my view, this realignment has improved dramatically
the quality of our analysis by honing our focus and pinpointing where
we can collaborate with and leverage both our own departmental skills,
knowledge, and resources as well as those of the intelligence
community. This approach has led to major analytic achievements in my
office and across the DHS Intelligence Enterprise. We now regularly
produce high quality Homeland Security intelligence assessments for the
Secretary and other Department principals, directly support key
Department efforts, such as the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) and the
Visa Waiver Program, provide improved and more tailored analyses to
State, local, tribal, and private sector, and better complement IC
analysis with our own unique perspectives.
As I noted, we now have five analytic thrusts to focus and energize
our efforts. The first is threats to border security. We look at all
borders--air, land, sea, and virtual--and examine a range of threats,
such as narcotics trafficking, alien and human smuggling, money
laundering, and other illicit transnational threats. These threats are
interwoven and, importantly, can provide potential avenues for
terrorists to enter the homeland. Our initial focus has been the
Southwest border, per the secretary's priorities. During 2007, Office
of Intelligence and Analysis intelligence assessments on worldwide
travel vulnerabilities and the potential for extremists, terrorists,
and other transnational criminals to exploit travel to the United
States raised decisionmaker awareness of U.S. border security
concerns--an area previously under-reported in intelligence community
channels. We also continue to be the only intelligence community
organization looking at U.S. borders holistically. A key example of
this is our Southwest Border Threat Assessment, which underscores the
range of issues threatening border security as well as their potential
nexus to terrorism.
My office's Intelligence Campaign Plan (ICP) is expanding DHS
intelligence capabilities focused on border security by forward-
deploying intelligence officers to key border intelligence centers and
augmenting border threat analysis, requirements, and classified
communications infrastructure. This year, I deployed the first Homeland
Intelligence Support Team (HIST) officer to El Paso, Texas, to provide
direct intelligence support and information fusion to front-line
operators and agents along the border. The HIST will be staffed with an
integrated team of intelligence professionals responsible for
identifying the intelligence needs of our border agencies, ensuring
that information is coordinated with multiple Federal and local
agencies, and facilitating the use of national intelligence resources
to support them. The team also will ensure that critical Homeland
Security information is appropriately shared with key mission partners
external to DHS.
In addition to our HIST in El Paso, as part of our expanding
reports officer program, we are deploying reports officers at various
cities along the southwest border to provide our operators with
situational awareness and information support. The reports officers and
the HIST will be coordinating their activities with the SBInet Program
Office to fuse information, analysis, and technology to provide new
strength to border security efforts. Our border agents are on the line
every hour of every day, and the ICP, HIST, and reports officer
deployments exist to support their needs.
The office's reports officer program is key to supporting DHS
operating elements, the DHS Intelligence Enterprise and the IC--and I
have made significant investments in it. It is improving the
Department's ability to move information with intelligence value that
is gathered by DHS operating components throughout DHS and to other
Federal agencies, to our non-Federal stakeholders, and to the
intelligence community. I also have been expanding our reporting
capabilities through reports officer training of headquarters, field
intelligence, and selected operational personnel. Over the last
calendar year, we have increased our Homeland Intelligence Report (HIR)
production from 2,000 to nearly 3,100 HIRs. These unique, unevaluated
reports provide the larger intelligence and homeland security
communities with a trove of information that in previous years went
unharvested and unevaluated.
A second analytic element in my office is dedicated to assessing
the threat of radicalization and extremism. Our top priority is
radicalized Islam (Sunni and Shia groups); however, we also look at
radicalized domestic groups; to include white supremacists, black
separatists, and fringe environmentalists. We do not monitor known
extremists and their activities; instead, we are interested in the
radicalization process--why and how people are attracted to radical
beliefs and cross the line into violence. We are using non-traditional
intelligence and working closely with our State and local partners to
leverage their insights and expertise to build a baseline of
radicalization that leads to ideologically based violence in their
localities. From this baseline, we plan to develop an integrated
framework for tracking a radical or extremist group's risk for
terrorism and assisting policymakers in developing strategies to deter
and prevent it.
As a complement to our efforts to look at threats inside the
homeland, such as radicalization, we further are collaborating with our
DHS Operating Components to focus on a third analytic element,
potential threats from particular groups entering the United States--
groups that could be exploited by terrorists or other ``bad people'' to
enter the homeland legally or to bring in CBRN or other materials. We
further focus on travel-related issues of interest to the Department,
such as visa categories and the Visa Waiver Program. Our key
intelligence sources are the data that our Components gather in their
daily operations. DHS Intelligence never before has pursued such an
effort--one that is important to support the Department, our State and
local partners, and the intelligence community. Last year, for example,
Office of Intelligence and Analysis analysts assessed factors in global
instability that are driving migration to the homeland--a phenomenon
potentially exploitable by terrorists. Office of Intelligence and
Analysis analysts also led a key effort last year in developing the
U.S. Government's security screening program to vet prospective Iraqi
refugees entering the United States.
A fourth analytic element assesses threats to critical
infrastructure, both private sector and State-owned and operated. We
are enhancing our existing analytic efforts in partnership with the DHS
Office of Infrastructure Protection in a center--the Homeland
Infrastructure Threat and Risk Assessment Center, or HITRAC--to assess
terrorist threats to and vulnerabilities in the 17 critical
infrastructures identified in HSPD-7. We have completed a baseline
assessment for every sector; last year, we completed, from a
geographical (vice sector) perspective, 56 State and territory threat
assessments--the first ever infrastructure intelligence threat
assessments for each State and territory in the Union--to support State
and local requirements on terrorist and other threats to U.S. critical
infrastructure. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis engaged State
and local partners in working groups to review and contribute to these
assessments, as well as delivered tailored briefings to a wide range of
State, local, and private sector customers to enhance their awareness
and understanding of the threats.
The last analytic element, but certainly not the least, supports a
full range of customers on chemical, biological, radiological, and
nuclear (CBRN) threats. We focus on the threat from improvised nuclear
devices (IND) and radiological dispersal devices (RDD), or ``dirty
bombs.'' We are also developing a major effort on bioterrorism threat
analysis to support the Department's role to deter bioterrorism in the
homeland. In the bioterrorism area, we are emphasizing the threat of
infectious diseases--such as avian influenza--to support the
Department's role in pandemic preparedness. Our concerns do not end
with infectious human diseases, however, but include infectious animal
diseases that could devastate our economy, and we are developing
expertise in this area.
Equally important is the fact that we have demonstrated the value
of Homeland Security intelligence by contributing regularly--
individually and collaboratively--to the President's Daily Brief and
the National Terrorism Bulletin. We also have developed key new product
lines--such as the Border Security Monitor, CubaGram, Cyber Security
Monitor, and Infrastructure Intelligence Notes, as well as a much-
demanded, rapid turnaround publication for State and local customers--
our Chief Intelligence Officer Notes. These product lines respond to
the demand for breaking, emerging, and quickly evolving information
updates on foreign and domestic threats and incidents with a potential
impact on homeland security and principally respond to the concerns of
our non-traditional customers--homeland security operators and
policymakers as well as Federal, State, local, tribal, and private
sector partners--for tailored, timely, and actionable intelligence.
