MOVING BEYOND THE FIRST FIVE YEARS: EVOLVING THE OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE
AND ANALYSIS TO BETTER SERVE STATE, LOCAL, AND TRIBAL NEEDS
=======================================================================
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
__________
APRIL 24, 2008
__________
Serial No. 110-108
__________
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 Candice S. Miller, Michigan
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, Chairwoman
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
----------
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................................... 2
Witnesses
Mr. Matthew Bettenhausen, Executive Director, California Office
of Homeland Security, State of California:
Oral Statement................................................. 5
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
Ms. Juliette N. Kayyem, Under Secretary for Homeland Security,
Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, Commonwealth of
Massachusetts:
Oral Statement................................................. 16
Prepared Statement............................................. 18
Mr. Frank J. Cilluffo, Director and Associate Vice President,
Homeland Security Policy Institute, George Washington
University:
Oral Statement................................................. 25
Prepared Statement............................................. 28
MOVING BEYOND THE FIRST FIVE YEARS: EVOLVING THE OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE
AND ANALYSIS TO BETTER SERVE STATE, LOCAL, AND TRIBAL NEEDS
----------
Thursday, April 24, 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 10:05 a.m., in
Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Jane Harman
[chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Harman, Carney, Perlmutter,
Reichert, and Dent.
Ms. Harman. The subcommittee will come to order. Good
morning everyone. The subcommittee is meeting today to receive
testimony on Moving Beyond the First Five Years: Evolving the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis to Better Serve State,
Local and Tribal Needs. After a string of missteps by the
current administration, the next one must get information
sharing right. ``Success'' means figuring out what data to
share, putting the technology in place to do so, and
establishing the right rules for access. Of course, each step
must happen within the bounds of privacy laws and
constitutional protections. This is crucial, because it is
unlikely that the next President, a DHS Secretary, FBI director
or someone in the wider Intelligence Community will prevent the
next terrorist attack.
Instead, a diligent police or sheriffs officer somewhere in
America during the course of his or her daily work will see
something or someone out of place and guided by timely,
accurate and actionable information will connect the dots that
will unravel a plot in the making. My ranking member did
something just like that, it wasn't a terror plot, but it was a
very serious crime in his area some years back.
To this end, this subcommittee has made it an imperative to
improve intelligence and information sharing for our first
preventers. If we don't make it work for these people and for
the State Homeland Security advisors who work with them, some
of whom are facing me, then we will have failed to do what we
set out to do 5 years ago in the Homeland Security Act. As the
Department of Homeland Security faces its first Presidential
transition, we find its Office of Intelligence and Analysis at
a crossroads.
DHS has taken positive steps to forge a more constructive
and responsive relationship with State, local and tribal
customers it serves. Positive steps have been taken. In
Minneapolis, on a Monday, for example, I learned from MNJAC,
the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center of a weekly conference call
from DHS to link Fusion Centers together. This is very
positive. Unfortunately, we never heard about it from DHS, but
one of the local Fusion Centers.
But on the other hand, it has been a struggle to integrate
fully local law enforcement representatives into the
Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination Group or ITACG. The
Department and specifically, the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis, seems to have pursued a variety of missions without a
clear focus.
In my view, this is not entirely the Department's fault.
What was originally envisioned by many of us who were co-
authors of the legislation as a robust intelligence shop for
the Department in 2002 was restructured by President Bush in
2003 when he set up the Terrorist Threat Integration Center,
TTIC, later to become the National Counterterrorism Center,
outside of DHS.
Having lost the key function shortly after its creation,
I&A has struggled to redefine its intelligence mission. It
advertises itself as the primary provider of Federal Homeland
Security information to State and local customers, claim to go
create a new kind of Homeland Security intelligence.
I&A also claims to play the role of educator, rolling out a
basic level intelligence training course for department
intelligence analysts and their State and local customers with
mid- and senior-level courses on the horizon. But the
aggressive schedule that Under Secretary Allen and his team
have described of deploying department analysts and liaisons to
State and local Fusion Centers around the country has so far
been only moderately successful.
In addition, in my view, DHS has approached management of
the National Applications Office, the NAO far too casually. Let
me be clear, as a member who has fought for years to assure
that foreign intelligence surveillance complies with strict
legal safeguards, I will not permit the Department to task the
Nation's spy satellites for domestic purposes unless and until
it provides a clear legal framework to Congress.
It is our job today to assess the Department's progress and
to help the next administration get it right. The witnesses
before us, all of whom are good friends of mine, and I am so
happy to see you all hail from State government and academia.
Each will address how DHS and its intelligence shop can make
improvements to get it right now and after January 20, 2009.
I hope the Department of Homeland Security is listening.
The benchmarks that the witnesses describe for us today will
guide the oversight work of this subcommittee for the remainder
of this session and through the transition to next year. Let me
welcome you and tell you how pleased I am that you are here and
how important this hearing is, and I now yield to the ranking
member for any opening remarks.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, and
thank you for taking some time to be with us this morning. I
just came from a briefing down the hallway on the upcoming
Olympics in Canada, just above the Washington, Canadian border.
So my district is east of Seattle so it is of interest to me.
This morning they talked about, you might be familiar with
some of the terminology that we are using here in the U.S.
integrated security, and an integrated planning, a partnership
between the State's officials, the local officials and the RCMP
and Federal. I have had opportunities to work with most of
those in my previous career. So we are not the only ones trying
to work on this and find the answers to gathering people
together to protect the citizens of the United States, and of
course, the citizens of Canada, who are our good friends.
Today's hearing is a part of a series of hearings--Moving
Beyond the First Five Years. The theme is about improving the
Department's efforts to secure our homeland through integrated
cooperation. I believe that is why and what we in the
Department are working to do everyday. I want to thank you and
all the members of the Department of Homeland Security for what
you do each and every day to keep this Nation safe.
While the first 5 years, the Department has seen some
uneven progress and that is to be expected, the fight against
terrorists has not been without success. The Department and
Federal agencies have made significant progress in information
sharing and standing up such institutions as the National
Counterterrorism Center, NCTC, partially because of these
efforts are Federal, State and local governments have been
successful at preventing planned attacks on the United States
and against the United States's interests.
Aside from the obvious successes there have been
substantial internal improvements over the years at DHS and in
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. While examining this
process, it is important to note that this is an office that
was created from scratch 5 years ago and was substantially
reorganized just 2 years later.
Additionally, last year, this office was again given new
direction in the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act. In other
words, after being created from scratch, the office was
reorganized and then subjected to major legislation. According
to a press release from Chairman Thompson these series of
hearings are also focused on preparing for the next
administration and the future of the Department.
It is clear to me that what the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis needs is to have some time to focus on its core
mission without another major reorganization by the next
administration. The Department of Homeland Security has a clear
State and local mission, and must have some stability in order
to ensure these missions are carried out.
One thing that Congress should do to help the Department of
Homeland Security with their mission is to consolidate
oversight with over 80 committees and subcommittees that have
oversight, over components at the DHS, it is a wonder that the
Department of Homeland Security has been able to achieve
anything over the past 5 years.
While this subcommittee has been working to oversee some of
the legislative improvements that we recently implemented, the
Department is looking internally at its own flaws. One example
of this that is often cited is CENTRA, the CENTRA Report, that
was commissioned by Under Secretary Allen himself to help
improve the Office of Intelligence and Analysis' outreach and
service to the State and local communities.
Furthermore, Under Secretary Allen recently began the
Homeland Security State and local community of interest which
is a virtual intelligence group that has won praise within the
State and local community as major improvement in information
sharing. While these are but a few recent efforts, I would like
to hear today from our witness on improvements that they have
seen and what improvements still need to be made.
Thank you again for being here, thank you, Madam Chair for
the time and I yield.
Ms. Harman. I thank the ranking member. Other members of
the subcommittee are reminded that under the committee rules
opening statements may be submitted for the record.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our witness. Our first
witness, Matt Bettenhausen, is the Homeland Security security
advisor to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and is the
director of the California Office of Homeland Security. He
previously served as the Department of Homeland Security's
first director of State and territorial coordination where he
directed the Department's efforts with State, territorial and
tribal governments.
He served on several White House senior policy coordinating
committees and worked on implementing Homeland Security
presidential directives. From January 2000 to January 2003, Mr.
Bettenhausen served as the deputy governor of Illinois. As that
State's Homeland Security director, he is someone I work with
often and enjoy. I would love to report to everybody that
California is a bit safer because Matt is in the position that
he is.
Massachusetts is fortunate that our second witness,
Juliette Kayyem, who just completed the Boston Marathon in a
little over 4 hours--that makes me upset--is the first Under
Secretary for Homeland Security for the Commonwealth. She
serves as the liaison between the Governor's Office and all
Federal, State and local agencies on Homeland Security. She is
responsible for developing State-wide policy with a focus on
preventing, protecting, responding to and recovering from any
and all critical incidents. She also has direct oversight over
the Massachusetts National Guard.
Ms. Kayyem comes from her position from Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government, where she has been a lecturer in
public policy. Since 2001, she has been a resident scholar at
the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for science and
international affairs, serving most recently as executive
director for research. She is an expert in homeland security
and terrorism, I know this, and teaches courses on law,
homeland security and national security affairs.
She and I served together on the National Commission on
Terrorism, which before 9/11, reviewed how the government could
prepare better for the growing terrorist threat and predicted a
major attack on U.S. soil which sadly came to pass.
Our third witness, Frank Cilluffo, who is here with his
daughter, on Take Your Daughter To Work Day--Where is his
daughter? We want to welcome you--He leads George Washington
University's homeland security efforts on policy, research,
education and training. He directs the Homeland Security Policy
Institute, which has a research agenda that has spanned
domestic terrorism radicalization, disaster management,
emergency preparedness, pandemic influenza, intelligence and
information sharing. Along my travels in the security field, he
is someone who is always part of the panels we put together to
try to learn the subject matter better.
Mr. Cilluffo joined GW in April 2003 from the White House
where he served as special assistant to the President for
Homeland Security. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks he was
appointed by the President to the newly created office of
homeland security and served as the principal advisor to
Governor Tom Ridge.
Prior to his White House appointment, Mr. Cilluffo spent 8
years with CSIS in senior policy positions with a Homeland
Security focus.
Ms. Harman. Without objection, all of your full statements
will be inserted in the record. I now ask Mr. Bettenhausen to
summarize your statement for 5 minutes. There is a time clock,
so it will start blinking red just as you get to 5 minutes.
Welcome.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW BETTENHAUSEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY, STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Bettenhausen. Thank you, Chairwoman Harman, Ranking
Member Reichert, members of the subcommittee. We greatly
appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion and
conversation today about information sharing and terrorism
prevention. We certainly are proud to call you one of
California's very best and very own, Madam Chairwoman. We
appreciate all of your support and leadership as well as the
entire committee for their encouragement for support and
leadership which has happened not only over the course of
tragic events of 9/11, but since then, with the creation of the
Department.
Ms. Harman. We will give you an extension of time if you
want to continue to talk about how great the subcommittee is.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Thank you, I appreciate that.
I think and I agree with the ranking member in my
conversation with Chairwoman Harman before the committee too,
we have to be careful as we look at the 5 years, and we move
through the elections and the transition that we don't continue
to reorganize and shake these things up. We have got to start
solidifying actual action and implementation, and that is one
of the things that I would like to emphasize here today.
This is all about cooperation and partnerships. I got into
Washington, DC late last night having spent some time with our
friends and partners in Canada in British Columbia. Governor
Schwarzenegger has recognized that he wants to have a close,
and cooperative, and collaborative relationship with them and
certainly with the upcoming winter Olympics that is critical.
Borders are to longer defined simply by geography.
California is on the border with Canada. Our ports of entry in
Los Angeles, our airports, the shared maritime interests that
we have in trade is the key to the Asian Pacific corridor and
the ports that we share in bringing goods into the United
States and driving the economy are critical.
That idea of cooperation, coordination and collaboration is
the emphasis that I would like to have in my overall remarks,
because this is a philosophical point that we need to continue
to emphasize with our Federal partners. Prior to 9/11 terrorism
prevention, terrorism prosecution, terrorism internationally
was exclusively the province of our Federal Government. We
realized after 9/11, terrorism prevention is everybody's
business. It is State and local government, it is across
disciplines, it is individual citizen's business.
I have given a number of examples in my written testimony
from individual citizens. The worker at the Circuit City who
noticed a training video and reported it in. The idea of ``See
something, say something.'' That attack on Fort Dix.
We also have State and local officers in Torrance,
California who are investigating convenience store robberies
which they were committing as it turns out in a model of
Federal, State and local cooperations. A cell that was
operating, committing the convenience store robberies to get
the financing in order to do attacks on Jewish synagogues,
military recruiting depots and National Guard Armories in Los
Angeles. It was terrorism prevention in action. But it was the
action of States and locals that uncovered this. They are the
most important first responders and first preventers in a
terrorism prevention. Until we truly and fully treat them as
full and equal partners in the terrorism prevention mission, we
are not going to be successful.
So what I would like to talk about in terms of how we do
this in making sure that State and locals are full and equal
partners, I do go back to the theme of enlist, entrust and
empower. We must enlist our local first responders and first
preventers. There are only tens of thousands of Federal law
enforcement agencies in this country across all the Federal
agencies. But there are hundreds of thousands, nearly a million
sworn law enforcement officers, security guards who are doing
this. These locals are excellent and capable.
We have to overcome the fact that our Federal agencies are
not used to even working with each other, the walls that we
have broken down, but most importantly working with us, and
understanding what we can provide. It is not just that we have
information requirements, we are probably their most important
information producers. We have to collect and connect the dots
if we are going to prevent the next terrorist act.
We must entrust. We have to approve security clearances. We
have to have a presumption of sharing information. It has to be
not just about prosecution, it has to be just not about law
enforcement. You need to value what we have, it should not be
that we are considered as a nuisance to this mission. We must
be brought in as full and equal partners in this collaborative
relationship. Trust us, entrust us.
Finally empower us. I think the President's national
strategy on information sharing is a step in the right
direction. Your 9/11 implementation bill lays the foundation,
both for the finishing of this administration and the next
administration, but it is critical for sustainment and funding
for these things to encourage us to have the analysts to
support our front line first responders who are out there day
in and day out protecting the public and preventing terrorism.
I see that my time is up, so I thank you for the
opportunity to be here and I look forward to your questions.
Ms. Harman. Thank you very much, Mr. Bettenhausen.
[The statement of Mr. Bettenhausen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Matthew Bettenhausen
April 24, 2008
Chairwoman Harman, Ranking Member Reichert, and Members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this
morning to discuss the critical role State and local public safety
agencies play in preventing terrorism and how the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis can do more to enlist, entrust and empower
our first preventers.
Let me begin by taking a moment to acknowledge the Chairwoman's
commitment to enhancing the preparedness of local communities for both
intentional and natural disasters. Your leadership and role in
overseeing the Department of Homeland Security has paid significant
dividends. You and your colleagues have not been afraid to ask the
difficult questions and the sense of urgency this committee has brought
to homeland security issues has been a catalyst for productive change
within the Department and at the operational level.
