Homeland Security Won't Have Diet of Raw Intelligence

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Note -- "For now"

Homeland Security Won't Have Diet of Raw Intelligence
Rules Being Drafted to Preclude Interagency Conflict
By Dan Eggen and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 6, 2002; Page A43

With the FBI and CIA insisting on strict limits on the information they
must share with the new Homeland Security Department, the Bush
administration has begun to craft rules for the handling of intelligence in
the hope of heading off conflict among the agencies responsible for
protecting the United States from another terrorist attack.

For now, the intelligence agencies have persuaded the White House that
information provided to the Homeland Security Department should be in the
form of summary reports. Those summaries generally will not include raw
intelligence or details on where or how the information was gathered, in
order to protect sources and methods.

But defenders of the new department, which will consolidate 22 federal
agencies early next year, say its analysts occasionally will need -- and
receive -- access to a wider range of intelligence, including undigested
classified information, to fulfill their primary mission of protecting the
nation's infrastructure.

Access to information is likely to be a significant topic of debate in the
formation of the new department, according to government officials and
outside experts. Because the rules and procedures governing information
sharing are not yet decided, officials said it is too early to tell how the
debate might play out.

"The new agency succeeds or fails depending on whether it gets what it
needs from the CIA and FBI," said Mary DeRosa, a senior fellow at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies who specializes in homeland
defense issues. "There are strong incentives for FBI and CIA not to want a
new player taking away their turf. . . . People in leadership will need to
pay attention to this all the time."

Administration officials already are considering, for example, whether to
include homeland security representatives as members of the 56 regional
Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which oversee local terror investigations.
That suggestion has sparked discussion over how much access to information
those representatives should be granted, and to what extent the information
should be shared with others at the Homeland Security Department, sources
said.

The statute that created the new agency is not specific about how the
department will obtain and analyze classified information. The law signed
by President Bush last month appears to give Tom Ridge, the homeland
security director who has been nominated to head the new department, the
power to demand access to classified intelligence held by the FBI and CIA.

"Except as otherwise directed by the president, the secretary shall have
such access as the secretary considers necessary to all information,
including reports . . . and unevaluated intelligence relating to threats of
terrorism," the statute reads. "The secretary may obtain such material upon
request."

But administration officials said that in fact Ridge's department would
receive undigested intelligence only when he makes the case for it under
yet undefined procedures, and that these guidelines are to be laid out
generally in presidential directives that are only now being drafted. No
one yet knows who will broker any conflicts between the department and
other agencies, or what criteria will be used to make such decisions,
officials said.

At the FBI, the summaries will be compiled by a new contingent of "reports
officers," who will be responsible for culling useful information about
terrorist threats from raw intelligence for use by homeland security and
other outside agencies. The process will be similar to that used by the
CIA. Neither agency will be folded into the new Homeland Security
Department.

At the new agency, analysts will try to speed the intelligence they receive
-- information, for example, that al Qaeda operatives are thought to be
casing government buildings -- to the federal and local security officials
who can take appropriate action.

A number of officials at the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency have
deep misgivings about distributing raw intelligence too widely, especially
to a new and untested department. A number of officials and staff members
on Capitol Hill also fear that internal squabbling could hinder the
formation of the new department, and will contribute to pre-Sept. 11, 2001,
tensions between existing intelligence units that authorities have been
working to defuse.

"There has been a real reluctance to provide information or access to
information; it would be naive to think that reluctance won't continue,"
said one Senate aide involved in the homeland security legislation. "There
is real friction among these agencies. A lot of people want to put Homeland
Security in a little box and not share too much with them."

Senior Bush administration officials play down the likelihood of discord,
saying the intelligence issues are relatively minor and can be worked out.
The new department's relationship with the CIA and FBI "will be a learning
process as it moves forward," but it's "an unnecessary leap" to conclude
that the disagreements will be serious, one administration official said.

The debate comes at a time of uncertainty over the future of the domestic
counterterrorism effort, including growing concerns among some lawmakers
and administration officials over the FBI's readiness to detect and prevent
another attack. Senior White House officials have begun to discuss whether
the FBI should turn over its counterterrorism responsibilities to a new
domestic security agency.

The debate over information sharing essentially is a continuation of
arguments that began immediately after President Bush unveiled his homeland
security proposal last spring. Some administration officials and lawmakers
suggested at the time that the new department should have unfettered access
to raw intelligence data, such as information gathered by eavesdropping
satellites operated by the supersecret NSA.

Intelligence officials worked quickly to quash such talk, arguing that
sharing raw data was unwieldy and risky. However, a number of the new
department's component agencies -- such as the Secret Service, the Customs
Service, the Coast Guard and the former Immigration and Naturalization
Service -- will retain intelligence divisions that continue to gather
classified data as they have for years. As a result, some officials said,
the new agency will pose a bureaucratic threat to the FBI, the CIA, the
NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others.

As an example of what the future may hold, some officials point to a
current case of interagency disagreement. The FBI and the Customs Service
have been squabbling for months over Operation Green Quest, the mammoth
Treasury-run task force that is investigating the funding of terror groups.
Some FBI officials have pushed hard to gain control of the investigation,
arguing that officials at Customs and its parent agency, the Treasury
Department, do not have the counterterrorism expertise that the probe
requires. Representatives from each side disparaged the other in private
briefings with Congress, according to sources familiar with the meetings.

To end the dispute, administration officials have tentatively decided to
leave responsibility for the Green Quest probe with Customs when that
agency moves over to Homeland Security, while putting the FBI in charge of
all other terrorism-related financial probes, sources said.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with a
broad reorganization aimed at transforming the bureau into a
counterterrorism agency, telling employees in one of his regular memos last
week that "we're being called upon to take on added responsibilities and to
view our role in different ways."

In terms of sharing information with the Department of Homeland Security,
Mueller has repeatedly emphasized the need to cooperate in internal memos
and comments to his top staff, according to sources familiar with his
views. The White House has also made clear to the FBI and other agencies
that collegiality is required, and that they are committed to avoiding
showdowns.

"There are going to be bumps in the road; I would be lying if I said there
weren't," one U.S. intelligence official remarked. "But we are prepared to 

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