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S. Hrg. 110–1028 

INFORMATION SHARING: CONNECTING THE DOTS 

AT THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL LEVELS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 23, 2008 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

CHRISTIAN J. BECKNER, Professional Staff Member 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOHN K. GRANT, Minority Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

PATRICIA R. HOGAN, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Hearing Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 20 

Prepared statement: 

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 35 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2008 

Eileen R. Larence, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office ...................................................................... 4 

Hon. Thomas E. McNamara, Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment, Office of the Director of National Intelligence .................................. 6 

Charles E. Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis and Chief 

Intelligence Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security .......................... 9 

James M. Thomas, Commissioner, Department of Emergency Management 

and Homeland Security, State of Connecticut ................................................... 12 

Jeffrey H. Smith, Partner, Arnold and Porter ...................................................... 15 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Allen, Charles E.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 129 

Larence, Eileen R.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36 

McNamara, Hon. Thomas E.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59 

Smith, Jeffrey H.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 15 

Prepared statement with an attachment ....................................................... 149 

Thomas, James M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 145 

APPENDIX 

‘‘Annual Report to the Congress on the Information Sharing Environment,’’ 

prepared by the Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment, 

June 2008, submitted by Mr. McNamara .......................................................... 64 

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Ms. Larence ....................................................................................................... 164 

Mr. McNamara ................................................................................................. 166 

Mr. Allen ........................................................................................................... 168 

(1) 

INFORMATION SHARING: CONNECTING 

THE DOTS AT THE FEDERAL, STATE, 

AND LOCAL LEVELS 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2008 

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Lieberman and Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good morning and welcome to today’s 

hearing, ‘‘Information Sharing: Connecting the Dots at the Federal, 

State, and Local Levels.’’ 

I want to say at the outset that Senator Collins called and, unfortunately, there has been a crisis in Maine, and so she cannot be 

with us today. But she will certainly follow the transcript and the 

statements that you make. 

The attacks of September 11, 2001, obviously showed us how disastrous it can be when intelligence information gathered by one 

agency is not shared with other agencies—Federal, State, and 

local—who share the responsibility to protect our Nation and our 

people. 

The 9/11 Commission Report documented instance after instance 

where agencies either kept crucial information to themselves or, 

even if they were prepared to share the information, did not let 

other agencies know they had it. Because of this information hoarding, crucial clues that existed in different databases that, if combined and analyzed, might well have thwarted or stopped those 

attacks were missed, and the terrorists succeeded in the most 

devastating attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. 

The 9/11 Commission wrote in its report, ‘‘The culture of agencies 

feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead 

feel they have a duty to the information’’—to share the information—‘‘to repay the taxpayers’ investment by making that information available.’’ 

In today’s hearing we will examine progress on information sharing since then. In fact, this is the first Committee inquiry since 

2004, our first round of post-9/11 Commission Report hearings on 

2 

this subject. And so we are going to ask in simple terms what has 

improved and what still needs to be improved. 

We have a panel of very distinguished and experienced witnesses, and I welcome you all here today and thank you for being 

here. 

Charlie Allen is—I have used so many superlatives to describe 

you. I think I should just say ‘‘Charlie Allen.’’ I was once at a meeting a couple years ago where Henry Kissinger was introduced by 

somebody as ‘‘a man who needed no introduction.’’ So Dr. Kissinger 

got up and said, ‘‘It is probably true that I need no introduction, 

but I like a good introduction.’’ Anyway, you are a national asset, 

Mr. Allen, and I thank you for being here. 

I also particularly want to welcome Skip Thomas, Commissioner 

of the Department of Homeland Security from Connecticut, who is 

here to talk about some of the very innovative work being done, I 

am proud to say, in my home State. 

We also are very glad to have Ambassador McNamara, Program 

Manager of the Information Sharing Environment; Jeff Smith, 

former General Counsel of the CIA, now a partner at Arnold and 

Porter, who worked with our Committee on the intelligence reform 

legislation and was very helpful; and Eileen Larence of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

In the testimony today, I am pleased to say we are going to hear 

about significant progress over the last few years to improve the 

sharing of critical information across Federal agencies, and between Federal, State, and local agencies. And I thank you for that. 

Following hearings of our Committee in 2004, which I referred 

to, Congress passed and the President signed into law the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which created the 

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to forge a 

greater unity of effort among our country’s very diverse intelligence 

community. The legislation also established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and the Office of the Program Manager 

for the Information Sharing Environment (ISE), both intended to 

strengthen and streamline the exchange of terrorism-related information within the Federal Government. 

The 9/11 Commission Act, which we call ‘‘9/11 II,’’ signed into 

law last year, further enhanced the authorities of the Information 

Sharing Environment program manager and established in statute 

the State and Local Fusion Center program office at the Department of Homeland Security. 

At the National Counterterrorism Center, officials from a wide 

variety of agencies—CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, DOD, and many others—now work side by side, 24/7, to assess terrorism-related evidence, indications, and warnings and, of course, to jointly analyze 

the threat. The NCTC is now the one place where our government 

is responsible for connecting the dots that were left dispersed prior 

to September 11, 2001. And it is quite a remarkable achievement, 

and I am sorry Senator Collins is not here because we both have 

been there. It is one of those moments in the Senate life when you 

actually see something that you helped to create created and feel 

the satisfaction and encouragement to know that it is really making a difference. Those moments do not come too often, but when 

they come, they are quite satisfying. 

3 

State and local governments are now also increasingly seen as 

partners by the Federal Government, and the network of fusion 

centers across the country, with support from the Department of 

Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, is playing a valuable role in the broader efforts to share terrorism-related information and to detect suspicious activities. 

Just last month, fusion centers from Indiana and four other 

States collaborated on a joint assessment that looked at suspicious 

activities related to a certain sector of public infrastructure, and 

they did so acting on their own initiative. 

This kind of horizontal, decentralized information sharing and 

analysis is exactly the kind of activity that we had hoped the fusion 

centers would be doing. It fixes one of the information-sharing gaps 

that was evident as we looked back at the September 11, 2001 plot, 

where Federal agencies did not connect the dots regarding those 

suspicious activities at flight schools in various parts of the country. 

However, as we will discuss, more work remains to be done to 

fulfill the 9/11 Commission’s charge that our security and intelligence agencies change from a culture of ‘‘need to know’’ to a culture of ‘‘need to share.’’ 

GAO has included this subject matter, which they call ‘‘Establishing Appropriate and Effective Information-Sharing Mechanisms 

to Improve Homeland Security,’’ on its high-risk list since 2005, not 

that there has been no progress made. There obviously has, but I 

think it is a measure of the very high consequences of failure, unacceptably high, and how critical it is that all relevant agencies 

continue to work to remove this item from the high-risk list. 

As we are going to hear from GAO, the Program Manager for the 

Information Sharing Environment, according to GAO, really needs 

to create a road map so that it can objectively monitor progress, ensure accountability, and make participating agencies aware of their 

distinct responsibilities as part of the Information Sharing Environment. 

Without that kind of a road map, it is going to be very hard to 

identify and root out remaining cultural, organizational, or technological barriers to effective information sharing that we know still 

exist. 

We do not want to allow the continuation of institutional stovepipes that funnel intelligence straight up a single agency rather 

than a decentralized, networked approach, where information is 

broadly distributed. 

I think we need to build on the considerable progress that has 

been made. That is what I take away from the work that has been 

done and my understanding of it. Unfortunately, there are some, 

I gather, who would like to see the Information Sharing Environment program office defunded and disbanded by as early as 2010 

and then apparently return to the old ways of doing business, 

which obviously simply did not protect the security of the American 

people. I want to make clear this morning my firm opposition to 

any such move. I will do anything I can to stop it from proceeding. 

So I look forward at this moment, as we approach a transition 

in government, to working with the next Administration in making 

these programs that are so critical to our Nation’s security even 

4 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Larence appears in the Appendix on page 36. 

more efficient and effective, and the work that all of you have done, 

to prepare for this morning’s hearing will certainly assist this Committee in doing so. Thank you very much. 

Now I would like to call first on Ms. Eileen Larence, who is the 

Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Thanks for being here. 

TESTIMONY OF EILEEN R. LARENCE,1 DIRECTOR, HOMELAND 

SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. LARENCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to summarize the results of our recent reviews of the government’s efforts to better share terrorism information since September 11, 2001. As you already acknowledged, in 2005, GAO did 

place the issue of information sharing for homeland security on its 

high-risk list, and it has been monitoring efforts to remove barriers 

to sharing since then. My testimony this morning summarizes our 

recent work on: One, assessing the status of the Information Sharing Environment, called for in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and 

Terrorism Prevention Act; two, challenges to State and local efforts 

to create and maintain fusion centers; and, three, recent reforms 

to streamline rules for handling sensitive information. 

In the 7 years since September 11, 2001 and the 4 years since 

the intelligence reform act, Federal, State, and local agencies are 

clearly sharing more terrorism information. New organizations 

were created and new processes, systems, and networks evolved to 

handle the sharing, and the Congress and Administration issued 

new laws, policies, guidance, and standards to promote more sharing. But there is still critical work that the program manager for 

the Information Sharing Environment and agencies must do, as 

you also acknowledged. They need to better integrate these pieces, 

continue to overcome agency stovepipes and change cultures that 

promote information protection over secure sharing, better monitor 

and measure progress, and perhaps most importantly, maintain 

momentum. 

In a report we are releasing to you today, GAO acknowledges 

that building the environment is a very complex challenge involving many stakeholders, each with equities and investments already 

in place. Nevertheless, the program manager and agencies have 

had a measure of success. The program manager issued an implementation plan in 2006. He initiated a governance structure and 

working groups. His office and agencies achieved most of Phase 1 

of the plan, which focused on setting up and getting ready for implementation. This included developing information inventories and 

directories, uniform standards, and a technology framework. 

The program manager is also leveraging initiatives agencies 

independently pursued, such as terrorist watchlisting and fusion 

centers, and he has issued two annual reports that begin to catalogue these actions and measure progress. But progress has been 

tempered, to some extent, by several gaps to fill. 

First, the program manager and Federal agencies key to making 

the environment work—and that includes the Departments of DeVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000008 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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fense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State—still have to fully define the environment’s scope and parameters or what it is to 

achieve and how it will operate. This includes what information all 

critical stakeholders need to combat terrorist threats, what information should be shared, how it will be made available to analysts, 

while also protecting it as well as civil liberties, and what technologies will be used. 

