Senators ask who's in charge of homeland intelligence

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked Thursday for clarification about which federal agency is ultimately responsible for the analysis of foreign and domestic intelligence on threats to the United States and whether the lines of authority are clear.

Two prominent members of the committee said they have not been able to get a definitive explanation about whether the Homeland Security Department, the Defense Department or the CIA has chief responsibility for integrating and disseminating intelligence information on threats to the country. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said administration officials have yet to answer in a "satisfactory manner" two letters sent last year that questioned which agency was responsible for coordinating intelligence.

"I am told that the reason we haven't received an answer to our letters is that DHS, DoD and CIA can't agree on an answer, which implies to me that the lines of authority are not clear and that the answer is still being devised," Collins said during a hearing on Defense's role in homeland security.

Committee ranking member Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked whether chief responsibility rests with the CIA's counterterrorism center or the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which was created almost a year ago by combining elements of DHS, Defense, the FBI and the CIA.

"You've got to focus responsibility for making the ultimate call that then will go up to a decision-maker," Levin said. "We can't afford to have any cracks or uncertainty here between the intelligence analysis folks."

Levin asked Paul McHale, Defense assistant secretary for homeland defense, to provide the committee a written clarification to address "the concerns that many people have had about any confusion or overlap in this area."

McHale initially said he believed TTIC had chief responsibility for intelligence fusion. "Clearly, TTIC working closely with the FBI and CIA takes the overarching lead for the fusion of all [intelligence] sources, overseas and domestic," he said.

When pressed by Collins, however, McHale said he was not qualified to say which agency had official legal responsibly for intelligence fusion. According to McHale, his office viewed TTIC as the "single source of fused information drawn from all sources, civilian and military, domestic and international."

"I can tell you as a practical matter each and every day, in a peacetime environment as well as a crisis environment, the interface that we have with the [intelligence] community is through TTIC," McHale said.

McHale said he would confer with Stephen Cambone, Defense assistant secretary of for intelligence, in order to provide a written response to the committee.