Intel Chief Praises Fusion Centers

by Mickey McCarter

Charlie Allen outlines DHS plans for remainder of 2008 Information-sharing between federal, state and local governments at national fusion centers has proven vital to alerting authorities to possible terrorist threats, such as those that might damage supply chain security, Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence Charles Allen told the Maritime Security Council in Washington, DC, Tuesday. "Our ability to move, analyze and act on information is our greatest strength. We must use the network and the information in that network, to push our defensive perimeter outward," Allen declared. The network in question--the National Fusion Center network--is staffed with intelligence officers who must pass threat information along to where it is needed, whether at the national level or in a city. To overcome old barriers to communication between federal, state and local analysts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has worked to strengthen the National Fusion Center Network, deploying 25 officers to fusion centers nationally with 10 more to be assigned by the end of the year. DHS has further expanded secret clearance sites of the Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN) to 23 to facilitate access to secret information around the nation. The department plans to double the number of secret HSDN sites by the end of the year, Allen announced. Each fusion center with HSDN has Web pages to assist with information sharing. Meanwhile, agents in 45 states, the District of Columbia and seven federal agencies have access to the unclassified Homeland Security State and Local Community of Interest. DHS also will provide mobile intelligence training to fusion center personnel, starting next month. The DHS Offices of Privacy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties also will provide mobile training to the centers to protect individual rights and privacies. The increase in fusion center activity has resulted in more intelligence products, Allen remarked. Nine intelligence assessments have been produced in collaboration with the fusion centers, DHS and others so far this year. State and local fusion centers also have served as an important source of intelligence for federal agencies. The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has passed along more than 140 homeland security intelligence reports from state and local sources to the national intelligence community, Allen reported. Last year, such reports accounted for 1.5 percent of intelligence reporting nationally, but it has accounted for 8 percent so far this year. "In two cases, [intelligence community] analysts used local information to write articles for the President's Daily Brief," Allen remarked. "Without the presence of a DHS officer in the state fusion center, this information would not have been available. This is the essence of the effort to share intelligence and information vertically and horizontally." The application of intelligence from federal, state and local stakeholders along with private businesses will continue to help secure unprecedented levels of containerized cargo--estimated to reach 492 million units in 2015, up from 192 million in 2005,according to the United Nations.