This morning, I want to share with you why we need to enlist,
entrust and empower State and local preventers and how invaluable
fusion centers are to California's homeland security strategy. The
progress being made by the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of Justice in this effort is noteworthy. Congress has also
provided sound policy direction and the resources to ensure an
effective network of fusion centers is built with the capability of
protecting our communities and critical infrastructure from terrorist
attacks. It is also important to recognize that our best efforts to
share information will be in vain without a firm commitment at all
levels of government to ensure fusion centers and analysts
institutionalize policies to protect privacy and civil liberties.
Finally, I want to highlight some of the areas where the Department's
Office of Intelligence and Analysis can do more to enhance the
effectiveness and sustainability of fusion centers.
STATE AND LOCAL FIRST PREVENTERS
Prior to 9/11, State and locals were all too often an afterthought
in counterterrorism efforts. This has proven to be a hard mindset to
change. Many of our Federal partners underestimate the unique
capabilities of State and local public safety agencies. There has been
progress on enfolding locals into the counterterrorism effort, but we
are not there yet. For this reason, I take every opportunity to remind
my Federal partners that, as counterterrorism efforts evolve, we must
work with our first preventers to uncover the recruitment, fundraising
(money-laundering), networking and operational planning of Islamic
extremists in the United States.
Early in my career, I realized the need to enlist State and locals
in our counterterrorism efforts. It was in the wake of the Oklahoma
City bombing in 1995, while I was serving as a Federal prosecutor in
Chicago. My colleagues and I in the U.S. Attorney's Office were busy
looking through international flight data for a global nexus. In the
meantime, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper stopped a yellow 1977
Mercury Marquis without a license plate. The driver of the car was
Timothy McVeigh. The alert trooper arrested McVeigh for carrying a
loaded firearm. Three days later he was identified as the man being
sought in the nationwide manhunt.
The Olympic Bomber case is another example of the critical role of
local preventers. As the committee knows, Eric Rudolph conducted a
series of bombings across the southern United States, which killed
three people and injured at least 150 others. He declared that his
bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion. Despite
the efforts of the FBI, Rudolph was ultimately arrested by a local
police officer in North Carolina who was on a routine patrol and
observed Rudolph scavenging for garbage in a dumpster behind a Save-A-
Lot store.
In a more recent case, the Fort Dix Six, a group of six radical
Islamist men allegedly plotting to stage an attack on the Fort Dix
military base in New Jersey, were arrested by the FBI on May 7, 2007.
They were subsequently charged with planning an attack against U.S.
soldiers. The alleged aim of the six men was said to be to ``kill as
many soldiers as possible.'' Local law enforcement was alerted to the
group when one of the suspects requested that a neighborhood
electronics store convert a video tape to DVD that depicted the
suspects firing weapons and shouting jihadist slogans in the Poconos.
Store employees notified law enforcement, which identified and
monitored the suspects until arresting them.
Closer to home for the Chairwoman is the Torrance Case. In this
case, Kevin James, a Muslim convert, founded a radical Islamic group
called Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS), Arabic for Assembly of
Authentic Islam, from his cell in Folsom Prison in California. James
recruited fellow inmates to join a prison based terrorist cell and
recruit both released inmates and new recruits to join his mission to
kill those he considered infidels in the Los Angeles area. The break in
the case came when local police officers in Torrance, California,
arrested two men in connection with a string of armed robberies at
convenience stores. During the investigation, the local police officers
noticed Islamic extremist materials during one of their searches. With
this new evidence, authorities began to unravel their more sinister
intentions to attack military recruiting stations and Jewish sites in
Los Angeles. Late last year, Kevin James pled guilty to ``conspiracy to
levy war against the United States through terrorism'' and faces up to
20 years in Federal prison upon release from State prison.
International cases also rely on leads generated by local
preventers. As was the case when local police in the United Kingdom
discovered suspicious U.S. Navy information after arresting Babar
Ahmad, the leader of a terrorist support cell and a computer specialist
working on the now defunct Azzam.com, an Islamist extremist website.
The previously classified information, planned movements of a U.S. Navy
battle group, was found in Ahmad's room at his parent's home in London.
After the discovery of these documents, officials in the United Kingdom
alerted the FBI. U.S. authorities subsequently issued search warrants
upon e-mail accounts associated with the Azzam.com websites and
discovered e-mail communications from Abujihad (formerly known as Paul
Hall) dating from late 2000 and the Fall of 2001 from his personal and
military based e-mail accounts. Information gleaned through the
original search ultimately led to the arrest of Abujihad.\1\ During the
investigations of Abujihad, and his onetime roommate, Derrick
Shareef,\2\ investigators learned of a discussion between the two to
carry out a sniper attack on a military installation in San Diego.
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\1\ Abujihad was convicted March 5, 2008, of providing material
support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense
information. His sentencing is set for May 2008 and he faces up to 25
years in Federal prison.
\2\ On November 29, 2007, Shareef changed his original plea and
pled guilty to plotting a grenade attack on a Rockford, Illinois mall.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are just a few of the many cases where State and local public
safety officials have been at the center of our national and
international counterterrorism efforts. These examples underscore how
State and locals are in the best position to discover and disrupt
Islamic extremist activity in our communities.
CALIFORNIA'S STATE TERRORISM THREAT ASSESSMENT SYSTEM
To determine an accurate depiction of our adversaries, their
intentions, and their capabilities, California moved quickly after 9/11
to establish a Terrorism Threat Assessment System. The State Terrorism
Threat Assessment System (STTAS) is responsible for regional and
statewide information collection, analysis and sharing activities. The
STTAS is comprised of four Regional Terrorism Threat Assessment Centers
(RTTAC) and one State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center (STTAC). The
RTTACs are located in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area
and Sacramento. These locations mirror the Federal Bureau of
Investigation areas of responsibility within California and are
comprised of a mixture of State, local, and Federal public safety
agencies.
The State fusion center is designed to provide California's senior
leaders with: situational awareness of identified threats; visibility
of, and coordination with, the critical infrastructure of the State;
and constant access to the latest local, State and national information
analysis products and assessments. The STTAC provides: statewide
assessment products; information tracking and pattern analysis;
geographic reporting linkages; and connections with the latest national
information from the FBI, DHS and other Federal agencies.
The Regional fusion centers: integrate the intake, analysis,
fusion, and synthesis of intelligence information with an emphasis on
terrorist threat intelligence; identify patterns and trends that may be
indicative of emerging threats; and provide relevant, timely and
actionable intelligence products for the region. The RTTACs establish
policies to share and exchange terrorism-related information and
intelligence products with public and private sector organizations
having public safety and infrastructure protection responsibilities.
There are currently 15 personnel assigned, or pending assignment,
to the STTAC from a mix of State agencies, including the State Office
of Homeland Security, the California Highway Patrol and the California
National Guard. The regional fusion centers vary in size from 15
individuals in the Sacramento and San Diego RTTACs, 40 individuals in
the Los Angeles RTTAC, and 44 individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area
RTTAC.
The State and regional centers are supported by a network of
Terrorism Liaison Officers (TLOs) and a secure web-based information
sharing system to distribute and receive information. The TLOs serve as
the local public agency and private entity point of contact for all
terrorism-related issues. At the local level, law enforcement and
public safety agencies are designating TLOs who are trained in the
review and assessment of local reporting and in conducting outreach to
other public safety agencies, critical infrastructure operators and
community groups. The TLO is the local agency point-of-contact for all
terrorism-related alerts and suspicious activity reports, requests for
information, warnings and other notifications from regional, State or
Federal homeland security agencies. The TLOs review local-agency
reports, manage local reporting and initiate or respond to requests for
information. The TLOs have an ongoing relationship with other local
agencies, especially those with daily contact in the community, and
develop relationships with critical infrastructure sites within their
respective jurisdictions, establishing a personal connection with their
security and management staff.
California has trained over 4,300 TLOs through a formal training
program, approved and certified by both DHS and California Commission
on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST). We have also expanded
the TLO program to include an initial group of over 70 individuals
representing State agencies in Sacramento who will be connecting State
government directly to the STTAC.
With the support of the Federal homeland security grants, our
future investments will include: (1) expanding the existing threat
assessment analytical capabilities at the fusion centers; (2) expanding
the training of Terrorism Liaison Officers; (3) expanding the existing
State-wide information sharing technology platform; (4) expanding law
enforcement counter-terrorism case de-confliction efforts; and (5)
enhancing public and private sector information sharing partnerships.
STATE AND LOCAL FUSION CENTERS NEED FEDERAL SUPPORT
I first want to recognize the initiative the Department of Homeland
Security has taken to embed DHS Intelligence Analysts in State and
regional fusion centers. This effort is to be applauded. Similarly, I
would be remiss if I did not recognize the contribution of the FBI
Special Agents in Charge in California for their partnership and
support of California's fusion centers. In particular, cooperation by
the Los Angeles FBI office resulted in space being donated to house the
Los Angeles area analysts. This collaboration continues, as the Los
Angeles RTTAC is being ably led by Ms. Leslie Gardner of the FBI. I
cannot underscore enough the value of these partnerships to the overall
success of our fusion centers.
The National Strategy for Information Sharing (Strategy) is also
praiseworthy, as it provides clear and concise direction to all levels
of government. The Strategy recognizes the critical role of State and
local first responders and first preventers in preventing acts of
terrorism. Being enfolded by this strategy validates the unique
perspectives of State and local public safety agencies and represents a
much needed change away from a Federal-centric approach to combating
terrorism.
We are committed to quickly implementing the Strategy and I am
pleased to report that one of the key elements--suspicious activity
reports--is being piloted in California by the Los Angeles Police
Department (LAPD). The goals of the pilot program are to standardize
internal processes and institutionalize counter-terrorism throughout
the LAPD. The collection of this data will enable the LAPD, and other
departments, to develop a measurement tool for terrorism-related
behavior and activities to identify indicators of emerging threats.
The establishment of the Interagency Threat Assessment and
Coordinating Group (ITACG) is another positive step being taken by DHS.
The ITACG has the potential to bring a State and local perspective to
products produced by the Intelligence Community. The ITACG also has the
potential to enhance our ability to turn information analyzed at the
national level into action at the operational level. However, more work
needs to be done to better define the information requirements of the
Intelligence Community from State and local public safety agencies.
Locals need clearer direction on the types of information that should
be shared.
At the operational level, fusion center analysts have been pleased
with the Department of Homeland Security's deployment of the Homeland
Security Information Network (HSIN), a system for sharing sensitive
analytical products. Under Mr. Charlie Allen's leadership, the
Department has improved both the timeliness and the quality of the HSIN
products. Responses to requests for information from State and local
agencies have also been more timely.
Another positive development has been the establishment of the
Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community Interest
(HSIN-SLIC). The HSIN-SLIC provides a secure forum for analysts from
over 43 States and 6 Federal agencies to directly share information
with each other. The forum is also supported by weekly threat
teleconferences. Early feedback has indicated that this is one of the
more promising venues to share information horizontally and to identify
emerging national threats.
FUSION CENTERS' ROLE IN PROTECTING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Fusion centers should also be leveraged to enhance critical
infrastructure and prevention capabilities. DHS should act on the
recommendations made by the State, Local, Tribal and Territorial
Government Coordinating Council (SLTTGCC) to establish the critical
infrastructure and key resource desks (CIKR Desk) at State fusion
centers. (see attachment). As the SLTTGCC noted, the key function of
the CIKR Desk in fusion centers would be the integration of threat,
vulnerability, and consequence data to develop information products for
public safety and private entities with security responsibilities.
In California, fusion centers are being utilized to extend training
to our private sector partners. At the Governor's direction, the
requirements for licensed security professionals were modified to
mandate enrollment in a 4-hour terrorism-awareness training program.
This common sense policy change will ultimately provide terrorism
training to the approximately 400,000 licensed security professionals
in California. We have also implemented a terrorism-awareness training
program amongst professional and trade associations to ensure that they
have current trend and pattern information, threat assessments and
connectivity to their RTTAC. Additionally, the State fusion center is
working closely with the agricultural industry to protect this critical
resource by formulating an initiative with the California Department of
Food and Agriculture to deliver a 1-day TLO course to each of the 58
county agriculture commissioners. Furthermore, a partnership is being
formed with the State's Rural Crime Task Force to train its members in
terrorism awareness and California's information sharing protocols.
The RTTACs have been working closely with my office to identify,
prioritize and protect the State's broad array of critical
infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR). These efforts have been
closely coordinated with a broad group of private-sector partners--
those entities that own and operate the bulk of the State's assets and
resources. Such partnerships include site owners and operators, first
responders, public and private organizations and associations, and
other levels of government, including local, State, Federal, and tribal
partners.
The Automated Critical Asset Management System (ACAMS) is a Web-
enabled information services portal which helps our State and local
governments build critical infrastructure/key resource (CI/KR)
protection programs. ACAMS provides a set of tools and resources that
help law enforcement, public safety and emergency response personnel:
collect and use CI/KR asset data; assess CI/KR asset vulnerabilities;
develop all-hazards incident response and recovery plans; and build
public/private partnerships. ACAMS is a secure, online data base and
data base management platform that allows for the collection and
management of CI/KR asset data; the cataloguing, screening and sorting
of this data; the production of tailored infrastructure reports; and
the development of a variety of pre- and post-incident response plans.
The Department of Homeland Security provides ACAMS for free and ACAMS
is used in more than 32 States and territories.
PROTECTING PRIVACY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
In all of these efforts, we are fully committed to protecting
California's residents and respecting their privacy, civil rights and
civil liberties. Our fusion centers must comply with our Federal and
State Constitutions, laws, regulations and policies regarding the
protection of privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. Because
protecting these rights is so fundamentally important to our democracy
and our office's mission, we established the State Terrorism Threat
Assessment Advisory Group (STTAAG) to provide independent and informed
advice. The STTAAG is comprised of a broad and diverse membership of
Californians who bring a wide range of experiences including public
safety, national security, community service, communications, and
academia.
The STTAAG Chair is Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, Dean of the Pacific
McGeorge School of Law and a former CIA and NSA General Counsel. The
Vice Chair is Craig Manson, who previously served as Assistant
Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks in the U.S. Department of the
Interior and as a Judge in the Sacramento County Superior Court. The
membership also includes Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, Dafer Dakhil of the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation, prominent
members of the Sikh community, the California Broadcasters Association,
and representative from various public safety organizations.
Over the past year, we have formalized the existence of the STTAAG
through the adoption of a charter. This charter reflects the two
primary objectives of the group--providing independent advice on
privacy, civil rights and civil liberties issues; and, on how our
organization can engage the people we serve is a constructive dialog on
who we are and what we are doing to enhance their collective security
in a manner which respects their individual liberties.
Along these lines, we co-hosted an outreach event with the Simon
Wiesenthal Center last November. A substantial number of my senior
staff, along with our Federal and local partners in Los Angeles, spent
several hours with Southern California business, community and
religious leaders. We provided them with information on the terrorist
threat, the measures that we are taking to mitigate that threat and the
role of the citizen in planning for and preventing terrorist attacks
against our homeland. It was an incredibly positive session and we hope
to host similar events on annual basis around the State.