Sharing Information and Quality Analysis Across the Homeland Security
Operating Environment
Across this land, the ``seamless community of intelligence
professionals,'' which I described to you last year, is expanding. Over
the last year, DHS Intelligence continued to set the standard for
integration by solidifying productive, collaborative relationships with
traditional intelligence professionals; operational and law enforcement
intelligence professionals; and State, local, tribal, and private
sector intelligence professionals. As you know, all members of this
community are equally essential to its success--the threat is too
decentralized and complex to be destroyed without the full engagement
of the community as a whole.
Our success rests on our collective abilities to share information,
collaboratively fuse this information into a clear threat picture,
cooperate to fill the gaps in understanding the threat, and communicate
the threat to the right stakeholder at the right place and time. As
mandated by the Congress, my office leads information-sharing efforts
across all of DHS. Working with the Program Manager--Information
Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), I continue to create and implement the
framework for the DHS information-sharing environment.
Last year, the Department also improved substantially the
foundation for its congressionally mandated Information Sharing
Environment by establishing the information-sharing governance
structure and improving information-sharing processes and products,
such as the Data Asset Catalog. On behalf of the entire Department, the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis is leading the development of the
DHS Information Sharing Environment framework. A critical element of
this framework is the information-sharing governance structure. We
established the three-tiered structure to represent all DHS components
and enable us to speak with ``one voice'' to our external partners. The
Information Sharing Governance Board (ISGB), which I chair, is the
decisionmaking body on all DHS information-sharing and collaboration
issues. The DHS Information Sharing Coordinating Council (ISCC) is the
implementing body for Department-wide information-sharing matters, and
supports the ISGB. As part of this structure, we are building ``shared
mission communities''--such as law enforcement--to provide a community-
based forum to address barriers to information sharing and resolve
issues which resonate across a shared mission. This allows us to ensure
that while we address policy and technology aspects of information
sharing, we're also building a culture of collaboration.
DHS also is addressing requests from the Intelligence Community for
access to DHS information. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has
been working with DHS Components and our intelligence community
partners to remove information-sharing barriers and develop a
standardized approach to information sharing using Information Sharing
and Access Agreements (ISAA), in order to facilitate external requests
for DHS information. We are also creating Shared Mission Communities
(SMC) to align component activities according to shared missions in an
effort to increase efficiency and transparency across agencies; remove
barriers to information sharing--both real and perceived; and develop a
culture of information sharing and collaboration. The first SMC, the
Law Enforcement Shared Mission Community (LE-SMC), has brought all of
the DHS law enforcement components together to address information-
sharing opportunities and to build a coordinated approach to
information sharing. Other SMCs, including critical infrastructure,
border security, and transportation, will follow. Through this
framework, we have increased our momentum in implementing the
secretary's ``One DHS'' vision for improving information sharing--
contributing to a more integrated DHS and ensuring the timely and
efficient access of information between mission partners.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has continually expanded
its outreach, both within the Department and outside the Department to
support State and local partners. As a key cornerstone of our outreach
efforts, my office has deployed 22 representatives, and will be
deploying more to reach 26 by the end of fiscal year 2008. As the Chief
Intelligence Officer in DHS, I have been uniquely challenged in
developing a program that not only is consistent with the expectations
of the 22 different areas within the Department of Homeland Security,
but also meeting the needs of our Federal partners, and most
importantly meet the needs of the State and local customers for which
the program was developed.
The partnerships the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has
nurtured in the State and Local Fusion Center Program Management Office
are demonstrably successful when one considers the enormity of the
task. The first area the Office of Intelligence and Analysis needed to
bring partners together in the program's creation were internal,
meaning the divisions within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis,
whose resources would be stretched to support such a program. The
Office of Intelligence and Analysis has developed a group of leaders
from within each major area of the Office and worked with them to
create a program that would work across any parochial mission areas and
not interfere with existing work already being conducted with our State
and local partners. The success of these endeavors is best summed up in
an excerpt from a letter sent to Secretary Chertoff by the Los Angeles
Chief of Police William Bratton. Chief Bratton wrote, ``I would like to
personally thank DHS, and specifically, I&A [the Office of Intelligence
and Analysis], for taking our partnership to the next level and look
forward to reading future joint intelligence products that highlight
our shared interests as we work to protect and secure America.''
Sheriff Bob Alford of Johnson County, Texas, echoed this spirit when he
stated, ``We very much appreciate the information that is passed along
to our agency. It has been very beneficial in helping to stop rumors
going around the county, keeps us informed as to any threat to our
county and is the first time in my career that we have received regular
and frequent information from the Federal Government.''
Clearly, our information gathering, reporting, and analytic efforts
would be undercut dramatically without a functional information
technology and knowledge management backbone and structure. Recognizing
this, last year we created the Homeland Secure Information Network
(HSIN)--Intelligence, a secure but unclassified portal, to distribute
unclassified DHS and State and local intelligence to Federal and non-
Federal analysts and customers. We further developed a virtual analytic
community of interest with our State and local partners--the Homeland
Security State and Local Intelligence Community (HS SLIC)--on the HSIN-
Intelligence portal and last year sponsored analytic conferences on
radicalization, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat detection and
prevention, and border security. Each of these three collaboration
activities brought together--and HS SLIC continues to bring together--
over 100 analysts from across the country. Such efforts result in an
enhanced shared analytical understanding between DHS and other Federal,
State, local, and tribal agencies; a greater ability to assess threats
via multi-level government participation, meshing domestic on-the-
ground knowledge with overseas intelligence; and increased intelligence
sharing with our Homeland Security partners such as Governors, homeland
security advisors, private sector owners and operators, and State,
city, and county officials.
While the Office of Intelligence and Analysis continues to expand
our reach we continue to realize the need to bring the customers in
during the program's growth to ensure their voice was heard as the
program matures. Per the recommendation of Congress we have established
a Law Enforcement Fellowship program that will soon be receiving its
third candidate this year. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has
also worked with many Federal partners and advocacy groups
simultaneously to expand the Fusion Center Guidelines. This requires
balancing the interest of many parties and ensuring that work is not
allowed to be stalled by the parochial interest of any one participant.
I believe this success was recently demonstrated when both OMB and the
House and Senate appropriators doubled the program's baseline in only
its second year of existence.
Further, we are streamlining and merging disparate classified
networks into a single, integrated network--the Homeland Secure Data
Network (HSDN)--to help increase the sharing of intelligence and other
information securely to fulfill its homeland defense mission. Homeland
security leaders envision that HSDN will become the major secure
information thoroughfare joining together intelligence agencies, law
enforcement, disaster management, and front-line disaster response
organizations in the common goal of protecting our Nation and its
citizens. We are actively deploying HSDN internally and to our State
and Local partners. We have a program to ensure relevant information is
made available on these networks.