Second, work on the environment has pushed agencies to partner 

better on information sharing, but there is still some confusion and 

conflict about agency roles, responsibilities, and level of commitment versus that of the program manager that need to be resolved 

because of such slow progress. And questions remain as to whether 

the program manager has the authority needed to drive change 

and who is holding agencies accountable. 

And, third, the program manager and agencies have made goodfaith efforts to set and refine goals, objectives, and metrics to design the environment. But taken together, these efforts do not yet 

provide a complete and current road map and accountability systems to guide future implementation and investments, even though 

the hardest part of building the environment is still to come. 

The 2006 plan’s milestones were ambitious. It is unclear what 

has replaced it to guide agencies all in the right direction. Developing these tools is important to give this clear sense of future direction and priorities, and to measure how far we are in setting up 

the environment, as well as how much sharing has improved and 

what is left to achieve. 

Turning now to the issue of State and local fusion centers, our 

work on such centers showed that they vary widely but face some 

similar challenges. The Federal Government is helping to address 

these challenges, but they are not yet resolved. States and localities 

created centers to fill information gaps the Federal Government 

could not. The centers range in maturity and capability. Most focus 

on collecting information on all crimes or all hazards, not just terrorism; and most of it is collected by law enforcement entities, but 

partnered with many other State and local agencies and have Federal personnel assigned. 

A number of centers reported challenges: Having to manage too 

much information and too many systems; finding specific operational guidance and analyst training; finding and keeping qualified personnel; negotiating the Federal grant process; and of most 

concern, sustaining center operations long term. 

DHS and DOJ are helping to address these challenges by providing people, guidance, technical assistance, training, system access, and grant funding. But we recommended that the Federal 

Government better determine the long-term support it expects to 

provide these centers. The Administration addressed this to an extent in the 2007 National Information Sharing Strategy. In addition, provisions in the 9/11 Commission Act address support for fusion centers. And a new bill to remove grant restrictions on personnel funding addresses a concern centers also voiced. 

Finally, in regard to protecting sensitive information, in March 

2006, we reported that agencies were using a myriad of different 

labels to designate information as sensitive but unclassified, as 

well as confusing and conflicting rules about handling it, thereby 

6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. McNamara appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

discouraging some sharing. We recommended that the government 

streamline these practices. The President recently issued a policy 

calling for the use of a uniform controlled and classified information label and providing several options for handling dissemination. 

This is a good start. But as our work demonstrated, it will be important to ensure individual agencies have their own guidance with 

specific examples as well as training to help employees determine 

what information should bear this label. They will also need an effective set of internal controls, such as supervisory review and audits, to ensure employees make accurate decisions so as not to inhibit sharing. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement, and I would be 

happy to answer any questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Ms. Larence. Good beginning. 

Ambassador McNamara, welcome. You are next. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. THOMAS E. MCNAMARA,1 PROGRAM MANAGER, INFORMATION SHARING ENVIRONMENT, OFFICE OF 

THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to 

thank you and the Committee for the opportunity to be here with 

the other members of the panel to talk about the progress in terrorism information. 

Just over 2 years ago, I was appointed program manager for the 

Information Sharing Environment (ISE) with a clear mandate defined by statute and the presidential directives to improve the 

sharing of terrorism-related information among those responsible 

for protecting our Nation from attacks. There was much to do and 

much pressure to move quickly. We had, however, no Information 

Sharing Environment to use as a model. No precedents existed, at 

least not in government. 

My charge was not to create the Information Sharing Environment from scratch. Instead, the Congress and the President instructed me to work with others at all levels of government to build 

and expand on existing communication and sharing capabilities. 

I am pleased to report that priorities were set, initiatives were 

taken, and collaboration has been the hallmark of this effort. We 

have accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. We have 

defined the path to be taken in establishing the ISE. The Information Sharing Implementation Plan and the President’s strategy outlined that path. 

The initial functioning of the ISE is underway, and it is beginning to have an impact on how the government does business. This 

is the beginning of a cultural transformation that if it is continued 

for an extended period, can make the ISE a routine and necessary 

part of government functioning. 

Our second Annual Report to the Congress is very specific about 

how information sharing has improved through our efforts. And by 

‘‘our,’’ I mean the Project Managerof the Information Sharing Environment (PM–ISE) office that I head, the Information Sharing 

Council agencies that have worked on this, the Office of ManageVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000010 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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1 ‘‘Annual Report to the Congress on the Information Sharing Environment,’’ June 2008, submitted by Mr. McNamara appears in the Appendix on page 64. 

ment and Budget (OMB), the White House, our State, local, tribal, 

and private sector partners above all, and this Congress—all of 

whom have worked in partnership to bring about these accomplishments.1

I want to quickly list and highlight just a couple of the changes 

that I think are important. There are many more. 

The first, sharing with State and locals. A framework for sharing 

information among Federal, State, and local and tribal governments and the private sector is being implemented. The framework 

is designed with substantial input by State and local officials. We 

consulted with them. I want to highlight just two areas that are 

a very high priority. The one is that we have a functioning Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group now established and operating in the NCTC. This brings together Federal, 

State, and local partners and personnel who work side by side in 

developing and producing intelligence products that are specifically 

designed for State and local consumers, a first in the Federal Government. 

Second, we have laid the foundation for a national network of 

State and major area fusion centers. This network is functioning at 

a very preliminary stage now, but it is getting stronger by the day 

and by the month. Today, there are over 50 fusion centers in operation nationwide. DHS, FBI, and other Federal agencies have personnel in many of these centers, and these centers are being connected to classified and unclassified Federal information systems. 

The second area was already mentioned by our colleague from 

the GAO. The President has issued a new standardized procedure 

for handling the otherwise chaotic jumble of information known as 

‘‘sensitive but unclassified.’’ This new regime, called Controlled Unclassified Information came about as a result of the work of the Office of the PM–ISE and several of the agencies on the Information 

Sharing Council. 

Protecting privacy and legal rights. This has from the very beginning been at the top of our agenda. There are now Information 

Sharing Environment privacy guidelines, there are implementing 

procedures for those guidelines, and there is a user’s manual for 

Federal agencies to use to ensure that all the activities taken in 

the context of the Information Sharing Environment protect the information privacy rights and other legal rights of Americans. Every 

agency has a designated senior privacy officer, and we have an ISE 

Privacy Guidelines Committee. Most of those privacy officers sit on 

that committee. We are working with our partners to see if we cannot come up with a common way to incorporate those privacy 

guidelines in the rules and regulations that govern State and local 

information sharing. 

Finally, Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR). You mentioned this, 

Senator. We are implementing a standardized process for sharing 

information related to these suspicious activities by State and local 

authorities. It will help to detect terrorists operating in our local 

communities while at the same time ensuring that the information, 

privacy, and other legal rights of Americans are protected. This 

8 

standardized, mostly common approach is being implemented over 

the next year in a pilot program. And I want to commend at this 

point the Los Angeles Police Department and its chief, William 

Bratton, for the foundational work that they have done to create 

a SAR model that can be replicated by other localities. And I also 

want to commend the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Major City 

Chiefs Association, and the International Association of Chiefs of 

Police that are working closely with the LAPD and with my office 

to incorporate the LAPD process into our pilot program. We are listening to the State and local authorities. 

Although I am pleased with the progress we have achieved, I am 

not suggesting we have finished the job. Far from it. The ISE is 

functioning, albeit haltingly, and not at all in some areas. But we 

have laid the basis for a fully functioning ISE in the future. We 

are, to use Churchill’s famous phrase, ‘‘at the end of the beginning.’’ 

The challenges to the Information Sharing Environment are not 

to be underestimated. Information silos, cultural habits, budget 

limitations, bureaucratic inertia, and other barriers that inhibit 

sharing are very strong, and they are impeding progress. The 

progress I have described today in my oral and written testimony 

has been a hard one. It is unfinished, definitely. It must be developed further and then institutionalized and ingrained in our work 

cultures if it is to be a long-term implementation. 

I would point out that the real power to implement, however, 

rests with the major Federal departments whose planning and 

budgets are not yet focused on the ISE. As program manager, I 

have sought to champion interagency collaboration to build that Information Sharing Environment. In doing this, there are three 

characteristics that have been critical to the success of the office. 

First, the PM–ISE acts as the honest broker in the interagency 

consideration of the issue, and it operates as the honest broker because it has no turf to defend. 

Second, the PM–ISE office is bureaucratically neutral. It has no 

agency axe to grind, and, in fact, it operates outside of the agency 

context that, in fact, defines the interagency largely. 

And, third, the PM–ISE office has the authority to build the ISE 

provided it does so by cooperating and coordinating with our Federal, State, local, tribal, and private sector partners. I am called 

the information manager, and I am indeed the program manager 

for information. But I am also in large measure the program coordinator. I don’t have a budget that can implement the program. I 

rely on the budgets of the agencies. 

I hope that you understand and that the Committee realizes that 

these characteristics have been essential to the success and they 

will be essential to the future success of the ISE. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Committee, and 

I welcome any questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you for that good report, Ambassador. 

Next is Charles Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis and Chief Intelligence Officer at the Department of Homeland 

Security. Thanks again for all your public service, Mr. Allen, and 

we look forward to your testimony. 

9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Allen appears in the Appendix on page 129. 

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES E. ALLEN,1 UNDER SECRETARY FOR 

INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS AND CHIEF INTELLIGENCE 

OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Chairman Lieberman. It is a pleasure, 

and ‘‘Charlie Allen’’ is a fine introduction. I don’t need anything 

else. 

I really want to commend your Committee for the work that it 

did in helping create this environment for the sharing of terrorism 

information through the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. And I am pleased to have an opportunity 

today to talk about what the Department is doing in cooperation 

with its Federal, State, local, tribal, and private sector partners to 

ensure that the phrase ‘‘information sharing’’ is not just a buzz 

word but that it really does reflect action on the part of the Department in helping share information with its principal stakeholders, 

particularly at the State and local levels. It is a great pleasure to 

be here to appear with my colleague Ambassador McNamara, with 

Skip Thomas, with my old friend from the CIA, Jeff Smith, with 

whom I worked some years ago, and also to have the GAO offering 

a very good overview of where we are in the area of information 

sharing. 

We at the Department have a statutory mandated role in the 

Homeland Security Act of 2002, which you had a lot to do with, 

that is very distinctive in the intelligence community because of 

our unique set of customers and our focus on the homeland. This 

role is made even clearer in implementing the recommendations of 

the 9/11 Commission where the Department was designated as 

having the lead responsibility for the Federal effort to integrate 

State and local fusion centers into a National Fusion Center Network to which Ambassador McNamara alluded. And as the Under 

Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, I am responsible for implementing those mandates on behalf of the Secretary and the Department, and I want to explain some of the things that we are doing. 

