[Ppnews] Monitoring America

Political Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Mon Dec 20 12:23:31 EST 2010


Monitoring America

Dana Priest and William Arkin
Monday, December 20, 2010; 1:40 AM
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/?wpisrc=nl_excl>http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/monitoring-america/?wpisrc=nl_excl

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, 
the United States is assembling a vast domestic 
intelligence apparatus to collect information 
about Americans, using the FBI, local police, 
state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most 
technologically sophisticated in the nation's 
history, collects, stores and analyzes 
information about thousands of U.S. citizens and 
residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and 
local law enforcement agency in the country feed 
information to Washington to buttress the work of 
the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name 
two - are well acquainted with such domestic 
security measures. But for the United States, the 
sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of 
a larger Top Secret America created since the 
attacks. In July, The Washington Post described 
an alternative geography of the United States, 
one that has grown so large, unwieldy and 
secretive that no one knows how much money it 
costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.

Today's story, along with related material on The 
Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America 
plays out at the local level. It describes a web 
of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, 
each with its own counterterrorism 
responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 
of these organizations have been created since 
the 2001 attacks or became involved in 
counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11.

The months-long investigation, based on nearly 
100 interviews and 1,000 documents, found that:

* Technologies and techniques honed for use on 
the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have 
migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.

* The FBI is building a database with the names 
and certain personal information, such as 
employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens 
and residents whom a local police officer or a 
fellow citizen believed to be acting 
suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing 
number of local law enforcement and military 
criminal investigators, increasing concerns that 
it could somehow end up in the public domain.

* Seeking to learn more about Islam and 
terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have 
hired as trainers self-described experts whose 
extremist views on Islam and terrorism are 
considered inaccurate and counterproductive by 
the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies.

* The Department of Homeland Security sends its 
state and local partners intelligence reports 
with little meaningful guidance, and state 
reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.



Counterterrorism on Main Street
In cities across Tennessee and across the nation 
local agencies are using sophisticated equipment 
and techniques to keep an eye out for terrorist 
threats -- and to watch Americans in the process. Launch Gallery »

The need to identify U.S.-born or naturalized 
citizens who are planning violent attacks is more 
urgent than ever, U.S. intelligence officials 
say. This month's FBI sting operation involving a 
Baltimore construction worker who allegedly 
planned to bomb a Maryland military recruiting 
station is the latest example. It followed a 
similar arrest of a Somali-born naturalized U.S. 
citizen allegedly seeking to detonate a bomb near 
a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, 
Ore. There have been nearly two dozen other cases just this year.

"The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists 
abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just 
that - the old view," Homeland Security Secretary 
Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.

The Obama administration heralds this local 
approach as a much-needed evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism.


Top Secret America is a project two years in the 
making that describes the huge security buildup 
in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, 
attacks. Today’s story is about those efforts at 
the local level, including law enforcement and 
homeland security agencies in every state and 
thousands of communities. View previous stories, 
explore relationships between government 
organizations and the types of work being done, 
and view top-secret geography on an interactive map.

However, just as at the federal level, the 
effectiveness of these programs, as well as their 
cost, is difficult to determine. The Department 
of Homeland Security, for example, does not know 
how much money it spends each year on what are 
known as state fusion centers, which bring 
together and analyze information from various agencies within a state.

The total cost of the localized system is also 
hard to gauge. The DHS has given $31 billion in 
grants since 2003 to state and local governments 
for homeland security and to improve their 
ability to find and protect against terrorists, 
including $3.8 billion in 2010. At least four 
other federal departments also contribute to 
local efforts. But the bulk of the spending every 
year comes from state and local budgets that are 
too disparately recorded to aggregate into an overall total.


The Post findings paint a picture of a country at 
a crossroads, where long-standing privacy 
principles are under challenge by these new efforts to keep the nation safe.

The public face of this pivotal effort is 
Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona, which 
years ago built one of the strongest state 
intelligence organizations outside of New York to 
try to stop illegal immigration and drug importation.

Napolitano has taken her "See Something, Say 
Something" campaign far beyond the traffic signs 
that ask drivers coming into the nation's capital 
for "Terror Tips" and to "Report Suspicious Activity."

She recently enlisted the help of Wal-Mart, 
Amtrak, major sports leagues, hotel chains and 
metro riders. In her speeches, she compares the 
undertaking to the Cold War fight against communists.

"This represents a shift for our country," she 
told New York City police officers and 
firefighters on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary 
this fall. "In a sense, this harkens back to when 
we drew on the tradition of civil defense and 
preparedness that predated today's concerns."

----

 From Afghanistan to Tennessee

On a recent night in Memphis, a patrol car rolled 
slowly through a parking lot in a run-down 
section of town. The military-grade infrared 
camera on its hood moved robotically from left to 
right, snapping digital images of one license 
plate after another and analyzing each almost instantly.

Suddenly, a red light flashed on the car's screen 
along with the word "warrant."

"Got a live one! Let's do it," an officer called out.

The streets of Memphis are a world away from the 
streets of Kabul, yet these days, the same types 
of technologies and techniques are being used in 
both places to identify and collect information 
about suspected criminals and terrorists.

The examples go far beyond Memphis.

* Hand-held, wireless fingerprint scanners were 
carried by U.S. troops during the insurgency in 
Iraq to register residents of entire 
neighborhoods. L-1 Identity Solutions is selling 
the same type of equipment to police departments 
to check motorists' identities.