As the under secretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
I work on a daily basis to influence the State and Local Fusion Center
Program Management Office's direction on a national level. The Office
of Intelligence and Analysis conducts its work with our partners
mindful of the very strong concerns of our citizens over the protection
of civil rights, civil liberties and privacy at all levels of our
relationship. As this committee is aware, the Office of Intelligence
and Analysis continues to be a principal supporter of the Fusion Center
National Conference at which nearly 500 State and local intelligence
leaders will be present along with many of our Federal partners. In
total nearly 800 people, including you Madam Chair, will be in
attendance. This is nearly a 25 percent increase in participation over
last year. In very real terms the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
faces the task of maintaining these very important relationships on a
daily basis and actively influences policy concerning this program at
senior levels of Government. I remain committed to the program and our
State and local customers as we move forward in this mutually
beneficial relationship.
Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination Group (ITAC-G)
A major emphasis of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis has
been the establishment of the Interagency Threat Assessment
Coordination Group (ITAC-G), which has been stood up under the
management of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to help us
meet the information needs of our State, local, and tribal partners. I
have provided two senior officers from the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis, along with two officers provided by the FBI, to lead the
stand-up of this organization. I am extremely pleased to report that
the ITAC-G achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC) on 30 January
2008 and that current staffing requirements have been met. In total,
four Federal and four State personnel, as well as contractor officers,
are working in dedicated spaces with essential systems connectivity in
NCTC.
The ITAC-G has already begun providing valuable input to
intelligence products disseminated to State and local organizations,
and its personnel regularly attend NCTC meetings and are engaged in
NCTC production processes and activities critical to serving non-
Federal customers. Since stand-up operations began on 23 October 2007
under DHS day-to-day leadership, the ITAC-G has reviewed more than
25,000 finished intelligence products. From that review, the ITAC-G
identified products that meet State and local needs, and has already
disseminated many of them to State and local officials. Since 23
October, the ITAC-G also has reviewed 1,576 separate reports on
worldwide threats to U.S. interests, identifying 69 of these as
possible threats to the homeland. Further review by the ITAC-G revealed
five reports of questionable credibility, two of which required better
characterization of the threat or source. As a direct result of the
ITAC-G's efforts, DHS and the FBI refined our characterization of the
threat and released joint reports on the two cases noted above
requiring further threat detail.
We have also established the Advisory Council to the ITAC-G, which
I head on behalf of the secretary that will meet for the second time
tomorrow. I have set an ambitious agenda, centering on our discussion
of a number of priority challenges that we all expected the fledgling
group would encounter--from recruitment of State, local, and tribal
personnel; to establishing a formal mechanism and feedback process for
State, local, and tribal customers, who will be key to strengthening
the ITAC-G's value and evaluating its success. I am confident that DHS,
FBI, and NCTC in collaboration with the ITAC-G Advisory Council and
ITAC-G personnel will work closely together--not only to ensure that
the ITAC-G meets the letter and spirit of statutory obligations vis-a-
vis State, local, and tribal needs, but also to synchronize and
harmonize intelligence community support to our State, local, and
tribal partners.
the role of the under secretary in integrating the enterprise
I am grateful for your support to my office in the Implementing
Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. The ``9/11 Act''
elevated my position to an under secretary, effectively codifying the
authorities previously conferred on me by the secretary. I now have an
even greater responsibility--under the law--for integrating the
activities of the Component intelligence organizations of the
Department. My goal is to ensure that we are efficient and effective in
our approach toward inculcating a common intelligence culture.
Passage of the 9/11 Act, and within it, the creation of the under
secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, displayed farsightedness on
the part of this subcommittee. The 9/11 Act underscored the need for a
robust and integrated intelligence and information-sharing program
within DHS. Using existing Intelligence Enterprise governance and
oversight mechanisms, I have been laboring to evaluate and refine the
direction, efforts and resources necessary to implement its objectives.
Appropriate resourcing is fundamental to our success, and DHS will be
assiduous in ensuring that we are extraordinarily efficient and
effective in the use of our appropriated resources. I encourage the
subcommittee to recommend that the DHS intelligence program be
adequately resourced to fulfill the laudable objectives of the 9/11
Act.
As the chief intelligence officer of the Department, I created in
2006 the Homeland Security Intelligence Council (HSIC), providing a
venue for all DHS Intelligence Enterprise leaders to discuss issues and
collectively make decisions of consequence to the entire Enterprise.
Under my authorities, I conduct annual DHS intelligence program reviews
and work with the DHS Office of Policy and the chief financial officer
to issue intelligence guidance as part of our resource planning and
programming cycle. I am now required by law to present a consolidated
DHS intelligence budget to the secretary. The program reviews provide
the analysis and insights necessary for me to identify comprehensively
for the secretary the requirements and activities of the DHS
Intelligence Enterprise. These reviews also show me how to streamline
and structure departmental activities to leverage efficiencies of scale
and eliminate unnecessary programmatic duplication. This year, I hope
to expand and diversify beyond annual program reviews to include
periodic, focused, issue-based evaluations of smaller component
intelligence activities throughout the entire year.
I have been guiding our program and budget efforts toward the
creation of a Homeland Security Intelligence Program (HSIP) to manage
the Department's non-national intelligence programs that contribute to
homeland security intelligence collection and analysis. The HSIP will
encompass the resource planning, programming, and budgeting activities
of all members of the DHS Intelligence Enterprise. I have been laying
the groundwork to implement the HSIP for the last 2 years through the
collaborative leadership of the HSIC, the Homeland Security
Intelligence Integration Board (HIIB), the Intelligence Career Force
Management Board (ICFMB), and the Intelligence Systems Board (ISB). I
believe DHS is now well-positioned to establish a standardized basis
for how the DHS Intelligence Enterprise conducts its activities, and
fully bring into practice the goals envisioned in the 9/11 Act. The
HSIP will allow the Department, through the Chief Intelligence Officer,
to more effectively and efficiently provide oversight and direction to
all DHS intelligence resource planning, programming, and budgeting in a
concerted fashion to better ensure that all elements of DHS are
properly resourced, equipped, and collaborating to maximize fusion and
analysis of homeland security intelligence data collected. Over the
next year, I will continue to establish policies, procedures,
standards, and other guidelines to implement the HSIP in conjunction
with the Chief Financial Officer, the Office of Policy, and the HSIC.
Furthermore, as a member of the Intelligence Community and in my
role as the program manager for the DHS National Intelligence Program,
I participate in the DNI's Executive Committee. As an active member of
this committee, I ensure that the intelligence needs and capabilities
of the DHS Intelligence Enterprise, State and local officials, and
private sector owners and operators are a tightly woven, integral part
of the fabric of intelligence community planning and requirements.
