For years, I have advocated a significant increase in funding for the intelligence community in order to identify the bad guys days or weeks before they come near the airport, rather than try to pick them out of the thousands of people in the queue during the last-chance 25 seconds using the AIT, x-ray, and/or pat down. Silly me.
Recently a biting 141-page report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations stated that “DHS ‘fusion centers’ are pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.” So apparently, it’s my fault. Read on.
There is a nationwide network of 77 such fusion centers intended to share information with other local and Federal agencies about potential terrorist threats, but because of a multi-jurisdictional and arguably dysfunctional Congressional grants process, DHS doesn’t even know how much they have spent on the program — estimates range up to $1.4 billion federal dollars and much more from affiliated state and local agencies.
Here’s a surprise: DHS disagrees with the report; says it’s outdated and “too focused on information produced by the program”. Color me cynical, but isn’t that the point of such a program?
One fusion center manager claimed the centers have processed more than 22,000 “suspicious activity reports” triggering 1,000 federal investigations, and have shared with the Terrorist Screening Center some 200 “pieces of data” that provided “actionable intelligence.” However, quoting the report, “...the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless, or inappropriate intelligence, and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever”.
The Senate report said that analysts received just five days of training in intelligence gathering, and that supervisors imposed report quotas on some unproductive analysts, which clearly lowered the quality of the intelligence — analyses of such dastardly deeds as cars with fold down rear seats that could hide people in the trunk ( I have two of those), a report of two fishermen acting ‘suspiciously’ (failing to catch fish — me again), and a Muslim who gave a day long motivational seminar on positive parenting (I admit I skipped it).
The report reviewed more than 600 reports over a one-year period, most of which had nothing to do with terrorism. However, they did stock up on covert shirt button cameras, top-of-line laptops which were later donated to a local morgue, big-screen TVs to collect “open-source intelligence” (i.e. CNN News), a $2M fusion center in Philadelphia that never opened, and a $45,000 SUV used by management for commuting to work.
DHS claims all of the questioned expenses “are allowable under the grant program guidance, whether or not they are connected with a fusion center.” I must have missed the memo explaining the logic and contractual accountability of that clause. I hereby promise, publicly and humbly, to stop trying to give them more money, at least until I can get a job there.
