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."
With just over 100 analysts, TTIC is still growing. The decor is minimalist: on one wall, a movie poster for The Matrix; on another, a life-size firing-range target of Osama bin Laden riddled with bullet holes. Displayed on one desk is a copy of the tabloid Weekly World News (headline: Saddam and Osama in love). About half the analysts come from the CIA. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security each supply roughly 20. The NSA sent over its most senior terrorism analyst along with several other experts. TTIC is set to move next May into a new home outside the CIA that will house some 300 analysts, along with most of the personnel from the CIA's and FBI's counterterrorism centers.
TTIC's growth, though, is meeting some resistance. "A lot of folks in these agencies are still working in very parochial ways," says a counterterrorism official. The first big battle erupted after TTIC took over the job of compiling the Threat Matrix. Some officials thought the center should also take responsibility for the President's Daily Brief, the CIA's report to President Bush on the latest intelligence. But the CIA objected. The compromise was to create an additional document, the President's Terrorist Threat Report (pronounced "putter"), delivered six days a week to the president and his top national security aides. This report gives the president "one strand of information analysis coming from all these agencies," says Brennan. "The effort here is to integrate them before the Oval Office."
Initial reviews are positive. "I read their product every day," says NSA Director Hayden. "It's to the point and focused, and in addition to saying what the issue is, there is a section on what we've done about it."
Skeptics. TTIC is also producing regular spot analyses, such as the one on scuba divers. Its work helped lead to the heightened threat warning around July 4, an advisory that terrorists might use stuffed animals to hide bombs, and a decision to suspend the Transit Without Visa program. The latter came about after TTIC received intelligence suggesting that terrorists were looking for ways to enter the country without obtaining visas. At TTIC, representatives from the Transportation Security Administration and the Customs Bureau pointed out a potential vulnerability through a visa-process exemption for air travelers on their way to a third country. Says Michael Dunlavey, the top Homeland Security official at the center, "TTIC brought that all together, and I don't think this might have happened before."
TTIC also maintains lists of known and suspected terrorists, and counterterrorism officials tell U.S. News that the White House is preparing to give TTIC the job of maintaining and standardizing the central database that will be used to feed the government watch lists.
Skeptics, however, say that TTIC should be considered a temporary measure. "TTIC is not a replacement for the intelligence capability that Congress has mandated for the Department of Homeland Security," says Rep. Christopher Cox, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. Cox and others worry that the government simply doesn't have enough well-trained terrorism analysts. An FBI internal study in January 2002 found that 66 percent of the FBI's 1,200 "intelligence research specialists," or analysts, were unqualified.
For now, Brennan is more worried about allaying fears that the CIA is veering into spying on Americans. "We don't operate or collect," he says. The CIA's Counterterrorist Center will continue to run its own clandestine operations, while the FBI's Counterterrorism Division will conduct specific investigations. Laws restrict access to certain types of intelligence and law enforcement information, even inside TTIC. "We're doing what every American wants us to do," says Brennan. "We want to make sure we are doing everything we can to put the pieces together."
This story appears in the September 15, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.