Achieving the Department’s information-sharing mission requires 

people and tools, and we have devoted significant resources to providing both of these. Within my office, my team has created the Department’s State and Local Fusion Center Program Management 

Office to build essential relationships with the fusion centers. 

Through the program office, we have deployed intelligence officers 

to 25 fusion centers that serve alongside with their State and local 

partners. We are going to have 10 more intelligence officers deployed by the end of the year, and these men and women serve at 

the front line for information sharing. They are providing State, 

local, tribal, and even other Federal partners with the information 

they need to keep America safe. These same skills permit them to 

cull the best of what fusion centers are collecting and analyzing 

and ensure that these data get to the appropriate people in other 

States, as well as here to the Federal Government. 

DHS is committed to providing fusion centers with the information-sharing tools they need to participate in the Information Sharing Environment described by Ambassador McNamara. 

10 

At the Secret level, we have deployed the Homeland Secure Data 

Network (HSDN). This network is now in 23 fusion centers, and we 

are working to deploy it to 17 more by the end of the year. Among 

other things, the network provides access to NCTC On-line classified portal that maintains the most current terrorism-related information at the Secret level. The network also provides the fusion 

centers with a window into the National Intelligence Community 

that they can use for their own information needs. Ultimately, 

every fusion center with this network access will have its own web 

page where relevant State and local products can be posted and 

made available to other fusion centers and, of course, to the National Intelligence Community. 

At the unclassified level, the Homeland Security Information 

Network’s Intelligence portal provides more than 8,000 people with 

access to finished intelligence products. To better foster collaboration and share the best practices and lessons learned within the fusion center network, DHS also sponsors the Homeland Security 

State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest, which we call 

Homeland Security SLIC. It is a virtual community of intelligence 

analysts, hundreds of them. Its membership has grown significantly in the past year. We have 43 States participating in SLIC, 

as well as the District of Columbia, and seven Federal departments. This is a way that intelligence analysts across the country 

can collaborate via threat conferences, biweekly at the Secret level 

with secure video teleconferences, and in a virtual community of interest on the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) intelligence platform. SLIC also sponsors Secret-level conferences 

that are annual analytic conferences, and we have at least on annual theme-oriented conference per region. 

DHS also is working to ensure that information we share is what 

our partners need. To do this, we undertook a project with six fusion center partners to examine day-to-day information needs of 

the fusion centers. As a result, my office was able to develop a set 

of priority information needs for the fusion centers. We are now 

seeing joint analytic products serving all levels of the government 

and the private sector being written by fusion centers in conjunction with DHS and the FBI. 

The Department also is providing leadership to important multiagency organizations dedicated to improving information sharing 

with our non-Federal partners. An important piece of multi-organizational efforts is the National Fusion Center Coordination Group, 

a Federal-State partnership that was established as part of the Information Sharing Environment. The Director of my State and 

Local Fusion Center Program Management Office serves as cochair of this important group with the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the FBI. The coordination group has had success in fostering the development of fusion centers and bringing them into a 

cohesive partnership at the State and local level as well as with the 

Federal partners. 

On the content side, Ambassador McNamara talked about the 

Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group (ITACG), 

which was established at the direction of the President and implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. 

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tion between the National Intelligence Community and with our 

State and local partners. By pulling together in one place an outstanding group of Federal, State, local, and tribal homeland security, law enforcement, and intelligence officers at the National 

Counterterrorism Center, there is now a focal point to guide the development and dissemination of Federal counterterrorism intelligence products through DHS and the FBI to our State and partners. 

The ITACG achieved Initial Operating Capability on January 30. 

It is led by one of my senior intelligence officers who serves as its 

Director. The Deputy Director is a senior analyst from the FBI. 

Currently, the team includes four law enforcement officers from 

State and local police departments who work full-time at NCTC. 

We are working to expand this to at least 10 non-Federal participants from a broad range of expertise, including fire and health departments, homeland security advisers, and other organizations as 

needed. 

The ITACG members have essential systems connectivity in 

NCTC, participate in key briefings, and are engaged in the NCTC 

production processes and activities so that they have a broad perspective of the intelligence community, which then they can share 

information down to the State and local levels. 

I chair an Advisory Council of the ITACG on behalf of the Secretary. The council, of which at least 50 percent of the members 

must represent State, local, and tribal organizations, has become a 

very robust organization. It includes distinguished Americans, including the Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska. It meets at least 

four times a year, but I have decided as Chair to meet every 

month. We either meet face to face or in teleconference. So I am 

very pleased that the ITACG is truly up and operating effectively. 

We are also establishing an attractive Fellowship Program so 

that we can get the very best from our State and local governments, both law enforcement and non-law enforcement officers to 

serve in the ITACG. And I am very proud of what we have assembled, both for the detail and for the Advisory Council. 

I have only touched on a few areas of where the Department is 

engaging in information sharing involving its partners at the State 

and local level. I think we are making real progress. We believe 

that information sharing is central to our mission. It cannot be an 

afterthought. The Secretary and I remain committed to implementing the information-sharing mandates of both the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the 9/11 

Commission Recommendations Act of 2007. We also work to protect 

civil rights and civil liberties and privacy, as Ambassador McNamara pointed out. 

I look forward to your questions. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much. I was just thinking, 

as I was listening to you, because you have been involved in intelligence work on our Nation’s behalf for quite a while, that you have 

seen some remarkable changes occur. I take it beyond the written 

word that you have just given us, this is quite a change from not 

so long ago in the intelligence community. Am I right? 

Mr. ALLEN. You are absolutely right, because I have worked very 

closely with the National Intelligence Community, being a CIA offiVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000015 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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1The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas appears in the Appendix on page 145. 

cer for some decades, and the lack of information sharing among 

intelligence community agencies, it may have been a model that 

worked in the Cold War. We did not make the changes that were 

required. We did not break down those barriers in the 1990s when 

we should have. And as a result, this country suffered greatly. We 

can never afford to do this again, Senator, and I will do everything 

in my power to ensure that we continue to change and build the 

culture that Mr. McNamara is trying to build. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I know you will and you have, and I do 

not want to jump ahead, but I do think that listening to the testimony—we will go on now—there ought to be reassurance to the 

American people insofar as they know about what we are up to. 

And in some sense there ought to be deterrence to our enemies that 

we have not only raised our guard but broadened it, if I can put 

it that way. 

Mr. ALLEN. At every level, in the private sector, State and local, 

and at the Federal level, our air, land, and sea borders, it is tough. 

And we are making it tougher every day. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes. Thanks. 

OK. Commissioner Thomas, great to have you here from Connecticut, and I appreciate now hearing from the State perspective 

about the question at hand. 

TESTIMONY OF JAMES M. THOMAS,1 COMMISSIONER, DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND HOMELAND 

SECURITY, STATE OF CONNECTICUT 

Mr. THOMAS. Thank you very much, Senator Lieberman. Just for 

the record, my name is James M. Thomas, and I am the Commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management 

and Homeland Security, and I am here to talk to you about the Intelligence Reform Act. 

I want to start off to tell you that in my 39 years of law enforcement experience, I have never seen such a strong willingness for 

people to come together and share information. It was not always 

like this, and it has taken place as a result of September 11, 2001, 

I am sure. 

We work very closely with the Department of Homeland Security, and they work not only with our State but all the other 50 

States. As I am here today, our colleagues are in New York City 

meeting with New York, New Jersey, and the other New England 

States on interoperability and information sharing. Monday of this 

past week, we were in New York City, again, sharing information. 

I have participated in and seen the benefit of this collaborative 

approach, not only in Connecticut but throughout the country. I 

think DHS has set some standards, guidelines for fusion centers. 

Everybody is following those standards. That is what we need to 

do. I think it is very important. 

I think that since September 11, 2001, under the leadership of 

Charlie Allen and Secretary Chertoff, DHS has been a leader providing training, expertise, and analysts to help us get going in this 

critical mission, and DHS has been successful in preventing future 

terrorist attacks. 

13 

I think the key for me—and I came from a local law enforcement 

agency to the State-level—to terrorism prevention is good, timely 

intelligence. The motto, which is in our State, should be ‘‘Gather, 

evaluate, analyze, and then share information.’’ That is our motto. 

Every single piece of paper we put out, we talk about gathering information at the local level, passing it up to the State level, analyzing, and then sharing it. That is what we do 24 hours a day, 7 

days a week. 

I can tell you that in our part of the country information sharing 

has never been better. For example, this week, and every week, the 

Connecticut Intelligence Center weekly bulletin is shared with 169 

towns in our State and with tribal nations. It includes information 

from the local law enforcement, State Police, Department of Corrections, Federal agencies such as FBI, ATF, DEA, TSA, U.S. Coast 

Guard, and DHS. The Connecticut Intelligence Center weekly bulletin—I brought ours in. It has reports from New York, New Jersey, and the other five New England States. 

I think the key thing for us is we can issue these bulletins on 

an hourly basis, a daily basis, or they always come out every single 

week. As a former chief of police in two communities, I want to 

make sure it is hitting the street where the officers need it. I think 

that is where we are going to make the difference in terrorism-related situations. So when I am out—and I am one of these people 

who goes out to talk to the police departments, and I want to talk 

to the officers in the field—I am assured every single day from the 

patrol officers to chiefs and other command people that they have 

the information, they are receiving it. They have never seen anything like it in all their careers either. 

I think that if we do not do this, this is clearly a big mistake and 

I appreciate the work you have done, Senator, and that the DHS, 

FBI, and others have brought into this collaborative effort. There 

is too much risk if we do not share information with each other. 

The men and the women out in the field are professionals. They 

are on the front line. They deserve the very best means of preventing or stopping a terrorist incident from happening. 

I think the key for us is, again, it must be done at the local level. 

That is where the information is. In our State, we ask every organized police department to put an intelligence liason officer (ILO) 

program in place. We at the State level put five regional intelligence officers (RILOs) out. Our five regions in the State of Connecticut touch base every single day with the ILOs. That is where 

the information comes in. We gather it, we analyze it, we disseminate it. I think the ILO/RILO program we have in our State is really what makes our State unique, and it is really working well. 

In our Intelligence Center, we have local officers, State officers, 

Federal officers. You would not know who they are and what agency they are from. We also have analysts primarily from FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, Coast Guard, and the governor has authorized 

us to hire a State analyst also. 

