Illustrating his strong interest in TTIC, Bush personally engaged in the planning process on two separate occasions.205 From the White House point of view, TTIC was the best compromise the CIA and FBI could expect amid growing public and legislative pressure for reform. While advocates of the plan argued that the TTIC initiative was a strong signal of the president’s support of the CIA and FBI, the established agencies did not quite see it that way.206 The CIA was opposed to the idea because it would take away from its responsibilities as lead agency for threat analysis and assessment; the FBI too would have preferred to be in charge of the process. From an FBI standpoint, the new arrangement, created and later managed under CIA leadership, was a clear setback for the bureau.207 The FBI—which until then had held sole responsibility for domestic intelligence and counterterrorism—would have to start sharing this responsibility with a range of other agencies.
At the same time, the agencies most affected by the creation of TTIC recognized they had a common interest in cutting their losses.208 Reflecting the experimental nature of the plan, they were tasked with building something new that would create synergies between their diverse cultures while leaving all the existing structures intact; TTIC had to be designed so it would not affect their respective future analysis or collection capacities. TTIC would be made up of representatives detailed from their respective agencies who would bring their own funding with them. The center would not have any collection authority and not be able to hire any people. Established under CIA leadership and housed at CIA headquarters, TTIC would rely on the agency to furnish it with organizational capabilities, from computer systems to analysis.209 As it was designed, then, the new venture depended on the goodwill and collaboration of the very agencies whose failure to work together provided the reason for TTIC in the first place.
The loose nature of the TTIC organization was also crucial because it meant legislation could be avoided. After the struggle over the DHS legislation, the president had made it clear that he did not want to go back to Congress.210 Instead, the White House wanted to use the lowest level of authority for implementing the changes because it would allow the most executive flexibility. The State of the Union address represented an opportune venue for announcing the creation of TTIC while also establishing a surrogate mandate. All in all, TTIC offered an opportunity for a solution to a problem that the administration could truly own.
On May 1, 2003, TTIC started operating under former CIA Deputy Executive Director John Brennan. Two months later, the joint venture had built a cadre of 100 analysts and liaison officials, one-third of its final capacity. Very quickly it became clear that TTIC would either carry out many of the functions intended for DHS or overlap with DHS’s IAIP in the area of threat-related analysis. TTIC was designed as the new focal point for terrorist threat analysis. As an interagency joint venture, it was supposed to ensure “rapid and unfettered sharing of relevant information across departmental lines … collaps[ing] bureaucratic barriers and clos[ing] inter-jurisdictional seams.”211 TTIC would also be responsible for compiling daily all-source terrorist threat assessments for the president and other members of the senior leadership—for the first time, the president would be able to rely on a single stream of intelligence on terrorism.
Lawmakers viewed the decision to create TTIC outside DHS as a violation of the new department’s statutory mandate. From a legislative point of view, DHS was created in part as an “intelligence fusion center” with the core responsibility of consolidating, analyzing and acting on all terrorist-related threat information.212 Placing the information fusion center outside the department seemed to violate a core purpose for creating it in the first place.213 Members of Congress also worried that the center had created an accountability vacuum. While TTIC as a whole reported to the CIA director, its various components continued to report to their respective agencies and departments. Asked about who would take responsibility “when some bit of intelligence is not properly viewed or vetted for what it is and something bad happens as a result,” TTIC Director John Brennan could only suggest that it would be “very case-specific.”214 Some lawmakers also feared that the work of the new center could violate the law that prohibits the CIA from law enforcement or internal security functions, since TTIC would also be responsible for the analysis of domestically collected information—a concern magnified by TTIC’s organizational affiliation with and physical proximity to the CIA.215
In a letter to the CIA, FBI, DHS, and TTIC heads, Senators Susan Collins (R-Me.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) raised questions pertaining to TTIC’s responsibilities and those of other federal intelligence collection divisions, especially the IAIP Directorate of the DHS.216 In response, representatives of DHS and TTIC stressed that DHS is solely responsible for information related to domestic counterterrorism, while TTIC’s “terrorism analytic mission is global in nature.”217 This distinction was highlighted in a joint response letter by the FBI, CIA, DHS, and TTIC heads. If information has no link to international terrorism, the responsibility is divided between FBI and DHS. And while the FBI has primary responsibility with regard to analysis of such information, IAIP is charged with “matching the assessment of the risk posed by identified threats and terrorist capabilities to our Nation’s vulnerabilities.” In addition, DHS “also has significant responsibilities with regard to … its critical infrastructure protection, customs, immigration, and other statutory responsibilities.”
In September 2003, President Bush further announced the creation of a FBI-run Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) by means of presidential directive. TSC would be responsible for compiling a master database with information on all “known and suspected” terrorists.218 Bearing close resemblance to the TTIC concept, the joint venture included the DOJ, DCI, DOS, and DHS and was designed to resolve the “watch list” dilemma. In a highly publicized report, the General Accounting Office determined in April 2003 that, almost two years after 9/11, the U.S. government still relied on twelve different terrorist “watch lists” run by nine different federal agencies, which were not designed for interagency exchange and held different information.219 The new TSC would consolidate data from these twelve separate “watch lists” and for the first time make the data available across agency lines, allowing more efficient and comprehensive background checks. According to Attorney General Ashcroft, “the Terrorist Screening Center will provide ‘one-stop shopping’ so that every federal anti-terrorist screener is working off the same page—whether it’s an airport screener, an embassy official issuing visas overseas, or an FBI agent on the street.”220 Due to its long-time expertise in running nationwide criminal databases, the FBI was the natural candidate to lead this venture.221 According to some observers, the arrangement also served another purpose: after delegating TTIC authority to the CIA, the other bureaucratic monster needed to be fed as well.222 In any event, by June 2005, the Terrorist Screening Center had assembled a single, consolidated watch list that could be accessed with the help of TSC’s 24-hour call center.
Some DHS officials pointed out that IAIP was never intended to be similar to or in competition with TTIC or TSC. Instead, it was designed to fulfill a unique mission of building new vertical information sharing structures between the local, state, and federal levels of government and facilitate information flows in both directions.223 However, critics soon questioned the uniqueness of this mission. Starting in 2004, for example, state and local governments began pooling their counterterror intelligence and policing capacities at so-called fusion centers. By summer 2007, more than fifty-eight state and local centers, as well as six regional centers, had been or were being created nationwide.224 While a key reason for building the centers in the first place was to make up for insufficient federal information-sharing mechanisms, it remained doubtful in how far the state-run centers could improve two-way vertical information flows between federal, state, and local governments. In the meantime, the FBI proceeded to boost its own state presence by effectively tripling the number of FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces