Post-9/11 intelligence goes local

In 2006, the fusion center in Columbus, Ohio, was launched. (Photo by Michael Vail)

SANTA FE -- Day in, day out a handful of analysts sit in a nondescript building at the National Guard Center off Highway 14 south of Santa Fe. 

There's an analyst for terrorism/Islamic extremist activity. One for militia/white supremacists. And another for border security. Critical infrastructure and collection management are assigned to still two other analysts.

Two full-time captains from the New Mexico Department of Public Safety who act as liaisons round out the team, says Earl Rose, the director of the New Mexico All Source Intelligence Center, which opened to little fanfare Sept. 30, 2007 in the space once occupied by the Emergency Operations Center.

Together the team collects and interprets tips and raw data flowing in from an alphabet soup of federal, local and state agencies, as well from tribal governments.

Welcome to the latest stage in America's fight against terrorism.

It is unclear what it costs New Mexico to run the center. But in a post-9/11 world, such a center is an innovation needed to combat enemies that may strike from unexpected places, supporters say. Because it centralizes the inflow of information and supposedly flattens barriers to communication among the various players, it hands a powerful tool to government and law enforcement agencies to strengthen security, they add.

But these very innovations are provoking alarm among some who invoke past abuses in American history to talk about the potential for innocent Americans to be swept up in investigations and of "mission creep" as a domestic intelligence program slowly evolves into a domestic surveillance program.

A national perspective

New Mexico's program -- also known by the more friendly moniker "fusion center" -- is one of several dozen facilities to have opened, often quietly, across the country in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks with the express purpose of fostering information sharing among law enforcement, emergency management and public health agencies. 

Because of the emphasis on streamlining data collection, local sheriff and police departments now play greater roles in intelligence gathering and homeland security than they ever have, officials say. At the same time, the centralized intake of information and tips creates more coordination for tackling top New Mexico priorities,  such as immigration, human trafficking, border violence or drugs, Rose says.

"We are a clearinghouse," says Rose, a former Army Intelligence veteran and analyst at Arizona's fusion center before moving to New Mexico. "We do collect suspicious activity. We are about to roll out a system where citizens and public officials can report suspicious activities to us."

A way to think about fusion centers is as an antidote to "siloing" of information, a lapse often said to have contributed to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials say. 

"We believe that at the... state level, it's not going to be the CIA or FBI but it will be the local law enforcement officer, or a member of the public... who has the awareness to call if something is not right," says Norm Beasley of Arizona, who sat on a federal committee that drew up fusion center guidelines which the Justice Department adopted in 2005.

As of March of this year, there were 58 fusion centers around the country, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which reports having provided more than $254 million in recent years to state and local governments to support the centers. That included $2.73 million the department released last year for New Mexico's law enforcement agencies to support anti-terrorism activities including first response fusion centers and collaborations with other government agencies and non-law enforcement partners, according to news reports.

The federal agency, meanwhile, has deployed 23 officers to fusion centers around the country, although New Mexico didn't get one, according to the agency's website.

Emerging Concerns

As the fusion center movement has developed into a national trend it also has begun to attract scrutiny and critics, primarily because the facilities inhabit the space between the competing interests of national security and civil liberties. The national ACLU submitted an updated report last month that was critical of the fusion centers. The authors spoke of "overzealous intelligence gathering, the expansion of uncontrolled access to data on innocent people, hostility to open government laws," and "watching and recording the everyday activities of an ever-growing list of individuals."

As evidence, the organization pointed to stories in the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times that reported on a new Los Angeles Police Department order that compels LAPD officers to begin reporting “suspicious behaviors” in addition to their other duties -- creating a stream of “intelligence” about a host of everyday activities that, according to documents, will be fed to the local fusion center.

Critics also talk about "data mining," of innocent Americans swept up in frivolous investigations and of a nascent domestic intelligence program that, if left unchecked, will morph into a full-fledged domestic surveillance program.

"Our primary concern is that these centers will let local law enforcement to consider any protests to government policies ... as worthy of investigation," says Peter Simonson of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.

The ACLU is considering pushing for some kind of oversight during the 2009 legislative session, Simonson adds. 

"Do we need some oversight over that office, some kind of regular report that briefs the Legislature?" he asks. "Should this state have some statutory protection for protected First Amendment behavior, so that it does not lead to spying?"