BUILDING A MORE ROBUST AND SUSTAINABLE NETWORK OF FUSION CENTERS
In previous hearings this subcommittee reviewed the findings of the
February 20, 2008 fusion center report issued by CENTRA Technology,
Inc. The report focused on three areas in need of improvement: (1)
identifying the priority information needs for both the Department and
for State and local fusion centers; (2) streamlining the process for
responding to requests for information; and (3) enhancing the open
source analytical capabilities of analysts in State and local fusion
centers. In general, the Department has acknowledged that these are
indeed areas that should be acted upon.
I look forward to working with the Department to assist them in
their effort to offer additional open source training opportunities for
our first preventers. We are also committed to ensuring timely and
accurate responses to requests for information. The Department should
be certain that requests initiated, and responsed to, by regional
fusion centers are carbon copied to State fusion centers. This will
ensure States have optimal situational awareness and enhance their
ability to identify emerging trends. Additionally, the Department
should be clear in issuing their priority information needs and provide
routine feed back to State and locals that contribute information to
the Intelligence Community.
To be effective, fusion centers must be staffed with well trained
and properly cleared personnel. The National Strategy for Information
Sharing acknowledges the importance of personnel and states, ``the
Federal Government will support the establishment of these centers and
help sustain them through grant funding, technical assistance, and
training.''\3\ Congress also recognized the value of staffing fusion
centers in passing H.R. 1, the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11
Commission Act (9/11 Act), which explicitly allows States and locals to
utilize homeland security grants to hire personnel to staff fusion
centers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ National Strategy for Information Sharing, October 2007.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notwithstanding the urgent operational need and unequivocal
legislative intent, the Department has continued to issue guidance
(Information Bulletins 235 and 281) regarding the use of Federal funds
under the State Homeland Security and Urban Area Security Initiative
Grant programs which has been extremely counterproductive and
detrimental to State and local efforts to build and sustain a network
of fusion centers and contravenes the clear intent of Congress. I urge
the committee to eliminate the unduly burdensome and detrimental
guidance.
State and locals have invested a lot of time, money and personnel
in terrorism prevention and have absorbed the vast majority of the
costs for prevention, protection and infrastructure preparedness with
State and local funds. Creating, establishing and sustaining fusion
centers has been a success story. Staffing them with qualified, cleared
analysts has been and remains a challenge. These analysts and fusion
centers also clearly work to the benefit of the Federal Government by
allowing for better information sharing and real time communication
during a crisis.
Putting unnecessary restrictions on funding while we are still in
the developmental stage of the fusion centers and information sharing
is unwise. The lack of analysts will have adverse consequences on our
infrastructure protection efforts, including their review of classified
information and providing information back to DHS's Infrastructure
Protection Directorate. California is conducting a number of
comprehensive reviews with the Department, and fusion center analysts
are assisting in these efforts. We have also developed and invested
significant resources in the identification and training of several
thousand TLOs at government and private agencies throughout the State.
Without a functioning fusion center system, the information gathered by
these TLOs will be at risk of not being collected, as the system needs
constant attention and skills refreshment.
As I mentioned earlier, embedding DHS personnel in regional and
State fusion centers is a positive development. DHS should take every
opportunity to replicate the success of this initiative by detailing
analysts from other components of the Department. Fusion centers and
should be the logical base of operations for DHS's Protective Security
Advisors, rather than being assigned to Secret Service field officers.
Additionally, Congress has provided additional resources to the
Department to deploy Mass/Surface Transit Security and Aviation
Security analysts. These personnel would also be good candidates to
embed in regional and State fusion centers. Indeed, all agencies and
Departments with either law enforcement or emergency response
capabilities should have a significant presence at regional fusion
centers. Currently the United States Coast Guard, Federal Bureau of
Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Agency participate in
California's regional fusion centers. Our prevention, analytical and
information sharing capabilities could only be enhanced by a sustained
commitment from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives Agency, and Transit
Security Administration.
As we build this nationwide matrix of connected State and local
fusion centers staffed by a multi-disciplined analysts from the public
safety field, it remains important to ensure that barriers to
information sharing from traditional Federal, State and local law
enforcement agencies are appreciated and reduced consistent with the
necessary protection of privileged information. We are building a new
capability across the country, focused on prevention, and the key to
its success must be the widest possible exchange and access to analysts
and information. Great progress has been made, but work remains on
demonstrating that Homeland Security professionals and first responders
in the fusion centers are equal and relevant partners.
DHS should also expedite the fielding of the Homeland Security Data
Network (HSDN) system to the State fusion center. This long awaited
project is a needed improvement to California's information sharing and
analytical capabilities, as the HSDN system will allow the STTAC and
OHS analysts access to some levels of classified information and
connectivity with the RTTACs and DHS at the classified level.
Finally, security clearances--both in terms of availability and
proper level--remain an issue for State and locals. Perhaps the most
recent and best example I can provide you with is the classification of
the new Presidential Homeland Security Directive regarding cyber
security at the Top Secret level. Unfortunately, the Department has not
recognized the need to issue Top Secret clearances to State and local
public safety officers--even when those individuals bear the
responsibility of implementing national security directives.
Again, thank you for this opportunity to be here today. I will be
happy to take your questions.
Attachment
Ms. Harman. I think we may frame your oral testimony. It
is the core mission of subcommittee. I would just add that your
example of Torrance, California is one we all know. We had a
hearing in Torrance, which is in my congressional district,
about how successful that was.
Ms. Kayyem, please summarize your testimony in 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JULIETTE N. KAYYEM, UNDER SECRETARY FOR HOMELAND
SECURITY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF PUBLIC SAFETY AND SECURITY,
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
Ms. Kayyem. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Harman and
Ranking Member Reichert. I am also pleased to be here. I will
take Matt's compliments of the subcommittee and continue.
I think it is great this subcommittee is thinking about the
future and also thinking about how to make what is already
there better, rather than shifting around again, because from
the State perspective, enough shifting so to speak. We need to
sort of make a plan and stick with it.
In my written testimony, I discuss our Fusion Center. What
it is, what it is doing, how it conceptualizes itself. It will
be very different from California's many Fusion Centers in
other States. I think that is good and right.
I think given the threats and the particular concerns of
any given State and any given governor considering crime or
whatever else that we don't want one size doesn't fit all. We
don't want to think of Fusion Centers as these sort of new
intelligence beasts not linked to the public safety entities
that they have to contribute to.
I actually compliment the law enforcement intelligence
relationship that exists in most Fusion Centers. I think when
the media says those Fusion Centers are just doing criminal
analysis, that is actually right. We need to make it all
hazards, all threats and make it integrated into the public
safety community.
So with my time, let me talk about quickly what works and
what is not working on a very specific level and then how we
might think about it in the future. I&A and DHS, in its
intelligence functions, has to think in the world that exists
now where is their value added, because we have so many players
in this realm. We have the JTTF in our State, which is
excellent. We have any other number of counterterrorism,
antiterrorism units. So what is their value added? Basically
their value added is with the States and locals and their
consumers.
What has worked in that regard is we actually have an I&A
specialist. She had been a member of the Fusion Center in our
Fusion Center. It is great. I have one person to go to. The
quagmire that is DHS for a lot of us, it is answered by one
person. She may not have all the answers, she knows how to get
them to me. Requests for information come back quickly. We have
particular threats in our State. We have high profile people
coming to the universities. We need to know stuff fast. I can
go to one person. I don't have to come down here, and figure
out who to talk to. I think that is great. The CENTRA report
promoted that. To the extent, you can get more of them into
Fusion Centers, it makes a lot of sense.
What ought to be fixed? The truth is that as a consumer of
the intelligence at I&A is pushing out. That is our Fusion
Center in many respects. There are three main problems right
now. One is and I say it in my written testimony, that the
intelligence apparatus here in the District of Columbia
sometimes, I think, lives by the motto ``publish or perish'',
the academic model.
There is just too much, it is not helpful to me from the
prospective of a State Homeland Security advisor. Great
examples of relatively public example. This year alone we have
seen an increase in the Osama bin Laden tapes. The content is
not that interesting. It is the same tape over and over. But as
we reach this transition and certainly a Presidential
transition over the course of this year, what I want it know as
a consumer of the intelligence, because I can hear about the
tapes on CNN, is how is DHS thinking about this? How is I&A
thinking about what this means for transition? Are we worried?
Should I be worried? Are these more or less? It is the kind of
intelligence themes rather than the fact of it that matters
more to me. Because based on the Osama bin Laden tape, we are
not going to recommend from an operational level to ramp up the
State Police or to get MEMA active, Massachusetts Emergency
Management Agency activated. That is what I think thematically.
We have the JTTF for specific investigations.
Secondly, grants. You know, I won't talk about grants
except for one thing, I can not wake up rationally one day and
be told by DHS that 25 percent of my Homeland Security funds
have to be spent on IED prevention and response planning. When
I haven't been told that the year before, but more importantly,
I&A has never told me that. The grants are not matching the
intelligence. So I wake up thinking how am I going to tell this
to the people who want the money. That is a huge problem.
Third, treating us maturely, just picking up on what Matt
said. The spy satellite falling from earth was not a movie for
many of us, it was real. What we were getting was just not
helpful from an operational perspective. That is how we are
view ourselves. We are just making operational recommendations.
I don't have fire trucks. We are just saying react.
It was not helpful, let's just say. Whether the Department
of Defense, or Department of Homeland Security or, as I say in
my written testimony, the Secretary of Agriculture is in
charge, I could care less. What I wanted to know and what
wasn't provided to me is how operationally should we be
thinking about this? We were treated like kids, I mean
immaturely.
Boston Globe has a banner headline about it and I don't
have any good advice to give to either the governor or down to
the operational entities except for cross your fingers and
let's hope DOD shoots it down. That is not helpful. So in terms
of the maturity factor, I would really push that. So that is
how those changes would make a lot of sense for the next
administration in terms of what I need as a consumer of
intelligence. My written testimony gets into some other aspects
of the Fusion Center. Thank you very much.
Ms. Harman. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Ms. Kayyem follows:]
Prepared Statement of Juliette N. Kayyem
April 24, 2008
It is an honor to testify in this important matter, ``Moving Beyond
the First Five Years: Evolving the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
to Better Serve State, Local and Tribal Needs.'' It is especially an
honor to be here in front of Chairwoman Harman, who has not only been
an exceptional leader in this field, but a friend and mentor to me as
well.
I hope my testimony today will highlight some of the exceptional
work performed by our Commonwealth Fusion Center, provide guidance for
how this committee might think about the relationship between the
States and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding
intelligence efforts, and provide some thoughts on what does and does
not work in the structure that now exists. Since this committee is
already familiar with many of the challenges facing fusion centers,
including continuing funding by homeland security grants, I will focus
my discussion instead on themes and priorities. Of course, like every
other homeland security advisor, I worry about sustainability and
continued funding of the State's many efforts, but enough said in that
regard.
The last time I testified before this committee, I was a lecturer
at the Kennedy School of Government, and my focus then was on how the
Federal Government could better collect and analyze intelligence. For
the last year, I have served as the Under Secretary of Homeland
Security for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In this position, I
report to Secretary of Public Safety Kevin Burke. In addition, I am
Governor Deval Patrick's federally designated homeland security
advisor. In many respects, the status of my position reflects the
trends and changes within homeland security on both the Federal and
State level. Just as Hurricane Katrina painfully taught us that a
Department solely focused on terrorism may be at risk of undervaluing
threats brought by mother nature, a State homeland security apparatus
not aligned with the daily needs of public safety entities or first
responders could not survive or remain relevant.
In this capacity, then, Governor Patrick and Secretary Burke
charged me and our public safety agencies with evaluating the status of
homeland security in the State to promote successful integration of our
public safety and emergency management operations. Our legacy is in
ensuring that policies and practices better protect our citizens from
harm, wherever it may arise. So, first and foremost, this meant
requiring that the State had plans and policies in place to guide the
significant homeland security funds coming to the State, whether they
be for interoperability, evacuation planning, resource management,
recovery efforts or, as I will highlight here, intelligence efforts.
The Commonwealth Fusion Center, the CFC, is, by Executive Order,
the State's designated fusion center and was established in October,
2004. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, the BRIC, serves as the
UASI's primary fusion entity, and we continue to ensure that both of
their efforts are cooperative and, to the extent practicable, not
duplicative. DHS needs to ensure that limited resources, capabilities
and information do not unnecessarily create competition, but ensure
cooperation. We have a very good working relationship with the BRIC,
and the Boston police for that matter. DHS can play a very useful role
in ensuring that resources are shared to create a unified system.
The CFC is, like most fusion centers, part of our State police,
reporting through the chain of command to the Colonel of the
Massachusetts State Police (MSP). While in the past newspaper articles
and commentators have decried the fact that many fusion centers are
joint tasked--intelligence and law enforcement based--I think those
concerns are ill-founded. Indeed, I can't imagine a structure in which
a fusion center was not, in major respects, focused on traditional
crime analysis, providing information to localities and receiving
important criminal trends from them in return. A fusion center that was
solely terrorism focused could not sustain itself, not given the
intelligence that is out there nor the competing needs of Governors and
Mayors who are, as we are, concerned about crime. Because traditional
crime often serves as a means for more nefarious or dangerous
activities, we have to focus our efforts holistically. The true power
that resides at the State and local level of law enforcement vis-a-vis
terrorism prevention is not some grand new intelligence mission, but
rather a culture of sharing the product of the good work that has been
going on for years. The information that police officers routinely
collect in the course of their normal duties is the same information
that may identify terrorist financing or a pre-operational cell. It is
also, it should be noted, the same information that a local chief can
use to identify criminal hotspots or emerging trends.
To that end, we are working to put information and tools in the
hands of State and local law enforcement that will enable them to
detect and track precursor crimes as well as other trends. The
Statewide Information Sharing System, or SWISS, has been funded by our
homeland security dollars and while available and utile to all
contributing departments, it will drastically enhance the CFC's
homeland security and traditional crime missions. The dual-use concept
is thoroughly ingrained in our homeland security strategy so that we
might both meet head-on and mitigate the challenge of sustainability.
Indeed, our fusion center is so integrated into the workings of the MSP
that it is financially sustained wholly as part of the current
operational costs of the MSP. While homeland security funds focus the
CFC's efforts and training, we are not presently facing a wholesale
crisis or the potential loss of analysts as is occurring in other
fusion centers.
What is interesting here, however, is that not until recently has
there been a discussion by DHS with States and localities on how the
Federal Government could access that information in a strategic manner.
A recent article in the Los Angeles Times highlights the LAPD's efforts
to utilize some standardized form that would serve as a trigger for
suspicious reporting to DHS. That was a local effort, and to our
knowledge the most proactive attempt to treat what the fusion centers
are doing as relevant to Federal threat gathering. We do not need a
State-by-State capacity to access information about specific
investigations or persons; indeed, once an individual jurisdiction
sends information to the FBI under Guardian, we no longer have
``peeking'' ability. What we need is a system in which the trends or
activities that are reported to the DHS Office of Intelligence and
Analysis (I&A) are done so in a systematic way, and made transparent to
those who would need to know the information. Without that capability,
the efforts on the State level will be of little value to DHS.
The CFC has, like most fusion centers, been an evolving entity. I
sometimes imagine it like Goldilocks, searching for the ``just right''
fit. Ours began, like many of the post-9/11 entities, as an answer to
the call from the Federal Government to help prevent the ``next 9/11.''
The changes that have occurred in the CFC, and that will continue to
occur, happen because of the unique needs of our State and the changing
nature of the intelligence we receive.
