Testimony of Robert J. Jordan, FBI
Before
the United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee
on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
April 17, 2002
"Information
Sharing Initiatives"
Good
morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. My
name is Bob Jordan and I serve as the head of the FBI's Information
Sharing Task Force. With me today is Gene O'Leary, Acting
Assistant Director of the FBI's Information Resources Division
(IRD) and Ken Ritchhart, Chief of the Data/Information Management
Section of IRD. We welcome this opportunity to meet with you
today about the status of the FBI's information sharing initiatives
within the Bureau and with other government agencies for homeland
defense purposes.
The
FBI is an organization in change. Not only are we structurally
different but, in very fundamental ways, Director Mueller
has revamped our approaches to counterterrorism and prevention.
Since 9/11, we have seen massive shifts in our resource deployments.
Our missions and priorities are being redefined to better
reflect the post-9/11 realities. As an agency, we are committed
to devoting whatever resources are necessary to meet our prevention
mission and continue to sustain a dramatically enhanced worldwide
counterterrorism effort. A substantial component of this approach
is information sharing, not only at the federal level but
also within the entire law enforcement and intelligence communities.
Over the last several years, much has improved but this seemingly
simple issue is actually a complex myriad of technology, legal,
policy and cultural issues. Since the tragic events of 9/11,
this single issue, which is critical to public safety, is
receiving the sustained, high-level attention necessary to
ensure everything that can be done on every facet of the issue
is being done.
In that
regard, I am happy to say that the spirit of collaboration
and willingness to exchange data has never been stronger or
more pronounced than it is today. Many of the legal and policy
impediments that kept us from more fully exchanging information
in the past have been or are now being changed. The USA Patriot
Act (Pub. L. 107-56) has greatly improved our ability to exchange
data with the intelligence community and across law enforcement.
In addition, the Attorney General's recent directive to increase
the coordination and sharing of information between the DOJ,
the FBI, the INS, the USMS, and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking
Task Force (FTTTF) on terrorist matters and to establish secure
means of working with state and local officials are major
milestones in improving our information sharing and collaboration
efforts. Equally important, the difficult technology challenges
we all face are on the top of everyone's priority list. This
is especially so at the FBI. Under Director Mueller's leadership,
the FBI, on every front, is hard at work carrying out the
Attorney General's information-sharing directive.
Joint Terrorism Task Forces
Within the FBI, Director Mueller has personally taken on the
challenge of improving information sharing and has directed
FBI executive management to develop every means necessary
to share as much information as possible with other agencies
as well as with state and local law enforcement. Years of
experience have demonstrated that Joint Terrorism Task Forces,
JTTFs, have proven to be one of the most effective methods
of unifying federal, state and local law enforcement efforts
to prevent and investigate terrorist activity by ensuring
that all levels of law enforcement are fully benefiting from
the information possessed by each.
There
are currently 47 JTTFs. We are working expeditiously to establish
JTTFs in each of the FBI's 56 field offices. In 1996, there
were only 11 of these task forces. The creation of 21 new
JTTFs this year is resulting in an expanded level of interaction
and cooperation between FBI Special Agents and their Federal,
state and local counterparts, as well as an enhanced flow
of information between the participating law enforcement agencies.
Among
the full-time federal participants on JTTFs are the INS, the
Marshal's Service, the Secret Service, the FAA, the Customs
Service, the ATF, the State Department, the Postal Inspection
Service, the IRS, and the U.S. Park Police. State and local
agencies are heavily represented.
In addition
to the JTTFs, the Regional Terrorism Task Force (RTTF) initiative
serves as a viable means of accomplishing the benefits associated
with information sharing without establishing a full-time
JTTF. FBI Special Agents assigned to counterterrorism matters
meet with their Federal, state and local counterparts in designated
alternating locations on a semi-annual basis for common training,
discussion of investigations, and to share and discuss intelligence.
