Intel Centers Losing Anti – Terror Focus
This story is being spun as a negative, when in reality a multi-disciplinary all-hazards approach is required. Terrorism is too narrow a focus and diminishes the role that intelligence and pre-incident planning play in addressing other threats. Unfortunately, the government applied their resources against the wrong model and the “intel” component is replaced with a “sharing” dynamic that doesn’t provide the same yield as a true intel fusion center. Maybe it is time to revisit the TEW Expansion program.
Local intelligence-sharing centers set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have had their anti-terrorism mission diluted by a focus on run-of-the-mill street crime and hazards such as hurricanes, a government report concludes.
Of the 43 ”fusion centers” already established, only two focus exclusively on preventing terrorism, the Government Accountability Office found in a national survey obtained by The Associated Press. Center directors complain they were hampered by lack of guidance from Washington and were flooded by often redundant information from multiple computer systems.
Administration officials defended the centers and said encompassing all sorts of crimes in the intelligence dragnet is the best way to catch terrorists. (NY Times)
Comments
By Jeffrey on November 29th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
“when in reality a multi-disciplinary all-hazards approach is required. ”
Quite right. This CRS report from a few months ago agrees with you: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34070.pdf
By Mark Hogan on January 6th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
This info was mirrored in the ACLU document released recently where they state “A recent ACLU paper on Fusion Centers reports that the leadership at some fusion centers has admitted that they switched to an “all-hazards” approach so they could apply for a broader range of grants, and because it was impossible to create ‘buy in’ amongst local law enforcement agencies and other public sectors if a fusion center was solely focused on counter terrorism, as the center’s partners often didn’t feel threatened by terrorism, nor did they think that their community would produce would-be terrorists.”
This is also nothing new to us in the fusion center world. We’ve been seeing this first hand for some time now. Its a pity that the TEW fusion standard did not remain the as it was more all hazard then the DOJ standard ever will be.
The TEW model also dealt with the private sector better, they were removes as a liaison officer. More on this later.