So, what I want to lay out here are my thoughts at this moment in
time, with an eye to guiding this committee, as well as DHS, on
bettering our collective efforts in the future. The CFC was one of the
pilot fusion centers in the recent CENTRA report, and we learned a lot
in that process. Where I critique, it is only to urge a more thoughtful
assessment for the future; where I compliment, it is to provide,
however anecdotally, some evidence where efforts ought to be sustained.
To begin, it might be helpful to simply lay out who is, and isn't,
at the fusion center now and what they do. The core of the CFC is
staffed with MSP personnel, who first and foremost are responsible to
their chain of command. Representatives from other agencies include one
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analyst, one agent and one
analyst from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,
one counter-drug analyst from the Massachusetts National Guard, one
analyst from the Department of Correction (currently deployed to Iraq),
one representative from DHS I&A, one police officer from CSX railroad,
and a Geographic Information Systems specialist from the U.S. Army
Civil Support Team. In addition, several MSP troopers under the direct
command of the CFC, and therefore the Executive Office of Public Safety
and Security, are assigned to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF)
for specific investigation support.
The primary focus for today's hearing is on the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis, and how it works with State fusion centers.
We are fortunate to be a State with a designated I&A analyst. She had
previously worked at the fusion center, and so her knowledge of it, and
the State itself, has been a tremendous asset.
She is, for the fusion center, and for me specifically, our one
stop shopping. While she may not have every answer at hand, she knows
how to get it for us. We should not underestimate how important that
is. DHS, for any State, can be both amorphous and large. In
Massachusetts alone, the DHS entities--from ICE, to Coast Guard, to
FEMA, to a critical infrastructure analyst, to chemical industry
regulators, to TSA--are all professional, but from the perspective of a
State, are also too numerous to count. While FEMA has taken the lead on
trying to integrate these entities, the truth is that their mission and
chains of command so vary that it can be difficult. For us to have one
liaison that can tap into, at the very least, intelligence efforts at
DHS, and across the Federal Government, has proven exceptionally
helpful. There are, after all, 16 Federal agencies that make up the
Intelligence Community, all attempting to assess the persistent and
evolving threats this Nation faces. It may be, one wonders, too many
for the Federal Government; it is certainly too many for a single
State. As one of our fusion center analysts noted, our I&A analyst
provides a mechanism to reach into the ``quagmire'' and get the
information and resources needed by the State.
This is particularly true in one aspect of our needs: Requests for
Information (RFI). Working with the CFC and the BRIC, and due to the
CENTRA assessments, I&A submitted recommendations for creating a
process which would efficiently serve the State's needs. This process
was concluded before the CENTRA report findings, but is supported by
that report. While I cannot disclose the details of the requests we
have made, they have revolved around unique aspects and threats to our
State and to Boston, whether they be related to critical infrastructure
or visits by foreign dignitaries. I&A provides connectivity and rapid
response for us; some requests are returned with information within
hours of being relayed. This information can then be utilized to guide
operational planning by the State police or local law enforcement.
There are other benefits, including access to secure cell phones
for State designees and getting through the red tape that often is
involved in security clearances. Indeed, in a recent trip I took to
Paraguay, a Nation that has a relationship with the State's National
Guard, our I&A analyst was able to successfully transition our security
clearances to the State Department with 1 day's notice.
Thus, the physical presence of a single person who can tap into
DHS, who knows why we are asking and what it means for the State, has
gone exceptionally far in our relationship with DHS regarding
intelligence efforts.
However, it is in the CFC's role as a consumer of intelligence that
many of the more persistent difficulties arise. First, the CENTRA
report, which I have studied, places tremendous emphasis on making
intelligence more accessible to States and localities. That is an
important effort. But, while DHS focuses these efforts on ensuring that
the quantity of information getting to us continues to flow, we are
likely similar to many other States in wondering whether we aren't at
risk of threat assessment fatigue.
Let me put this another way. We have placed so much focus on
ensuring that intelligence flows horizontally and vertically from and
to State and Federal Governments that we may be at risk of the
intelligence version of the often quoted academic trajectory: publish
or perish. The quantity of information coming to us, often without much
reference to either its strategic or tactical relevance, is
overwhelming. As a State, we are left in a bit of a dilemma: distribute
the information and risk triggering responses that are not justified by
the validity of the intelligence or simply close-hold the information
and be at risk of recreating the very stovepipes this whole effort was
meant to destroy. Thus, while DHS assesses its own intelligence
capabilities in the years to come, and under a new president from
either party, the quality of the intelligence being shared has got to
be an essential aspect of that conversation.
A relatively public example may be helpful. In 2008, there have
been a number of Osama bin Laden audiotapes. We received notification
of each of them by DHS (as well as by the FBI) but also, I must admit,
by CNN. Their substance, for those of us who follow these things, was
nothing novel: the literal rantings of the terrorist against everything
associated or affiliated with the United States. But, as we all know,
we need to remain exceptionally vigilant during times of democratic
transition; both Spain and the United Kingdom were victims of terrorist
attacks immediately before or immediately after a change in government.
So while the fact of the tapes didn't seem to raise anything new in our
mind, and the literal statements didn't seem particularly worrisome, as
more and more audiotapes came out (and may continue to be released), we
would want to be in a position to know how the Federal Government is
assessing this, how are they thinking through this summer and fall of
transition, and whether we shouldn't be doing the same. It is that kind
of strategic guidance that would be helpful.
I am relatively confident that any information that is worthy of a
preliminary or criminal investigation will be properly vetted and
analyzed by our JTTF, where many of our CFC troopers work. But, for the
majority of information, call it white noise or background
atmospherics, we are simply consumers, not quite able to decipher
whether there is any strategic relevance to so much information, but
pretty confident that our operational assessments will not change.
Second, and this is not something we can fix on the State level,
DHS needs to ensure that the kinds of guidance we are receiving from
other DHS entities or other Federal entities is aligned with the very
intelligence we are receiving from I&A. Most recently, the States
received guidance and priorities for the major State homeland security
grant cycle, which concludes in May. This is the major grant that
States and the UASIs receive to support first responder capabilities.
While we know that IEDs continue to be a threat in Iraq and against our
soldiers abroad, no intelligence we had received from DHS or any
Federal entity prepared us for the explicit focus that the grant now
has on IED prevention, protection, and response planning. To be clear,
this is an important effort, one that needs attention and one that we
have and will continue to address, in particular with our critical
infrastructure program, which I will discuss further in a moment. But,
by explicitly focusing on IEDs, we were left wondering whether we
proverbially didn't know what we didn't know. Or, for another example,
the Buffer Zone Protection grants are annually distributed to critical
infrastructure sites to buttress prevention and law enforcement
efforts. At the same time, some specific industries--say
telecommunications or water purifying sites--will be chosen for site
visits. From what we know, on the State level, these industries are
chosen without us knowing why, and certainly without the industry
knowing why. It may be, as I believe now, that DHS is doing due
diligence and ensuring that States focus on many different sectors.
But, since there is no intelligence to decipher why a specific industry
is chosen, or in one case in our State, a specific site, we are left
explaining to our private sector partners to simply accept the
designation, trying to assure them that they are not at increased risk.
This gets me to the final comment on the challenges of our
``consumer'' role. Intelligence can be inherently vague and hard to
define; with it, comes a tremendous amount of responsibility. While we
continue to live with threats, from terrorists or bad actors or even
from mother nature, the knowledge of those threats demands that those
of us who work and respond to them act professionally and in a reasoned
fashion. When intelligence goes from atmospherics, to potentially a
real threat, we need to ensure that the very processes we have put into
place are utilized and reinforced. This was made entirely clear from
our recent responses to the potential consequences of an NRO spy
satellite falling to earth. From my perspective, I don't really care if
the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security or even
the Secretary of Agriculture, if he is so inclined, is designated the
principal Federal officer for an event. The concern is that, as the
other homeland security advisors shared information they were receiving
in that 2-week period leading up to the successful Defense Department
downing of the satellite, it was clear that we simply didn't have a
unified notion of how we ought to prepare our public safety agencies,
let alone the public. There was also a lack of a reality check in all
the chaos that could answer whether the real issue at hand was one of a
danger to the public for emergency management planning purposes, or a
danger to our national security in that secret information might be
disclosed if pieces of the satellite fell in adversary hands. It was in
that vacuum that, I believe, each State likely planned differently,
based on information that we all believed was probably not forthcoming.
Perhaps it was because there was confidence that the Defense Department
would successfully shoot down the satellite, or perhaps because the
trajectory couldn't actually be determined, or maybe we knew less
because the trajectory never made its way to New England, but it was in
that vacuum that both paranoia and gossip gets started, and when
confidence in the entire process gets undermined. The States must be
treated as mature partners in these intelligence efforts.
As we look forward as well, I want to add two important efforts
into the mix of how we should be thinking of DHS and I&A intelligence
functions in the future. We need to continue, as we do in all homeland
security efforts, to provide policies and practices that will be dual-
use and respond to many hazards. Thus, as we think about the legacy of
fusion centers and their continuing viability, one of the major arenas
where they will and can provide unique value is in critical
infrastructure assessments. In the past, our State's critical
infrastructure assessments were locally based, providing the State with
hundreds of potential and vulnerable sites, ranging from nuclear
facilities to local high schools. Both are, of course, important, but
we had no mechanism to focus these efforts on risk reduction and, from
the perspective of the State, response needs.
Specific intelligence against a particular site, and our response
to that information, is different than the kind of analysis we are now
supporting through the fusion center in Massachusetts. Indeed, many of
the homeland security dollars going to the CFC are now supporting
training and efforts related to creating a unified critical
infrastructure assessment tool, known as ACAMS, which is supported by
DHS. We know, and explicitly express in the Commonwealth's State
Homeland Security Strategy,\1\ that in order to effectively carry out
their missions, public safety officials and policymakers need a
comprehensive understanding of the vulnerabilities of assets, systems,
networks, and functions that provide critical services to the people of
the Commonwealth. This knowledge will drive public safety and public
policy decisions regarding preventative and protective measures, as
well as response activities to natural and man-made incidents. We are
committed to understanding and assessing risk in the Commonwealth by
ranking what assets are in the State based upon their vulnerabilities,
whether they are likely to be under threat, and how their destruction,
through any means, would impact the State. ACAMS and the CFC provide a
State-wide, coordinated approach to the identification, prioritization,
and protection of critical infrastructure and key resources that can be
shared with important stakeholders and emergency response personnel.
For this to be a successful effort, we must also partner with I&A to
ensure that their strategic knowledge is shared and disseminated.
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\1\ http://www.mass.gov/
?pageID=eopssubtopic&L=3&L0=Home&L1=Homeland+Security+%26+Emergency+Resp
onse&L2=State+Homeland+Security+Strategy&sid=Eeops.
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Another such critical infrastructure initiative that has recently
begun to take shape at the CFC in regard to critical infrastructure is
a relationship between the CFC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC). At the recent fusion center conference in San Francisco, it was
brought to our attention that there exists an NRC database cataloging
suspicious activities reported by utility companies throughout the
country. Being a State with one active nuclear power plant and two
others in bordering States that affect Massachusetts' communities
within the 10-mile emergency planning zone, we were intrigued by this
information and the opportunity to further our critical infrastructure
protection efforts utilizing the NRC database. We have reached out to
the NRC and are beginning a process in which the NRC, the CFC, and our
emergency management agency will communicate on issues of suspicious
activity involving radiological threats.
I believe that these efforts, in conjunction with DHS and I&A, are
really the foundation of a legacy for fusion centers nationwide. Not
simply because we can better prevent and respond to terrorist threats
against our critical infrastructure, but also because we can know,
beforehand, how we might prioritize any number of important public
safety and public policy needs.
Finally, and this is something that I know Chairwoman Harman
promotes, we need to continue to demand that fusion centers are as
transparent as possible, ensuring that they serve our important public
safety needs in a democratic society. There will always be a tension
between liberty and security, but the tension need not impede honest
discussion and even evaluation. I believe, as someone who began her
career in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and someone
who has written extensively in this regard, that we may never
permanently settle this issue, but we must always be prepared to have
the discussion. Before I came to work for the Commonwealth, my notion
of what was going on in the intelligence world was not always a benign
one.
The balance at the CFC and in the State we are trying to achieve
now has made us reexamine our efforts, our policies, and our
transparency. In response to the most recent ACLU examination of fusion
centers, we vowed to provide a reply with an honest assessment of where
we were and where we hoped to be in the future. That letter is attached
for your review. We are, in addition, promoting a privacy council to
ensure that we have the benefit of outside council not on specific
investigations, but on how the State's public safety agencies might
better balance their important public safety mission with the rights of
our citizens. I am confident that we are closer now, but I am also
confident that the world is changing so quickly and access to
information, databases, and technology is so rapidly evolving, that we
can not simply rest on such assurances. Such advice need not just apply
to the fusion centers, but perhaps to any entity that utilizes
intelligence and information sharing as a prevention, protection, and
mitigation tool. As information becomes more readily available, and the
risks (as well as the benefits) are more easily multiplied, we must
formalize structures and policies that embrace the debate, rather than
deny or ignore it. We are not alone in our State, and to the extent
that DHS can serve as a model or provide the very practices we all are
seeking to achieve, we will ensure that we will take the proper steps
to protect privacy and civil liberties, while continuing to utilize the
mechanisms of intelligence and analysis that help protect our citizens
from critical incidents.
I hope I have provided you with useful information to assess and
enhance DHS I&A. I have discussed the issues that are at the forefront
of the CFC's concerns; which we know also hit home with many other
fusion centers. Efforts on the part of DHS and the Federal Government
to address the issues that were raised today offer a solid basis for
making improvements and continuing useful efforts by I&A.
Attachment
Ms. Harman. Mr. Cilluffo.
STATEMENT OF FRANK J. CILLUFFO, DIRECTOR AND ASSOCIATE VICE
PRESIDENT, HOMELAND SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE, GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Mr. Cilluffo. Chairwoman Harman, Ranking Member Reichert,
distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify before you today. I will be very brief,
not my strong suit. As you know, I have never had an unspoken
thought. I want to pick up on a couple of themes we have heard
here and expand on two or three that I think are significant.
Firstly, that the title of the hearing is spot on. That
should be the priority of I&A at the Department of Homeland
Security. I am not sure they have seen it that way thus far.
While it has become a cliche, timely, accurate and well
informed intelligence and information products shared both
vertically and horizontally, at all levels of government are
more important than ever to inform us about threats, solutions
and responses.
Collectively these capabilities build our understanding of
the adversary. We tend to focus so much on the indication and
warning. The reality is we need to know the context by which
this fits in and it is sort of looking for the needle in the
haystack. So I think there has been too much emphasis on the
warning side and not enough on the broader strategic function.
Not only at the State and local level, but at the Federal level
as well.
Collection is sexy. We all like to steal secrets and we all
like to have secrets. The reality is what does it mean? How can
you use it? Is it usable and how do we operationalize it--I
think is the real issue we need to be working toward.
While I agree with Matt and Juliette there has been some
progress, and I think the national strategy is a good case in
point of that, at least in theory if not fully in practice. At
least people are now at a point where they understand. I think
everyone is getting to the recognition of the need to share
vis-a-vis the old need-to-know model.