The design of this non-traditional terrorism task force provides
the necessary mechanism and structure to direct counterterrorism
resources toward localized terrorism problems within the United
States. There are currently six RTTFs: the Inland Northwest,
the South Central, the Southeastern, the Northeast Border,
the Deep South and the Southwest RTTFs.
The FBI
has a long tradition of exchanging unclassified information
with Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies on
wants and warrants, fingerprint identification, forensic information
and watch lists. The last few years have seen dramatic increases
in the exchange of specific case-related information due,
in large part, to the proliferation of task forces. Now, we
are improving our sharing of classified information again
through such mechanisms as the JTTFs.
Terrorism
Watch List
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, FBI
Headquarters compiled what became known as the "Project
Lookout Watch List." The project was successful in identifying
a number of individuals potentially connected to the PENTTBOM
investigation. Due to the success of this effort and in recognition
of the need to maintain a centralized repository of names
of investigative interest related to terrorism investigations,
Director Mueller instructed the establishment of a permanent
Terrorism Watch List (TWL) to serve as the FBI's single, integrated
listing of individuals of investigative interest that will
be accessible throughout the law enforcement and intelligence
communities. We anticipate the full implementation of the
TWL within the next 60 to 90 days, replacing the stop-gap
system now resident in NCIC. The TWL will consist of a compendium
of names based on information identified through FBI and JTTF
investigations, US Intelligence Community reporting, and Department
of Defense intelligence gathering, as well as information
provided by cooperating foreign governments.
The
TWL will be designed to assist both the intelligence and the
law enforcement communities in their investigations of terrorist
groups/individuals and, equally important, to alert officers
or agents should a person of interest in a terrorism matter
be encountered by another agency. TWL staff will coordinate
with the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
Division to ensure the utilization of appropriate NCIC files.
This capability will provide all state and local law enforcement
agencies ready access to this information. Information in
the TWL will also be shared with US Government agencies that
operate comparable tracking systems. As I describe these new
databases and our plans for sharing them, please remember
that the FBI will by complying with the Privacy Act and the
detailed regulations that govern our law enforcement, counterterrorism,
and counterintelligence activities, which ensures proper protection
for the rights of Americans in the use of the databases.
The
TWL will be divided into three distinct categories. The first
category will include the names of individuals for whom formal
criminal charges or indictments have been issued (e.g., the
22 individuals on the Most Wanted Terrorist list). The second
category will include the names of individuals of investigative
interest to the FBI. The third category of the TWL will include
the names of individuals provided by the Intelligence Community
and cooperating foreign governments.
Other
FBI Initiatives
We have recently developed an FBI-wide and DOJ-wide capability
to electronically share case information. Our Integrated Intelligence
Information Application (IIIA) database is another example
of major improvements in information sharing. It uses information
derived from many different sources including the Department
of State and INS. IIIA provides analytical support for Counterintelligence
and Counterterrorism programs. It is a real-time collection
system that houses over 33 million records. In the aftermath
of 9/11 and PENTTBOM, IIIA has been asked to provide electronic
search support to units within the FBI as well as to the critical
FTTTF. To satisfy these requests, multiple programs have been
written to standardize incoming data arriving in differing
formats and to package the responses to accommodate the requesters'
needs.
Director
Mueller has undertaken several other initiatives that either
directly or indirectly enhance the FBI's information sharing
capacity. All of these efforts are designed around the recognition
that post-9/11, the FBI has adopted both a new focus and priorities
that recognize the substantial investment being made in prevention.
A few examples include:
Director
Mueller has named Louis Quijas, currently Chief of Police
of High Point, North Carolina, to be FBI Assistant Director
for Law Enforcement Coordination. Chief Quijas has as his
single mission fully exploiting state and local law enforcement
support through enhanced information sharing and ensuring
that state and local law enforcement have a strong voice within
the FBI as we work on terrorism, prevention and major investigations.
An Office
of Intelligence is now part of the FBI's organizational structure.