I think it is really important that we also engage the private sector, and, again, really through the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Allen’s office in particular, we have an analyst in the 

State of Connecticut. She provides us with what we call ‘‘open 

source documentation,’’ stuff that is out there that is non-classified, 

14 

but very important information, and it is given to us at a State 

level, a regional level, national, international. We take this information. which is open source. We put it on our secure portal. We 

make it available to people on our State portal with the private 

sector. 

As a result of engaging the private sector, we are getting information from them on a daily basis. We have a very effective Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) program, in Connecticut. We think it 

models what they are doing in Los Angeles, but we are always 

looking for change, and we are looking for the best possible practice. 

In conclusion, times have changed. The threat of terrorism-related activities is real and a constant concern. So the way we do 

business needed to change. This change is now taking place. I believe and hope that your Committee will continue to support and 

fund the fusion centers that have been developed and will support 

our goal of having well-trained intelligence analysts from the Federal, State, and local agencies working side by side analyzing the 

information and intelligence that they receive and, most importantly, disseminating it back to the street where it needs to be 

shared. 

This past March, the Department of Homeland Security and the 

Department of Justice sponsored a National Fusion Center Conference. All 50 States, territories, and possessions were there. 

Highly interactive. I was there. And I could tell you, working together, we can and will make a difference. We need to work together like we have never done it before, and if we work together, 

I honestly believe the United States will be a safer place. 

I see the first responders—the local and the State officers—as 

first preventers. They are the ones who are going to make the decisions out in the field. And our State and I think a lot of States are 

also doing that through the mobile data terminals. An officer in the 

field, through their little computer in the car, has access to our intelligence briefing—again, hourly, daily, and weekly. Information is 

really at their fingertips, and we are very pleased for that. 

Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you 

today, Senator. I am proud of what we are doing in Connecticut, 

but, more importantly, I am proud of what we are doing on a regional basis and the national level under your leadership. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Commissioner. I am 

grateful for what you are doing in Connecticut and beyond. 

Just while I think about it, say a little bit more about the involvement of the private sector because that is, obviously, critical 

in terms of the control of critical infrastructure but more generally. 

Are they self-motivating in this area? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, I think we realize that, just from a security 

viewpoint, you take any urban area in the State of Connecticut and 

85 percent of the assets are owned by the private sector. They need 

and support the Federal Government and State government. They 

want to be engaged. They even have their own security forces that 

sometimes outnumber the local law enforcement by 10-fold. In a 

city like Hartford or New Haven, they may be lucky if there are 

70, 80 officers in the field. There are thousands of private security. 

If we can engage them, they know what is happening, and they see 

15 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Smith with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 

149. 

suspicious activity. If they trust us and we have a relationship with 

them, which I think is critical, they will report suspicious activity. 

That is where it is. We think that working with the private sector 

is a smart thing to do. We are doing it in Connecticut. We have 

had many conferences with them. They want to be engaged with 

us, and we are doing that. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Great. Thanks very much. 

Our final witness on the panel is Jeffrey Smith, a partner at Arnold and Porter, previously with the Central Intelligence Agency, 

a real expert in this field. Thanks for being here, Jeff. I look forward to your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF JEFFREY H. SMITH,1 PARTNER, ARNOLD AND 

PORTER 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here 

and to appear on this panel and to thank the Committee in person 

for the efforts that you have done over the years. 

I have been asked to appear this morning because of my service 

on the Markle Foundation Task Force, and under the leadership of 

Zoe Baird and former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, the Markle 

Foundation convened a bipartisan task force, of which I am a member, to examine national security in the information age. 

Let me emphasize at the beginning that I am appearing here 

today on my own behalf, not on behalf of the task force, although 

I have consulted with several members of it. 

This diverse group met with government officials, private industry, experts on technology and civil liberties, and foreign partners 

in order to find solutions for this critical information-sharing problem. We issued a series of reports and advocated the creation of a 

trusted information-sharing environment that ensures the twin 

goals of national security and civil liberties. I am pleased that the 

government has taken many of our recommendations to heart, and 

this Committee deserves special recognition for the role it has 

played. 

As the GAO found in its report released today, the Information 

Sharing Environment has improved dramatically. The Congress, 

the President, and the intelligence community have made much 

progress, although much still needs to be done. Significant cultural, 

institutional, and technological obstacles remain. There is reason to 

be concerned that the initial focus and momentum have dissipated 

a little bit, while confidence in the process and deliverables has decreased. I don’t mean to be the only one speaking negatively, but 

we are picking up some of this, I think, despite the really extraordinary efforts of Ambassador McNamara, Charlie Allen, and others. 

One cannot allow the recent reforms or the absence of a new attack 

on our homeland to lull us into complacency. 

It is true, as you say, Mr. Chairman, the Nation is certainly 

safer, but our enemies get smart as well, and we need to stay one 

step ahead of them. 

As our task force recommended, this effective information-sharing environment must be built on trust. The agencies must trust 

16 

each other with sensitive information. The American people must 

trust their government to protect their civil liberties and privacy. 

Realization of this trust environment urgently requires sustained 

leadership and strong oversight from all branches of government; 

clear policies, processes, and guidelines; and technologies that facilitate sharing while protecting privacy and security. 

The Markle Task Force will continue to assess the government’s 

progress, and we are currently preparing a report card that will 

make what we hope to be constructive recommendations to give to 

the next President and to Congress that will help the Nation move 

forward in its information-sharing system. 

Let me touch on a few issues. I have a longer prepared statement, Mr. Chairman, but let me just touch on a few of these. 

Congressional leadership is needed to proactively exercise oversight responsibilities and provide adequate funding for the implementation of information-sharing provisions. There is a lot of new 

legislation that has passed, but I also urge the Congress to stay on 

top of this. I also worry a little bit about the overlapping jurisdiction of some of the oversight and appropriations committees, which 

is always a difficult issue up here. As the Chairman will remember, 

I was General Counsel of the Armed Services Committee for a 

while, and I am very familiar with these issues. I know it is difficult, but I hope the Congress will take a hard look at these issues. 

Presidential leadership is also necessary to steer implementation 

across agencies, facilitate the kind of cultural transformation that 

is required, and encourage public confidence in the government’s 

information-sharing policies. The White House has recently issued 

a comprehensive information-sharing strategy, standardized the 

classification system, and streamlined the security clearance process. All good moves. 

Earlier this year, Ambassador McNamara released his second 

Annual Report to Congress. I commend you for your work and that 

of your colleagues. The Executive Branch efforts have initiated a 

paradigm shift from a ‘‘need to know’’ to a ‘‘need to share’’ culture. 

I also welcome the GAO’s report and Charlie Allen’s effort. However, the Administration must ensure that transforming the government in order to improve information sharing and collaboration 

is an urgent priority that does not wane or fall victim to turf battles and ambiguity about responsibility and authority. 

Finally, leadership is needed at the State and local level to improve coordination, standardize information-sharing procedures, 

and evaluate progress. I am impressed by what Commissioner 

Thomas just reported to us, that there has been a lot of progress. 

Again, we continue to hear occasional problems at the fusion centers that have their roots not in bad intentions, but in inadequate 

sharing of information and a certain amount of turf warfare that 

is inevitable in any organization. 

Let me talk about two or three of the most important policy recommendations of the Markle Task Force. I have listed others in my 

statement, but let me touch on just a couple. 

First, a core recommendation of the Markle Task Force is the 

adoption of an authorized use standard. Under such a standard, 

agencies or employees could obtain mission-based or threat-based 

permission to access or share information, as opposed to the curVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000020 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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rent system which relies on place-of-collection rules, U.S. Person 

status, or originator control—ORCON—limitations. The Administration has looked at this and said that they thought adopting that 

would be difficult because of privacy guidelines. I am confident that 

if we work hard, an authorized use standard is achievable. 

Also, let me touch briefly on an issue of enormous importance to 

all of us—the protection of privacy and our civil liberties. The ISE 

has issued guidelines that require that information sharing complies with the Constitution. Each agency now needs to develop its 

own guidelines consistent with the ISE’s. 

As this Committee knows, the law also established the Privacy 

and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and that functioned briefly. 

However, after its first report in 2007, one of its members resigned 

because he believed that the board interpreted its responsibilities 

too narrowly and lacked sufficient independence from the White 

House. In response, Congress wisely reconstituted the board as an 

independent agency within the Executive Branch. By statute, the 

board should have been up and running by January 30 of this year. 

It is regrettable that a full slate of new board members has neither 

been nominated nor confirmed. And the Congress and the President should breathe new life into this important institution, if not 

this year, surely in the new Administration. 

We also have called for greater training and development of 

human capital. We have talked about measures to improve decisionmaking by officials. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) 

has done a great job in focusing on greater use of open source information. The success of the mission managers for hard targets like 

North Korea and others have proven to be a big success. I think 

they go a long way, but we still have a ways to go. 

I also believe that we need to focus on vertical integration of 

State, local, and private actors. The Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group has begun to support the NCTC by 

sharing Federally coordinated information with others. That is important. 

Finally, the status of technology. We believe in the Markle Task 

Force that there is some technology that can be extremely valuable 

to achieving this goal of improving our security and protecting civil 

liberties. These include the use of immutable audit logs and 

anonymizing information technology. Again, the Administration 

has looked at these and said that they are not convinced that the 

technology exists. Well, let me state that differently. They believe 

it exists, but have reservations about the expenses associated with 

trying to adopt it and the good results that could be achieved. Our 

view in the task force is that this technology is there, can be adapted, and we urge the Administration and Congress to consider funding this technology. 

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to your questions. The Markle 

Task Force will continue its work with Congress. It looks forward 

to working with the transition team for the new President, and as 

I said earlier, we hope to make some recommendations to the new 

Administration. We do this on a bipartisan basis. This is far too 

important for any partisan issues to creep in. That has been the 

way our task force has worked. That is the way this Committee has 

worked. And we look forward to working with you. 

18 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Smith. Very helpful. 

Incidentally, the Markle Task Force has followed the lead of the 

9/11 Commission in that your members have stayed active and continue to monitor progress in this area. It is very important. 

Take a minute and just tell us a little more about a word that 

we do not see in use much here on Capitol Hill. It is called 

‘‘anonymization.’’ I guess I had a double meaning in my reference, 

but now I mean a singular meaning. Tell us about anonymization 

technology. 

Mr. SMITH. Anonymization technology is technology that permits 

information to be shared without identifying the person about 

whom the information describes. In other words, in the current 

rules, based on old technology, we have a series of minimization 

procedures in which if we acquire information that has the name 

of an American citizen, that is stricken and that name can be disclosed with proper authorization. 