I continue my efforts to recruit and develop an outstanding
workforce and retain high performers by investing in a strong training,
education, and professional development program. Without appropriate
training and education, the DHS Intelligence Enterprise will operate
neither as a culture nor as a unified workforce. Thus, I have made it a
cornerstone of my efforts with the HSIC to develop and institute
training programs that serve the entire Enterprise as well as our State
and local partners. The first two iterations of the 6-week Basic
Intelligence Threat Analysis Course were conducted last year, and the
third iteration is under way as I sit here before you. This key
milestone of the DHS Intelligence Enterprise Education, Training, and
Professional Development Strategy provides basic level intelligence
training to new intelligence analysts and to State and local personnel
who are customers of DHS intelligence. This year, I will begin
development of a complementary Mid-level Intelligence Threat Analysis
Course. We have made significant progress in establishing a strong
collection requirements and management program, building an initial
capacity in open source intelligence, streamlining the reporting of
information of intelligence value by our reports officers, and
improving our exploitation of information gathered through the
Department's conduct of its law enforcement authorities.
the president's fiscal year 2009 budget submission
Now I would like to address how the President's fiscal year 2009
budget submission supports the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
efforts. First, I am pleased to inform you that the 2009 budget
submission includes funding for seven critical areas that will allow
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis to bolster and sustain its core
missions and further integrate the DHS Intelligence Enterprise: State
and Local Fusion Center deployments; intelligence analysis;
intelligence requirements, collection, and dissemination; integration
planning; information sharing; outreach; and mission support. In each
of these areas, as I have sought to demonstrate throughout this
testimony, we have made much progress. Still, we have much work ahead
to accomplish.
The President continues his commitment to a national fusion center
network that is already demonstrating results by providing the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis with additional funds to expand its
representation at State and Local Fusion Centers (SLFC) across the
country. The fiscal year 2009 budget will enable the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis to deploy additional intelligence analysts
and HSDN connectivity to SLFCs, provide security awareness training to
SLFC personnel accessing sensitive Federal information, more robustly
conduct privacy and civil liberties awareness and protection training,
and continue the Office of Intelligence and Analysis' efforts to
provide intelligence support to the SLFCs from headquarters. I am
encouraged by Congress' continuing support to the State and Local
Fusion Center Program Management Office and look forward to working
with them to fully fund the program in fiscal year 2009 in order to
meet both the President's goals and objectives and the requirements of
the 9/11 Act. I must also be mindful that this direct customer support
requires a robust analytical and support engine behind it to remain
successful. I am eager to work with the legislative branch to ensure
all levels of State and local support are funded at the President's
request level to ensure the continued success of the national network
of fusion centers.
The fiscal year 2009 budget provides additional funds to hire more
WMD analysts within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. These
analysts will focus on WMD-related threats to the United States and
provide the Office of Intelligence and Analysis with greater access to
a critical source of WMD threat information, Project ARGUS, and the
robust streams of human and animal biosurveillance data available from
around the globe.
These analysts also will contribute to a core Office of
Intelligence and Analysis mission--integration of the Intelligence
Enterprise--by working closely with analysts from other DHS Component
intelligence organizations to develop timely, tailored, and actionable,
homeland-focused public health and medical intelligence products for
our Federal, State, local, tribal, and private sector partners. They
will further help to institutionalize my office's relationships with
other departmental partner organizations, such as the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office, Science and Technology Directorate, National
Preparedness and Protection Directorate, and the Office of Health
Affairs.
In addition, these analysts will support the expansion of the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis' ability to identify foreign
persons posing a WMD threat who are coming to the United States or are
already here. This expansion effort will facilitate the full analysis
and screening of such persons in order to advise the law enforcement
community and the intelligence community on potential WMD-related
threats to the homeland.
The fiscal year 2009 budget for intelligence requirements,
collection, and dissemination will allow the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis to hire additional personnel to support the acquisition and
reporting of all unevaluated component information of potential
intelligence value to Federal, State, local, tribal, and private sector
entities that have responsibilities relating to the security of the
homeland. With these additional personnel, DHS will be able to increase
its ability to acquire all threats/all hazards information available
through the State and Local Fusion Centers (SLFC). The reports officers
will be trained on how to handle law enforcement information to ensure
it is appropriately protected, and that departmental records and
databases are reviewed within statutory and regulatory prescriptions.
This activity supports the Office of Intelligence and Analysis' core
mission of sharing relevant information across the DHS Intelligence
Enterprise and the intelligence community.
The President's budget will also provide increases for the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis' open source (OSINT) research and analytic
capabilities, recognizing the intelligence value of information that is
freely found in the public domain. This increased capability will allow
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis to conduct OSINT research,
acquisition, collection management, content management, and knowledge
management to increase the quantity of relevant OSINT provided to our
customers. Exploiting this type of information complements the broader
intelligence community's open source investments and allows DHS to
better serve Federal, State, and local customers.
These new initiatives--along with the maturation of DHS' Integrated
Collections Strategy and fused approach to intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance--will improve the Department's responsiveness to the
needs of our internal and external partners.
Overall, the President's fiscal year 2009 budget request sustains
Office of Intelligence and Analysis investments in information
sharing--the lynchpin of Enterprise Integration and Homeland Security
outreach. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis will further develop
the enterprise architecture and expand our connectivity with our
Federal and non-Federal partners. One of the cornerstones of these
endeavors is the expansion of a collaborative information environment
at the SECRET level, which will foster classified communication among
the Department's components and with our State and local partners. This
capability, coupled with the Department providing access to both
intelligence reporting and analytical products at the unclassified and
For Official Use/Sensitive But Unclassified levels, will enhance our
information-sharing relationships with State, local, tribal, and
private sector partners.
Through an Integrated Product Team, we are fully engaged with the
DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate and other departmental
components to identify, develop, and acquire technology to help us
improve information sharing. For example, S&T resources are targeted to
develop technology that will improve data sharing and data fusion for
information sharing.
As chief intelligence officer, and now as under secretary, I have
initiated many programs within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
critical to the security of our Nation. Activities such as the National
Immigration Information Sharing Operation, the National Applications
Office, media exploitation, reports officers, and State and Local
Fusion Center representatives are either providing or poised to provide
broad access to unique DHS information. We must invest in the support
network that allows all of these programs to function effectively. As
an under secretary reporting directly to the secretary, I must capably
manage taskings, people, and funding; ensure laws and Federal
regulations are strictly adhered to; and create programs and policies
to integrate the DHS Intelligence Enterprise. As intelligence
activities within DHS expand, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
must realize a commensurate increase in staff capabilities to provide
adequate organizational support and oversight. The fiscal year 2009
budget will allow me to hire qualified personnel to provide mission
support in areas such as budget, human capital, and administration.
