DHS Covers Up Failures of U.S. Counterterrorism Centers
A huge post-9/11 counterterrorism program that’s received hundreds of millions of dollars has failed miserably to provide any useful intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has covered up the mess from both Congress and the public.
Scathing details of the wasteful program were uncovered in the course of a two-year bipartisan investigation by a key U.S. Senate oversight committee. This week the panel released a 141-page report blasting one of the country’s largest domestic counterterrorism programs, fusion centers that are supposed to share terrorism-related information between state, local and federal officials.
Nine years and more than $300 million later, the national centers have failed to provide any valuable information, according to investigators. Instead they have forwarded “intelligence of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”
A review of more than a year of fusion center reports nationwide determined that they were irrelevant, useless or inappropriate. None uncovered any terrorist threats nor did they contribute to the disruption of an active terrorist plot, the report says. In fact, DHS officials acknowledged that the information produced by the fusion centers was “predominantly useless.” One branch chief actually said “a bunch of crap is coming through.”
Harold
In The Name of Fighting Terrorism, Fusion Centers Bypass Fourth Amendment To Spy on Americans.
Federal and State Fusion Centers—perhaps by design laid the groundwork for Government agencies to bypass U.S. Citizens’ Fourth Amendment Protections to invade the privacy of every American. Since 9/11 federal government has established across the nation approximately 77 Fusion Centers. The Fusion Centers were originally established to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence among different state, local and federal law enforcement agencies. But have since taken a different path with encouragement of the federal government to pursue all crimes and hazards. Fusion Centers now pursue for analysis not just criminal and terrorist information, but any information that can be derived from police, public records and private sector data about Americans. Fusion Centers increasingly involve components of the U.S. Military in addition to other government entities to spy on U.S. Citizens. Fusion centers heavily rely on local and neighborhood informants often not reliable for information that is shared with Local, State, and Federal Police Agencies.
More recently the Department of Homeland Security began sharing more classified Military information with local Fusion Centers, perhaps a mistake. Historically not all local police keep secrets—disclosing confidential police information to neighbors and friends; in cop bars, sometimes to anyone that will listen. Some Fusion Centers appear to operate more independently than others and take advantage of ambiguous lines of authority to manipulate differences in federal, state and local laws to maximize information collection. Increasingly more (private security corporations and their operatives) are working with law enforcement and Fusion Centers—exchanging information about Americans. Some private sector security corporations appear merged with police. Because Fusion Centers and law enforcement exchange information with select U.S. private sector companies: that has enabled fusion centers to escape accountability and public oversight. That happened in Germany during the 1930’s when Hitler’s SS and private Gestapo worked with German corporations, local and State Police to target often-lawful German Citizens and others for arrest, extortion and asset forfeiture. Before Hitler’s Gestapo was consolidated with the German Government in 1934 his Gestapo arrested Citizens and confiscated their private property with no legal authority. In 1934 the Gestapo was placed under SS leader Heinrich Himmler Chief of German Police. In 1939 all German Police agencies were put under the control of the “Reich Main Security Office” the equivalent of U.S. Homeland Security.
While the press on occasion has discussed Fusion Centers invading privacy of Citizens, the media has missed Fusion Centers’ involvement in criminal and civil asset forfeitures. It was problematic law enforcement and quasi private government contractors would gain wider access to Fusion Center data to secure evidence to arrest Americans and civilly forfeit their homes, inheritances and businesses under Title 18USC, The USA Patriot Act and other laws to keep part of the assets. Considering there are more than 400 laws and violations many which corporations unknowingly break that can make their property/assets subject to Government Civil Asset Forfeiture, it is foreseeable merging private security corporations with government police operations like Nazi Germany could result in government and quasi private security corporations seizing ownership of several large corporations; blackmailing corporations to support the will of politicians’ or dictator should that be the case.