CIA urged to collaborate more, strengthen weaknesses

PHILADELPHIA - The CIA and other intelligence agencies have little experience identifying potential terrorist targets in the United States and dealing with the threat posed by those vulnerabilities, according to Winston Wiley, the CIA's associate director of central intelligence for homeland security, who spoke Monday at a homeland security conference here. Wiley said the ability of intelligence agencies to perform "vulnerability assessments" of the country's infrastructure is the key talent missing from the proposed Homeland Security Department. While President Bush's proposal would set up a division charged with making those assessments, Wiley said that if it is going to succeed, the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the CIA must draw more on the expertise of other agencies in this area.

The Energy Department is one agency that has the experience in making these assessments, and works with other agencies and state and local governments to find threats posed to power plants, transit systems and other critical elements of the infrastructure. The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center and the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office also fulfill similar roles.

Wiley also said the FBI and CIA's counterterrorism efforts would have to be married to the Homeland Security Department's information analysis and infrastructure protection division so that the agencies could have access to details about U.S. infrastructures that they've never had in the past. The relationship between intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department also would have to extend far beyond analysis. "The intelligence community is going to have to interact with every part of the department," Wiley said. White House Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has said the department would leave intelligence gathering to the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and that the new department would become a major consumer of their work. The other divisions, particularly those focused on border security and countering weapons of mass destruction, would also depend upon the information that intelligence agencies analyze, Wiley said. Wiley advised CIA Director George Tenet about the agency's new cooperation with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies on counterterrorism. The CIA has detailed 25 intelligence analysts to the FBI, and Wiley said FBI agents have been assigned to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Wiley described himself as "[Tenet's] stalking horse for homeland security." Wiley said the CIA is beginning to understand how to share classified information outside its bureaucratic borders to prevent future attacks. But he also noted that sharing nonclassified information is perhaps even more important to homeland security. Immigration information, such as visa records, would be considered nonclassified. State Department officials, in separate speeches at the conference, said they are looking for ways to electronically disseminate information on foreigners with whom their staff members interact at embassies and consulates to a wide range of intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the hopes of spotting potential terrorists. Wiley is one of several high-ranking intelligence agency officials who are speaking at the conference, which ends Wednesday and was sponsored by Government Emerging Technologies Alliance, a nonprofit technology association.

Many speakers have said that such a public discussion of the activities of intelligence agencies-unheard of a few years ago-is a sign of how much those agencies are trying to be more open since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.