Senate panel’s report harshly criticizes role, utility of DHS fusion centers

• The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”
• DHS officials did not provide evidence to the Subcommittee showing unique contributions that state and local fusion centers made to assist federal counter terrorism intelligence efforts that resulted in the disruption or prevention of a terrorism plot.
• The investigation also found that DHS did not effectively monitor how federal funds provided to state and local fusion centers were used to strengthen federal counterterrorism efforts.  A review of the expenditures of five fusion centers found that federal funds were used to purchase dozens of flat screen TVs, two sport utility vehicles, cell phone tracking devices and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of an intelligence center.  Their mission is not to do active or covert collection of intelligence.  In addition, the fusion centers making these questionable expenditures lacked basic, “must-have” intelligence capabilities, according to DHS assessments.

“With a $16 trillion national debt and $1 trillion annual deficit, Congress has a duty to the American people to ensure that every dollar we are spending — particularly those spent on national priorities like counterterrorism – is spent wisely and effectively,” Coburn said.  “This bipartisan investigation shows that Congress needs to ensure it is getting value for the millions of taxpayer dollars invested in fusion centers.” 

The New York Times reports that the investigators reviewed 610 reports produced by the fusion centers over thirteen months in 2009 and 2010. The Subcommittee says that of these, 188 were never published for use within DHS or other intelligence agencies. Hundreds of draft reports sat for months, waiting to be reviewed by DHS security officials. By the time these officials got to the reports, much of the information in them was obsolete. Some of the reports appeared to be based on previously published information or facts that had long since been reported through the FBI.

The Times notes that the report raises broader questions about the role of DHS in the U.S. campaign against terrorism. The report implies that, at least so far, it is not clear that DHS has lived up to the anti-terrorism purpose (which is different from its natural disasters-related mission) set for it in its inception — “connecting the dots” in order prevent another terrorist attack like the 9/11 attacks.

The dysfunctional nature of the fusion centers is but one problem hobbling DHS. The department also found itself competing with other organizations within the government – for example, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and National Counterterrorism Center – which were set up for the very same connecting-the-dots purpose.

DHS officials strongly disputed the findings of the Senate investigators. Matthew Chandler, a department spokesman, told the Times that the Senate report “is out of date, inaccurate and misleading.” He said the investigators “refused to review relevant data, including important intelligence information pertinent to their findings.”

Representative Peter King (R-New York), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, also took issue with the Senate report. A couple of hours after the release of the Subcommittee report, King issued the following statement:

With the ongoing, post-9/11 terror threat facing our Homeland, it is important that we continue to ensure that State and local law enforcement has access to vital intelligence as part of the homeland security mission.
Certainly, information sharing and the fusion center network are worthy topics of Congressional oversight.
However, I agree with Chairman Joe Lieberman and Ranking Member Susan Collins that the subcommittee report issued this week paints with too broad a brush an incomplete picture that fails to recognize many of the important contributions that fusion centers have made in securing our Homeland.
The House Homeland Security Committee has long focused on ensuring their effectiveness.  In fact, my Committee is in the final stages of an extensive review of fusion centers and will offer significant recommendations for improvement in the coming weeks.