Further, as the complexity of the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis' operations has grown so has the need for statutory and
regulatory guidance. To this end, the fiscal year 2009 budget will also
allow me to hire needed attorneys and program managers to ensure the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis strictly observes all U.S. laws,
regulations, and policies that protect privacy, civil rights, and civil
liberties. Additional personnel will also be used to more effectively
implement and monitor Office of Intelligence and Analysis operations,
programs, resources, and performance.
conclusion
Members of the subcommittee, I want to convey to you my personal
sense of urgency and commitment to the mission we all share--ensuring
that DHS has the intelligence capability to address threats to the
homeland. The United States and its allies are engaged in a global
struggle against a broad range of transnational threats. DHS
Intelligence is a modestly sized program, but the budget before you
reflects this urgency. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis budget
request will enhance departmental intelligence capabilities to address
the ``complex and dynamic threats'' outlined in the President's
National Strategy for Homeland Security and continue the process of
integrating the DHS Intelligence Enterprise, as mandated in the 9/11
Act.
As always, I welcome the opportunity to appear before this
subcommittee to share our key accomplishments and review the major
funding priorities in fiscal year 2009. These priority areas are vital
to advancing DHS Intelligence to where it should be. Overall, the
realization of a national homeland security intelligence community
rests on addressing these areas. The Office's challenge in fiscal year
2009 is to aggressively pursue DHS Intelligence and Analysis' evolution
and to maximize budgetary resources to build on our capabilities and
sustain an inclusive partnership of equals to meet our critical mission
of protecting the homeland.
None of us--whether at the Federal, State, local level, or in the
intelligence community--can unilaterally predict the threat, warn our
stakeholders, and take action to mitigate the risks. Our success
depends on our ability to work together, while never losing sight of
the privacy and civil liberties of the public that we are sworn to
protect. We are constantly besieged by enemies, foreign and domestic,
which require perpetual awareness to mitigate the myriad threats. Our
success in protecting our Nation's security depends on how relentlessly
we collaborate.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Ms. Harman. I thank the witness.
Now it is time for questioning, and I yield myself 5
minutes for questions.
Mr. Allen, I listened carefully to your summary, and I do
appreciate--I think we all appreciate that your office is
making progress. But what I continue to hear is that your
office is making progress inside of DHS, but I don't really
hear that your office is being a good partner to other agencies
in helping the NCTC process to evolve.
Let me remind us all that initially, when the Homeland
Security Department bill was passed, the intelligence function
and the intelligence fusion function were all within DHS.
President Bush then decided sometime later to set up a separate
office called the Terrorist Threat Information Center, TTIC,
outside of DHS, free floating but more or less attached to the
CIA. I am sure we all remember this. That office has evolved
into the NCTC, which was given its status when we did the
intelligence reform legislation. The NCTC is, again, free-
floating, and it is a fusion center for all of the Federal
agencies that work on intelligence.
This committee expects you to be a full partner with the
NCTC, and we set up this new--what you call the ITAC-G, and I
just call the ITACG--system to incorporate State, local and
tribal people in the process of developing Federal intelligence
products for State, local and tribal consumption. The reason we
did this is because we felt that their perspective would be
enormously helpful in designing products for them to use.
We still don't feel--in the information I have, we still
don't feel that you are fully cooperating with this group. I am
just curious, for example, have you met with the State, local
and tribal detailees from Phoenix, Washington, DC, Boston and
the New Jersey State Police who are now here as part of the
ITACG? Have you personally met with them?
Mr. Allen. I have personally met with all of them, and we
have supported getting them--two of them, getting them on board
and funding them through a process called IPA, independent--
independent governmental authority in order to bring them on
board and bring them on board effectively.
We have worked very closely with NCTC on the whole process.
We have worked closely with the FBI. We have--I have two of my
most senior officers leading and helping work with the FBI and
State and local officials. We have worked very hard to get them
onboard, to get them to meet all the security requirements of
NCTC. I work closely with Mike Leiter, who is the acting
director of NCTC, and he and I agree that it is working well.
There is a report that will be coming, I believe from the
information-sharing environment program manager, that will lay
out the first quarterly report on the ITAC-G progress. I am
very, very pleased with what we are doing. I can cite
statistics, but I don't really have time. They are putting in a
lot of data into the State and local fusion centers and State
governments.
Ms. Harman. Well, let me ask you to define what you think
is the job of these participants in the ITACG and I am also
curious to know whether they are involved in producing
documents as part of their jobs that are stamped or identified
as documents produced by the ITACG.
Mr. Allen. Their job, as laid out in their charter, is not
to do original analysis and research, but to ensure that all
Federal information, whether it is at NCTC or in DHS or the FBI
that can be sent down to the State and local level that is of
threat interest to them, has done so. They have done an
extraordinary, extraordinary job.
I mean, the ITAC-G has reviewed over 34,000 intelligence
products that are out at NCTC. Twenty-five of those products
were identified, and a number of those products, 16 of those
25, were downgraded and are being sent out to the State and
local government because they involve more detailed assessment
on terrorism tactics, techniques and procedures.
So there is a significant amount of work that is under way.
These people are fully engaged. My support of them, everything,
every joint advisory that we and the FBI have produced--Art
Cummings and I--is reviewed and coordinated with the ITAC-G,
which goes out as threat--joint threat advisories with the
Bureau.
Ms. Harman. Again, my understanding is that the joint
explanatory statement says that they are not just to review
products; they are empowered to create products. I also
understand that most of their products to date have been
disseminated through NCTC Online, which is a Secret-level
network which most police and sheriffs departments don't have
access to.
So, Mr. Allen, my time has expired, but I suggest to you
that there is a lot more to do in terms of cooperating with
this effort. This committee sees its mission as representing
the people in the field and helping them to get better
information from the Federal Government, not the other way
around. In talking to those people, I don't have--if we have a
second round of questions, I will give you more time to
respond.
Mr. Allen. Thank you. I would like to do that.
Ms. Harman. In talking to those people, the impression I
get--and this is from numerous field hearings and visits that
we have had. The impression I get is that they are frustrated,
and they don't see full participation by your office in the
ITACG group.
Let me give you a chance to say something if you need to,
but then I am going to yield to the Ranking Member.
Mr. Allen. Let me just say that I chair the ITAC-G Advisory
Council. The ITAC-G Advisory Council is made up of 50 percent
Federal, 50 percent State, local and tribal. We have met twice.
We are supposed to meet quarterly. I have directed that we will
meet monthly either by teleconference or in person.
We have had two separate sessions. We have flown people in
from around the country.
We are going to broaden the State and local representation,
and that is one that I have advocated, to put a tribal
representative within the ITAC-G and, probably, someone
representing the fire administration, all the fire departments
of this country.
So we are moving up I think quite swiftly.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
The Chair now yields 5 minutes to the Ranking Member for
questions.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I want to
focus on the State and local partnerships through the fusion
centers.
I think I have seen some improvement as I have talked to
police chiefs and some of my old sheriff friends across the
country, and especially in the Northwest area. But there are
still some concerns.
How close contact or how closely do you work with the
Office of Grants and Training?
Mr. Allen. That is an area where we do the threat analysis.
We look at threats as they are raised across this country at
the State level and at the city level.
We have a very, very good way of assessing that. We do the
threat. However, the Infrastructure Protection Directorate
then, along with FEMA, looks at vulnerabilities; and between
threat and vulnerabilities, you make a policy decision on risk.