When I sit down with my State and local authorities,
whether they are in the intelligence shops at NYPD or LAPD or
any city throughout the United States, two common themes keep
coming back to me. One, without a seat at the table in
Washington, they cannot, as much as we talk about it, be true
partners in the intelligence and information-sharing process.
At the same time, the maximum of think globally, act locally
should apply to all of our efforts here.
Much of the information that is collected from State and
local authorities don't find its way into any national pictures
or frameworks or assessments. Many of the products that the
national community is providing don't meet the very specific
needs that their State and local authorities have. So I sort of
see three approaches that DHS I&A can take to try to remedy
this approach.
Firstly champion, champion, champion. Serve as the champion
for State and local in Washington and within the Beltway,
setting standards, designing customer driven intelligence
products and processes. In essence, readjusting the entire
requirement setting process to meet their needs. This includes
I&A inserting itself into the national intelligence priority
framework, a very elite table, but I think they should have a
voice in that.
I personally believe that I&A has spent too much time
proving that they deserve to be a member of the IC and not
enough on some of the customers, which is their true, real
differentiator at State and local. Secondly, it should enable
its State and local partners. To me, the big gap is not the
bricks and mortars, it is analytical capacity.
We need to ensure that an analytical capacity, people.
Ultimately this is all about people. We need to start investing
in people and make those capabilities and capacities available
to our State and local partners.
We love Fusion Centers, they are positive, and they are
good and there have been very positive developments there, some
better than others. What we really are missing is what comes
out of that. That is more of a data collection focus. I would
like to see greater analysis. I would like see how that can be
strung up together. This is where I&A play a very important
role to take regional approaches. What are we seeing in one
area, what are we seeing in another and how do we can put those
pieces together.
I listed a bunch in my prepared remarks of new products
that I think would be helpful. Much of them focused on
understanding the adversary, because quite honestly, there is
still a dearth of that. I think that some of these deliverables
can and should be done instantaneously. It is not in the United
States, it is really what are we seeing overseas? What trends
are important? What indicators are important? How can that be
factored into suspicious activity reporting at the local level?
What are we seeing in terms of modus operandi in combat
situations? What are we seeing outside of combat situations?
What are the trends? I am not sure that that has been done
effectively.
Secondly, I think CBP is a unique aspect of DHS and that
should be better integrated into our information sharing
efforts with State and local.
I think that as Juliette mentioned, some of the videos
quite honestly, I think we do need more of that. We need to
understand the terrorist narrative, not just what the actions
are, but what is making them tick. How can we get to a lexicon
where we can communicate with our communities? Ultimately, the
solutions are going to be community policing, hopefully
intelligence-led, and that to me should be a major, major
priority.
One pagers: I would like one pagers of every terrorist
incident we have seen overseas. Simple. I would like to see one
page about not only incidents but what about thwarted incidents
and how are they thwarted and why were they thwarted? This is
something that I think could be very valuable. If DHS I&A
doesn't provide it, Madam Chairman, and I realize this may be
outside of the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, perhaps
others, such as FBI and NCTC should be given the authority and
responsibility to do so.
On the enabling side my colleagues said it much better than
I ever could, but let me recognize the importance of privacy.
This shouldn't be an afterthought, it shouldn't be a
perfunctory last paragraph in every document. It needs to be
part and parcel. It is not just the civil liberties and civil
rights communities inside government, but the broader civil
rights communities should have a voice. Even if we all can come
to some conclusion, it won't work if it doesn't have the trust
of the community. Trust and confidence is at the bottom of all
of this. That includes the communities that ultimately we all
serve. So I would just highlight that, accentuate that and I
will stop at that. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Mr. Cilluffo follows:]
Prepared Statement of Frank J. Cilluffo
April 24, 2008
Chairwoman Harman, Ranking Member Reichert, and distinguished
Members of the Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk
Assessment Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify
before you today. The role of intelligence is the lifeblood in the
campaign against terrorism and other threats. Your leadership in
examining intelligence issues as they relate to the Department of
Homeland Security better serving State, local, tribal and other
stakeholders is to be commended. This should be the primary mission of
the Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
Officials at the State, local, and tribal levels and their
counterparts in the private sector are often the first preventers and
responders to terrorism and other security threats. Timely, accurate
and well-informed intelligence and information products, shared
vertically and horizontally with all responders at all levels of
government, are more important than ever in order to inform them about
threats, solutions and responses. Collectively, these capabilities
build our understanding of the adversary. Already, we have made some
headway toward this end in theory, if not entirely in practice. A
National Strategy for Information Sharing exists.\1\ We are moving
toward creating an effective Information Sharing Environment--one
supported by a culture based on a ``need to share'' rather than merely
a ``need to know.'' Notably, the National Strategy references the
crucial role of State, local and tribal partners in an effective
counterterrorism effort. However capable our intelligence apparatus'
may be, this is ultimately an exercise in risk management; intelligence
simply has limitations. Intelligence estimates, for example, are just
that: analysts are not and cannot be expected to be clairvoyant.
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\1\ National Strategy for Information Sharing, The White House,
October 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/infosharing/.
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In the course of my work as the Director of The George Washington
University Homeland Security Policy Institute, I have worked with a
range of State and local intelligence and law enforcement officials.
Two common themes have emerged among my discussions with them: without
a seat at the table in Washington, they cannot be true partners in the
intelligence and information sharing process; and at the same time, the
maxim of ``think globally, act locally'' should apply.
Information collected by State and local partners does not always
make it into national intelligence assessments, while the products they
receive often do not meet their unique needs. The Department of
Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis has the
potential to remedy this through three steps. First, the Office should
champion State, local, and tribal stakeholders within the Beltway,
setting standards and designing customer-driven intelligence products
and processes, such as the National Intelligence Priority Framework.
Second, it should enable its State and local partners by investing in
analytical capabilities in existing information sharing venues like
Fusion Centers and operationalizing that intelligence. Finally, it can
work to integrate fully intelligence collection and analysis at all
levels of government, producing the first truly all-source, all crimes
and all-hazards domestic threat assessment. Respecting and preserving
civil rights and civil liberties is crucial in all of this, and the
Department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties should be at
the forefront of these efforts, consulting and incorporating to the
fullest extent possible the views of the broader civil rights and civil
liberties community.
championing state, local and tribal stakeholders at the national level
Just as many law enforcement duties and policies are the purview of
State and local governments, so too should many corresponding
intelligence functions. While Federal agencies rightly should be
concerned with transnational threats against our homeland, allies and
interests abroad, relying solely on Washington, DC-based agencies for
State and community-based intelligence needs ensures local requirements
and concerns do not receive the priority they deserve. No one has a
better grasp of communities and their particulars than local officials
and partners. Thus, while products such as National Intelligence
Estimates and programs such as personnel rotations to different
intelligence details are important at the national level, the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis should ensure State and local partners
receive the priority they deserve by representing them at the national
and homeland security planning tables, setting priorities and
requirements and designing products that meet the unique needs of these
partners.
That said, intelligence and analysis on terrorist tradecraft
including weapons, financing and modus operandi currently used in
combat environments and other targets of terrorism far from our own
municipalities can be useful for domestic purposes. Knowing what and
who we face abroad can serve as a positive tool for creating policies,
fine tuning tactics, and collaborating on threat indicators among other
responses at the local level. As past events have indicated, our
geographic isolation from regions frequently affected by terrorism is
but a small impediment to those seeking harm against our homeland. The
need to think globally and act locally necessitates creating a
mechanism whereby State and local partners are kept in the loop
regarding national intelligence assessments of international terrorism
and transnational crime. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis should
ensure partner agencies and officials receive current national
intelligence assessments that can be integrated into State and local
law enforcement practices.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis should also take the lead
in designing new intelligence products such as the following:
Regional Threat Assessments, produced by Fusion Centers
incorporating intelligence gathered at the State and local
levels across a geographic region, would focus on trends in
suspicious activity, radicalization, threats to critical
infrastructure and other local concerns.\2\ Such assessments
would, for the first time in many cases, not only make State
and local authorities aware of threats and key vulnerabilities
in neighboring jurisdictions, but also in those across the
country. Besides raising awareness of terrorist and criminal
indicators throughout different jurisdictions, Regional Threat
Assessments would indicate similarities and differences in how
State and local authorities collect intelligence, as well as in
what they are collecting. Similarly, these assessments would
allow State and local officials to compare threats at a broader
level, thereby enabling them to more easily spot trends between
different jurisdictions. The Office of Intelligence and
Analysis would prove vital to ensuring that information
collected at the local level is fed into relevant analysis and
that the analytical capacity is in place to turn the
intelligence into products to be shared among disparate
jurisdictions.
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\2\ The regional approach has merits beyond the intelligence
context. See, for example, Regionalizing Homeland Security: Unifying
National Preparedness and Response, The George Washington University
Homeland Security Policy Institute, June 30, 2006, http://
www.gwumc.edu/hspi/pubs/hspiregion.pdf.
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Along with Regional Threat Assessments, other threat
assessments incorporating intelligence gathered overseas that
is directly relevant to State and local responders would be
produced. These products would include information on threats
to the homeland arising overseas, trends in radicalization and
counter-radicalization abroad and intelligence collected at
U.S. borders by Federal agencies. U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, for example, is a unique Department of Homeland
Security asset and information collector that should be better
incorporated into the intelligence capacities of local and
State partners with points of entry within their jurisdiction.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis should act as that
enabler. Another example of a best practice that should be
further disseminated and replicated is the Integrated Border
Enforcement Teams (IBETs) which bring together Canadian and
U.S. border security agencies at 23 locations. Intelligence
gathered abroad is already available; what is needed is for the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis to ensure national
collection assets collect the information needed by all levels
of government, and that products provided to State and local
responders meet their unique needs.
A virtual library of key documents, statements, video
propaganda, and other materials produced by our adversaries
would be established and maintained by the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis for its State and local partners.
This would provide State and local responders with a better
understanding of our adversaries' intentions, capabilities, and
tactics, but also the narratives they use to spread their
appeal--information needed to identify and counter
radicalization and emerging threats in their own communities.
It could also help State and local responders develop a lexicon
for effectively discussing issues of terrorism and
radicalization with their communities. In particular, they need
more and better analysis, providing a multidisciplinary
understanding of our adversaries' motivations, thoughts, and
plans. While indications and warnings of possible attacks are
vital, better understanding of our adversaries will allow our
first responders to move toward preempting and disrupting
terrorist activities before they take shape.
Incident reports providing background on and summaries of
international and domestic terrorist actions (including actual
incidents and those that were thwarted) would be produced and
collected by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and placed
into a virtual data base that would supplement the virtual
library. These incident reports would inform State and local
partners of terrorist activity and trends outside their
jurisdictions. Two examples of open source terrorism incident
data bases are the National Consortium for the Study of
Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University
of Maryland and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of
Terrorism's Terrorism Knowledge Base.
Information gathering and reporting processes would be
standardized by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis through
requirements setting. The Los Angeles Police Department, for
example, recently introduced Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)
for its officers to report in detail any kind of potential
terrorist-related activity, which fits seamlessly into their
daily operations. Department officers have been receiving
training in what kinds of suspicious activities to look for
based on a 65-item checklist which includes indications that
someone conducted surveillance on a government building, tried
to acquire explosives, openly espoused extremist views or
abandoned a suspicious package, for example. SARs represent a
best-practice that could be used at the State and local levels
across the country to feed information into customer-driven
products like the Regional Threat Assessments. These best-
practices are already being implemented by State and local
responders; what is needed now is for the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis to act as a champion of the SARs in
order to implement the program with other partners in a manner
that promotes information sharing as broadly as possible.
Analysts from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis could
take a SAR, for example, and fuse it with other intelligence
including that from Fusion Centers, and create a product that
is broad but recognizes both a community's unique aspects as
well as incorporating regional and national trends.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but to illustrate
some of the information products and resources that State and local
responders need--and are not necessarily receiving--in order to secure
their communities. By championing its State and local partners at the
national level, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis can set new
priorities and requirements at all levels of government in order to
produce these vital and currently overlooked products. While this may
be beyond the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, it is important to
note that if the Office of Intelligence and Analysis does not take on
this role, then others such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or
the National Counter Terrorism Center should be given the authority and
responsibility to do so.
enabling state, local and tribal first preventers & responders
Ultimately, the solutions to terrorism and related threats will be
local in nature--through localized analysis, community policing, and
counter-radicalization that starts from the ground up. More than just
setting requirements and providing products needed by State and local
entities, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis must enable and
empower State and local responders to be true partners in information
analysis and sharing--that is, in fighting terrorism.
This means, first and foremost, investing in analytical capacity.
Throughout our country's intelligence community, there is an emphasis
on collection over analysis. This is especially true with regard to the
State and local levels, where many responders lack the resources or
capacity to conduct analysis on their own. The New York Police
Department and the Los Angeles Police Department offer two exceptions
to the rule: both departments have developed effective intelligence
collection and analytical capabilities, to their great credit. While
there may be a few other exceptions, most municipalities and States do
not have the resources to develop similar capabilities on their own,
nor necessarily should they. This is not to say that stop-gap measures
do not exist. For example, a wealth of open source information
concerning our adversaries worldwide is available to State and local
officials by the Department of Homeland Security through the Universal
Adversary internet portal, a tool that is not yet well known. Training
and educating State and local consumers of intelligence analysis on how
best to make use of tools such as this is also important.
State and local responders often do not have much luck when turning
to avenues of information sharing with the Federal Government. Facing a
virtual alphabet soup of State and Federal offices and agencies to
contact, it is often difficult to even know where to turn. Even when it
is clear, analytical capacity is usually given second billing after
collection. Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and
Analysis Tomarchio, for example, noted in recent testimony that the
Office of Intelligence and Analysis now has 23 officers deployed and
serving in Fusion Centers around the country.\3\ While this is a
positive step, it should be noted that this amounts to a little more
than a third of an analyst per Fusion Center, excluding municipal
police departments. To remedy this, the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis should continue to deploy its own analysts to Fusion Centers
and other points of cooperation, working to build out the analytical
capabilities of these organizations. The burden of championing,
enabling, and integrating the capabilities and goals of State and local
partners should not fall to the Department of Homeland Security alone.
Rather, sustained, long-term investment of both capital and personnel
resources by the White House, various cabinet and sub-cabinet agencies,
along with this and other Congressional bodies is necessary to increase
the analytical capacities of and access for State and local partners.
Unfunded mandates are not the answer, and it is important that Congress
remain cognizant of the need for sustained investment in this area over
the long run.
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\3\ Focus on Fusion Centers: A Progress Report. Testimony of
Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Jack
Tomarchio Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local and Private
Sector Preparedness and Integration, 17 April 2008.
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The key goal of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, however,
should not be to continue the trend of top-down driven analysis.
Instead, it should work to develop the analytical capacity from the
bottom-up, by providing the required resources and training,
disseminating lessons learned and best practices at home and abroad,
and by identifying and filling gaps in capabilities for its State and
local partners. For example, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
could enable State and local officials to gain hands-on experience
through international partnerships and exchanges, most of which are
outside the financial reach of State and local responders. Working with
their counterparts overseas, State and local officials can gain greater
understanding of how terrorists operate internationally, what
counterterrorism approaches are being implemented abroad, what
radicalization and counter-radicalization look like on the ground, and
on-the-scene situational awareness.\4\
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\4\ LEAP: A Law Enforcement Assistance and Partnership Strategy:
Improving Information Sharing Between the Intelligence Community and
State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement. Prepared at the request of
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, House Committee on Homeland Security,
pp. 10-12.
