Testimony of Steven C. McCraw, Assistant Director, FBI
Before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee
July 24, 2003
"Intelligence
and Counterterrorism"
Good
afternoon Chairman Gibbons and members of the Subcommittee.
On behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), I
would like to thank you for affording us the opportunity to
speak to you today on this very important matter, Information
Sharing. First, I would like to publicly acknowledge the outstanding
support the FBI receives from the Department of Homeland Security,
the Intelligence Community, and our nation's over 17,000 local
and state law enforcement agencies. Our ability to share information
with all of our partners has been and will continue to be
a key factor in neutralizing many threats through a variety
of means.
Mr.
Chairman, your Subcommittee is evidence that the threat to
our homeland is far different than ever before. Worldwide
economic, political, social, and technological changes have
resulted in a more dispersed, complex, asymmetric threat to
our nation. Terrorists, criminals, and foreign intelligence
collectors have significantly benefitted from these rapid
changes, which have permanently shrunk the world. Yesterday,
the most significant threat to the homeland was from nation
states that were geographically distant and contained. Today,
global networks (terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking
and foreign intelligence operations) are no longer distinct
activities, but rather fluid enterprises that pose a significant
threat to the security of our homeland. As you are aware,
Director Mueller is reshaping the FBI to meet these new threats.
The
FBI has always been a great collector of information; however,
the sharing of information was primarily case oriented rather
than a part of an enterprise-wide activity. Prior to 9/11/2001,
statutory and other legal restrictions limited to some extent
the degree of information sharing between the FBI and our
Intelligence Community partners. Thanks to the enactment of
the Patriot Act, the FBI now can clearly share information
much more robustly than ever before. Moreover, in today's
threat environment, cooperation rather than competition must
be the guiding principle and the recognition that the benefits
of sharing information far exceed the risks. We and our partners
must have transparency in our knowledge of terrorist threats
to the United States. In fact, it is Director Mueller's view
that information sharing is the greatest force multiplier
in the defense of our nation. For example, the globalization
of crime and terrorism poses unique challenges to local and
state law enforcement agencies. Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs
need access to information far beyond their jurisdictional
boundaries to protect the citizens of their communities. Today,
events in Pakistan and Yemen can have a public safety dimension
in San Antonio, Texas, that the Chief of Police, the Sheriff,
and the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety
must know about in order for them to effectively discharge
their responsibilities.
Since
9/11/2001, the FBI has implemented several information sharing
initiatives and others are underway. Collectively, when fully
operational, these initiatives will provide an integrated
system to quickly deliver information to our law enforcement
and Intelligence Community partners. All who are involved
in the war on terrorism are continuing to work through very
real problems, without preventing in any way the full sharing
of terrorism threat-related information. We must not only
collect and share more, we much collect and share smarter.
Collecting and sharing vast amounts of information without
any thought being given to the usefulness of the information
collected is counterproductive and wastes precious collection
resources, while at the same time drowning the end user, whether
he or she is a Chief of Police, Department Head, or Intelligence
Community Analyst.
The Intelligence
process when properly executed ensures that the information
shared is useful and meets the needs of the customer. Intelligence
has always been a core competency of the FBI and organic to
the FBI's investigative mission. The Patriot Act has created
new opportunities to strengthen and expand the FBI's Intelligence
capability and allowed us to move from thinking about "intelligence
as a case" to finding "intelligence in the case"
and sharing it widely with our Intelligence and Law Enforcement
Partners.
The
collection and timely dissemination of the right information
to the right people as part of an enterprise-wide business
process is so critically important, the Director has elevated
intelligence to program status in the FBI and hired a senior
intelligence professional from the National Security Agency.
Under her leadership, the FBI has embarked on a 10-week program
to develop and implement Concepts of Operations for all nine
key intelligence functions. We have already completed a concept
of operations for dissemination that focuses on both the form
and substance of FBI raw intelligence reports. Our aim is
to move from individual production processes to a single process
that will be imbedded throughout the FBI. One of our first
improvements to our already strong Intelligence Program will
be to explicitly link the requirements to the raw product
and produce metrics to measure our performance against the
information requirements of local and state law enforcement
agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, the Intelligence
Community, and those of DHS officers, our Special Agents,
and other Intelligence Community officers assigned to the
newly established Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC),
in which we, DHS, CIA and others are full partners.