We don't make the decisions relating to grants. We provide
the threat information keeping us out of policy decision-
making, keeping us as professional intelligence officers.
Mr. Reichert. Yes. But you definitely understand the
connection between the financial support for local--State and
local and their ability to participate in fusion centers. I
hope that in your position you have--you voiced an opinion
there on this, the need for that money.
Mr. Allen. Well, my view is that the Fusion Center is a
great new development in this country. It is going to make this
country safer not only from terrorism, but a host of other
threats; and our ability to share information and to embed
officers out there is going to make, I think, a great deal of
difference along--working with our partners, the FBI, I think
is going to make a great deal of difference in the coming years
in the security of our country.
Mr. Reichert. What are the top priorities of your office?
Are they the ones mentioned in your statement, the realignment,
the five points of realignment in your----
Mr. Allen. Yes. My top priorities really involve building a
cadre of professional officers; we did not have that when I
arrived. We are hiring and recruiting from the university
system, developing and mentoring and nurturing people who have
analytic skills, to be able to send highly qualified officers
out to the field to help us with information sharing.
Second, to build our information management systems that we
did not have when I came there.
Third, of course, is to train, to develop a robust training
program.
I would say, fourth, we need to build a more robust open
source effort, and we are getting a lot of assistance from the
Director of National Intelligence and David Shedd in that
endeavor.
Mr. Reichert. So in the development of the fusion centers,
just to kind of centerpiece this effort in bringing locals and
Federal and State agencies together, will the budget allow you
to perform this task to bring State and locals together?
Mr. Allen. Well, we obviously are going to be straining it
this year to reach our stated goal of having 35 embedded
officers out there. We do not have quite the funds to do that
now. We will probably have to do some reprogramming in order to
do that or to meet that goal.
Fiscal year 2009, if fully funded, will meet some of our
goals to do that.
Mr. Reichert. Are the 35 on top of the 19 that you talked
about last year you added?
Mr. Allen. I am sorry. I didn't hear the question.
Mr. Reichert. Is that an additional 35?
Mr. Allen. No. That is 35 in total last year. We obviously
will have to grow beyond that.
Some States have several fusion centers. Some States have
very large populations. Our officers are really overtaxed
trying to cover the States. Some of my officers work many
additional hours each week, and out in the State, in order to
cover--in order to meet the needs of the homeland security
advisors and the heads of the fusion center.
Mr. Reichert. I want to ask this last question, basically
for your information, too, that this is what I am hearing from
sheriffs, very concerned. Again, I know that it is not your
primary area of authority, but certainly you have a connection
here.
You repeatedly discussed the importance of State and local
fusion centers to the Department's intelligence mission. The
President's strategy for information sharing also knows the
importance of fusion centers and discussed the need for
sustainment of funding for these centers through the Federal
Government. But we are told that there are some cuts that are
coming to specific programs.
What Federal resources are we going to use to fund these
centers in the future?
Mr. Allen. We obviously are going to be facing, I think, a
crossroads on this, the level of Federal funding and how much
it will be sustained over time and what will be State and local
government responsibilities.
I have this issue raised with me everywhere I go, whether
it is in Florida or California or Wisconsin. You name it, we
have some serious issues about sustained funding of fusion
centers. Because as good as they are and as great at innovation
as fusion centers, in my view they need to be sustained in
order to help keep our country safe.
Mr. Reichert. I appreciate your answers.
I yield. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. The Chair now yields 5 minutes to Mr. Carney of
Pennsylvania.
Mr. Carney. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Allen. Thank you for your testimony.
I guess I have some questions, you know, besides things
like the classification of personnel issues, what other sources
of impediments do you see toward the standing up of the--sort
of system of fusion centers that you would like, and what other
things are slowing it down in places?
Mr. Allen. Well, I think there is a range of issues that
does affect standing up the fusion centers. Some fusion centers
do not have all the security requirements because we want to
feed those fusion centers with Secret-level information. They
clearly need to be certified and improved to handle secure
intelligence. That is one issue.
I think one of the things where--and I will acknowledge
it--we have not put our homeland data network out there, or
homeland security data network, Secret level, at the speed that
we need to at the fusion centers. We are trying to move it as
fast as we can, but we have a shortage of resources in doing
that. So there are some impediments.
At the same time, at the homeland security intelligence
area, at the official use level, we are doing a lot of issues.
We have 41 States which we meet with on a weekly basis by
secure--by teleconference, secure teleconference, where we talk
about threat information, new terrorism techniques, tactics and
procedures. This is a whole new innovation. We call it the
SLICK system.
We are having a major fusion center conference out in San
Francisco. This is one we are doing jointly with the DNI and
with the Department of Justice. I think this will be testimony
to how far we have come in the last 2 years.
Mr. Carney. Well, that is good to hear that we are moving
forward.
How many fusion centers do we need in the Nation?
Mr. Allen. We can't dictate that. I think that comes from
the States, the States, what will be required. California has
four. Some others have more than one. Your State, Pennsylvania,
they clearly would put one in Harrisburg and they are thinking
of putting another one up in Philadelphia, which is a major
UASIs center city, as well as seaport.
So I think probably Pennsylvania will probably want to have
a couple. We will want, as soon as you--most of these are not
yet mature. But as soon as they are mature, it will go to the
top of the list, and Pennsylvania will have one of my officers
there helping.
Mr. Carney. Well, awfully glad to hear that, obviously.
When we have less populous States, does every State need a
fusion center, a couple of fusion centers? Do we need a system,
do we need regional ones? How do you envision it?
Mr. Allen. I think we will find that some of the States
will go together in regional networks. We already have fusion
centers engaging in regional networks today in the Southeast,
out in the far Southwest, in the Northeast. We see a
cooperation, I think, in some of the less populous States. We
will have fusion centers maybe serving two or three States and
I think that makes good sense.
Mr. Carney. Okay. Back to the issue of the classification
thing. Is the State responsible for building the SCIFs that can
hold the classified information or is it DHS?
Mr. Allen. I think the States have to help build the SCIFs.
We certify them. I have a senior officer behind me here who
helps work the certification of secure networks. We help
certify the security of--DHS Security does, but the States have
a responsibility to sort of meet Federal requirements for the
handling of classified Federal information.
Mr. Carney. Okay. No questions at this time.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
The Chair now yields 5 minutes to Mr. Perlmutter for
questions.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Secretary, I would like to start with--you know, as we
have talked about this, and I will move to the fusion centers
in a second. But we need to have strong, you know, security
apparatus in place; and one of the places where there have been
developments we have not quite finished is in this National
Applications Office. I just have questions to you as to--you
know, we have this space kind of intelligence system in place.
It is moved over from the Geologic Survey or whatever
department it was in.
One of the things we have been talking about is putting in
the protocols to make sure we can use that in a way that
benefits our country and, you know, aids in our security
without, you know, stepping all over certain rights of privacy.
Where are we on the protocols?
