The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will convene on January 9th. The topic of this committee session will be to ensure the full implementation of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations.

The Commission, convened by an Act of Congress in late 2002, issued a public release of its full report on July 22, 2004. This report offered both findings and recommendations to prevent future attacks. In December of that same year, these recommendations were enacted into law along with a myriad of other reforms included within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act [of 2004], or IRTPA.

The 9/11 Commission issued five general recommendations including the unification of strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Center; unifying the intelligence community with a new National Intelligence Director; unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information-sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries; unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and accountability; and strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders.

The short-lived Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), created in 2003, was subsequently dismantled and reconstructed under the new and improved alias of National Counter-Terrorist Center, or NTCT.

In addition, the Office of Director of National Intelligence was created, reshaping those duties once held by the Director of Central Intelligence. In April 2005, John Negroponte became the inaugural Director of National Intelligence.

The DNI then set up a complex paradigm of positions ranging from Civil Liberties Protection Officer to the “Iran Mission Manager”. It was a measure to release our intelligence gathering community from the outdated and limiting modus operandi of the Cold War era.

In September 2006, the NCTC released a five-year report outlining both progress since 9/11 and challenges that lay ahead. The NCTC offered a listing of issues that will require attention over the upcoming year. These issues are as follows:

Privacy issues include some information vital to the war on terror is intermixed with information about US persons. Ways to use such data while protecting privacy and civil liberties must be identified.

Access issues include decisions regarding access to information are largely controlled by collectors, thereby creating an inherent tension with analytic elements that need to review information.

Sources and methods of data collection and the collectors’ ability to obtain vital data must be protected as ways are sought to ensure that intelligence is available to those who need it.

Dissemination of operationally sensitive information must be balanced against the potential adverse impact on intelligence/law enforcement operations.

US law and policy often are not the only factors governing the ability to share information. Key allies may dictate the extent to which their information may be shared. Violating such guidance could result in the loss of future access to information.

The act of dissemination lends credibility to information and can force operators to respond to very low credibility information. When information meets dissemination criteria, it should include a clear, standardized credibility assessment.

Broad information sharing is a double-edged sword. Consumers of information find themselves quickly overwhelmed by the vast quantity of information. Obtaining tools to search, analyze, and process results is critical.

Methods for ensuring that homeland security and terrorism information is shared among non-Federal government entities and the Federal government remain inadequate. The Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment is working to facilitate two-way information flow.

Acquiring data that contains terrorism information is often a legally and bureaucratically cumbersome process. Often Secretary-level government officials must approve the data transfer; generally only after many layers of review.

When the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs convenes on January 9th, these issues will assuredly make their way to the table and will be used as fodder to extend their appropriation and seemingly carte blanche budget. Perhaps we will one day discover the identity of the tenth member of the Fellows grant award. It is beginning to smell like Cold War politics as everything old becomes new again.

Image Courtesy of DayLife - US President George W. Bush (R) shakes hands with Alaskan Republican Senator Ted Stevens after signing the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, in this August 3, 2007 file photo in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC.The US Justice Department asked a federal court on April 1, 2009 to "set aside the verdict and dismiss the indictment" in the corruption case against former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, court documents show. Stevens, 85, was convicted in October on seven counts of lying on mandatory financial disclosure forms. - Getty Images

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