**[The House Committee on Homeland Security]{.smallcaps}**

**[Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk
Assessment]{.smallcaps}**

**[Hearing, "The Resilient Homeland: How DHS Intelligence Should Empower
America to Prepare for, Prevent, and Withstand Terrorist
Attacks"]{.smallcaps}**

**[Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:00AM]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Testimony of R.P. Eddy,]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

**[[Executive Director of the Center for Policing Terrorism, The
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research]{.underline}]{.smallcaps}**

Chairman, members of the Committee, my sincere thanks for inviting me to
speak with you today.

Our Federal Government learned some of the wrong lessons from 9/11.

That morning we all looked to the skies for the Air Force F-16's and we
looked to Washington to protect us. The main thrust of federal effort
since then answered that call: troops were deployed overseas, funding
for the CIA and NSA was greatly increased, and the FBI has begun to
focus more on counterterrorism. But state and local police, when
considered, were considered only as the "first responders" of terrorism.
They were funded to be \-- in effect \-- the clean-up crew to remediate
our communities after the terrorists launched a successful attack.

This focus and funding -- on federal forces and not local police, on
international intelligence and not internal awareness -- is wise *only*
if our enemies are outside our borders and we can stop them before they
get in. But our reality is much more complicated, and much more
dangerous. Our next 9/11 is as likely to be from terrorists already
*within* our borders as is it to be from terrorists overseas who plot to
penetrate our nation.

Terrorism everywhere is increasingly homegrown. The trend line is
unmistakable: it runs from the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, to the 2003
attacks in Casablanca and Istanbul, through the 2005 subway bombings in
London and to the foiled plans to bomb jumbo-jets flying from London to
the US in 2006. But we need not look only overseas for examples of the
local threat. Consider this partial list of U.S. locales in which
terrorist activities have been disrupted in the last five years:
Lackawanna NY, Bly OR, Lodi CA, Torrance CA, Iredell County NC, Miami
FL, Toledo OH and Syracuse NY. In each of these incidents, and in dozens
of other smaller ones, the perpetrators were not infiltrators. They were
residents, citizens, neighbors-next-door. They had all the necessary IDs
and excuses. They didn't have to blend in; they *were* in.

Of course we do still face a threat from international terrorists
seeking to hit us at home, a-la 9/11. In these instances as well, state
and local law enforcement are the critical line of defense. Recall that
two of the 9/11 hijackers were pulled over by local police on routine
traffic stops and released. These terrorists lived in our towns, ate at
our restaurants, and studied at our schools for many months. It is much
more likely that the nation's 730,000 local police officers \-- with
years on the beat and connections with all aspects of the community \--
and not the perhaps 2,500 FBI agents dedicated to domestic
counterterrorism, or other federal forces, will have the situational
awareness to identify and locate terrorists already in our midst.

Soon after 9/11, the NYPD realized they had to tackle prevention on
their own. They asked me and the Manhattan Institute to build them a
small think-tank to support them as they ramped up their
counterterrorism capabilities. NYPD wasn't getting the Federal support
necessary to detect and defeat terrorists then, and most police forces
still aren't now.

Since our start with NYPD, The Center for Policing Terrorism at the
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (CPT) has expanded to become
involved with other agencies such as the Los Angeles Police Department
and the New Jersey State Police. CPT's focus is to advocate to and
enable core police departments to become "first preventers" and to adopt
the practice of "intelligence led policing."

CPT is supported entirely by private philanthropy. Our donors, who span
the political spectrum, have enabled CPT to fill gaps in public funding,
gaps that I believe should not exist.

I hope to bring to you today an *invested* understanding of what needs
to be done to prevent terrorism in our nation. By invested I mean: my
donors, my colleagues, and I have put our money where our collective
mouth is. I am not an academic promoting theories or a contractor
looking for support. I have the honor of representing a small group of
dedicated citizens who have sought federal leadership and federal
funding, and when we found both lacking we went and created the
solutions on our own, with our own dollars.

