State and Local Intelligence: Challenges for Homeland Security

Workshop sponsored and organized by The Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security

Monterey, CA                    12-14 July 2007

David Pyle, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the intelligence community, along with domestic law enforcement agencies, initiated, and in some cases, enhanced, efforts to gather intelligence against domestic terrorists. The growth of intelligence fusion centers supporting the police forces of major cities in the United States is an example of a municipal response to the terrorism threat. State and local police forces also have redoubled efforts at community based policing to enlist average citizens in the fight against terrorism. These efforts have paid dividends. In May 2007, for instance, the federal government charged five individuals with plotting an attack against Fort Dix, New Jersey. These individuals were apprehended after a store employee alerted police about a disturbing video that had turned up in a local photo shop.ⁱ The fact that the year-long investigation involved local police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force demonstrates that progress has been made in linking domestic and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the fight against terrorism. Improvements in intelligence sharing among local, state and federal agencies is crucial in countering the spontaneous development of local cells, which are sympathetic to al-Qaeda's objectives.

Attendees during presentations

Although much has been written about how the threat of international terrorism creates challenges for federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, much less has been written about the nexus between local and state law enforcement officers, first responders and federal organizations, especially in terms of intelligence collection. This is an important shortcoming in the existing literature on homeland defense and security. As the first line of defense against the threat of domestic and transnational terrorism, local police departments play a critical role in the global war against terrorism. Yet, a gap continues to exist today between the federal agencies that make up the national intelligence community (IC) and state and local police departments and intelligence organizations. The gap is not only organizational in nature, but also involves practice and theory. Intelligence professionals working in the IC know little about community policing procedures undertaken by local agencies, while local police departments often see the IC as distant and unresponsive to their needs. This state of affairs is regrettable because the policies or best practices adopted by police or public health officials might be used to increase the effectiveness of federal law enforcement agencies. Moreover, without some sort of dialogue between federal, state and local officials from a variety of organizations and disciplines (law enforcement, intelligence, public health, firefighting and medicine), it will be impossible to develop all-source intelligence fusion. As every instance of intelligence failure has demonstrated, there are always "signals," accurate indications of what is about to transpire, somewhere in the intelligence pipeline. It would be tragic indeed if bureaucratic or jurisdictional stovepipes prevent officials from surveying and analyzing available information to derail some nefarious plan to launch a mass casualty attack.

Nestor Duarte, FBI

In response to this need to develop a sort of ground truth when it comes to best practices for intelligence for homeland security, the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) sponsored the first State and Local Intelligence Workshop at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). The conference was a three-day event that began on the evening of 12 July 2007. It was an opportunity for the NPS faculty, state, local and federal officials, law enforcement personnel, public health officers and members of the National Guard to discuss the latest developments related to intelligence for homeland security. The workshop allowed practitioners, academics, and other intelligence officials to network together and build interagency and intergovernmental relationships. The conference was intended to pool insights from academics and practitioners to produce a publication on intelligence that can be used by the homeland security community. The event also enhanced the current homeland security curriculum by exposing the new cohort of over thirty students from state and local organizations to the sophisticated debate and discussions that occurred during the conference.

The paper presenters at the conference highlighted several issues related to intelligence for homeland security: (1) the process of producing finished intelligence and the special challenges created by the problem of intelligence for homeland security; (2) intelligence liaison between federal, state and local agencies; (3) intelligence fusion centers; (4) comparison of large and small municipalities (5) police intelligence techniques (6) intelligence best practices.

Currently the contributors are revising their papers based on the discussions and comments received at the conference. It is hoped that the edited papers will be published in the form of a scholarly collection of essays sometime in late 2008.

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ⁱ"Official: Radicals wanted to Create Carnage at Fort Dix," May 9, 2007, CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/08/fortdix.plot/index.html.