Anonymization would permit looking across much broader pieces 

of data banks, data information, and looking at that information to 

detect patterns, but at the same time not identifying to the user 

the names of the American citizens who might be in that data 

bank. And it is very sophisticated technology that we believe would 

permit the government to do some of the things it needs to do without impinging on the privacy of American citizens. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Understood. Charlie Allen, do you have a 

reaction to that? Is that something we should be investing in? 

Mr. ALLEN. Well, I think we have to look at all such tools because, as you know, part of our issue has been how to lawfully and 

appropriately use information on U.S. persons. And I agree with 

the Markle Foundation recommendations ought to be fully examined as a tool to do this. 

The main thing we have to do is what I do, that all my officers, 

including myself, take every year very rigorous review of how to 

handle U.S. information. There has to be reasonable belief before 

us to use that type of information. We just do not use any information on U.S. persons. It has to be used with great rigor and great 

oversight from our Legal Department. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Let me ask this question, and I suppose 

appropriately it should be to Charlie Allen, Ambassador McNamara, and Commissioner Thomas. You have given us some encouraging reports as to the progress we have made on information 

sharing since September 11, 2001. I wonder, within the bounds, obviously, of either—this is another form of anonymization, as I think 

about it—not disclosing classified information or discussing cases 

that have become public in some way, whether you can put a little 

flesh and bone on this. In other words can you bring to mind any 

specific situations where the new information-sharing environment 

has actually helped you to connect the dots in a way that allows 

you to take action you would not otherwise take? Obviously I do 

not need names here if they are not public. Do you have any that 

comes to mind, Mr. Allen? 

Mr. ALLEN. I think absolutely where we had some arrests in 

South Carolina last year—first responders, as Skip Thomas pointed 

out, were very vital. That information we immediately put at the 

Federal level, involved the State of Florida. 

19 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So it came from first responders? 

Mr. ALLEN. Absolutely, and I was called on a Saturday night, 

and I activated my officers in both South Carolina and in Florida, 

and we had a lot of information that I could immediately brief the 

Secretary on. 

So the information-sharing examples—we just recently had one 

over the 3rd and 4th of July. It was a minor incident that turned 

out to be a criminal event back in the Northeast. But initially it 

was—it did give us some alarm, but working with State and local 

officials, who were very open, we were able to run traces and 

checks and found out it was a criminal action and had nothing to 

do with terrorism at the time. But it did give us concerns initially, 

and I remember talking to the Secretary even about the issue. 

So we have had incidents here, incidents in California where 

Chief Bratton and others have called upon the Federal Government, NCTC, and ourselves to quickly supply information, as well 

as the Bureau. It is a whole new culture. It is learning to collaborate and work together in ways that are absolutely unprecedented. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So in the South Carolina case, did local 

first responders apprehend someone or see something suspicious? 

Mr. ALLEN. They stopped a car that was speeding, and then because of the suspicious behavior of the occupants, they then detained the individuals, and as a result of that, without getting into 

the particulars, it is clear that it became an FBI investigation case. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Excellent. Commissioner, do you have any 

examples? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes. I think what Mr. Allen had indicated to you 

is a prime example I believe. It is going to be an officer in the field, 

a trooper in any one of the 50 States who can make a routine stop, 

run a name through the computer, and if there is cause—and that 

is what happened in South Carolina, and as a result, information 

was developed. And I have seen it just on a practical basis. That 

is why in Connecticut we do an all-crimes approach. We do everything from—you name it—murder, rape, robbery, or assault. That 

bulletin hits the streets. It is full of photos of suspects, actual 

crimes that have occurred. And I will tell you, within hours sometimes many cases are solved. Others lead to other situations. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Because you are running them through 

other databases. 

Mr. THOMAS. Correct. And, it crosses State lines, and it is amazing. It is a tremendous source of information. It is effective, and 

people really trust each other. And when the people in the field 

know that they are being heard and they have credibility, they are 

really likely to give you more information. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ambassador, do you have any examples? 

Mr. MCNAMARA. I think the best example I can give is a pilot 

program that we ran with the FBI, my office and the FBI, in which 

we actually took the information from the databases, and we were 

able to move it to a controlled environment that allowed BlackBerry access to it by law enforcement officers on the street in New 

York and Washington, DC. In doing this, we found that they were 

able to pinpoint much more accurately exactly who it was they 

were looking for, who they would find. They were able to look at 

20 

photographs, for example, on their BlackBerry while the individual 

that they were working on was present within eyesight. 

The BlackBerry project was so successful that the FBI in the end 

has funded this BlackBerry program for every FBI agent and all 

the Joint Terrorism Task forces (JTTFs) around the country. And 

we hope to see it extended to all the local law enforcement officers 

that work with the JTTFs. 

In practical terms, that pilot program was underway in New 

York at the time of the JFK tank farm case. And it played a role 

in that particular case. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is great. 

My time is up. I will say that by coincidence you have before you 

the two Members of the Senate who may be most BlackBerry addicted. [Laughter.] 

We are constantly competing, Senator Pryor and I, to see who 

has the latest version. Perhaps the program that you have described, Ambassador, could be extended to the Senators. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. I will see about that, Senator. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. All right. Senator Pryor, thanks for being 

here. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. The Chairman always has a nicer BlackBerry 

than me. It causes a lot of consternation on my part. I am always 

a step behind him. 

Let me start with you, Mr. Allen, and follow up on something 

you said in your statement. You mentioned that the Department of 

Homeland Security is establishing a fellowship to allow State and 

local fusion center analysts to serve on the Information Sharing Coordination Group. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and 

what the timetable on that is? 

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, and this has been a very energized effort on our 

part because we and the FBI, working under the management of 

the National Counterterrorism Center, are establishing this Interagency Threat and Coordination Group. The FBI had an established program for bringing officers in from the State and local 

level. This is something new to the Department of Homeland Security. So we have worked very hard—my office and my information 

managers, working with the ITACG and the Advisory Council of 

the ITACG. We have established a program where now we have 

the same kind of incentives and benefits essentially that the FBI 

has in bringing people from State and local law enforcement officers, homeland security specialists, or health specialists into this 

ITACG. And it has worked out very well because they have to have 

a place to stay here, they have to have some funds to travel home 

on a relatively reasonable basis. They have to have a vehicle in 

order to get around the Washington area. And they have to have 

something that, when they finish their tour of duty here, which 

right now is for a year at a time, that they can go back to their 

own police departments, and this will be a boost to their career. 

Being away from a police department does not help unless you 

have something to really show for it when you go back. We are 

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ligence, working with all this sensitive information, and are able 

then to help sanitize a lot of it and get it down to State and local. 

This experiment, I think, as Ambassador McNamara said, is 

proving to be a very successful, good beginning. We have only been 

in business about 6 months, but we are making progress. 

Senator PRYOR. And how many do you think will be in the fellowship at any given time? 

Mr. ALLEN. We hope to have up to 10 people at any given time, 

and then rotate them in and out on a staggered basis, the individuals serving a year at a time. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Allen, let me ask if the DHS strategy with 

respect to supporting State fusion centers, and sometimes the Federal Government and the State government have a different view 

of things. Do you feel like that your strategy in trying to support 

State fusion centers has the same objectives and goals that they do 

at the State level? 

Mr. ALLEN. I think we have the same goals because we deal primarily, obviously, against the terrorism threat, but we also support, as Mr. Thomas said, all threats to our homeland, which is a 

little broader. So I think our goals are the same. What we have to 

do, of course, is to learn—and in my written statement, I talk 

about how we have run a pilot program with six of the fusion centers to make sure we understand fully the needs and requirements 

and the priorities of State and local. Because at the Federal level, 

we provide intelligence obviously that may not be as relevant or as 

useful at the State and local level. 

We have learned a lot over the last couple years, so I think we 

have identified the priorities and needs, at least in a measured 

sense at the State and local level, but we have a lot to learn, and 

we are very sensitive to the need to listen rather than to transmit 

from the Federal Government. 

Senator PRYOR. And do you see fusion centers playing a longterm role with the Department of Homeland Security? 

Mr. ALLEN. I think they are going to play a role for years and 

decades to come, knitting together in what we call this National 

Fusion Center Network and working horizontally with other fusion 

centers across the country. They are naturally sort of grouping into 

various sectors, like the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Northeast. And as they work vertically up to the Federal level, I think 

we are going to see a richer exchange of information, and also I 

think we are going to see a safer country, because we are going to 

be able to hopefully detect and disrupt activities that are nefarious 

and designed to hurt this country. 

Senator PRYOR. A minute ago, we talked about the Fellowship 

Program that you are establishing right now. Let me ask a question on the training that analysts go through. Is it important that 

analysts have a consistent training across the country? Or should 

that training be more individualized on the State level? 

Mr. ALLEN. I think it is important that we at the Federal level 

take the lead because we have been working on intelligence training and analytic trade craft for decades. Obviously, it has to be 

changed and modified for the State and local intelligence officer, intelligence analyst, but we are doing this. 

22 

Right now, with the help of the Director of National Intelligence, 

we are developing a State and local intelligence course, which we 

will have ready by the 1st of October, that is really directed at the 

official use level where we can teach. Meanwhile, we are sending 

mobile teams out to train intelligence analysts, and also I am 

bringing officers in as part of my intelligence training program to 

train my own analysts because I have a lot of analysts that need 

training. 

This is very essential. If we are going to be successful, the Federal Government has got to work with the State and local to help 

train those analysts and train them in what we have learned over 

many decades as a result of our experience in the Cold War and 

beyond. The context, the information, and how we do analysis are 

different. But the principles remain the same, and the Federal Government has to work very hard with State and local government. 

And I am committed to this, Mike Leiter at the NCTC is, I know 

Mr. McNamara is, and I know the DNI is committed to help us 

train analysts at the State level and local level. 

Senator PRYOR. And a question we always get from our State and 

local people is who pays for that training. 

Mr. ALLEN. Well, that is a bit issue, and that is one that the Secretary is in a better position to answer. I do know that the Secretary has extended working with OMB. We extended for a third 

year intelligence analytic training, and so there is an additional 

year that has come about as a result of the Secretary’s work with 

the Office of Management and Budget. 

I believe at a certain level, the Federal Government has to be involved because we have the—we work very hard with the schools. 

There is a CIA University. There is a National Intelligence University. The Defense Department teaches over in the Defense Military 

Intelligence College. There are a lot of tools, techniques, and ways 

that we should be helping the State and local governments, and we 

need to impart that information. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Pryor. I appreciate your 

being here. 

Notwithstanding all the improvement that we have made—and 

it really is quite significant, nonetheless, as I indicated earlier, 

GAO continues to put information sharing on the high-risk list. 