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While some information such as a better understanding of our
adversaries will likely come from the national intelligence community,
intimate knowledge of local communities will not be found in
Washington, DC. State and local law enforcement, fire fighters,
emergency medical services and others are truly on the front line
against terrorism; they are not only the first to respond to an attack
but, knowing their communities best, are the best-placed to identify
and thwart radicalization and emerging plots before they become
critical threats. Though terrorist threats are often transnational in
nature, the solutions are primarily local. While the brick-and-mortar
infrastructure of Fusion Centers and related entities are important, it
is people who are critical--individuals trained and prepared to conduct
intelligence analysis and intelligence-led community policing.
These last two are essential. I have often said that in the
struggle against terrorism, we cannot simply kill or capture our way to
victory, but instead must utilize all instruments of statecraft to
undermine the appeal of our adversaries' narrative.\5\ This is as true
abroad as it is at home. Here, we cannot rely on the hard edge of
policing by arresting our way to security. Instead, through community
policing and engagement--earning the trust of communities, informing
the public, identifying suspicious activities and signs of incipient
radicalization, and discerning and diminishing grievances--we can
undermine the appeal of our adversaries' narrative at home as well as
abroad. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis can play a role not
just by enabling and empowering State and local responders to develop
their own analytical capabilities, but also by disseminating good work
being done in the field of community engagement at the Federal level.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See for example, NETworked Radicalization: A Counter-Strategy,
The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute and
The University of Virginia Critical Incident Analysis Group, http://
www.gwumc.edu/hspi/reports/NETworked%20Radicalization_A
%20Counter%20Strategy.pdf.
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BRINGING STATE, LOCAL, AND FEDERAL TOGETHER
Like much of the Department of Homeland Security since its
inception, the role and structure of the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis has evolved over time. The Office's integration within the
Federal intelligence community as well as with local and State partners
is both necessary and challenging. It is important to remember that
this integration is a process, the end of which we have not yet
reached. As we look to ways to better integrate all levels of
government, to enable and empower State and local responders, and
create a customer-driven intelligence environment, the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis will develop the capability to produce a
truly powerful intelligence product: a comprehensive National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) addressing threats to the homeland, both
foreign and domestic.
Currently, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) provides, among
other products, high-level estimates of global trends.\6\ Within the
NIC, however, there is no National Intelligence Officer (NIO) or deputy
NIO from the Department of Homeland Security. This means that a
domestic threats security perspective, including systematic input from
State and local officials, is not fully provided. The quick fix of a
deputy NIO from the FBI did contribute to the July 2007 NIE on threats
to the homeland. Looking to the future, however, the responsibility for
domestic threat assessments ought to reside outside of the Intelligence
Community.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See for example the July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate:
The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, http://www.dni.gov/
press_releases/20070717_release.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Within the larger discussion of the evolving role of the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis, privacy protections must play a central
role. Protecting civil rights and civil liberties must not be an
afterthought to the discussion of how to effectively collect, share and
disseminate intelligence. Rather, ensuring the privacy of Americans
should be part-and-parcel with the intelligence and analytical
objectives and goals of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. As
more agencies at all levels collect and share information on more
facets of our lives at the community level, the opportunity for even
the well-intended to cause privacy violations increases. This is
problematic not only from the standpoint of an ordinary citizen
concerned with their privacy, but also from an operational perspective.
If communities view first responders, for example, as intelligence
collectors with too broad a mandate, a lack of trust will develop,
making it impossible for first responders to fulfill their primary
roles and closing off an important avenue of information sharing with
their communities. As Benjamin Franklin noted well before intelligence
became a specialized discipline, ``Anyone who trades liberty for
security deserves neither liberty nor security.''\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of
Pennsylvania (1759).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By establishing clear and transparent guidelines on the protection
of civil rights and liberties, and by designing and providing
appropriate training to State and local partners, community-based
intelligence programs will not be marred and undermined by concerns of
the potential for privacy violations.
For any new intelligence or information sharing program, or
collaborative effort through the Department of Homeland Security to be
successful, it is critical for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
to build trust and confidence with public and private partners across
all governmental levels to better serve its customers. That credibility
will allow the Office of Intelligence and Analysis to serve three key
functions for its State and local partners: serve their intelligence
needs; enhance their creativity, resources and potential; and advocate
within the Beltway for enhanced cooperation, funding and other critical
resources to help State and local partners better serve their
communities. Enhanced intelligence capabilities across local, State,
regional and national levels will lead to better community security and
ultimately our Nation's security.
It is important not to get lost in the bureaucratic weeds. What
we're talking about here today is simple: finding ways to making the
good work being done by responders at all levels of government easier
and better by connecting all of their efforts together. Since it takes
a network to defeat a network, it is essential that we enhance our
Nation's responders' interconnectivity and information-sharing
capacity. This is one of the most powerful force multipliers for
homeland security.
With that in mind, there is a need to de-mystify intelligence and
its role in policymaking. As we all know, a little black box with
unearthed secrets that is accessible to only those with a sufficient
security clearance simply does not exist. Intelligence should play a
supporting function--a means to an end rather than an end in and of
itself. But those intelligence means are critical to providing national
and community-based officials alike with the necessary tools to enable
closer cooperation, more informed decisionmaking and more nuanced
policymaking. It is the people, not the programs, that are doing the
work--and it is in people that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis
should be investing.
I wish to thank the committee and its staff for the opportunity to
testify before you today, and I would now be pleased to try to answer
any questions that you may have.
Ms. Harman. Each of you anticipated most of my questions. I
thought your testimony was excellent and now we will go to the
questioning round and I am yielding myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Bettenhausen, enlist, entrust and empower, I think,
will become the new committee mantra. Any objections? When we
print our coin, if we ever print such a thing, that is what it
is going to say, so thank you for that.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Hopefully I will get that first challenge
coin.
Mr. Perlmutter. Coordination, collaboration, cooperation.
Ms. Harman. There we go. We will have a committee meeting
on that later. We will put that on the back, then.
More seriously, we have been fighting here, I don't think
that is an incorrect word to get the ITACG, and you all are
familiar with it. It was set up as a creation in order to
accommodate State and local participation, because the NCTC did
not want that participation directly as part of it, you can
correct me, but at any rate, my view was set up to accommodate
State and local participation. We have had this long fight
about how many people to include, whether they need clearances,
whether they gets desks and pencils, what role they play,
whether the products they work on should show the fact that
they are part of the NCTC, et cetera. It has been difficult and
it required a legislative fix. Language was added to the 9/11
Act last year to compel their inclusion. It took a long time,
things are getting better. We are moving in a proper direction.
I would argue that it could only go up. Nonetheless in talking
with Mike Leiter, the new head of the NCTC, he has told us on
the record and in meetings of the value added by this
participation. Example, when there was a ricin incident in Las
Vegas, he pointed out it was the State and local participants
who said that the product describing that should describe what
ricin looks like, and how much of it is harmful, and what you
do about that. It seems obvious to me, but apparently the
intelligence product that had been written at 30,000 feet
didn't include that. So it didn't give direct guidance to State
and local and tribal partners about what to do.
I appreciated your comments, Juliette, about being treated
like children. State and local partners are the people who are
going to uncover the next terror attack. It is not going to be
me, and it probably isn't going to be you--although it might
be--but those are the folks, like Sheriff Reichert who need to
have the actionable information. So we have to get this right.
I just want to give each of you an opportunity for more
comment on this. I appreciated, Frank, your addition of privacy
concerns. It is certainly my view and certainly the committee
shares it that those have to be built in on the front end. It
is not something you add later. The way I put it, is that
privacy and security are not a zero sum game. You either get
more of both or less of both. Ben Franklin actually said that a
long time ago, even before you skip. It wasn't an idea that you
generated. So could you each respond to this notion of full
inclusion, what it really means, at least in terms of the
Federal agencies that we directly regulate and what about
privacy.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Thank you. I share your concern and I
also share frustration. That should not have been an 18-month
battle. It was appalling the amount of time wasted by
leadership at the State, local and Federal level to get State
and locals a seat at that table. It was common sense. That is
time we are not going to get back. It should not have been that
way. Most of the Federal agencies supported it. Some did not.
But that battle is now over, thanks to your intervention on the
grant funding. We have to get the Department to fix this.
We are going into an election period, a transition period.
These Fusion Centers are new, there is a shortage of analytical
capability in Federal agencies and there is also at the State
and local. At the same time, we have DHS telling us either come
up with your own State funds or lay off those analysts, and
push them out the door in the midst of this high-risk
environment. The need to develop these capacities and
capabilities is appalling and more time wasted.
Since information bulletin 235, I am appalled when I think
about how much time we have wasted arguing over an information
bulletin when our time could be spent on improving actual
products, preparedness an protection activities.
Ms. Harman. Thank you. Ms. Kayyem.
Ms. Kayyem. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. Is your microphone on?
Ms. Kayyem. Excuse me, let me go back. On this sort of why
do States need this information as sort of key players, and
that is what I think is often forgotten. Your ricin incident is
perfect. What does it look like? It is because we have the
capacity to get out to the people who are going to actually
walk in the front door and say something. We can distribute
that information and we have databases. It is bringing the
Intelligence Community down a notch from wars and the stuff
over there and the threats and IEDs.
There is local and State emergency management, public
safety people who are going to walk in the front door and what
do you want them to know? On my publisher scenario it really
puts the States in a dilemma. The lack of tactical or strategic
advice given by DHS on the information coming out. I say I, it
is not me, the Fusion Center, whoever is in the dilemma of
either distributing intelligence that might trigger operational
reactions that are not validated by the intelligence itself.
If I send out a Hamas leader was killed, let's all be
worried. I don't know how that will be interpreted by a local
police chief. So I have either that dilemma or we hold onto it
and then we are creating the very stovepipes that this whole
venture meant to destroy. So it is a dilemma for us. If we
could bring the Intelligence Community--I say down, but that
may not be right. Why do we want to know this? It is not just
because we just want to be in the know. There is actually
operational needs that we have.
On the civil liberties--I am embarrassed that I talk too
fast, your timer went off when you spoke, I wonder if you have
an in.
Ms. Harman. Mine is off now.
Ms. Kayyem. No, but on the privacy issue it is something I
have been focused on in my previous capacity. We are embarking
on a privacy council, and it is not just intelligence. The way
the technology is changing means that people have to have
assurances that we are looking at this, that this is at the
front end, because if something goes wrong and it inevitably
will, we don't want to be following the last crisis. We want to
be in a position where we can regroup, say it was either a
mistake or consistent with our guidelines, but have the
policies and practices in place now so they can guide people
who are not lawyers, who do not think about this every day as
they shouldn't. We guide them in how they deal with these
issues in the future.
Ms. Harman. Thank you very much. Mr. Cilluffo. I apologize
to my colleagues, I'll let you go over your time also if the
answer does that.
Mr. Cilluffo. I'll try to be brief. I don't think it is a
very sexy issue. It is requirement setting. It is customer
service. That requires, as Juliette was saying, bringing the
intelligence down. But I think we have a lot to learn from the
military environment where you are, the J2 and J3, the
intelligence and operations in separation. Finally there was
some recognition, and this is important to understand what
intelligence is, it is a means to an end. It is not the end in
and of itself.
We tend to talk about it that it is, itself, the end. It
supports something, whether it is policy or budget priorities
or operations or diplomacy. It is a support function. I think
it really comes down to requirements setting.
I do feel that there are some elite tables that State and
locals should have a voice at. I am not sure they should be
directly representative of, say, the national intelligence
priority framework, but someone needs to be their advocate,
someone needs to be their champion, someone needs to speak for
them, and someone who speaks for them has to understand them.
What makes them tick everyday?
We don't want to create little black boxes that are
specifically for terrorism. It better work in a day-to-day
function environment, not something totally unique and
different.
One other thing that I think is important here, there still
is this belief and I think we have to demystify to some extent
what intelligence is. There still is this belief, if I only had
my TSCI clearances, I would have all the answers. I don't want
to compromise a secret there, because it is not. It ain't
there.
The reality is we need to recognize the limitations of
intelligence on collection and analysis. These are estimators,
they are not clairvoyants we don't have all the answers. So to
me it is requirement setting, it is getting the customer to
drive that. That is not easy either. Once the customer has to
actually start and think about its specific needs, they are
going to find it is not an easy business, but it has to happen
that way.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go out to a
little bit bigger picture. I think we are all in agreement that
we don't want to see any major reorganization occur. We are all
nodding our heads on that one.
I will share a little story with you. Back when I was the
sheriff, I made some trips here to Washington, DC and worked
with Vice President Al Gore and his group on a project called
Safe Cities. We were one of the ten in the Nation named a Safe
City although we were a county. We were the only county in the
country a member of this group and it had to do with gun
safety.
Well, as the administration changed then, not too long
after that there was discussion about ending safe cities which
was a very, very successful program. So what we had to do to
fight to keep this program in place under a different
administration, the name had to be changed. That is the only
way that we were able to keep it. People might recognize this,
it changed to Project Safe Neighborhoods. So that came from
Safe City.
So what my concern is, and what we are all worried about is
reorganization. How do we, and maybe you already have begun
discussions with DHS leadership and others that you know, how
do we minimize any efforts or attempts to reorganization? Or
what have you done or what should we be doing to prevent major
reorganization? I think this will be--all of the things that
you all have talked about so far this morning will be the death
knell for all of us and the progress that we have made.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Let me address a couple of those. We, as
the National Governance Association of the Homeland Security
Advisory Council, meet regularly with the Department. We as a
full group met last April with the Department of Homeland
Security last April, we will be back here in May. Over a year
ago we had already started those discussions about transition.
Again, it is really more of an afterthought that is still
happening about what about your most important customers the
State and locals? How can you serve us better? The central
report that Charlie Allen had done is a good look at how these
things need to be done. We are almost getting in too late in
the transition process with this particular administration in
terms of what they are doing and how they are going to move it
forward.
There is a national Homeland Security consortium, we have
put together a white paper which will share with the committee
that addresses some of the key transition issues. The
congressional research service and our friend John Rollins came
out with an excellent report on transition as well. This is
going to require it, because Homeland Security is bipartisan.
Actually, I would say it is a nonpartisan issue. So whoever the
nominees are going to be, we want to start working early on
with their potential leadership to talk about these potential
transition issues, because we do not want to be caught in a
transition exposure by being disorganized.
September 11 itself was a transition attack. The 1993 World
Trade Center attack was a transition attack with the second
month of the Clinton presidency. The transfer of power from
Blair to Brown in the United Kingdom saw an attack. We saw the
attack in Spain. This is going to require early on and
particularly after the election results are known, immediately
working with them. Emphasizing again, let's not reorganize this
thing to death, let's work on making sure what is working
right, continues to work right, and how do we improve what is
broken?
Ms. Kayyem. I would just add simply a new leadership at the
Department of Homeland Security to ask a question of each of
these entities, but in particular I&A. What do you do that no
one else does? We don't have to reorg for that question. What
is your value? I mean, it is a simple Kennedy School question,
but it actually helps. We think about that all the time because
with crime, and everything else going on, and no money and
schools, what are we doing that is something that no one else
is doing?
