Trying to Connect the Dots
Inside the government's new Terrorism Threat Integration Center
In a cluttered cubicle on the fourth floor of the CIA's Original Headquarters Building, a young FBI analyst's desk was piled high with dispatches from clandestine operatives and photographs of underwater explosives. Her immediate task was to follow up a tip by scouring highly classified intelligence databases for clues to how terrorists might attack American maritime targets. In this instance, the 28-year-old rookie had another valuable resource close at hand: counterterrorism specialists from a variety of government agencies including the CIA, the FBI, even the U.S. Coast Guard. With their input, she drafted a classified threat analysis. Soon afterward, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued detailed bulletins warning local authorities that terrorists might use scuba diving gear to carry out attacks and outlining possible tip-offs, such as purchases of certain specialized diving equipment by people lacking appropriate training.
The scuba alerts show how the government's new Terrorist Threat Integration Center is bringing together disparate, often isolated elements of the nation's counterterrorism effort. A direct response to the intelligence failures exposed by 9/11, TTIC (pronounced "tee-tick") connects the worlds of law enforcement and intelligence. U.S. News got an exclusive look inside the four-month-old, top-secret nerve center in its temporary home at the CIA. "We're supposed to be the one-stop shopping in the U.S. government for the terrorism threat," says TTIC's director, John Brennan, a veteran CIA official who reports directly to CIA Director George Tenet. "We're also supposed to know where the gaps are."
Disconnected. Nobody pretends the job is going to be easy. Simply collecting all the intelligence from around the government is a massive task. Each of the major departments involved with TTIC--including the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency--has its own separate and, in some cases, antiquated system for storing classified intelligence. A glance under Brennan's desk highlights the problem: five different computers tied into systems unable to talk to one another.
TTIC must also break down cultural barriers between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. "We are allowing a more robust flow of information between two worlds that we intentionally kept separate," NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, tells U.S. News. Inside TTIC, this begins with the open-bullpen layout of the office. The cubicles are grouped in clusters, commingling people from different agencies in a kind of forced integration. "Within the walls of TTIC, there is a free flow of information," says the center's deputy director, James Bernazzani, the top FBI official there.
On any given morning, analysts from as many as a dozen different agencies gather around an oval table in the center of the office to pull together the Threat Matrix, a daily 15-to-20-page compendium of the latest intelligence on specific threats and plots against the United States. The center's analysts marvel that they are discovering expanded sources of information, such as reporting from local law enforcement agencies. "Before, you could say the cooperation was virtual," says one senior TTIC analyst. "Now it's face to face."
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