And I wanted to ask you, Ms. Larence, if you would just say a little 

bit about why and what you are looking for to be able to have GAO 

remove this from the list. In other words, what are the parameters 

of it, first? Is it information sharing generally? Is it related to 

homeland security? What is missing? 

Ms. LARENCE. It is more specifically related to terrorism information sharing as opposed to the homeland security emergency response information sharing. And what GAO looks for in making the 

decision whether to take something off of the list is: Do we have 

a clear, organized, and structured plan in place; do we have the resources and the commitment in place; and do we have a good way 

to measure progress. 

So we do not wait to ensure that all the I’s are dotted or all the 

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onstrate that it is, then we entertain taking those issues off the 

list. 

We have been working collaboratively with the Ambassador’s office and the Office of Management and Budget on what the plan 

is for coming off of the list, what commitments they would make 

to the plan, and what it would take to get off the list. And we have 

been monitoring that progress every 6 months. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. So let me now ask you, Ambassador, and perhaps Mr. Allen, how you understand the placement 

on the high-risk list and what you are doing to try to get off it. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Well, it may sound somewhat paradoxical, but 

I welcome the fact that information sharing is on the high-risk list 

because I think it is a matter that demands constant attention and 

a priority position, and things on the high-risk list tend to get that 

attention and get that priority. That is also the reason why I welcome the GAO report. It is a fresh set of eyes looking at a very 

complex problem and giving us insights into where we need to do 

better. 

We all welcome the pat on the back when we do well, but it is 

also good to have somebody looking over our shoulders to try to 

help us to do even better. 

I think that the way to get off the high-risk list is to institutionalize and routinize the Information Sharing Environment. 

Since we have not yet gotten to the point where the Information 

Sharing Environment is fully functional, that is the first thing we 

have to do. And by making it fully functional, I mean, as I said in 

my opening remarks, that it becomes part of the ordinary way in 

which government does business. That has not happened yet, and 

it is not surprising that in a few years—this huge bureaucracy and 

the complex government structure we have, this Federal structure 

goes out to the State and local and tribal areas, and, indeed, there 

is even the cooperation to a more limited extent with our allies and 

partners overseas—it has not become routinized in the way in 

which we hope to have it. 

So I think that by placing the priority on it—and here I do disagree with GAO. There is a road map. The initial road map was 

the implementation plan, as I said in my opening remarks. That 

has been refined by the President’s National Strategy for Information Sharing. Nobody can doubt what the priority areas are and 

what the road ahead is as seen by the Administration, writ large. 

So we are probably a little behind—and here I agree with GAO’s 

critique. We are behind in, if you will, the metrics of how we measure the progress we have made, but I think there is no doubt that 

we have made a significant amount of progress. And, indeed, making the progress, in my book, took precedence over measuring 

whatever progress we made. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. And I think that the way we are going to get 

off the high-risk list—and I do not think we should come off the 

high-risk list until there has been a determination made by the Administration, by the Congress, and by those of us working on this, 

that we have institutionalized a fully functioning Information Sharing Environment. And that is some years in the future. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Allen. 

24 

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I agree with my colleague. I like to 

have oversight, and I like to have the pressures. And if GAO and 

you all view our information-sharing work today as high risk, I 

would agree because we are in the very early stages of this. We are 

breaking barriers month after month, and as you can see, just 

forming the ITACG, just building connectivity, both unclassified 

and secure, getting our officers deployed, starting to speak the 

same language at the State and local level takes time. With the accesses that we now have, some of the information we have is very 

sensitive, and we have to strip out the information from the 

sources and methods. 

We know how to do this. In the past, we have been reluctant to 

really work at that problem. Now we understand how to do it. The 

security rules are changing. This controlled and classified environment, controlled unclassified info (CUI), that we are now working 

on here with Ambassador McNamara is going to help a great deal. 

But it is going to take a while to institutionalize this. We are just 

in the early stages, and we are just in the early stages of working 

and training analysts at the State and local level and to intelligence analytic trade craft. But we are going in the right direction, 

and we just need to now push a lot harder in the next several 

years. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Interesting. So really you are saying flat 

out that this is not something we should want to see come off the 

high-risk list next year. If it does, you would say it would be unjustified because of the tremendous change in the status quo that 

is necessary, but also because of the consequences. 

Mr. ALLEN. I think that, as Ambassador McNamara said, has to 

be a decision made by the Administration and by the Congress, and 

it has to be evaluated. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. ALLEN. And he is right. Using metrics, we still are working 

hard to determine their progress. We know we have made progress, 

and we see visible results on a daily basis. But we need a more 

structured, organized, institutionalized way of operating our Information Sharing Environment. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ms. Larence, do you want to say anything 

in response to what the Ambassador and Mr. Allen have said? 

Ms. LARENCE. No, sir. It sounds good to us. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. Ambassador McNamara. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Could I add a couple of points with respect to 

how we measure this? 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Sure. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. When I came into this job a little over 2 years 

ago, what I was hearing—to use the phrase very frequently used 

here on the Hill—from my constituents or my customers at the 

State and local level was, ‘‘It is broken. We are not getting the information.’’ What I am hearing now, and what you have heard here 

in this hearing from non-government officials, is that, ‘‘It is not 

fully fixed, but it is an awful lot better than it was before.’’ 

I take that as a metric. I go out, my staff goes out to dozens of 

conferences. We have visited dozens of fusion centers. We have 

talked with hundreds and hundreds of first responders, homeland 

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25 

cials at the State and local level, and they are all saying, ‘‘It is 

much better.’’ That is a metric. I am not sure GAO could quantify 

it, but I take that constituency response as being a metric. 

One other point. I said at the beginning of my statement that we 

had no model on which to build this ISE. We looked around and 

there was nothing in government that we could model on. I take 

it as a compliment and as an indication of progress and of success 

that, in the last several months, three other efforts to create Information Sharing Environments within the government have come to 

us to try and learn from what we have done. I am sure you and 

the Committee are aware of the FAA’s next-generation air transport system. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. The FAA has come to our office to learn about 

the technologies, the architecture, and the standards that we have 

set up so that they can adapt and apply them for their air transport system. The Maritime Domain Awareness Network that is 

being set up by the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, the Department of Transportation, and others is looking to 

try to integrate the information flows within the maritime environment, both military and commercial. That means ports, transport, 

etc. They came to us to study our progress over the course of the 

last couple of years to see how much of that they could take and 

apply to their upcoming information environment. 

And, finally, the Department of Health and Human Services is 

sponsoring a nationwide Health Information Network that they 

hope to have up and running. They also came to us to try and take 

our templates, if you will, and apply them. 

So I think we are moving along at a pretty good clip. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I would say you should take that as a 

compliment. That is great. 

Let me move to this question of the authorized use standard, 

which the Markle Task Force recommended, which would replace 

the current system of place-of-collection rules and originator control 

with mission-based and threat-based permissions to access and 

share information. 

The 9/11 Commission Act required the ISE to report to Congress 

on the feasibility of an authorized use standard, and we did, in 

fact, receive that report in March. The ISE noted that such a 

standard would be difficult to implement under existing law and 

would potentially contravene privacy- and civil liberties-related 

laws and executive orders. 

I wanted to ask you first, Ambassador McNamara, given these 

objections, one, whether you believe that the move to the authorized use standard is a good idea; and, two, how you believe the 

legal framework would need to be altered to permit that standard 

to go into effect. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. I think in principle, an authorized use standard 

is a very valuable tool that would assist in establishing a fully 

functional Information Sharing Environment, a fully functioning 

ISE. There are, in fact, regulatory and legal rules that prevent us 

from moving directly to an authorized use standard in the short 

term. But I think we—and by that I mean the program manager’s 

office and the major agencies involved in this—and that is the DeVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000029 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
26 

partment of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Homeland Security Department, and the Department 

of Defense—have, in fact, underway studies to see how one can 

move to that. 

I think in all likelihood—and I am not an expert in this area by 

any means—that we are going to move to that by stages rather 

than just one fell swoop. For example, I think it will be easier to 

move to authorized use within an agency structure than it will be 

to move multiple agencies at the same time to an authorized use 

standard. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Smith—I am sorry, Ambassador. Do 

you want to go further? 

Mr. MCNAMARA. One last thing, and that is that we need to define authorized use, and then we are going to have to come back 

to the Congress and change laws and regulations that right now 

operate on a different standard. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. 

Mr. Smith, why don’t you talk a bit about what definition of authorized use you would like to see, and then comment on the ISE’s 

report and the necessary legal changes to implement this idea. 

Mr. SMITH. The notion of an authorized use standard is to sort 

of turn things around. To make sure we all understand it, in the 

current rules, the purpose for which information is disseminated is 

determined by the person who collects it. It is driven by a series 

of rules, like if it is a U.S. person and information, it follows certain channels. 

The idea was that we ought to have, instead of these rules that 

are based on the manner in which it was collected, it ought to be 

disseminated for the purpose for which it can be used. And in that 

sense, it is kind of turning things on its head. 

In the Markle Task Force, we anticipated some of these problems. I will be frank with you. I think we thought it would be a 

little easier than it has proven to be. But we certainly respect what 

the Administration has done. I am pleased that Ambassador 

McNamara’s report, that they are looking hard at it. 

I don’t know, Mr. Chairman, as I sit here this morning, that I 

have specific suggestions as to what laws might need to be changed 

or whether regulations need to be changed. But to the extent they 

do need to be changed, I think they are worth looking very closely 

at because we do think that this can go a long way. 

In my mind—and I would be interested in the reaction of my colleagues—it is not unlike what the intelligence community is doing 

on the front end; that is to say, with the mission managers, where 

they have a more effective way of trying to coordinate targeting of 

intelligence collection. And this would in a sense, then, be the other 

end of that telescope where the information is then disseminated 

for the authorized use of that information rather than necessarily 

basing it on whether it is SIGINT, HUMINT, COMINT, or something else, which then puts it into a particular channel that determines its dissemination. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good enough. Mr. Allen, do you have a reaction to this discussion? 

Mr. ALLEN. I simply affirm essentially what both Jeff Smith and 

Ted McNamara have said. It is going to take time. It is going to 

27 

be incremental. We obviously have to change because the rule set 

today I think is too rigid about those who originate and collect the 

information. But under the current policies and probably certainly 

from a legal perspective, there will have to be significant change 

over time to implement an authorized use standard. I think we 

have to work toward that. I believe that Jeff Smith is right. But 

I think like Ambassador McNamara, it is going to take time. But 

we should work at this goal because in the past it has inhibited the 

full flow and sharing of information. In our Department, it took us 

18 months to ensure that we can share information just across all 

segments of this Department, which is 210,000 people. You would 

think you could have done that in a month. It took 18 months. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Understood. 

