Better Oversight Needed for Domestic Intelligence Collection
The catchphrase for the intelligence coordination mistakes leading to the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks is “connect the dots.” The post 9/11 homeland security apparatus has largely focused on avoiding that mistake again, namely through improved efforts to share information between law enforcement and intelligence partners vertically and horizontally.
State-owned fusion centers – localized command posts for the gathering and sharing of information among agencies – were lauded by the Department of Homeland Security as an effective venue for their mission of national coordination to prevent threats. Their goal was to help bridge the traditional gap between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement which can no longer be systematically separated if we wish to tackle national security threats including terrorism, transnational crime, and cyber-attack.
A report released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations yesterday reveals poor management of fusion center operations by DHS officials and a lack of fund tracking resulting in wasteful “intelligence” gathering. A major problem with oversight processes that should ideally extend from Congress down to agency administrators on through the bureaucracy was that fusion centers are operated through the states, adding an extra level of coordination.
One of the most concerning findings of the report is that DHS cannot pinpoint its allocations of funds to fusion centers under the Homeland Security Grant Programs (HSGPs) to a range more accurate than $289 million to $1.4 billion since 2003. That appropriation only accounts for roughly 20-30% of funding and personnel, as state and local allocations cover the remainder. The quality of training and analysis (or lack thereof) cited in the report brings into question the potential of fusion centers to service their stated goal of counterterrorism appropriately. Examples of misguided analysis detailed in the report include instances of resource allocation for extended surveillance of questionable targets, for example, a book club with high Islamic membership and a group of bass fisherman.
The purported strength of fusion centers is that they allow intelligence efforts to be targeted to localized threats which may vary by region. However, it appears that disconnects remain which prevent an efficient, coordinated federal counterterrorism effort under the purview of fusion centers. Much of the analysis conducted at the centers is discounted as mindless data mining by established federal intelligence community members. Hence, their efforts to communicate appropriate information down the chain or take a legitimate local tip seriously are vastly diminished.
The underlying issues here are twofold. First, the scope of the homeland security mission is huge. Mission creep between agencies and across levels of government is inevitable. DHS must devise an effective strategy for levels of coordination sufficient to allow dot-connecting to occur, while agencies maintain their individual identities and specializations. Reduction of redundancies is paramount when budgets are thin, which is certainly the present case. Within the bounds of the law, Congress should encourage distinctness among agencies and avoid overlap. For example, analysts from state police, FBI, DEA, and ICE are not all needed to investigate a drug cartel operating within our borders.
Secondly, federally-appropriated funds must by tracked more closely, both by Congress and by the executive branch administrators accountable to them. The HSGPs used to fund fusion centers are a difficult case because they are routed to the states, but that is no excuse for the shortcomings in transparency and knowledge at the federal level. Systematic tracking of resources is a common-sense solution that should occur to any agency director. The broad scope and admitted difficulty of the homeland security mission does not exempt it from that requirement.