Before
I proceed with the remainder of my testimony, I would like
to take this opportunity on behalf of every FBI employee to
thank you Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee and your
colleagues for the support you have provided the FBI that
is enabling us to overhaul its information technology infrastructure.
When completed, every aspect of FBI operations including the
sharing of information will be significantly improved.
The most
productive exchange of information occurs at the people level
working side by side. Currently, there are 84 Joint Terrorism
Task Forces throughout the United States with participation
from 25 different Federal agencies and hundreds of local and
state law enforcement agencies in the 84 Task Force locations.
Every JTTF Officer, Agent, and Analyst has a Top Secret clearance
and unfiltered access to all of the information.
The National
Joint Terrorism Task Force located in the Strategic Information
and Operations Center at FBIHQ is comprised of representatives
from 35 different Federal agencies. Like the JTTFs, the NJTTF
benefits from the combination of experience, diversity of
mission and access to the databases of each member agency.
Even
prior to 9/11/2001, the FBI benefitted from the assignment
of Special Agents to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and
the CIA assignment of case officers and analysts to the FBI's
Counterterrorism Division. Since 9/11/2001, the exchange of
personnel has dramatically increased as has the timely flow
of information. The benefits of co-location cannot be overstated.
This is why the Administration made the extraordinary decision
to co-locate the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, the CIA's
Counterterrorism Operations and TTIC in the same facility
next year.
The
TTIC has already had a positive impact on information sharing
throughout the community. As the Subcommittee is aware, TTIC
is an interagency joint venture of its partners. The TTIC
members include, but are not limited to, the Department of
Justice/FBI, DHS, CIA, National Security Agency, National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and
the Department of State. Through the input and participation
of these partners, TTIC integrates and analyzes terrorist
threat-related information, collected domestically and abroad,
in order to form the most comprehensive possible threat picture,
and disseminate such information to appropriate recipients.
TTIC, through its structure, draws on the particular expertise
of its participating members, thereby ensuring that the terrorist
analytic product takes advantage of, and incorporates, the
specialized perspectives of relevant federal agencies. In
addition, TTIC will have access to, and will aggressively
seek to analyze, information from state and local entities,
as well as voluntarily provided data from the private sector.
TTIC will work with appropriate partners to ensure that TTIC's
products reach not only federal customers, but also state
and local, as well as private sector, partners. TTIC provides
comprehensive, all-source terrorist threat analysis and assessments
to U.S. national leadership. Mr. John Brennan, the Director
of the TTIC, and his staff have done a tremendous job in quickly
standing up this vital center. The FBI is proud to be full
partners in this effort.
I would now like to provide you a quick overview of other
FBI information sharing initiatives.
In 2002,
the FBI established the position of Reports Officer whose
job is to extract pertinent information from FBI investigations
and analysis and disseminate it to the widest extent possible.
Currently, the FBI has 18 Reports Officers that have already
disseminated nearly 2,000 Intelligence Information Reports
to the Intelligence Community. We are in the process of hiring
120 more Reports Officers 90 of whom will be assigned to the
field, where they will support both local law enforcement
and Intelligence Community information needs.
Since
2002, the FBI has sent to approximately 17,000 law enforcement
agencies a weekly bulletin concerning terrorism-related information.
However, the FBI is not yet satisfied with its ability to
provide our law enforcement partners a comprehensive view
of the threat. As a result, we are currently establishing
an executive briefing capability in the field to ensure senior
law enforcement officials receive more detailed threat briefings
tailored to their needs.
In addition,
senior law enforcement officials need access to classified
U.S. Government information and to do so they are required
to have a security clearance. As you are aware, security clearances
are both costly and time consuming. Nevertheless, since 9/11/2001,
the FBI's Security Division has favorably adjudicated over
2,686 security clearances for local and state law enforcement
personnel and another 823 are pending approval. This is so
important the FBI established an entire Unit to focus solely
on the security clearances of local and state law enforcement
executives and JTTF members.