I humbly suggest three categories of solution -- all with minimal budget
impact -- in which Congress can build resiliency and improve our overall
counterterrorism posture, while also strengthening the capacity of our
state and local police against the entire range of hazards.

1.  Support National Counterterrorism Academies

CPT is proud to have partnered with LAPD to begin building the National
Counter-Terrorism Academy (NCTA), funded by the Ahmanson Foundation and
the State of California. NCTA already has 60 students from more than 27
public agencies and private sector companies throughout the states of
California and Nevada. Topics of instruction include homegrown
radicalization, methods for interdicting terrorism finance and case
studies of significant terrorism plots presented by the investigators
themselves. [^1]

Over the next year, the Academy will expand its course offerings, seek
additional funding and grow to eventually include four components: a
bricks-and-mortar location in Los Angeles; a virtual, or online,
academy; a digital library; and mobile academic teams. Under the LAPD's
guidance and Chief Bratton's leadership, a small staff of professionals
will develop curricula, manage operations and outsource the instruction
to the best and brightest.

The Academy will augment and serve as a focal point for existing federal
training programs and strengthen the intellectual body of homeland
security knowledge by adding the critical perspective of local agencies.
The training will be tailored to the needs of the up and coming leaders
in state and local agencies and their counterparts in the public safety
and private security fields.

NCTA does not compete with existing institutions like FLETC. Rather it
offers a first-rate, dedicated option for police leaders to become
evangelists and trainers of first prevention and intelligence-led
policing doctrine.

In just a few months of operation, NCTA has already proven to be such a
success that we are eager to expand the model across the nation. CPT is
already underway in discussions to partner with the New Jersey State
Police to build a sister academy on the East Coast. We are happy to note
that the Bureau of Justice Assistance was heavily represented in these
discussions. This academy will scale from the LA academy and draw on the
same virtual library, training teams, and other key assets of the NCTA.

Though the NCTA academy is teaching nearly 30 public agencies the skills
they need to prevent and respond to terrorism, as well as many other
hazards, proposals for modest levels of federal funding have not been
accepted. To fully fund three full years of NCTA operation, teaching
hundreds of police and private leaders in a train-the-trainers model,
injecting intelligence-led policing and first preventers practices into
hundreds of departments, and establishing the premier online library of
written materials and videotaped lectures available to police across the
nations will cost less than \$4,000,000.

DHS should fund NCTA and its East Coast counterpart in 2009.

2.  Support Intelligence-led Policing and Foreign Liaison Officers

Looking at the intelligence picture through the reality of the homegrown
threat, we need to shift our paradigm from believing we have to solve
for simply how to get intel and training *from* DHS(or other Federal
entities) *to* state and locals, and instead recognize most of the
intelligence relevant to state and locals simply is [not]{.underline}
being collected federally. There are not huge buckets full of magic
intelligence sitting in federal SCIFS that will solve all the puzzles of
big city police.

It has become a well-worn criticism that there is very little tasking in
federal collection towards things useful to state and locals, and that
the sharing of what does exist is pitiful. And while Federal
organization, tasking and sharing certainly needs to be fixed, we also
must learn three simple things:

1.  *A vast array of useful intelligence for CT and many other crimes is
    in our communities*. Generally homegrown threats will only be
    detected in the communities where they are plotted and to be
    launched, but even most foreign-borne plots will demand that
    terrorists spend real time attempting to integrate into the fabric
    of our communities. This is intelligence that will come from close
    connections with the communities and the establishment of
    situational awareness in the way only our hometown police can do.

