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Domestic Intelligence Service Would Disrupt DHS Efforts |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Wednesday, 22 October 2008 |
Standing up a new agency would inevitably take missions from DHS, FBI, says the author of a RAND study on the proposal
Congress should consider the impact creating a domestic intelligence agency would have on intelligence analysis and information-sharing at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies that currently hold those responsibilities, the author of a new study on establishing such an agency told HSToday.us.
The Rand Corp., based in Santa Monica, Calif., Monday unveiled the study, titled "Reorganizing U.S. Domestic Intelligence: Assessing the Options," which it conducted at the request of Congress to examine issues with standing up a US domestic intelligence agency in the mold of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or the UK MI5. The report does not make any recommendations on the operations of a domestic intelligence agency, but it raises important questions about its structure and mission, Gregory Treverton, the report's author, told HSToday.us.
"Our current efforts to reach out to state and local authorities not to mention private citizens are pretty much a mess despite good intentions," Treverton remarked. "We talk a little bit about how a separate agency would or wouldn't help that. In the short term, creating a new agency probably would as always disrupt existing relationships."
Currently DHS has responsibility for reaching out to state and local authorities but it lacks to the people to fully meet the challenge, Treverton noted. So the question of the placement of a domestic intelligence agency becomes important because it would disrupt the fledgling information-sharing efforts between levels of government at DHS should the agency fall outside of the department.
The establishment of a domestic intelligence agency also would disrupt operations at the FBI, which conducts even more work with state and local governments through its Joint Terrorism Task Forces, Treverton added.
"The proposal would say if you are going to create a separate agency, you would effectively take that responsibility away from the bureau and put it somewhere," he commented. "We talk about several different organizational variants you could look at. If you create a new agency from existing parts, then obviously the main part of that would be the National Security Branch of the FBI--the main domestic intelligence agency now."
Crime vs. Terrorism
Treverton advocated maintaining state and local fusion centers stood up with DHS, although his study makes no explicit recommendation on them.
"Fusion centers are a great idea. They are very much a work in progress. DHS has tried very hard to get some people in the field. It's only a handful in comparison to the FBI and the JTTF, but it's a good idea. It's the right thing to do," he stated.
But DHS places emphasis on the threat of international terrorism, which does not pose significant risks to many of the areas where fusion centers operate, Treverton noted. Therefore, many of the fusion centers have shifted their mission toward preventing crime as opposed to preventing terrorism, which seems to be an appropriate use of their resources.
A formal all-crimes approach at fusion centers might create new relationships with the FBI and affect operations at a US domestic intelligence agency, he suggested.
"Unlike the Brits for whom the problem is almost entirely domestic, we still think of our terrorism problem as significantly coming from abroad--although with some tentacles reaching here," Treverton said. "We have seen groups like the Miami group and the Fort Dix plotters--people that don't have much of any connection to international terrorism except for inspiration.
"So the question for us is how much is our problem going to domesticate in the way that it has in Britain," he continued. "That raises interesting questions in both directions. It raises questions of how do you make even better what is certainly vastly improved cooperation between the FBI and the CIA. But also how do you then work across between law enforcement and intelligence if the problem is moving across an organized crime direction as opposed to terrorists abroad seeking to infiltrate us."
The study does not consider these issues as it explores the concept of an intelligence agency focused on domestic counterterrorism.
Civil Liberties
The study does explore questions of how a domestic intelligence agency would avoid infringing the civil liberties of US citizens--a concern often raised when the issue of domestic spying is raised.
Issues of civil liberties are difficult to settle in abstract discussions, Treverton remarked.
"It's not really much a question about how domestic intelligence is organized but more of a question about what it does. What is it authorized to do? To the extent we were asked the organizational question, we embedded that in the larger analysis. Organization is secondarily relevant to issues of civil liberties," he said.
One view of a domestic intelligence agency requires it to receive separate authorization and separate oversight from other agencies and to consider it purely an intelligence service and not "the tail of a law enforcement dog," Treverton observed. Canada followed this philosophy in standing up its domestic intelligence agency.
The opposing view calls for the inclusion of law enforcement mechanisms that have proven useful in collecting information. For example, law enforcement agencies watch suspects in a case for only a limited time and collect useful information during that time. But the observation does not continue indefinitely; it ends when the suspect is cleared or charged. Some policymakers could find such law enforcement methods useful to domestic intelligence, although they could create questions of civil liberties violations.
"We pose these questions very clearly. They are hard to settle at the level of general principles because they are matters of values," Treverton said.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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