Homeland Security to boost staffing at 'fusion centers'

A top Homeland Security Department official told the U.S. Conference of Mayors Friday that DHS agents are critical to the success of the "fusion centers" the department is setting up nationwide to coordinate with local law enforcement and public health workers.

"Our primary contribution is the people, the DHS officers who are there with you every day, side by side, going to every meeting with you," said Chet Lunner, deputy assistant DHS Secretary for intelligence and analysis. "They're the link between your folks and DHS and can be the link between you and DHS."

Currently, there are 22 DHS agents assigned to 20 fusion centers, Lunner said, and the department expects to add 13 more this year. Homeland Security planned to include agents from component agencies to meet the specific needs of different areas, he added.

The legislation that created DHS gave the department "encouragement to get more of our components in, so if you have Coast Guard in your area, you'll see more of those components rather than just a single person, coming in," he said.

DHS wanted to make the best assignments and would negotiate with human resources managers to assign personnel to the fusion centers, according to Lunner.

"As the fusion centers stand up, we'll staff them," he said. "We're confined by the human resources bureaucracy of the federal government, among other things. We want to make sure we have the right people in these assignments as well."

Agents assigned to fusion centers have to communicate intelligence produced on a national level and help coordinate local information and responses, in addition to training local law enforcement and public health personnel, so they must be able to adapt to the needs of the community to which they are assigned, Lunner noted.

"We tell them that we work for the person who runs the Florida or California or New York fusion center, so we're increasingly tuning the information to those needs," he said.

That attention to local needs is critical to Homeland Security's mission, Lunner added.

"Like all politics, all terrorism is local," Lunner said. "This is not a federal issue. This is a national issue. [And] this is not a lecture, it's a dialogue."