Commissioner, let me go to you on the fusion centers. These have 

been really a significant forward development to facilitate information sharing among Federal, State, and local agencies. Let me just 

ask you the open-ended question acknowledging that you have testified that they have made real progress, they have been helpful. 

Is there anything further that you would like to see or that you 

need from the Federal Government to assist you at the State level 

in your mission here? 

Mr. THOMAS. I think the key thing for us, Senator, is the longterm sustainability of these fusion centers. I think we have started 

making great progress, and I see it at the local level, I see it at 

the State level, and the cooperation we have been receiving from 

the Federal level—whether it be from DHS, FBI, Coast Guard, or 

others I could name—has been tremendous. But for us this is going 

to have to be a long-term investment. 

Coming from the local side, I cannot expect the Federal Government to pay 100 percent of it. We are paying a lot of personnel— 

it’s a big commitment—but we have to do this for many decades. 

And I think it is critical that we have a portion of the homeland 

security—some of the advisers have even said, OK, let’s take a percentage of any homeland security grant we get. The most important thing for us today, I think, is going to be information sharing. 

The days of buying equipment and training, those are good, but 

you need information. 

So the most important thing we can look for is going to be longterm sustainability of these intelligence/fusion centers. That to me 

is going to be the key. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ambassador McNamara. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Yes, I fully agree. I think what we are doing 

here is we are going through a period of adjustment as a new phenomenon or, if you will, a new set of institutions comes onto the 

horizon, and that is fusion centers. 

I want to stress that, at least from my perspective, it is very important to see the fusion centers in terms of all crimes, all hazards, 

not just terrorism, because I think they are not sustainable around 

the country if they only do terrorism. There are a few places where 

that will work. New York City is an example, L.A. and probably 

Washington, DC, where you would get a very high volume of terrorism work and information that needs to be worked on. But for 

the country at large, I think they need to be all crimes, all hazards. 

That means we have to look at the funding with a much broader 

28 

perspective than just homeland security, just terrorism, or just 

even law enforcement in many cases. 

I think we need to look at this so that these fusion centers evolve 

and develop into valuable commodities for the localities in which 

they are in; that is to say, the States and the major urban areas. 

And if that is the case, then they will get funding from the States 

and the major urban areas because it is worth it to those governments and those localities to fund it. And the Federal Government 

will get information coming from those State and local fusion centers that will be valuable to the Federal Government, not just in 

terrorism but in other areas. 

If we can look at it with this more holistic approach, I think we 

can work out the details of who funds what and what share of the 

cost ought to be borne by what element of our federated governmental structure. 

Mr. ALLEN. I would just like to add—— 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Go ahead. 

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I agree with that, this broader allthreat, because in homeland security intelligence, we look at terrorism, but we look at it through the prism of homeland security 

intelligence, which includes secure borders, because bulk cash 

couriers could be carrying money for drug-trafficking organizations, 

or they could be carrying money for Hezbollah. So trying to narrowly separate out terrorism from these broader threats does not 

help. I think representing the fusion centers as all-threat, all-hazard is the right way to go, and I believe Ambassador McNamara 

has the essence of the issue here, that there are broader reasons 

than just terrorism why these fusion centers are going to be very 

valuable—smuggling networks, other proliferation, loss of U.S. 

technology. There are a lot of reasons why State and local fusion 

centers are needed and needed for the foreseeable future. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, absolutely. You all make a strong 

point, and obviously modern information technology enables that 

kind of sharing and networking to occur, not only more easily but 

more instantaneously than before. So this is a new age we have entered. 

Secretary Allen, let me ask you about a particular case which 

shows both the value of information sharing, but then some of the 

privacy challenges that we have. I know the Department of Homeland Security has been working with the National Counterterrorism Center to find a way to provide access to information in the 

arrival and departure information system run by the US-VISIT 

program in a way that appropriately cross-checks that database 

against known terrorism information, but is also consistent with 

privacy laws and standards, for example, by promptly disposing of 

records where there is not a match. 

Can you talk to us about that, about some of the challenges associated with that kind of activity. Very important to do, of course, 

for our homeland security, and yet we want to be careful about the 

information we gather. How is that going? 

Mr. ALLEN. I think it is going well. Still, as Secretary Chertoff, 

were he here, would say, there is progress to be made. We are very 

good on air and sea entries into this country. We very carefully ensure that the names of individuals are checked against the TerVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:46 Apr 15, 2010 Jkt 44580 PO 00000 Frm 000032 Fmt 06633 Sfmt 06633 P:\DOCS\44580.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
29 

rorist Screening Center, which is run by the FBI, to ensure that 

they are not on any lists that would indicate any type of nefarious 

activity. And that works well. It is rare that anyone—extremely 

rare that anyone gets past that particular check. 

We also are working hard, as you know, with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, to have identity cards, and so that we will 

avoid the kind of problems that some people have because even 

though they have nothing to do with another individual of the 

same name or similar dates of birth, that is something we are 

working very hard on. The watchlist, as it has been reported in the 

press, is being refined, and where you have only the last names or 

the first names, those kinds of data are being eliminated from the 

watchlist so that we have a more streamlined and more effective 

way of tracking people as they come into this country and they are 

not held up when they are traveling. 

A problem, of course, is on the outgoing to ensure—we do not 

have at this time complete systems for exit determining who has 

left the country. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. ALLEN. And that is going to be—that is a huge challenge. It 

is going to take a lot more study and a lot of technology, and it is 

obviously going to take a lot of resources to do that. 

But I think overall—and I know that the Secretary has given 

this high attention because he was speaking about this earlier this 

morning. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Excellent. Thanks. 

Another question that is about incentives within the Department. The 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 included a section that 

gave agencies the authority to consider, ‘‘the success of an employee in appropriately sharing information,’’ and that should be 

considered when making determinations on monetary incentives 

and cash awards to Federal employees. 

I wonder if you have any report on what progress is being made 

to implement this provision to provide incentives to employees to 

effectively promote and engage in information sharing, either Ambassador or Secretary. 

Mr. ALLEN. I would just say that my intelligence organization is 

moving to pay for performance in accordance with what the Director of National Intelligence desires. That is obviously one of the criteria that will be used in evaluating employees as to their performance, and we are looking for ways to innovate, and some of the innovation that we have developed within the Department on new 

systems of connectivity—I talked about the State and local community of interest, the fact that we can link now to 43 States and the 

District of Columbia where endless talk weekly, either at a classified level or official use level, is unprecedented. And we are awarding people who are involved in this kind of innovative thinking 

within the Department. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Ambassador, do you have a response? 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Yes. In fact, one of the metrics that we have set 

up is to measure the incentives and disincentives to information 

sharing in the agencies that are members of the Information Sharing Council. There are 17 of them. 

30 

We are finding the responses from the agency are that information-sharing incentives a year ago were about 40 percent, and they 

grew to about 73 percent, according to the reports from the agencies. What we are now doing, having gotten in that data, is we are 

going back and through the summer, spring, and fall of this year 

examining exactly what those incentives are. But we know of many 

of them, and others we are looking very closely at. 

One of them, for example, is the one that Charlie Allen alluded 

to, and that is, the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell—who, by the way, is an absolutely committed and very strongly committed individual with respect to information sharing—has 

mandated that within the intelligence community that there be in 

all employee reports an aspect of the employee’s evaluation report 

which covers that employee’s performance with respect to sharing 

information. We know, for example, that the FBI has an awards 

program for sharing information, and other agencies are also coming in. 

We are also interested in reducing disincentives, that is, to reduce the number of rules and regulations that are being applied 

within an agency that restrict information flows, and obviously 

originator controlled (ORCON) information is one of those. But reducing the ORCON and other restrictions generally tends to be 

done agency by agency, and what we are looking to do is to set 

up—and we have not gotten to it yet—a set of guidelines for incentives and disincentives to information sharing that we can get a 

general agreement on throughout the interagency, and then issue 

the guidelines with instructions that agencies should implement 

the guidelines and include the incentives and disincentives in their 

programs. 

We are also working with the Office of Personnel Management, 

OPM, to see whether or not OPM can help us with these incentives 

and disincentives. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is excellent. 

Two more questions from me. One is the fusion center guidelines 

that were published jointly by DHS and DOJ suggested that there 

was a role for non-traditional sources of intelligence, from the not 

so non-traditional as the fire service to, for instance, private sector. 

And, Secretary Allen, let me start with you. I wonder if you think 

there is a value to the fire service and other non-traditional entities 

being involved in the Information Sharing Environment, and if so, 

particularly through the fusion centers, what is happening in that 

regard from your perspective. 

Mr. ALLEN. I would believe that non-traditional sources of information are important—the fire departments and public health 

service are going to be important as we look at controlling 

pandemics perhaps or getting early warning of pandemics. We are 

developing a relationship with fire departments across the country, 

with the New York City Fire Department, I have a very close relationship, and we have provided information, equipment, and classified capabilities to the New York Fire Department, as we do to the 

New York City Police Department. 

So it is going to be important that we find non-traditional information. We think that, still respecting private sector, civil rights, 

and civil liberties, non-traditional intelligence sources are going to 

31 

be vital to us in the coming months. When we had the terrible accident in New York City, the Corey Lidle, the small plane that hit 

an apartment building, it was the fire department that was there 

first to help deal with that problem. 

Information from fire departments is going to be very important 

to us in the future, and I know that probably Skip Thomas would 

support that view. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, that is good to hear. I was going to 

ask you, Skip, what your response is. 

Mr. THOMAS. I think it is very critical—— 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Are they involved with you now at all? 

Mr. THOMAS. Yes, to some degree, and what we think—the fire 

marshal’s office, which is extremely critical regarding any major investigation, plus the fire service is just a tremendous source of information out there. They deal with all kinds of hazardous material. They have access to every facility that is in any city, town, or 

county in the United States. I think they are extremely critical of 

that. Again, that trust relationship has got to be there. There are 

tremendous men and women in that service. 

It is the same thing with public health. We had a very difficult 

case in Connecticut, if you remember, the anthrax case, and the 

first people on the scene were EMS, fire service, public health officials, and we worked with their laboratories. So we have to reach 

out to everybody and to still respect the rights of everybody that 

is impacted. But the Fire Service and public health are really tremendous sources. That is why we think even in the private sector—in our State, we have an Infoguard chapter with our FBI. It 

is very strong, about 800 members in it. And we continue to meet, 

at least on a quarterly basis, and again, it is true collaboration at 

its very best. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. 

