House chair says DHS should lead intelligence analysis

The Homeland Security Department should ultimately take responsibility for analyzing intelligence related to domestic terrorism, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Friday.

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said the fusion and analysis of intelligence by the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center should migrate to the DHS Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate when the latter organization matures.

"Personally, I have been willing to countenance TTIC as an interim step, but as we build [IAIP], I think we ought to look forward to an endgame where the secretary of Homeland Security is ultimately responsible for that effort," Cox said during the McGraw-Hill Companies Homeland Security Summit in Washington.

Cox said allowing TTIC to remain the main federal agency doing "competitive analysis" would impede IAIP's ability to develop a data-fusion capability.

"There is in fact … a great deal of 'ad hocracy' in the creation of new agencies and centers," Cox said. "We're creating more possibilities for too many people who don't talk to each other."

According to Cox, DHS is charged by law with being both the integrator and disseminator of information to the public and the law enforcement community on terrorist threats.

Cox told Government Executive that he is convinced problems with intelligence coordination will not occur again between DHS and the Justice Department. Late last month, the lawmaker criticized a press conference by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller on threat information.

During the press conference, Ashcroft said "Credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda plans to attempt an attack on the United States in the next few months." DHS Secretary Tom Ridge was not at the press conference, causing Cox and others to question if there was a lack of coordination among agencies with homeland security responsibilities.

"It was simply that the news conference, as conducted, went beyond what everybody thought was going to be its purpose … and straight into what appeared to be a national warning," Cox said Friday.

"That was more than a protocol breach because in addition to straying into DHS' mission, there was at least the appearance of a substance difference between the DHS message of the morning and the DoJ message of the afternoon," he said.