[Vision2020] DHS ‘fusion centers’ portrayed as pools of ineptitude, civil liberties intrusions

[Art Deco]

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   DHS ‘fusion centers’ portrayed as pools of ineptitude, civil liberties
intrusions By Robert O’Harrow
Jr.<http://www.washingtonpost.com/robert-oharrow/2011/03/02/ABP6xmP_page.html>,
Published: October 2

An initiative aimed at improving intelligence sharing has done little to
make the country more secure, despite as much as $1.4 billion in federal
spending, according to a two-year examination by Senate investigators.

The nationwide network of offices known as “fusion centers” was launched
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to address concerns that local, state and
federal authorities were not sharing information effectively about
potential terrorist threats.

But after nine years — and regular praise from officials at the Department
of Homeland Security — the 77 fusion centers have become pools of
ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions, according to a scathing
141-page report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
permanent subcommittee on investigations.

The creation and operation of the fusion centers were promoted by the
administration of President George W. Bush and later the Obama
administration as essential weapons in the fight to build a nationwide
network that would keep the country safe from terrorism. The idea was to
promote increased collaboration and cooperation among all levels of law
enforcement across the country.

But the report documents spending on items that did little to help share
intelligence, including gadgets such as “shirt button” cameras, $6,000
laptops and big-screen televisions. One fusion center spent $45,000 on a
decked-out SUV that a city official used for commuting.

“In reality, the Subcommittee investigation found that the fusion centers
often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting
to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever,” the report
said.

The bipartisan report, released by subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin
(D-Mich.) and ranking minority member Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), portrays the
fusion center system as ineffective and criticizes the Department of
Homeland Security for poor supervision.

In a response Tuesday, the department condemned the report and defended the
fusion centers, saying the Senate investigators relied on out-of-date data.
The Senate investigators examined fusion center reports in 2009 and 2010
and looked at activity, training and policies over nine years, according to
the report.

The statement also said the Senate investigators misunderstood the role of
fusion centers, “which is to provide state and local law enforcement
analytic support in furtherance of their day-to-day efforts to protect
local communities from violence, including that associated with terrorism.”

The DHS statement also said that all of the questioned expenses were
allowable under the rules.

Department officials have defended the fusion centers in the face of past
criticism from the news media and internal reviews. DHS Secretary Janet
Napolitano and other senior officials have praised the centers as
centerpieces of U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, an advocacy
organization, called the report unfair. Sena, who manages the center in the
San Francisco Bay area, said fusion centers have processed more than 22,000
“suspicious activity reports” that have triggered 1,000 federal inquiries
or investigations. He said they also have shared with the Terrorist
Screening Center some 200 “pieces of data” that provided “actionable
intelligence.”

The Senate report challenged the value of the training and much of the
information produced by the centers. It said that DHS analysts assigned to
the fusion centers received just five days of basic training for
intelligence reporting. Sena said they received an array of other training
as well.

Some analysts at the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis,
which received the fusion center reports, were found to be so unproductive
that supervisors imposed quotas for reports, knowing those quotas would
diminish the quality of the intelligence, according to the Senate report.
Many of those analysts at the DHS intelligence office were contractors.

Investigators found instances in which the analysts used intelligence about
U.S. citizens that may have been gathered illegally. In one case, a fusion
center in California wrote a report on a notorious gang, the Mongols
Motorcycle Club, that had distributed leaflets telling its members to
behave when they got stopped by police. The leaflet said members should be
courteous, control their emotions and, if drinking, have a designated
driver.

“There is nothing illegal or even remotely objectionable [described] in
this report,” one supervisor wrote about the draft before killing it. “The
advice given to the groups’ members is protected by the First Amendment.”

Financial questions were pervasive, with the report saying oversight has
been so lax that department officials do not know exactly how much has been
spent on the centers. The official estimates varied between $289 million
and $1.4 billion.

A DHS official, who insisted on not being identified because he was not
authorized to talk to the news media, acknowledged that the department does
not closely track the money but said it conducts audits of the fusion
spending. The official said that just under half of the fusion centers’
budgets comes from the department.

In the statement, the department said its Federal Emergency Management
Agency, which administers the grants, provides “wide latitude” for states
to decide how to spend the money.

“All of the expenditures questioned in the report are allowable under the
grant program guidance, whether or not they are connected with a fusion
center,” the statement said.

The Senate report said local and state officials entrusted with the fusion
center grants sometimes spent lavishly. More than $2 million was spent on a
center for Philadelphia that never opened. In Ohio, officials used the
money to buy rugged laptop computers and then gave them to a local morgue.
San Diego officials bought 55 flat-screen televisions to help them collect
“open-source intelligence” — better known as cable television news.

Senate investigators repeatedly questioned the quality of the intelligence
reports. A third or more of the reports intended for officials in
Washington were discarded because they lacked useful information, had been
drawn from media accounts or involved potentially illegal surveillance of
U.S. citizens, according to the Senate report.

* *




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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