Despite efforts since 9/11 to improve the gathering and analysis of government and military intelligence, getting agencies to pool information “is still a battle,” said Kevin R. Brock, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
“A lot of entities are reluctant to share information,” Brock told a recent NDIA conference. “They want to protect sensitive sources ... But I tell them, ‘Bring me an example of when sharing has hurt your case.’ So far, nobody has been able to do that.”
President Bush established the center in 2004, as one of the intelligence reform steps that was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. It reports to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who coordinates the work of the CIA, FBI, Defense Department intelligence agencies and parts of the Department of Homeland Security. In November 2005, Negroponte ordered the center to manage all counterterrorism missions for the entire U.S. intelligence community.
The center does not direct operations or collect intelligence, Brock explained. Instead, it analyzes and coordinates all intelligence concerning international terrorism. “We have 29 different networks coming into the center,” Brock said.
One of the center’s jobs is to maintain a terrorist watch list, Brock said. “We’ve identified about 350,000 names that we want to know more about. After you throw out all of the aliases, that’s about 250,000 individuals.”
Those names are made available to local law enforcement. “When a name pops up — somebody is stopped for a traffic violation, for example — the local police call us, and we talk about what to do. Should the person be arrested? Or should the police just gather whatever information they can and send him on his merry way? Law enforcement has responded beautifully to this process.”
A serious drawback is the sheer volume of information coming into the center. Every month, the center reviews a million pages of data. “We are drowning in a sea of information,” Brock said. “We do not have enough human beings to handle all of the information ...
“About 95 percent of the reports aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but it’s the other 5 percent you have to pay attention to.”
Brock recalled an incident that occurred during his previous assignment as the FBI’s assistant director for intelligence. “The FBI discovered it had, in its voluminous files, a memo from an agent that seemed to have information about a possible 9/11 hijacker. That memo never went anywhere. I remember saying to the FBI director, ‘we have a problem.’”
Later this month, the center is scheduled to present a plan that outlines how it intends to resolve the issue. The plan, Brock said, “is breathtaking, badly needed and long overdue.”