I think I&A is forced to answer that question, we are the
answer. That is it. Then you figure out what their priorities
are going to do, how they treat us maturely or your three
things. Then also, how they get into resiliency, what I call
resiliency intelligence. What are the things that are long term
that we should be thinking about in terms of critical
infrastructure, aging infrastructure and other issues like
that? I think if the entity rather than being told to change,
move or whatever else, that is simple. What is your mission
statement and then I think we go from there, that no one else
could have.
Mr. Cilluffo. To build on some of Juliette's points, I
think the value added was more Harvard Business School than The
Kennedy School.
First, I think it is very helpful to look at it. Form
should always follow function. The reality is what are the
mission areas? What needs to be met? What are the customers
defining as the mission areas and what needs to be met. From
there we can play with the boxes and the org charts, whether it
needs to be reorg'd or not. I am not sure it does. What I would
suggest is to look at what the mission is, and if it is not
being met, give someone the wherewithal to meet that mission.
I would also argue that it shouldn't be an inside-the-
beltway process. This has to be organic and some point there
has to be with the top down bottom and the bottom up come
together. We haven't even discussed the integrate side. At some
point, that is where we need to get.
On the actual transition planning, they actually have, I
think, based on briefings I have received, done some
interesting work. I have got a pretty radical view in terms of
some of how this can be improved in the future. I feel that all
deputy secretaries should be career civil servants.
The one thing that the United Kingdom handled quite well,
the Home Secretary just got her first JTAC briefing, the first
intelligence briefing, literally 3 hours before the prevented
incident. The reality is home office and the agencies that are
running that, the ops guys are much more like the military. You
can be promoted but you are a civil servant, so no gaps in
terms of what it is doing. So those are my quick thoughts.
Mr. Reichert. If I could make one quick comment. I want to
encourage you to continue with your efforts. The only reason
that this project that I talked about changed from Safe Cities
to Project Safe Neighborhoods and continued on was pressure by
the local sheriffs, police chiefs, mayors and city councils.
Keep up the good work. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Reichert. I have to say I
totally agree with your thrust here. Mr. Carney.
Mr. Carney. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for
showing up today. This is pretty remarkable to have your
experience and insight here. My question actually gets more to
the heart of how the relationships work between the Federal
Government and the State agency. Do you find it evolving,
improving, devolving, not getting any better?
Mr. Bettenhausen. You know sometimes you feel like you have
made three steps forward and then you wonder whether you have
made two steps or four steps back. It is evolving, but it is
getting better. There is an emphasis here on DHS today, but
this is beyond DHS. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also
has a responsibility to be better sharing the information and
looking after the customer focus, because as Director Molar has
said, it is not just about prosecution. This is about
preemption and prevention. That is what we must be doing and
that requires a different mindset.
Mr. Carney. Right.
Mr. Bettenhausen. I spent most of my career as a Federal
prosecutor and I understand this is a sea change in the way
that they are doing business. There are cultural and
bureaucratic roadblocks that are still there. This requires an
attitude that we are going to have these partnerships, and it
will be full and equal, and we want to share. Sometimes that is
personality driven. You can have a special agent in charge
where things are going swimmingly with all of your partners and
that can change overnight with somebody else who comes in.
If we establish the precedent, the requirements, the need
for these partnerships and that is expected, that is the gold
standard, and nothing less will be allowed or you will be
removed from that office or be downgraded with your rating. If
we don't have that attitude, you are going to have problems. We
have it easier outside the beltway. Where the rubber meets the
road, we can often get together and resolve some of these
bureaucratic issues and work to have a clear sight of our
mission of the realities of what must be doing and how we can
do in a common sense way. That also requires changes from on
top.
Mr. Carney. I agree. Something of the pavement and the
Beltway that prevents common sense from interfering with what
we are doing here.
Frankly you are right, I think if the folks working the
problem would check the egos at the door we would get more
done.
Ms. Kayyem. When I took this job, I don't think I had any
idea if I just thought about DHS. I agree with you, FBI is
there. We have a very excellent SAC and the JTTF that works. So
from the DHS entities alone and I think I listed them, we have
ICE, Coast Guard, FEMA, a critical infrastructure analyst,
chemical industry regulators, TSA and my I&A person and Coast
Guard who report up a totally different structure. We are
trying to manage it.
Now rightfully, I think DHS is around more of the emergency
management side, on the FEMA side more regionally focused. But
Coast Guard is its own beast and it always will be I think. But
from the management perspective of the State, it can get very
difficult. So I sort of applaud efforts to have DHS figure out
what their family looks like so when they react to a State it
is helpful. I will tell you I have DHS people in the State that
other DHS people don't know about. That is how it works. These
chemical industry guys come in and it can he be amorphous and
unmanageable. It is through personality and phone calls that
you are able to do it.
Mr. Cilluffo. Very, very briefly. I think it clearly has
improved since 9/11. The problem is everyone is in the business
now, everyone is a producer or a customer, that it gets
confusing. There is a pandemic of plans. There is a lot of
tactics and a lot of strategy, but a lot of doctrine that is
missing, that is the big gap. I would also argue that it needs
to come from the bottom up. That is where we have to invest in
capacity for State and local, largely analytical.
There has been some emphasis on the hard edge, meaning law
enforcement. There are other customers who need to be part of
at least the information loop and informed. EMS, hospitals,
firefighters, where do they fit in this process in a way that
is cognizant with constitutionality but also privacy issues.
The real point that Juliette hit on, we wrote a very long
report that I think about three people read, although Senators
Collins and Lieberman, I think, did move it into legislation.
We have to go regions on the intelligence side, we have
regions. We need a regional footprint that can coordinate the
full panoply in assets that the Department of Homeland Security
has in support of State and local. I am not suggesting that
they assume that role, but I really do feel if they were one
big fix it is in the field. All the big fixes are always in the
field and opportunities are in the field. I would regionalize
DHS.
Mr. Carney. Thank you. I will probably have questions
later.
Ms. Harman. We will have a second round of questions. This
is fascinating.
Mr. Perlmutter, you were here before I gavelled the
hearing. I just explained that to Mr. Dent.
Mr. Perlmutter. Sorry, Charlie.
A couple questions. As I am listening to the testimony, it
kind of reminds me of an old science class I had, with the
beaker. It, kind of, comes down, and there is a narrow neck,
and then it goes out like that.
Just listening to the conversation, I am trying to figure
out, assuming we have intelligence-gathering capacity up here,
we have all these law enforcement and first preventers, first
responders down here, who is in that narrow--I mean, there has
to be some channel of communication. Who is in that narrow
neck?
Are you, Mr. Bettenhausen?
Are you, Ms. Kayyem? Are you the narrow neck?
I am trying to figure out how, in a sensible way, do we
channel up the information from local law enforcement agencies
and channel through down to the local law enforcement agencies
the intelligence-gathering capacity of the Federal Government.
Mr. Bettenhausen. It is an apt picture. Sometimes, though,
I will turn that upside down, too, because, again, this is a
bottom-up. They really need to be at the top of the chart,
though, at the same time.
But I think what you are looking at and where that focal
point needs to be is the State and regional fusion centers.
What you heard from all of us saying here, too, is all of the
agencies need to be represented there. It is an investment that
they need to make in it, because we can overcome a lot of the
stovepiping of information, because, look, we are not going to
come up with a be-all, end-all one system that is going to fit
everybody's needs. It is probably better if we actually have
people who are controlling that. Because then, again, that gets
to the privacy, civil liberties. Everybody doesn't have access
to that information, but somebody who is trained and
responsible for that and from that agencies will have it.
So, but if you have all of them sitting next to each other,
sharing information from both top-down and bottom-up, those
fusion centers are the ideal place to do that. Juliette--we
have better information-sharing with components of DHS in the
field and in these fusion centers than the directions that they
are getting from headquarters. Sometimes we get the information
before them. So that is where--it shouldn't be individuals.
The beauty of most of these fusion centers, too, is it is
not owned by a particular State, Federal or local. It is a
shared entity. It is about that cooperation and collaboration.
That is why it is the perfect vehicle to have people there.
The other thing is, when you have them sitting and working
together, there are things that get resolved and also solved
just by, you know, the happenstance of, ``Oh, by the way, you
know, we have this going on''; ``Huh, funny, I have seen the
same thing in another part of the State.'' So having them there
and integrating across Federal agencies, across State agencies
and local agencies, that is how you ensure those globs of
information get shared.
But you also have to--it is not just about collecting all
these dots. You have to have the analysts and the personnel, as
all three of us have talked about, and the Chairs of your
Homeland Security Committee, in riding DHS to allow us to
prioritize the use of grant funds to have that analytical
capability.
Because the ricin example is a perfect example of how State
and local perspective can help. The Virginia Tech shooting was
another example, where the Virginia State Fusion Center
immediately was able to get information out from the bottom-up
that this is not a terrorism-related-in-a-broader-sense
incident, this is not something requiring every university to
start being worried about multiple attacks.
That is the value. We can get this information all the way
up to the President and the White House with truly accurate
information and not having to get phone calls from five
different Federal agencies about what is going on with
something.
Ms. Kayyem. Sir, when you ask about intelligence, there are
two types, in my mind.
One would be the actionable intelligence or investigation
intelligence. What we have done, which I think works, is the
members of the Commonwealth Fusion Center who serve on the
JTTF--actually, in, you know, the org chart, but this matters--
are members of the Commonwealth Fusion Center and not of the
State Police generally. So we view it as there are Fusion
Center folks as part of the JTTF.
So that information flow, whether it is specific
investigations or whatever else, the principals get briefed
quarterly on--we will get the phone call, basically, because of
the relationship with the SAC if something imminent is
happening.
You know, there is a lot of hoax stuff out there right now.
The SAC will call and say, you know, we are sort of looking
into this, we think it is a hoax because the FBI in Detroit had
something like this too, where some guy is just trying to get
money from us, but we just wanted to let you know.
On the intelligence theme, the transition stuff that we are
all coming back to and whatever else, that is the kind of
information that, you know, more analysts and the quality of
the intelligence is going to matter a lot to make the fusion
centers and DHS relevant in this world. Because the truth is,
once it is actionable or once it is a specific investigation,
it really is--and rightfully so for privacy reasons, for
investigation reasons because it is going to go before a court
at some stage--a JTTF or FBI matter. DHS recognizes that and
needs to, sort of, understand why I keep going back to what is
their value added.
Mr. Cilluffo. I mean, they covered it beautifully. The only
thing is I, kind of, do like the beaker analogy. It needs to
change, though. DHS I&A should be, at this point, in the
interim, that point where it is the--they need to be the
champion, the enabler and, ultimately, the integrator in terms
of adding value until we actually get the bottom-up that we are
all looking for.
But personalities matter; they really matter. This is a
people business, and much more so. Trust and confidence can't
be written into legislation. It can't be put on a document.
That is something where you are in a foxhole, you have scar
tissue, you have been through experiences, you have been
through good, bad, ugly and everything else. This business, in
particular, is run on trust and confidence more than any other.
So how do we get to the point where people aren't
exchanging business cards, as we all know, when the balloon
goes up, but rather get to know one another as individuals,
translate from individuals to institutions, and personalities
into processes, realizing that that will change. But don't
underestimate the people factor.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. Mr. Cilluffo, I can't help but observe that
trust and confidence would help Congress, too. We would get a
lot more done.
Mr. Dent.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Thank you all for being here this morning.
Mr. Cilluffo, on page 2 of your testimony you stated that
DHS should send out, ``current National Intelligence Estimates
that can be integrated into State and local law enforcement
practices.'' You also ask that DHS make available for its
partners a virtual library of key documents, statements, video
propaganda and other material produced by our adversaries.
I think one of the complaints we have been hearing from
local law enforcement is that DHS is putting out a lot of
products, as you know, that don't reflect current intelligence
or law enforcement imperatives. I think Ms. Kayyem may have
alluded to that a little bit. So there is a little bit of
conflict between what I thought the two of you had said.
In light of that, don't you think that supplying the data
that you describe could create a, kind of, information overload
for first responders? I would like to hear from both you two,
because there seemed to be a little bit of conflict in your
testimony on that particular point.
Mr. Cilluffo. There may be some disagreement, but I am
trying to focus what I think is the ``so what'', the ``what
matters.'' I mean, when we look at metrics in this environment,
I like Juliette's example, publish or perish, but there is also
pay for the pound. I mean, we literally--it is not more
product, it is better product, it is different product. We need
the analytical capacity to be able to absorb that to meet
operational needs.
I still go around, and the reason, I guess, I am invited by
all the major city entities to talk about national security
issues, is very few people really understand the adversary.
They understand their communities, but until you understand the
adversary, you have two separate worlds, one that is over
there, one that is over here, and what are we protecting
against?
Mr. Dent. I guess the question is, what would you suggest,
then, to better tailor the resources of these needs to reflect
the priorities of local law enforcement I guess is the issue?
Mr. Cilluffo. Yeah, let them set the requirements. That is
the idea, that State and local authorities and tribal leaders
would actually set the intelligence requirements and the cycle,
so it is meeting their specific needs.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Let me just add one point with this that
I think directly meshes what Frank is talking about and what we
are talking about.
We need the access to this information. It doesn't mean
that I need to overload the cop on the beat in his morning call
with all this information. But, you know, the things that we
are recovering overseas, are they pictures of infrastructure in
our State? What are their tactics? Those kind of things our
analytical people need to be able to reach back and look into.
We have seen the returns on targets. We have received the
return of the planning and things. So our ability to have
access in the knowledge base, it needs to be there.
Then what we have to do is be smarter about it to make sure
that we are not overloading both the individual at the street
operational level and their policymakers and the policymakers
above us with too much information.
But I am the last one here to encourage and say that we are
getting too much, because we will sort through that. We are not
getting enough, or at least the right kind of things. But if we
have the access to it completely, it also helps us.
Ms. Kayyem. I am not sure if there is disagreement or not,
but let me just get back to where--from the perspective of,
sort of, the State consumer, which I have been focusing on in
particular, is the quality of what we are getting--maybe it is
Frank's point--the quantity is overwhelming. It has become
sometimes white noise to us. Really, I would actually say, if
less and better, I am happier.
Because the truth is--and we may disagree on this. Because
there is so much going on in the world, and I think the bin
Laden tapes is a good example. I mean, I got the bin Laden
tapes. Right? I can watch CNN and get the bin Laden tapes.
Right? From our perspective, it is, how is DHS actually
thinking about what is going on as we enter this summer? It is
transparent to me, because I talk to Frank and hear from Tom
and others and get the reports from Congressional Research
Service and elsewhere. But why is that not coming from the very
entity that ought to be thinking about this, in terms of the
quality of the intelligence?
I would hope--and I don't know on the example about whether
something that is captured or some intelligence that we get,
sort of, focused on, you know, a critical infrastructure
facility in Massachusetts, that we would be notified of it.
Maybe I am, you know--I actually think I have been in
situations in which we are.
I think when it gets to the point of, okay, this is
Massachusetts-specific or someone is visiting our State and
there is some concern about them, at least so far, and as far
as I know, of course, whenever we talk about this, that is the
part that is working, when it has ``Massachusetts'' written on
it. It is the other stuff that is going on that I am less
confident of, because, you know, we don't know.