Prior
to the Winter Olympics, Director Mueller mandated that all
domestic and international subjects of FBI terrorism investigations
be entered into the National Crime Information Center, providing
the over 700,000 police officers in the U.S. query access
to the names of known and suspected terrorists. This information
is also available to Federal law enforcement agencies and
the Department of State.
Training
must also be considered as an important mechanism for the
sharing of essential information. The better we educate ourselves
and our colleagues about the enemy the better we are able
to defend against them. All JTTF members receive specialized
counterterrorism training; however, local, state, and Federal
officers not in the JTTFs also need this type of information
including knowledge about the latest trade craft employed
by terrorists. We have expanded our counterterrorism training
to include another estimated 27,000 local and state officers
and are currently evaluating other training initiatives to
further increase training opportunities.
An essential
component of the FBI's information sharing strategy occurs
overseas with our law enforcement allies. Only by sharing
information and working directly with law enforcement abroad
will we have the opportunity to stop criminal and terrorist
threats before they reach our shores. The FBI has 46 offices
overseas where we have established solid cop-to-cop information
sharing and working relationships, and provided training and
forensic support.
The
internet provides a cost-effective means to quickly share
unclassified information. The FBI's Law Enforcement Online
(LEO) provides a secure and easily accessible gateway to this
information. Using individual log-on accounts, dual certificate
authentication, and point to point encryption, LEO will provide
a host of information services and enable the FBI to push
information over the internet in a cost-effective manner.
To further expand its reach, LEO connects to the Regional
Information Sharing System (RISS) which is widely used by
local and state law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, through
LEO, users will soon have access to OSIS.
Certain
information must be immediately brought to the attention of
senior local, state, and federal law enforcement officials.
The FBI is now implementing a National Alert Notification
System which provides us the ability to instantly send text
page messages throughout the nation alerting law enforcement
agency heads or their designees through their cell phones
and two way pagers.
The Criminal
Justice Information Services (CJIS) is working with local
and state law enforcement to capitalize on pre-existing data
agreements to address its crime statistics reporting mission
while at the same time provide a national indices that will
enable police officers to link subjects and modus operandi
throughout the U.S.
Another
information gap is the inability to access wide information
on suspicious surveillances. The Counterterrorism Report System
on Suspicious Surveillance (CROSS) was developed by Department
of Defense and is being piloted in the National Capitol Region.
CROSS will be accessible through LEO and it enables police
officers and Agents to report hostile surveillance activity
in a Web environment and receive instant notification on similar
activity elsewhere in the U.S.
The St.
Louis Gateway project was conceived by the local law enforcement
leadership in the St. Louis area to provide law enforcement
investigators and analysts easy access to unclassified criminal
and terrorism investigative reports from multiple agencies.
This initiative will employ link analysis tools and geo-spacial
mapping. During the testing phase, previously unknown links
between criminal and terrorism reports were identified demonstrating
the efficacy of this concept. When successfully completed,
this project will be expanded to other parts of the country
based upon previously arranged agreements with law enforcement
leaders in different areas of the country.
The FBI
is also in the process of establishing FBI web pages on Top
Secret and Secret Intelligence Community and Department of
Defense systems so that it can "post" information
on FBI web pages that is easily accessible to the entire community.
The FBI also has several ongoing classified information sharing
initiatives with its partners in the Intelligence Community
that are providing tangible results.
Finally,
it is critically important that the FBI leverage the outstanding
work that has already been done in the intelligence and information
sharing arena. Long before 9/11/2001, the International Association
of Chiefs of Police (IACP) were working on intelligence led
policing and the information sharing issue. In August 2002,
the IACP published a report recommending the creation of a
national criminal intelligence sharing plan. As a result,
the Global Intelligence working group comprised of leaders
from local, state, and Federal law enforcement agencies was
formed to address the goals and objectives outlined in the
IACP report. The FBI is essentially a small but determined
organization and we recognize that our future success will
in large part be as a result of our ability to leverage one
of our nation's greatest assets, the over 700,000 dedicated
men and women who serve in local and state law enforcement.
Again,
thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today and I
look forward to any questions you may have.
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