Inside The Fusion Center, Southern Nevada’s Counterterrorism Center

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas “fusion” center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs. Take a ‘behind the scenes’ look.

When a tip arrived about a threat of violence at a southern Nevada high school football game, a Clark County School District police officer helped plan a response.

When a Colorado man was arrested on terrorism charges, a Department of Homeland Security analyst probed whether he had Las Vegas ties.

Though the two cases are very different, the officials who worked them were in the same cubicle-filled room at the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas “fusion” center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs.

The fusion center concept, which was developed by the federal government after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is grounded in the idea that information flow between police agencies is the key to stopping terrorism.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, the concept has evolved to include a broader “all crimes, all hazards” approach.

A sign that federal law enforcement has embraced this strategy came last month when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Las Vegas and praised the local fusion center as a national model.

The maturation of the facility coincides with Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons’ decision last month to fold the state’s Office of Homeland Security into the Nevada Division of Emergency Management.

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Homeland Security Seeks 1000 Cybersecurity Pros

The Department of Homeland Security  has been given the go-ahead to hire up to 1,000 new cybersecurity pros over the next three years, secretary Janet Napolitano said today.

The new hiring authority will let DHS, a key agency in the nation’s cybersecurity strategy, fill positions in risk and strategic analysis, incident response, vulnerability detection, intelligence, investigation, and network and systems engineering.

The agency says it doesn’t currently foresee having to fill all 1,000 positions, but Homeland Security for the National Protection and Programs Directorate and director of the National Cyber Security Center Phil Reitinger told InformationWeek last month that hiring qualified cybersecurity pros was his top priority.

“I have some awesome people here at DHS, we have a great team, but we just don’t have enough of them yet, and we’re in strict competition with the private sector to get the best and brightest to work on these issues,” Reitinger said. “I’m a firm believer that organizations succeed or fail based on the people you have.

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DoD, Homeland Security Negotiate Pact to Help Keep Country Safe

An agreement between the departments of Defense and Homeland Security that calls for sharing some intelligence data with emergency operations centers nationwide is part of post-9/11 efforts to harden America against another terrorist attack, senior department officials said recently.

The more than 60 emergency operations centers — also known as “fusion centers” — are managed by state and local agencies. The centers collect information that can be used to combat terrorist threats or for responding to natural or man-made disasters.

Both the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and the 9/11 Commission report published in 2004 state “that we were not doing sufficient information sharing between federal agencies and state and local agencies,” Michael McDaniel, deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense strategy and force planning, said during a recent interview with The Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service reporters.

DHS became involved in helping state and local officials establish fusion centers in their jurisdictions, McDaniel said. “That was great as a first step. But, one of the questions still was: ‘How do you share this information?’” he said.

“The whole concept of a fusion center – what’s inherent in the word ‘fusion’ – is a collaboration of information across multiple agencies at multiple levels,” McDaniel said, “so that that information comes to a common center-of-gravity, if you will, and at that point is shared,” as needed, with analysts from different agencies, including those working at the state and local level.

Much of the nation’s intelligence-gathering capability is contained within the Defense Department, McDaniel said. The Defense Department and DHS, he said, have been collaborating over the past few years to provide intelligence information to state- and local-agency analysts.

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Homeland Security Sharing Tool Helps Fusion Centers Fight Terror

The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense (DoD) today announced an initiative to grant select state and major urban area fusion center personnel access to classified terrorism-related information residing in DoD’s classified network.

Under this initiative, select fusion center personnel with a federal security clearance will be able to access specific terrorism-related information resident on the DoD Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet)—a secure network used to send classified data. This classified data will be accessed via DHS’ Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN). DHS will be responsible for ensuring that proper security procedures are followed.

“This initiative reflects the federal government’s strong commitment to improve information sharing with our state, local, and tribal partners,” said DHS Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Bart R. Johnson. “Fusion centers are a critical part of our national security enterprise, and this new tool enables federal agencies to share information with these partners while utilizing our advanced technical capabilities for secure information sharing.”

“With this action, DoD continues its work in supporting states and localities who are leading our efforts to secure the nation from domestic terrorism attacks, said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs Paul N. Stockton. “We look forward to exploring other opportunities where DoD can help our state and local partners effectively defeat terrorism.”

This joint initiative will promote collaboration between DHS, DoD and other federal departments and agencies, enabling the trusted and secure exchange of terrorism-related information in order to detect, deter, prevent and respond to homeland security threats.

State and major urban area fusion centers provide critical links for information sharing between and across all levels of government, and help fulfill key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. This initiative will serve as a valuable resource to enhance situational awaeness and support more timely and complete analysis of national security threats.

Increasing the breadth of law enforcement that have access to terrorism-related data will further improve the ability of fusion centers to prevent, detect, deter, and respond to terrorist attacks, and advance the combined missions of DHS and DoD to protect the nation’s security.

DHS and DoD remain committed to protecting privacy and civil liberties as well as data and networks in an increasingly vulnerable cyber environment.

F.B.I. Agents Role Is Transformed by Terror Fight

The report last month was chilling: a 55-gallon drum of radioactive material had gone missing during shipment from North Carolina to California. Even worse, the person who signed for the cargo was not an employee of the company that ordered the load.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation here ramped up, consulting health officials, questioning radiation specialists and tracking down the trucker who dropped off the material, which could be used in a radioactive-bomb attack. Three hours later, the shipper found the drum — still sitting on a loading dock 20 miles from its destination in the Los Angeles area — having confused it with a similar shipment sent to a different company on the same day.

For an F.B.I. team here that vets tips and threats about possible terrorist activity, it was yet another false alarm in a job largely defined by hoaxes and bogus leads that must still be run to ground.

“A lot of time we are chasing shadows,” said Lee Ann Bernardino, a 20-year F.B.I. special agent who handled the case, “but it’s better to do that than find out later you let something get by.”

Spending two days with Agent Bernardino’s 21-member threat squad, known as Counterterrorism 6, or CT-6, offered a rare window on the daily workings of an F.B.I. transformed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Boeing To Staff Seattle FBI Fusion Center

To advance information sharing against terrorism, Boeing Co. expects to be among the first major corporations ? maybe the first ? to assign its own analyst to the Seattle FBI Fusion Center intelligence sharing office, according to a senior Boeing official.

The center is one of dozens around the country created by state and local governments to share anti-terrorism intelligence. Boeing wants to set an example of how private owners of critical infrastructure can get involved in such centers to generate and receive criminal and anti-terrorism intelligence, said Richard Hovel, Boeing senior advisor on aviation and homeland security.

“Hopefully, this will be the first of many similar efforts across the nation that will establish a collaborative partnership between the public sector and industry, and protect our critical infrastructure more effectively and expeditiously,” Hovel testified at a May 25 field hearing in Bellevue, Wash., sponsored by the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

Boeing and the fusion centers have similar goals, Hovel said. The private sector, which owns about 80 percent of critical infrastructure, needs to have real-time access to information from the fusion centers. At the same time, the fusion centers need access to “mature intelligence capabilities” in private companies, Hovel said.

via Boeing to staff FBI Fusion Center — Washington Technology.

Fusion Centers Combat Threats from Terrorist and Criminal Networks

In Arizona, after determining the subjects of an international terrorism case were involved in local criminal activity, the case was referred to local law enforcement. In New Mexico, several individuals linked to FBI investigations-including an MS-13 gang member-were identified. In Tennessee, we developed-with our partners-a formal process for collecting, sharing, and analyzing suspicious activity reports, looking for trends and patterns. Read more