A quick survey of surrounding states shows that New Mexico has less oversight at its facility than in other states.

Arizona Gov. Janet Nepolitano appoints an oversight committee for the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, says Beasley, who helped set up that state's center. In addition, an executive board made up of members from participating agencies oversees operations and then there is day-to-day oversight at supervisory level in how tips and investigations are carried out, he adds.

Similar to Arizona, the Colorado fusion center has an executive board made up of members from participating agencies.

New Mexico's facility has neither an executive board or a governor-appointed board, says state homeland security spokesman Pahl Shipley. New Mexico's fusion center falls under the aegis of that agency. 

Walking a tightrope

Even supporters of the concept acknowledge the inherent tension involved in collecting intelligence while protecting civil liberties. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell talked of that inherent difficulty last year in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Rose, Beasley and others say they understand the delicate balance fusion centers must strike and the concerns of civil liberties advocates, but safeguards are firmly in place.

"We have a privacy policy in place where we stipulate what we will collect, and how we collect that," Rose says. He adds that New Mexico's center only analyzes data and does not conduct investigations. That's similar to many fusion centers across the nation.

In Arizona, the fusion center does both -- analyzes data and runs investigations. Personnel there operate off a simple rule, Beasley says.

""If you say you have information Joe Blow is a terrorist and that comes in on a tip line, you follow up on that," Beasley says. "If you determine that there are some things that would lead us to believe that Joe Blow is a terrorist, that information could go into a file."

 "On the flip side, if there is no information that would make you believe that there is any connection, nothing goes into a file," Beasley adds. "The key is, it is absolutely critical for any Fusion Center, to have a privacy security policy and that there are checks and balances."

Adds Ray Churay, a captain in charge of intelligence at the  Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona and a major player in that state's fusion center: "We are absolutely sure we are doing nothing that violates someone's civil liberty. If only one center is found to be doing what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, ... it will be detrimental to all the centers."

Focus on New Mexico

Judging by other centers, New Mexico's staff is small, with fewer than 10 employees. 

The number of full-time employees at the fusion centers across the nation range from three to 250 and average about 27, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued in January.

It is also young. Centers in two nearby states began operating in 2004 and some facilities began even earlier.

The analysts at New Mexico's facility work for the state department of homeland security and emergency management.

The costs to New Mexico of operating the center is unclear. Rose says the fusion center's budget is split between the federal and state governments, but that it does not have its own line item in the state's Homeland Security and Emergency Management department. The federal government shoulders 90 percent of the cost and the state 10 percent, a senior policy analyst says.  Despite several requests, the center's budget was not supplied to the Independent.

New Mexico gets into the game late

There appears to have been two waves of state involvement in setting up fusion centers, according to the Congressional Research Service. The first began in 2003 and the second in 2005, meaning New Mexico is getting involved at the tail end of the second wave.

Meanwhile, nearby states got an early jump on the national trend.

Arizona's center, which employs more than 200 people, began operating in 2004, the same year the Colorado fusion center started up. Centers in places like Iowa also have been up and running for more than three years. Massachusetts, meanwhile, saw its center open in 2005. Some states got an even earlier jump into the game. Illinois opened its fusion center in 2003.

Arizona was able to set up its fusion center quickly due to circumstances beyond its control: there were significant connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, say Churay and Beasley. In fact, Rose, New Mexico's fusion center director, spent a few years in Arizona as an analyst before moving east to head up the center here.

Beasley and Churay both tell the same story of how they designed the Arizona's fusion center on a restaurant napkin at breakfast one morning in 2002 to explain the confluence of factors that helped them put up a fusion center quickly. 

"It sounds like folk history," Beasley says of the napkin design.

Back then, Churay was with the FBI and Beasley was an Arizona state police officer in charge of investigations.

One of the pilots who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, received flight training in Arizona. His extended presence in Arizona leading up to the terrorist attacks forced disparate agencies, from the FBI, the state's Department of Public Safety to local law enforcement agencies, to spend years working together, says Churay, who retired from the FBI to join the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

"We kind of had everthing perfect," Churay says. "We had a governor behind us, we had federal money. And we got cooperation.  It was a perfect storm."

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