2.  *Police are simply the best entity suited to collect this
    intelligence*. Our hugely decentralize police system (the US has
    over 17,000 police departments) ensures police come *from* the
    communities, they have the community access and generally the
    community trust to find this information. Local entities also
    generally have broader legal allowances to investigate crimes and
    assess risk in their communities. And then there are the numbers:
    there are, of course, 730,000 police in this nation but perhaps less
    than 2,500 FBI agents focusing on domestic counterterrorism[^2]. No
    federal entity has the exposure, the insight, the tools, let alone
    the breadth to collect local threat information

3.  *But, while Police are best suited to collect this critical
    intelligence, most simply are not collecting.*

That is to say, we miss much of the need (versus the homegrown terror
threat at least) when we think we simply need to grease the skids of
information downhill. It is as critical for DHS to help police collect
the intelligence that exists in their communities as it is for DHS to
share intelligence with police.

After the success of community led policing and COMPSTAT, the next major
innovation in policing is upon us. Intelligence-led policing is the
ultimate addition of strategy to counterterrorism and fighting crime. It
is conceptually simple: police departments should create intelligence
opportunities and use the outcomes to direct their limited resources. A
tiny number of US police departments have intelligence capacities; the
vast majority does not. Though we need to be mindful of the past abuses
by some police departments in the 1960's, today's police departments are
vastly different organizations, and intelligence gathering must be
integrated into police work, and not just for counterterrorism.

ILP can be applied to virtually every public safety challenge police
face. Having a firm understanding of a challenge, in real time, improves
decision-making and produces better results. Resiliency begins with the
way we think about problems and deal with mental adversity. Enhancing
local intelligence capabilities will allow us to achieve exactly that.

Fusion centers hold tremendous promise. Though they exist in every
state, many lack real strategy on how to share intelligence across, up
and down. Fusion centers also offer a perfect vessel to push the
necessity and tactics of Intelligence-led policing to their client
police departments, but again many are not resourced to do so.

At the strategic level DHS should begin to preach the value of
intelligence-led policing, and at the user level, institute a pilot plan
via the fusion centers to teach intelligence-led policing to local
police departments.

Intelligence-led policing and First Preventers doctrine transforms
police departments into proactive counterterrorism agencies. Not only
will they continue to thwart dozens of terrorist incidents, this posture
will deter untold potential homegrown terrorists as it will create a
hostile environment for violent extremists. Much as the Broken Windows
theory created by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson and implemented by
Chief Bratton revolutionized crime fighting, so too will these tools
revolutionize the nation's fight against terrorists.

Although controversial for the FBI and State, police should take
intelligence collection to the international level. NYPD's international
liaison program is a well known success. The NYPD officers stationed
with foreign counterparts in major overseas metropolitan police
departments have built NYPD's knowledge networks and best practices[^3]
immensely. These relationships inform NYPD's thinking not only on
counterterrorism, but also on fighting crime and other hazards.

We were very pleased to see this committee propose the concept of a
Foreign Liaison Officers Against Terrorism (FLOAT) Program as part of
the LEAPS legislation. Since 2003, we have proposed a program much like
FLOAT, in which 5-10 major city police departments would each assign one
officer overseas to liaison relationships with foreign police
departments. Ideally each city would send an experienced officer to an
area they know well. LA could send an officer of Indonesian heritage to
Jakarta, Miami could send a Colombian-American to Bogota, Detroit could
send an Arab-American to Cairo, etc. These officers would embed with the
local police to collect information on counterterrorism.

The regular reporting from the liaison officers would then be pooled to
the intelligence apparatus of all participating police departments, and
others.

I won't get into a detailed defense here of why police need their own
international liaison relationships, but suffice it to say, the current
reporting back from FBI and State generally does not make it to police.
When it does, it is obvious these departments are curious about very
different lessons and learnings than the locals. Instead of being seen
as adversarial, federal agencies should see the police liaison presence
as a compliment to federal activities which can also provide real-time
threat reporting to their local agencies.[^4]

As this initiative has not made progress at the Federal level, CPT
leadership is endeavoring to launch a FLOAT program funded by the local
police and donor dollars. Presuming the police departments will continue
to pay the salary and benefits of the officers, we estimate the cost for
housing and travel and other incidentals to be less than \$100,000 per
year per officer. We will also arrange to create and house the fusion
hub that will task, collect and distribute the liaison reports. NCTA,
discussed above, is an obvious home to serve as the hub to disseminate
FLOAT reports throughout the police community.