Ambassador, let me ask you the last question about the desire 

of some people, apparently, in the budget bureaucracy—in OMB to 

defund and disband your office, presumably by fiscal year 2010. I 

presume you think that is a bad idea. I hope you do. And I just 

wonder if you could give us a response to the reality of that threat 

and how you respond to it. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Well, as you know, Senator, we are funded 

through 2009, and the decision of OMB was that they were not 

going to put into their current cycle of budget figures new initiatives that were not already in there. It turned out that our office 

has been funded by the ODNI out of hide; that is to say, the ODNI 

has given us the funding without actually stipulating in the budget 

that it was to be funded. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You mean for 2009 or—— 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Before 2009—or since we started operating. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Oh, I see what you are saying, right. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. So it did not show up, and according to the 

OMB regulation, if you will, or rule for this cycle, since it is the 

end of the Administration, it did not show up and, therefore, I 

guess technically they are defunding it for fiscal year 2010. But I 

think that is something that the new Administration is going to 

have to look at when they come in. 

32 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. So did you think it was not substantive 

but procedural? 

Mr. MCNAMARA. I think it started as being a technical aspect of 

this cycle of the budget call for data, the budget data call that 

OMB was putting out. You will have to ask them. They have not 

told me. I have not been consulted on this. I have not been asked 

for my opinion, and I am prepared to talk about it on the proper 

occasion as this transition period comes upon us. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Got it. In any case, of course, it will be 

relevant for the new Administration making a recommendation for 

the 2010 fiscal year. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. Yes. I think, to give you my personal opinion, 

that the Office of the Program Manager has been an engine for 

change in this area. We have not done all the change, but we have 

been the engine driving the change. And the fact is that we have 

a 3-year implementation plan out there. As the GAO has noted, we 

have not finished with that. There is work still to be done. I have 

not heard anybody say that we have done what needs to be done 

in this area. 

I think it is up to the President and the Congress to decide on 

the future of this office. It was intended to be temporary. The original mandate was for 2 years. I think people recognized immediately the complexity of the problem made the 2-year limitation 

almost laughable. And, therefore, both the Congress and the President, jointly and separately, have extended it indefinitely. 

I think it is up to the President and the Congress, therefore— 

the Congress originally launched the idea of the Information Sharing Environment, and this Administration has supported it strongly. 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Mr. MCNAMARA. And, therefore, I am ready to discuss and put 

my 2 cents in, if you will. I plan myself personally to be leaving. 

I came out of retirement, as I said to someone a couple of weeks 

ago, I came here to build the foundation, not to complete the building. And I intend to move on. But I think the question of the office 

is important and needs to be discussed, and I think we have to 

make a distinction between the office and the functions. The office 

may be and indeed is temporary. But the functions that are being 

developed and being carried out by this office are going to be 

around for a long time. 

For example, the CUI that we have, we built the framework for 

the CUI. The President endorsed it and instructed agency heads to 

go out and implement the CUI regime. Rather than maintain the 

control of the CUI regime in our office, we passed it off to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), a permanent 

entity but an entity like us that has no bureaucratic turf to defend 

and no agency stake in it. They—NARA—will run the CUI regime 

indefinitely into the future. Somebody has got to—once we get the 

SAR program up and running fully, somebody other than the PM– 

ISE Office is going to have to take that on in order that the program be continued indefinitely into the future. And so much of 

what we are doing, the function remains even when the office disappears. 

33 

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Well, first, you are right that Congress intended the office to be temporary, and I think that is still the intention. I hope we come to a point where, as you have said, the office is not necessary. But it is very clear that we have not reached 

that point yet, so I think there will be a lot of opposition, beyond 

my own, to defunding or disbanding the office, if that is a decision 

that the next Administration makes. I also want to thank you for 

taking this role, and I think you should feel some pride yourself 

that you built a strong foundation for whoever follows to build the 

building. 

I want to thank all of you for your testimony today. To me, this 

is a very encouraging hearing, notwithstanding the constant necessity to try to get as close to perfection as we can because of the consequences of imperfection here. But there has been really a remarkable transformation in information sharing among the different levels of government and within the Federal Government. 

And I cannot thank you enough for what you have all done to bring 

that about. If I may modify a familiar phrase, your persistent vigilance is, in fact, the price of the safety and liberty of the American 

people, and I thank you for it. And this Committee will continue 

to do whatever we can to both monitor and oversee your progress, 

to pester you occasionally, but most of all, to try to support you in 

the critical work that you do. 

We are going to leave the record of the hearing open for 15 days 

if any of you want to submit any additional comments for the 

record or if any of my fellow Committee Members who could not 

be here this morning want to submit questions to you. But in the 

meantime, I cannot thank you enough, really, for what you do, not 

just in testifying today but what you do every day for our country. 

Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(35) 

A P P E N D I X 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Collins, I commend you both for convening 

today’s hearing to discuss information sharing among Federal, State, and local governments. 

The importance of sharing law enforcement and homeland security information 

became apparent after the events of September 11, 2001. In recent years, dozens 

of information sharing fusion centers have been created across the country to 

streamline intelligence gathering and share information among Federal, State, and 

local officials. 

My home State of Ohio has such a fusion center that is experiencing success with 

its information sharing efforts. The center is working with more than two dozen 

Federal, State, and local agencies as well as the private sector, and that work has 

allowed interested parties to write important and useful reports that have been used 

for a variety of purposes. In fact, Ohio’s fusion center was one of six State centers 

that were recently recognized for outstanding performance at the National Fusion 

Center Conference. 

Information sharing is allowing for important national security work like that 

being conducted at the Ohio fusion center. However, there are unresolved questions 

and areas of concern as Federal, State, and local law enforcement work to share information. 

First, the potential use of private sector data by fusion centers has led to questions about privacy and civil liberties violations. We must ensure that as law enforcement officials collect and share intelligence, they afford appropriate protections 

to personal information and appropriate deference to individuals’ right to privacy. 

At the National Fusion Center Conference, Ohio was recognized for its privacy protection policies and practices. I hope Ohio’s work and efforts can serve as a useful 

guide for other information collecting and sharing efforts. 

Second, as the Chairman knows, Senator Akaka and I have worked for years to 

bring a performance-based approach to how the government manages access to sensitive national security information. Included in these efforts are our work to lessen 

the amount of time it takes to investigate and adjudicate security clearance applications as well as our efforts to ensure that Federal agencies recognize security clearances granted by other Federal agencies. To my dismay, I understand State and 

local officials have had difficulties obtaining security clearances in a timely manner 

for individuals who need access to classified information and also problems getting 

Federal agencies to recognize security clearance granted to State and local officials 

by other Federal agencies. We have got to find a way to address these problems, 

and I hope today’s hearing discusses some potential solutions. 

Again, I want to thank the Chair and Ranking Member for calling today’s hearing, and I appreciate the witnesses spending some time with the Committee today 

to discuss this matter. Sharing information in a smart way can greatly help us secure our Nation. 

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163 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR DEVELOPING THE AUTHORIZED USE 

STANDARD 

Ensure Applicability Across the Government. Generally speaking, categories of 

authorized use should apply to all information sharing environment components, although, as discussed elsewhere in this report, the guidelines will also have to be 

tailored to the specific missions and authorities of individual departments and agencies. 

Tailor to Anticipated Uses. The authorized use standard for access to, or sharing 

of, information generally should be lower when the information is to be used for terrorism-related analysis, policymaking, or alerting functions; and higher when the 

anticipated authorized use is reasonably expected to include some action (such as 

detention, travel restrictions, or denial of a benefit) within the territory of the 

United States or against U.S. Persons. 

Treat Anonymized Information Differently. The Task Force has recommended 

the use of anonymization technology to enable information analysis without disclosure of personally-identifiable information. When combined with anonymization 

techniques, the implementation of a properly-defined and implemented authorized 

use system could facilitate use of information in ways that enhance both national 

security and the protection of civil liberties. For example, if an agency has an authorized use to obtain only a few records in a large dataset, the overall information 

could be correlated anonymously to determine the finite number of matching 

records. The receiving agency could use the matches discovered in the anonymized 

information to request specific records for sharing only when it meets a higher 

threshold of justification. This not only has obvious civil liberties benefits, but also 

would contribute to operational efficiency (i.e., less information transferred means 

less information to keep current). 

Articulate Authorized Use Guidelines. Authorized use guidelines should be developed through an appropriate public process. Legislation would set out the framework for an authorized use regime and the Executive Branch would develop specific 

implementations through a formal high-level process with as much transparency as 

possible. This process should include the participating agency’s information sharing 

environment privacy and civil liberties officer, and should be reviewed by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board prior to final approval by the President. 

Expansions to an authorized use should receive a thorough review and specific approval that is made public. 

Electronic Record of Authorized Uses and Compliance Monitoring Through 

Audits. Transmitting agencies would be required to keep an auditable record of 

each dissemination for which an articulation of an authorized use was made. The 

sharing and subsequent use of the information would be subjected to auditing and 

monitoring of compliance to ensure that information is utilized consistently with authorized uses. This auditing will be helpful to protecting civil liberties, as well as 

the security of information against insider compromise. Auditing monitoring sharing 

logs would have the added benefit of creating new intelligence and knowledge for 

analysts, policymakers, and others, as well as facilitating dispute resolution, by creating real-time, electronically-accessible records that automated software could use 

to identify common questions by different analysts. Such real-time logs will also 

play a role in helping identify unauthorized access, both for counter-intelligence purposes and to protect civil liberties. 

Minimize Transaction Costs. The system must be designed from the outset to 

record authorized uses electronically in the simplest possible way consistent with 

the sensitivity of the information requested. Sometimes it will be automatic, such 

as when an entire agency or component is authorized to receive information based 

on its mission. Other times it will require a single mouse click or a short explanation where an officer receiving, forwarding or authorizing access to information 

must affirmatively articulate an authorized use. To the extent that this process can 

be electronic—which we strongly recommend as the preferred solution wherever possible—it will minimize transaction costs to users. It will be critical, however, that, 

as the government seeks to minimize transaction costs for articulating authorized 

uses, it also creates mechanisms to ensure that authorized use determinations do 

not become either arbitrary or automatic. Officers must be required to think 

through, albeit quickly, their selections, and be able to articulate why they selected 

the authorized use they did. 

Clarify Roles and Responsibilities. It is important to clarify the roles and responsibilities of all participants in the information sharing environment. Implementation of authorized uses will help ensure that departments and agencies stay in 

their lanes, as authorized by our nation’s leadership and understood by the public. 

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