Mr. Cilluffo. Can I just build on two quick points? Because
I think it is relevant.
I mean, if you take the military example, what is provided
to the very pointy end of the spear, the men and women who are
really in harm's way, they are provided information in a
certain format that literally means life or death in that
particular situation. But there is other information that is
provided to so many others along the way that need to be taken
into consideration. I don't want the soldier necessarily
worrying about that. He has enough to worry about, and he has a
job to do. So that, I think, is maybe one way to think about
it.
Secondly, metrics, metrics, metrics. What gets measured
gets done, but are we measuring what matters? Here I think it
gets back to the same issue. To put it into a law enforcement
context, as Mr. Reichert would know much better than me, do you
want more informants or sources, or do you want an informant or
source who actually knows something? We often get more, but I
want the one who is inside the decision-making chain or the
loop of an organization or an enterprise, so we can bring it
down. So that is maybe the differential there.
Mr. Dent. Can I ask just one quick yes-or-no question?
Ms. Harman. Yes.
Mr. Dent. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
On page 5 of your testimony, you discussed LAPD and NYPD
developing their own intelligence collection, and we have heard
from NYPD over the years here.
Do you think that local law enforcement officials should
detail officers overseas to engage in intelligence collection
in foreign environments?
Mr. Cilluffo. I fully endorse the component of the LEAP
report that this committee put out that, yes, we should have
foreign liaison officers overseas, not for intelligence
collection per se. Now, NYPD, LAPD, maybe they are tripping up
sources vis-a-vis where they fit in with the other alphabet
soup of agencies overseas. But clearly, from learning and being
embedded with local law enforcement, you would benefit greatly.
Ms. Kayyem. I am afraid I don't have a yes-no answer to
that. We don't have it. I think there are real problems to it
in terms of, sort of, everyone bumping into each other, and
don't have intentions of doing it. But I don't know enough
about New York and LA's programs to say whether generically we
should do it.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Yes. But it should not just be about
intelligence collections. It is that relationship and
partnerships and fellowships of learning what they are seeing
and risks and threats. Because we are in a very small world,
and what you are seeing overseas isn't far from our shores, as
we saw on 9/11.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
Thank you all. I thought the testimony was superb, and the
answers to questions is superb.
That is why, if members want to ask another round of
questions, we will stay here to do that. I promise that my
questions will not exceed, including your answers, 5 minutes.
Let me first say I had an epiphany when--I think it was
Matt who said that everyone is a producer and everyone is a
customer. Did you say that?
Mr. Bettenhausen. I think that it was Frank.
Ms. Harman. Ah, it was Frank. Matt coined all our new
terms. Juliette had the other piece of what is special here,
which is where is the value added.
I just want to observe--and when you respond to the one
question I am going to ask you, please comment on this too--
that I think that I&A may be trying to play too many roles
here. It had a core mission ripped out, which was the Federal
Fusion Center function, which I mentioned in my opening
remarks, and it has been trying since then to find many places
that can fit in, when, in fact, if it would focus on value
added, it might be a much more effective part of DHS. That is
my thought, from what you all said.
My question is about the private sector. No one really
mentioned that. I think it was Frank who talked about EMS and
hospitals. But I want to observe that in Minneapolis, the other
day, we went to the Mall of America. We saw there a very
impressive director of security, who has an office of 100
people, who is running an operation in the largest, or one of
the largest--in area, it is the largest mall in North America.
I don't know that it has the most retail stores. Only my
daughter, the shopper, would know that.
But at any rate, his operation, which is tied into the
Fusion Center and other law enforcement agencies in Minnesota,
seems very effective. He showed us a tape that they made--they
have many surveillance cameras there--of an individual who
clearly, from this tape, was casing this mall. Turned out to be
of foreign origin, and it is a longer story.
But, at any rate, I was impressed. None of you has really
addressed how you integrate or how one should integrate
private-sector efforts with what you do. So that is my
question.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Unfortunately, I didn't have Frank's
clock that stopped when summarizing my testimony. But one of
the things that I did want to emphasize--because that is
critical.
Our critical infrastructure, most of it, is in the private
sector's hands. In my written testimony, one of the things that
we are advocating for and what the National Governors
Association and State and Local Working Group on Infrastructure
Protection has advocated is there needs to be a critical
infrastructure/key resources desk in every Fusion Center, so
that, one, you know what critical infrastructure do you have,
what are the potential cascading effects, as well as meshing
together threat information so that it matches the
vulnerability and potential consequences that you could have to
an attack on critical infrastructure.
One of the things that Governor Schwarzenegger also did in
California was our licensed security professionals and security
guards in California are required to have 8 hours of training.
The Governor, showing his vision and leadership on this, said,
look, we ought to change that so that they get at least 4 hours
of those 8 hours as terrorism awareness. One, so that they can
recognize operational surveillance. Because we know that they
have to do target selection, they have to do this, there is
that operational cycle. If we can catch on early, we can
preempt and prevent.
That is putting--you know, in looking at scale and scope
for California, there are 400,000 just-licensed security
professionals out there. Linking them in not only with their
eyes and ears so they know what to look for, more importantly
how to report it back into the Fusion Center process so that we
can understand and say, hey, we may have something going on
based upon a series of incidents at chemical plants, shopping
malls, whatever.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
Other comments.
Ms. Kayyem. Yes.
Ms. Harman. In 1 minute, between you.
Ms. Kayyem. The critical infrastructure/key resources desk
is key. It is, I think, a really legacy function of the fusion
centers, whether you have nuclear facilities or LNG terminals,
which we have. That is going to be, I think, one of the core
future functions of the Fusion Center-Homeland Security
relationship.
What we are trying to do, and what I think DHS has been
actually very helpful on, is this ACAM system, which is an
automated critical infrastructure system. It had a different
name in California. But by having one tool that we are all,
sort of, monitoring critical infrastructure off of, we are
putting all the data in, we are working with our private-sector
partners, we then have a basis to determine whether we should
be nervous or not, from the State perspective.
Because if I look at my critical infrastructure list, it is
over 300. It is every high school. I love high schools; I care
about high schools. But from the perspective of, is the
Governor going to be terribly worried that there is going to be
no energy in New England if something happened in the port,
they are different. They are different kinds of worries. So
that is a program that has helped very well.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
My time has expired. So hopefully, Mr. Cilluffo, you have
nothing to add?
Mr. Cilluffo. Yes.
Ms. Harman. Yes.
Mr. Reichert.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you, Madam Chair.
One quick question. I know it was really a struggle for me,
as a sheriff, to participate in all the Federal task force
entities that exist. You are always being asked to be a part of
this FBI task force or HIDTA task force or you name it. You
want to provide a body to that effort. The same goes with the
fusion centers and JTTF, et cetera. So the funding issue has
really always been a sensitive one and one that we have all
struggled with.
What is your opinion on the Federal Government's
responsibility and role as it relates to assisting local and
State agencies in providing funding for fusion centers and task
forces?
Mr. Bettenhausen. Very much appreciate that question.
There is a significant role that the Federal Government
needs to be making. There is a misperception here in
Washington, DC, that somehow $5 billion in Federal grant
funding made available to State and locals on an annual basis
somehow is supporting all of the State and local public safety
efforts. It is almost too much to say it is a drop in the
bucket.
You know, you are not recognizing the fact that, you know,
what changed after 9/11 is that terrorism prevention and
protection is everybody's business. There is a lot of personnel
and resources that we, as State and locals, are pouring into
this particular effort. The Federal Government needs to support
us with that.
That is why it is important, with the grants for the
analytical components of our fusion centers, for them to
support it. Because there is also a misunderstanding. There is
this belief that somehow these fusion centers are only for the
benefit of State and locals. It, again, ignores that
philosophical that you don't understand what we do as State and
locals and what your sheriff's office can help provide them.
These are there to support the national terrorism prevention
mission. It is also all crimes, all hazards, to make our
communities, our States, our Nation safer and better-prepared.
That is why the Federal Government has an obligation to
help support these, because it is to their benefit as well. It
is not just for the benefit of State and local. It is ignoring
all of the other things we are paying, whether it is
corrections and prisons and the officers on patrol and all the
TLOs, terrorism liaison officers, we trained and who fulfill
this and support that national mission. That is why we need
that Federal funding.
The best example is, you know, does the Federal Government
have urban search and rescue teams? Do they have hazardous
material teams? No, they don't. They are in our communities at
the State and local level. They become national assets in a
time of emergency.
That is why that grant funding we use to buy the equipment
and do the training. But we pay for the personnel. If the
Federal Government had to then create their own USAR teams to
sit around like the Maytag repairman waiting for a national
emergency, it would cost you a lot more than the $5 billion a
year. Plus, you are losing the benefit of them saving lives and
property day-in and day-out, 24/7/365.
Ms. Kayyem. I actually have nothing to add to that, because
that was great.
Mr. Reichert. I almost felt like I should ask the question,
run over there real quick and answer myself.
But thank you for that. I wanted that on the record.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Did I miss anything you would say as a
sheriff?
Mr. Reichert. You hit it right spot on. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. See, we do this vertical integration right
here. Here he is.
Ms. Kayyem. I will add one other quick thing on the grants,
because the IED thing is not helpful to us, from a State
perspective, 25 percent. I mean, we have people so nervous
right now for reasons that aren't supported by the
intelligence, as I related in the oral testimony.
I actually thought what is going on in the port grants--I
know it is not in this jurisdiction, but just something to
think about--what is going on in the port grants and obviously
in SAFECOM were really helpful exercises for the State.
Because, as you know, we have to distribute our money 80/20.
But to be told by the Feds that the State has to come up with a
plan, and it is your plan because I am a Commonwealth and I
have crazy radio systems all over the place, and come up with a
plan about how you are going to fix it, tell us how you are
going to fix it, have an integrated plan, we will approve the
plan and then release the money, and then you spend the money
according to the plan, great, great process. I love it, because
the complaining fire chief in a small jurisdiction who doesn't
get what he wants, I say, not part of the plan.
The port folks are doing the same thing with the trade
resiliency. You have to come up with the plan first for your
port money--we have $4 million this year--about how you will
resume trade, how you will be resilient. Then all the
jurisdictions mad at us, mad at the State, because they are not
going to get everything they want, they can apply for grants
according to the plan. It works great from a management
perspective and a security perspective.
Mr. Bettenhausen. I also caution, because I see a trend
toward trying to require matches, whether it is soft or hard,
and that is a mistake. There is not enough money there, based
on what we are already contributing as State and locals, and to
throw that match requirement on in these budget times, these
economic circumstances--and, more importantly and
fundamentally, it ignores that this is a Federal
responsibility. If they want those assets to become national
assets in times of disaster and catastrophe, you have to help
us support it, support and build them.
Mr. Reichert. Thank you.
Ms. Harman. Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks.
Just, No. 1, I want to thank the panelists. It has been an
excellent discussion, and just appreciate, you know, the
knowledge and the fact that you have lived this subject. You
can tell from your testimony.
Switch gears a little bit and talk about open source
opportunities or reports and just whether you think that is
something that the Intelligence Community, DHS should be
focusing on, whether we should be providing any legislation
concerning open source reports. Then, you know, if you have a
privacy aspect to it, I would like to hear that too.
Mr. Cilluffo. Well, in my prepared remarks I did highlight
the importance and significance of open source. I think a vast
majority of this information is. Its collation that gets a
little complex, but in terms of the information itself, is
publicly available if you know where to look for it.
The adversary relies entirely, if we are talking about al
Qaeda or terrorism, on the Internet. So they need that to
sustain their own operations. So they are tipping off many of
their intentions, capabilities, plans and the like.
If you look back during the Cold War, the amount of
resources we have devoted--war colleges popped up, defense
universities popped up--to understand the Soviet Union, we
haven't even come close to understanding this adversary. We do
so at our own peril. They are not madmen. They are not crazy.
We have to actually understand. To me, open source can play a
huge role in that.
I think some of the better products are actually open
source. One of the better DHS products is called The Universal
Adversary, and I am not sure you guys have even seen it. It is
not a very well-known product, because it is open source.
That is something we also have to change. If it has that
marking with a code word on it, we think it is better. That
doesn't mean it is better. The reality is just because--it is
how it was collected. I don't want to get into the whole
process of what collection, what markings are and
classification.
But the vast majority of this stuff is available and should
be. We need to devote the education, the resources and time to
do it.
Mr. Bettenhausen. Open source is very important because you
can pull a lot of this together. Sometimes we get more timely
information from reading the news reports than we do in getting
the products. I mean, you know, the National Intelligence
Estimate, we were reading about what was in there in the paper
for a week before we ever even got a briefing from DHS on it.
That is frustrating, and that has to change.
But open source is critical. The CENTRA report--I don't
think it requires legislation, in direct answer to your
question. But the CENTRA report that Charlie Allen and DHS I&A
commissioned talks about the importance of open source. In
fact, they have started a couple pilot training programs. We
were pleased to have one of them in California in our
Sacramento Regional Threat Assessment Center. It was very
useful. It was well-received.
So it is the kind of customer service that the customers
are saying, hey, we want more of this. So it needs to be at the
top of their priority, and they should be funding--you know,
now they are struggling, well, how do we continue this pilot
and move this on? Well, you know, when it is meeting that need
and it is being greeted warmly and with success, well, then we
need to prioritize and do it. Because it is a critical part of
the operations.
It was followed up by the ODNI's conference, open source
conference here in Washington, DC, that we attended and I spoke
at. Because that is very important, to be able to access and
use that information and get a better understanding of our
adversaries.
The importance, again, of that counter-narrative that Frank
is talking about, in terms of making sure that we don't have
radicalization occurring in our own communities, what are the
issues to prevent that from having traction and preventing true
assimilation and integration of our very diverse populations in
the United States.
Ms. Kayyem. Then, finally, just consistent with this, I
think that the push I think a lot of States are making now to
put the privacy and first amendment and retention-of-
information rules at the front end will not impede the open
source, I am pretty confident of that, but will provide
assurances to a public that doesn't often know what we are
doing. I mean, you know, it is just fusion centers are--if you
even know what it is, what is it doing and stuff.
So, you know, maybe I am in the publish or perish mode, but
I am, like, overwhelming people with, like, here is our privacy
guidelines, here is--just because I want people to know that we
have them, that we are not not thinking about this. If you can
get that out there at the front end, then the other stuff sort
of flows from it, and then they are consistent.
You know, the ACLU remarks about fusion centers, you can't
hide from them, they are out there. They represent, whether it
is the ACLU or people's feeling about intelligence, which I
often can have sometimes too, they represent a core feeling by
many Americans. We can't pretend like the debate is going to go
away. We have to, sort of, take it on front end and say, we are
also rational people who recognize the importance of this.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Thank you very much.
Ms. Harman. Thank you.
Thank you to the colleagues on this subcommittee and to our
witnesses. I thought the testimony and the Q&A were excellent.
We feel good about the direction we are taking. Glad the
message is being received out and about in the country. We want
to continue to work with the three of you, specifically, on
ways to satisfy the customer better and get I&A and DHS to
fulfill its core mission better.
Hearing no further business, the subcommittee stands
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