Mr. Allen. We are in the final process of having the
charter signed by the principals involved--the Secretary of
Defense, the Attorney General, the Director of National
Intelligence and the Secretary of Interior. We have--we believe
we have an agreed-upon charter that will be very clear to you
on permissible and impermissible uses of the National
Applications Office.
We really do believe that we have met your requirements and
that of Chairman Thompson of your House Homeland Security
Committee. We are very confident that we have privacy and civil
rights and civil liberties fully protected. We will have a
full-time attorney working within the National Applications
Office. In addition to layered review that will occur in the
National Geospatial Agency, because they will not accept a
request for National Technical Means imagery without doing
their own internal review.
So I think what we have is something that you will be very
proud of and very pleased with.
Mr. Perlmutter. Good. Let me switch to open source issues.
I would like to know what Homeland Security is doing today
to provide open source information to--or to assist local law
enforcement agencies with all this information that is out
there by the bucketful or the truckloads or whatever.
Is there some kind of procedure in place to assist local
law enforcement with this information?
Mr. Allen. Well, that is exactly what we are doing with
this State and local government pilot--with this pilot project
that I have described to you.
One of the efforts is to grow our open source program in
accordance with what they really need at the very local level.
I think we have a very good idea, as a result of this pilot
project in five States.
At the same time, we are getting four billets from the
Director of National Intelligence. We are also getting some
small funding support to put against our pilot project, which
we hope to expand across the country. We also then need to
train at the local level, how to use open source, what is of
value and what isn't.
So I am very, very pleased that our open source program is
going to, I think, take--get real traction in this coming year.
We would be happy to come back and talk to you in more detail
on how we are using open source. There are a lot of research
tools that will help you use open source more effectively,
which the DNI and others and CIA have, which we would like to
also use in working with State and local governments.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks.
The committee has a bill that I introduced that might
assist you with respect to open source, although I think you
really have a lot of the tools at your fingertips now. I am
glad to see that you are really focusing on this subject.
I guess the last question I have is, what kind of--you
know, going back to the fusion centers, I always--when I am
asked questions about homeland security when I am out on the
stump in Colorado, I say one of the places where there has
really been an improvement is the fact that the agencies,
whether it is the CIA, DHS, FBI, are all talking to one another
so that they get a whole picture of what might--what kinds of
threats might exist.
How are you coming up with credentialing so that
information can go down to the local law enforcement agencies?
Have you run into any trouble, you know, being able to pass
that information down to the ground in Colorado or anyplace
else?
Mr. Allen. I think--I think we are making progress. I think
we need to make more progress. We look to the National
Counterterrorism Center, as Chair Harman said, to help be the
overall integrator and assessor of terrorism threats, both
domestic and foreign. But we are actually working very closely
with the FBI and Central Intelligence Agency, other agencies
that collect technical intelligence in order to write for
release.
We have sent something at the Secret level today to State
fusion centers, which we worked jointly with the FBI, which I
showed to the secretary this morning. I said, this threat we
don't believe is serious, but here is an example of where we
really have worked together with NCTC and the FBI; and the
ITAC-G saw it and approved it as well.
So I think things are starting to work the right direction.
I think we are on course.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Madam Chair.
Ms. Harman. Thank you. We have the ability to ask a second
round of questions if Members are interested. I have just a
couple things I would like to say, and other Members are
welcome to do this. Mr. Reichert said that he stepped out
momentarily but may be back as well. So I suggest we stick
around just a little longer.
Mr. Allen, you hear my frustration. We hear from people
involved in the ITACG. There is no need to identify them, but
they clearly communicate to us that they don't feel you are the
full partner they expect.
I have now some of the language from the joint explanatory
statement to the 9/11 Act, and it tasks you to identify
information that is of interest--this is through the ITACG--of
interest to State, local and tribal law enforcement to produce
reports which can be disseminated to them in an unclassified
format, or at the lowest possible classification level, and to
assist in the targeted dissemination of products to appropriate
customers.
So one of the three pieces here is, produce reports. I am
not sure that your answer on the record was clear enough. Do
you believe that the ITACG detailees are producers of
intelligence products? Or do you believe that they are just
supposed to provide advice?
Mr. Allen. I believe that they are supposed to look at
threats, stay abreast of the threats, because they have access
to vast databases at the national counterterrorism
workstations. We have made certain they have all the current
activity and that they have all secure communications back to
the rest of the intelligence community.
In my view, they were not selected as terrorism in-depth
analysts. Some of them are very good analysts, and they could
produce information, additional information. But my view is
that they are to look at all threats, all information as it
flows in, to particularly look at products produced daily by
the intelligence community, writ large--the Bureau, as well as
ourselves, as well as the CIA and NCTC--and there is a plethora
of that; and to ensure that there are those that have any
interest at the State and local levels are sanitized, if
necessary, and released at the official-use level or at a
classified level that the States can use.
That is what is occurring, and I am really impressed--
really, at what has occurred.
In my two meetings with the advisory councils, we went
through a lot of this. We are going to have a teleconference
here in March with the advisory council, and then we are going
to have another full face-to-face meeting in April. If there
are problems as we get under way with this ITAC-G and if the
members of the ITAC-G have issues, then I am happy to listen to
them and to adjust accordingly.
Ms. Harman. Well, I appreciate that, the last part of that
answer, because I think they do have issues; and I hope you
will invite them to talk to you directly about the issues that
they have.
Again, I am not trying to be a counselor here to make job
satisfaction better. My goal is to make certain that the
provisions of the law, which I now have in front of me, are
complied with and, bottom line, that accurate, actionable and
timely information is communicated through this National Fusion
Center that we have set up, that President Bush has set up, to
State, local and tribal first responders so that they can
prevent harm to our communities.
I know you share the goal. The question is, are you
personally and is I&A as an institution doing its maximum to
make certain that this structure we have set up works?
I urge you to listen to what the people who work there tell
you. I believe that there could well be some improvements that
would reach our goal faster. I assume you share my interest in
reaching that goal.
Mr. Allen. I want to reach that goal and I will certainly
listen. I am in frequent communication with the acting director
of the ITAC-G, who is one of my senior officers.
Ms. Harman. Great. Let me ask you just a few more questions
about this and then yield to others.
Are you taking steps to put to use input from the ITACG in
your own intelligence products?
Mr. Allen. Yes. As they look at issues, what they think
should go to State and local governments, and advise us on what
should--if there is an item that has been produced by the
community that they think urgently needs to get to State and
local, we take their advice.
Ms. Harman. What if someone, a particular ITACG detailee
thinks that some piece of intelligence needs to be disseminated
to his or her home agency because that intelligence might be
relevant, how do you respond to a request like that?
Mr. Allen. We believe that the State and local
representatives are there to represent State and local
interests at large, whether it is fusion centers or police
departments or fire administrators or tribal. But if they can
make an argument that this particular fusion center in this
State and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Bureau out in the
State, needs to see it, I am sure that we would work very
closely with the FBI and with Mike Leiter and the office--and
the ITAC-G to get that product out there.
Ms. Harman. Fine.
