Lawmaker slams coordination at security 'fusion centers'

The head of a House Homeland Security subcommittee slammed the FBI and Homeland Security Department on Thursday for not coordinating efforts to help state law enforcers probe suspected terrorist plots.

California Democrat Jane Harman, chairwoman of the Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee, said she was "baffled" by the agencies' failure to consolidate multiple databases so the staffers at "fusion centers" do not have to access several systems each morning to see what threats the nation faces.

She also said it is "disturbing" that the FBI and Homeland Security do not recognize each other's security clearances at more than 40 local and regional hubs around the country. "This is obviously absurd," Harman said at an oversight hearing on the centers.

There is an "absence of national strategy" for the centers, which get state and federal funding, and many of them are merely "co-location centers" that do not have the infrastructure to effectively share data, she said. They also lack sustainable resources and a common baseline, she said.

Harman stressed that the FBI and Homeland Security must partner with state intelligence officials and "not dictate who should be doing what."

"I think everyone recognizes that fusion centers hold tremendous promise," she said.

Subcommittee ranking Republican Dave Reichert of Washington noted that "what makes the centers work is the fusion of the personalities" involved. The same characteristic also raises difficulties for the programs' effectiveness, he said.

"We know it's going to be a long process; we know there are going to be some hiccups in the process," said Reichert, a former sheriff.

Congressional Research Service analysts Todd Masse and John Rollins, and Eileen Larence of the Government Accountability Office offered recommendations for how to improve the centers. Both agencies recently studied the programs.

They said Congress could ask the executive branch to draft a national fusion center strategy because no uniform model exists. They added that lawmakers could provide more detailed guidance on the centers' federal funding mechanisms.

Jack Tomarchio, Homeland Security's principal deputy assistant secretary of information analysis; FBI Deputy Assistant Director Michael Mines; and Norman Beasley, counter-terrorism coordinator at the Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff's department, also testified.

Privacy watchdogs have expressed concerns with the fusion centers. Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee met last week to discuss those and other center issues.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it is worried about the involvement of non-law-enforcement agencies and private-sector entities in some fusion centers. The mass collaboration "gives rise to even more significant concerns about the roles these parties play in the collection and analysis of the private information concerning Americans," the group said in a press release.