Safety, Liberty, and Islamist Terrorism by Schmitt Gary J.;Bardají Rafael L.;Cosidó Ignacio;Gujer Eric;Parker Tom;Cosido Ignacio;

Author:Schmitt, Gary J.;Bardají, Rafael L.;Cosidó, Ignacio;Gujer, Eric;Parker, Tom;Cosido, Ignacio;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AEI Press

New Structures, New Guidelines

In addition to the changes made to U.S. statutes, 9/11 resulted in significant and large-scale changes in the country’s counterterrorism bureaucracy.

The most massive of the changes was the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002.34 DHS consolidated into one agency some 180,000 employees and twenty-two different agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Border Patrol. Not since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947 had such a large reorganization in the national security structure taken place at one time. As described by former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, the four core missions of the new agency were keeping dangerous people out of the country, keeping dangerous materials out of the country, protecting critical infrastructure, and building an agency capable of responding effectively to attacks or disasters.35

One advantage of a megadepartment like DHS is its ability to act as a fusion center for intelligence and data that the once-disparate bureaus and agencies contained within in it had in the past failed to share effectively. Customs, the Border Patrol, TSA, INS, and the Coast Guard generate on a daily basis a vast mosaic of who and what is entering the country and who and what is leaving it. As the former head of DHS intelligence has noted, the agency generates a “treasure trove of data” that needs to be reported, collated, and shared if the United States’ relatively open borders are to be secured.36

To help facilitate the flow of information to and from DHS, the department has placed personnel with other federal and local counterterrorism centers. DHS has also set up liaison relations with the homeland security departments established by the states—at the same time urging the states to create their own fusion centers—so that intelligence from local, state, and federal entities may be collated. Nearly five dozen fusion centers have now been established across the country, with some larger states having more than one.37

The other large post-9/11 structural change occurred with the passage of IRTPA in 2004. As noted earlier, George Tenet’s 1998 memorandum that the intelligence community should be on a war footing with al Qaeda produced little, if any, reaction. As Director of Central Intelligence, Tenet was head of the intelligence community but commanded few resources outside his role as CIA director. In testimony before Congress, in fact, the then-head of the National Security Agency explained that he took note of Tenet’s missive but interpreted it as applying only to CIA staff.38 Congress, following the recommendations set out by the 9/11 Commission, created the post of director of national intelligence (DNI) to solve this perceived problem. Whereas the director of the Central Intelligence Agency had in the past also been the nominal head of the U.S. intelligence community, the new “czar” for intelligence would no longer be double-hatted; he would be the head of the intelligence community simply, with new authorities to oversee the community’s budget, planning, and personnel as well as several crosscommunity intelligence centers.

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