This office has as part of its mission not only to ensure
the vigorous and fluid flow of information within the FBI
but also to ensure that intelligence goes elsewhere within
the law enforcement and intelligence communities in every
instance when it is appropriate to do so.
The
FBI has undertaken a major recruiting and hiring initiative
to bring into the FBI private sector IT experts who can greatly
assist in designing and managing the sizable IT projects recently
funded by Congress. These projects, such as Trilogy, are vital
to any robust information sharing program.
A Records
Management Division has been established, headed by an outside
records expert, to put in place the "information management"
policies and mechanisms critical to effective sharing programs.
The FBI is detailing personnel to other agencies, and vice
versa, to ensure that information both is both shared and
understood within both agencies. These efforts are critical
to programs like the National Infrastructure Protection Center
(NIPC), the Counterterrorism Center at CIA, and others.
Information
Security
One equity we must balance with our desire to share information
as freely as possible is the need for the security of information.
As recently detailed in Judge William Webster's report, we
must keep in mind that we are keepers of information that
is highly classified and controlled by "need to know"
principles. Access to highly confidential information will
be in accordance with the FBI's broad, new security policies.
Access control mechanisms, such as identification and authentication
will provide accountability for those individuals having a
need to know restricted information. In addition, audits of
this access will be routinely conducted. The lives of agents,
informants and innocent victims often rest upon the safe keeping
of their information. The need for information security must
be balanced by the driving need of the criminal investigator
to be able to follow any and all avenues in an investigation.
The
Webster Commission report accurately points out that the FBI's
information technology (IT) recapitalization effort, Trilogy,
includes funding for only the foundational elements of Information
Assurance (IA). At rollout, Trilogy will provide more security
than the FBI's current IT backbone. The goal, however, is
to develop the IA Program to be on par with other world-class
information systems security efforts. Significant coordination
has taken place between the Trilogy Program and personnel
assigned to the IA Program to ensure that the Trilogy security
architecture will support the utilization of the future IA
technologies we plan to employ. So, while Trilogy and related
applications will give the FBI a vastly increased capability
to use, analyze, exploit and share information collected in
investigations, it will be designed and deployed in a manner
that addresses the shortcomings apparent in the Hanssen matter.
Challenges
Today, information sharing is technologically feasible. Advances
in information technology have made it possible to link the
information systems of agencies that are operating with different
hardware and software. The improvements in information sharing
that are at the heart of these initiatives, however, require
that agencies participating in integration initiatives come
together and agree upon a governance structure to manage decision-making
in an integrated environment. Federal, State and Local law
enforcement must address the considerable challenge of developing
a formalized organizational framework within which participating
agencies will share responsibility for making and executing
overarching decisions on such issues as budgeting, hardware
and software purchases, and the development of policies, procedures,
and protocols that effect the operational integrity of the
information sharing system. Our systems were originally designed
to comply with a complex set of regulations restricting what
can and cannot be shared amongst Federal, State and local
agencies. We are committed to redesigning our systems and
making whatever changes are necessary to ensure the effective
and efficient exchange of information within the law enforcement
community.
At the
same time, we still need to further improve our ability to
share information between our own applications and our own
multitude of databases. Our Data Warehousing project will
provide us with the capability to finally combine information
from all our applications into a coherent whole and provide
advanced data mining, analytical and visualization tools.
We are also working with the Office of Homeland Security on
improving horizontal information sharing, developing common
data standards, and improving collaboration capabilities.
The FBI's
future ability to deter and prevent crimes requires the use
of current and relevant IT. We have several critical initiatives
underway to upgrade the FBI IT infrastructure and investigative
applications such as the Trilogy Program; Data Warehousing
& Data Mining; our Collaboration Initiative; and our Information
Assurance initiative. Funding these programs is essential
to provide our investigators and analysts with improved IT
resources and tools to support criminal and national security
investigations, enabling improved and more expeditious data
sharing and active collaboration.
That
concludes my prepared remarks, Mr. Chairman. I will be happy
to respond to any questions you may have.
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