Well, let me just summarize, I have pushed this issue
pretty hard. We think the ITACG and, more importantly, the NCTC
is a very critical part of our intelligence gathering and our
intelligence dissemination effort. We want to make absolutely
sure that State, local and tribal representatives have full
participation there because, No. 1, they add value, and No. 2,
they become more sophisticated by participating in the effort.
You agree with that, right?
Mr. Allen. I agree. I believe that they are developing a
deep appreciation for what is and is not available at the
Federal level. Having a tribal and having a fire administration
representative there representing the fire departments of this
country, I think is badly needed.
Ms. Harman. Finally, it is absolutely critical that as we
move forward, we break down stovepipes, we change what has been
called the ``need-to-know'' culture into a ``need-to-share''
culture, fully respecting the need to protect sources and
methods. Everybody understands that.
But we don't need to build parallel universes. We need to
build one joint command that fuses intelligence as effectively
as possible. That is the way we will connect the dots.
This is something that I am absolutely passionate about.
That is why we made mistakes pre-9/11. So I am urging you in
every way I can to review the reports you are about to send us
personally.
I know you are coming up here again. We are going to have a
hearing on the ITACG report. We remain keenly interested in
helping that function be as effective as possible.
I now yield for additional questions, first to Mr. Carney.
Mr. Carney. Thank you again, Madam Chair.
Mr. Allen, a couple things. I just kind of want to
understand sort of the flow, the architectural flow of the
intelligence. Is it top-down, bottom-up, is it a push-pull
system? You know, move from column A to column B?
Mr. Allen. The intelligence in DHS--as you know, we work
border security, the movement of chemical, biological,
radiological and other dangerous materials across our border.
We support the Secretary and the Department in much of this.
We work protecting critical infrastructures, a lot of that
data does flow down. On occasion we are getting more and more
from the fusion centers of pushing--of the fusion center
pushing things up, just as Chief Bratton said. Look, we have
worked with the Federal Government to produce this wonderful
assessment. We want to see more of this.
So I welcome--I welcome the State fusion center. The
Washington State Fusion Center produced a brilliant piece which
we then turned into something that was sent to the President.
So that kind of work, I think, is remarkable.
Mr. Carney. Okay. You know I have a background in
intelligence, and we are all familiar with the intelligence
cycle, such as it is.
Would I recognize that within the ITAC-G system?
Mr. Allen. Within the ITAC-G system, I think you would see
the requirements, the needs; and some of the pilot projects
that were written up in The Wall Street Journal inaccurately, I
think, reflect trying to determine the needs. The ITAC-G looks
at that, looks at the flow of information from across the
community.
We are talking about a vast flow. The ITAC-G is, at this
stage, a small organization with contractors--10, 12 people; it
is not a huge organization at this stage. But then their job is
to ensure that they identify those data, those intelligence
pieces that need to go in a timely basis down to the very local
level; and they work to do that.
What they have done to date is not inconsequential, it is
not trivial; it is very significant.
Mr. Carney. Another thing I was very, very curious about in
this whole process in the ITAC-G and the fusion centers, does
FISA information ever come in and play a role in that?
Mr. Allen. I don't think I can answer that question in this
particular forum.
Mr. Carney. Okay.
No further questions, ma'am. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Chair.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Carney.
Mr. Perlmutter, do you have any additional questions?
Mr. Perlmutter. Only questions that I don't think he can
answer in this particular forum. But I do have one.
Mr. Secretary, assume for the moment, or just for
argument's sake, that the President's budgetary priorities and
the budgetary priorities of the Congress are different, and we
don't come to some kind of agreement on appropriations bills.
What effect would a continuing resolution have on the
budget in your Department?
Mr. Allen. It would have--it would have a very, very
serious effect. When we were under continuing resolution last
fall and winter, I could not send people to travel. We held up
sending officers out to the fusion centers. It also inhibited
us in a number of ways in continuing, undertaking any new
initiative or expanding what we do. Continuing resolutions are
very detrimental to the efficacy of the Federal Government.
Mr. Perlmutter. I hope we don't come to that kind of a
result this time around. But I would suggest you have a
contingency plan in place.
Mr. Allen. I thank you very much for that, because I think
the risks and the threat to this country, the inbound threat in
particular, is so serious that we have to have something in
place to stay effective during any long continuing resolution.
Mr. Perlmutter. I was going to ask some questions about
FISA. But I will leave those for another day in another
setting. The last question I have, on the security clearances
for local law enforcement, is there a backlog in clearing
individuals? Like, let's say, in Colorado there is a fusion
center now, what problems, if any, are you running into in
clearing officers so that they can get, you know, more general
intelligence information?
Mr. Allen. I don't know of any major problems.
When I came to the Department, we had major problems in
moving security clearances to State and local. We have cleared
a lot of people--Nevada and California and New York; we have
cleared over 100 people in New York City alone.
So we do this, and most of the information, you know, can
easily flow to those people at the Secret level. Getting Top
Secret, Compartmented clearances takes longer, but we are doing
that. We did that for the people coming in to the State and
local officials in the ITAC-G.
The DNI is leading a study to expedite the clearances. It
takes about an average of several months. The President has, as
you know, sent out a statement that says we have to do a better
job in expediting the clearance of personnel, Government and
non-Government; and I think we have made a lot of progress. I
worked very closely with the Director of Security and the
Department to expedite those clearances, and I am quite a tiger
at pushing clearances and getting people cleared.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. I would just add, Mr. Perlmutter, that one of
the things we are trying to do at this end is to reduce the
amount of information that is classified. We have some
legislation in draft form that we have been circulating and we
have introduced one bill. But we are hoping to produce a
bipartisan effort that will move faster. That, I assume, is a
goal, again, that you share; is it not, Mr. Allen?
Mr. Allen. It is a goal I share and it is a goal that Mike
McConnell shares as a DNI, and he has given David Shedd, ahead
of his plans and policy, you know, full authority to move
swiftly on getting clearances.
Ms. Harman. Well, it is not just getting clearances. It is
reducing the amount of classified information which would
therefore guarantee that people who needed to see it, who did
not have clearances, could see it.
Mr. Allen. That is absolutely the case. We try to write at
the lowest classification possible the work that we do in our
Critical Infrastructure Threat Assessment Division, that I run.
It is amazing what we can get down to ``official use,'' where
it talks about real threats to various sectors of our private--
of our private industry and the steps that these sectors can
take to mitigate the threat.
I am rather amazed at what we have out there on a day-to-
day basis.
Ms. Harman. Well, I hope we have more out there. I hope
that what is out there is accurate and actionable, and that we
don't have an attack on our homeland because the stovepipes
didn't permit the sharing of information in a timely fashion.
So I appreciate your answers, Mr. Allen. We are going to
keep at this information. We are reviewing your request for
additional funds; we will review those carefully. We understand
your priorities, and I think we have been crystal clear about
our priorities, which are to make absolutely certain that
State, local and tribal representatives are fully involved in
the process of preparing and disseminating information that
they are going to end up using to help protect our communities.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