Again, there is an obvious Federal role here and we urge the committee
to fund international police liaisons.

3.  Support Strategic Resource Allocation

Local police agencies are the most knowledgeable resource when it comes
to their own critical assets. While many states and localities have done
impressive work understanding and cataloguing critical assets and key
resources in their jurisdictions, there is a stark lack of uniformity in
terms, methodologies and fundamental approaches. We believe that this
ultimately hinders the ability of national level decision makers to make
risk-based resource allocation decisions, since there is not a baseline
for comparing assets across jurisdictions.

We believe that a common approach for evaluating critical infrastructure
should be mandated on state and local agencies. There is good news here.
The LAPD, in partnership with DHS has developed Operation Archangel, a
robust methodology and information technology system for evaluating and
protecting critical infrastructure. Archangel was created to utilize
cooperation and coordination across departments as well as public and
private sectors to facilitate the strategic application and management
of information and resources to prevent, deter, mitigate, and respond to
an attack.[^5] It is well thought out and vetted and could be easily and
cheaply incorporated around the country.

***Resiliency comes from First Preventers and Intelligence-led
policing***

The focus of your hearing today, a resilient homeland \-- cities and
towns that can return to stability after a disaster -- relies on
numerous layers of prevention and response preparation. But it is
important to realize that we cannot begin to consider true resiliency
until we know the 730,000 local police are recruited to the cause.

When CPT goes to police leadership across the nations to help them build
prevention capacities, we find many police departments to be nearly
tabula rasa when it comes to counterterrorism. This is not to say they
are not eager to be involved with CT, rather most police departments \--
particularly in major cities \-- are already very overburdened and
under-resourced. If they don't see a clear and present terrorism danger
to their city, it is hard to convince elected officials or their staff
to shift their limited resources from fighting crime to
counterterrorism.

But we have had success and can be successful elsewhere for two reasons:

1.  Police leaders quickly realize that the "First Preventers" curricula
    and intelligence-led policing helps police and their local partners
    not just with CT, but against "all hazards," and

2.  These concepts resonate with the highly successful proactive
    policing models such as COMPSTAT of the 1990's.

Most agree the Londoners were resilient to the 7/7 subway bombings
because of the long English history with terrorism and even cultural
memories of WWII. We should not presume to think we can change American
mindsets, but a process of empowerment and knowledge sharing is, of
course, key to reducing panic in the event of an attack.

Local police departments are not just the crux of public safety in over
17,000 communities, but they are also the public servants most
integrated with the populace. By offering police insights and the
ability to proactively understand and pre-empt terrorism, we are in fact
injecting this confidence into our communities.

I would counsel that while we work hard to adopt the goals of resiliency
into nearly everything related to counterterrorism, we also realize that
sometimes resiliency will not be an option. Some attack scenarios,
including some we judge as highly likely in the medium term, are so
horrific that the only real strategic alternative is prevention.

I close by noting that I propose these initiatives not as a
theoretician, but as a representative of a group of citizens that have
since soon after 9/11found aspects of federal leadership in domestic
counterterrorism lacking so have been funding and enacting, on our own,
solutions to support our best hope for a secure homeland: our local
police.

[^1]: Manhattan Institute, *Manhattan Institute and LAPD Unveil
    Counter-Terrorism Academy for State and Local Cops*, Press Release,
    March 10, 2008.

[^2]: Federal Law Enforcement Statistics, US Department of Justice,
    Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics. Available
    at <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/lawenf.htm> \[accessed 5/9/2008\].

[^3]: Kelling, George L., and Bratton, William J. *Policing Terrorism*.
    Civic Bulletin, No. 43, September 2006, page 6.

[^4]: LEAP Proposal, page 10.

[^5]: Los Angeles Police Department, *Operation Archangel*.
    http://www.lapdonline.org/emergency_services_division/content_basic_view/33044
    \[accessed 4/7/2008\]