* In Arizona, the Maricopa County Sheriff's 
Facial Recognition Unit, using a type of 
equipment prevalent in war zones, records 9,000 
biometric digital mug shots a month.

* U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies 
General Atomics' Predator drones along the 
Mexican and Canadian borders - the same kind of 
aircraft, equipped with real-time, full-motion 
video cameras, that has been used in wars in 
Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan to track the enemy.

The special operations units deployed overseas to 
kill the al-Qaeda leadership drove technological 
advances that are now expanding in use across the 
United States. On the front lines, those advances 
allowed the rapid fusing of biometric 
identification, captured computer records and 
cellphone numbers so troops could launch the next surprise raid.

Here at home, it's the DHS that is enamored with 
collecting photos, video images and other 
personal information about U.S. residents in the 
hopes of teasing out terrorists.

The DHS helped Memphis buy surveillance cameras 
that monitor residents near high-crime housing 
projects, problematic street corners, and bridges 
and other critical infrastructure. It helped pay 
for license plate readers and defrayed some of 
the cost of setting up Memphis's crime-analysis 
center. All together it has given Memphis $11 
million since 2003 in homeland security grants, 
most of which the city has used to fight crime.


"We have got things now we didn't have before," 
said Memphis Police Department Director Larry 
Godwin, who has produced record numbers of 
arrests using all this new analysis and 
technology. "Some of them we can talk about. Some of them we can't."

One of the biggest advocates of Memphis's data 
revolution is John Harvey, the police 
department's technology specialist, whose 
computer systems are the civilian equivalent of 
the fancier special ops equipment used by the military.

Harvey collects any information he can pry out of 
government and industry. When officers were 
wasting time knocking on the wrong doors to serve 
warrants, he persuaded the local utility company 
to give him a daily update of the names and addresses of customers.

When he wanted more information about phones 
captured at crime scenes, he programmed a way to 
store all emergency 911 calls, which often 
include names and addresses to associate with 
phone numbers. He created another program to 
upload new crime reports every five minutes and 
mine them for the phone numbers of victims, 
suspects, witnesses and anyone else listed on them.

Now, instead of having to decide which license 
plate numbers to type into a computer console in 
the patrol car, an officer can simply drive 
around, and the automatic license plate reader on 
his hood captures the numbers on every vehicle 
nearby. If the officer pulls over a driver, 
instead of having to wait 20 minutes for someone 
back at the office to manually check records, he 
can use a hand-held device to instantly call up a 
mug shot, a Social Security number, the status of 
the driver's license and any outstanding warrants.

The computer in the cruiser can tell an officer 
even more about who owns the vehicle, the owner's 
name and address and criminal history, and who 
else with a criminal history might live at the same address.

Take a recent case of two officers with the 
hood-mounted camera equipment who stopped a man 
driving on a suspended license. One handcuffed 
him, and the other checked his own PDA. Based on 
the information that came up, the man was ordered 
downtown to pay a fine and released as the 
officers drove off to stop another car.

That wasn't the end of it, though.

A record of that stop - and the details of every 
other arrest made that night, and every summons 
written - was automatically transferred to the 
Memphis Real Time Crime Center, a command center 
with three walls of streaming surveillance video 
and analysis capabilities that rival those of an Army command center.

There, the information would be geocoded on a map 
to produce a visual rendering of crime patterns. 
This information would help the crime 
intelligence analysts predict trends so the 
department could figure out what neighborhoods to 
swarm with officers and surveillance cameras.

But that was still not the end of it, because the 
fingerprints from the crime records would also go 
to the FBI's data campus in Clarksburg, W.Va. 
There, fingerprints from across the United States 
are stored, along with others collected by 
American authorities from prisoners in Saudi 
Arabia and Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are 96 million sets of fingerprints in 
Clarksburg, a volume that government officials 
view not as daunting but as an opportunity.

This year for the first time, the FBI, the DHS 
and the Defense Department are able to search 
each other's fingerprint databases, said Myra 
Gray, head of the Defense Department's Biometrics 
Identity Management Agency, speaking to an 
industry group recently. "Hopefully in the 
not-too-distant future," she said, "our 
relationship with these federal agencies - along 
with state and local agencies - will be completely symbiotic."

----

The FBI's 'suspicious' files

At the same time that the FBI is expanding its 
West Virginia database, it is building a vast 
repository controlled by people who work in a 
top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. 
Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one 
stores the profiles of tens of thousands of 
Americans and legal residents who are not accused 
of any crime. What they have done is appear to be 
acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.

If the new Nationwide Suspicious Activity 
Reporting Initiative, or SAR, works as intended, 
the Guardian database may someday hold files 
forwarded by all police departments across the 
country in America's continuing search for terrorists within its borders.

The effectiveness of this database depends, in 
fact, on collecting the identities of people who 
are not known criminals or terrorists - and on 
being able to quickly compile in-depth profiles of them.


"If we want to get to the point where we connect 
the dots, the dots have to be there," said 
Richard A. McFeely, special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore office.

In response to concerns that information in the 
database could be improperly used or released, 
FBI officials say anyone with access has been 
trained in privacy rules and the penalties for breaking them.

But not everyone is convinced. "It opens a door 
for all kinds of abuses," said Michael German, a 
former FBI agent who now leads the American Civil 
Liberties Union's campaign on national security 
and privacy matters. "How do we know there are enough controls?"

The government defines a suspicious activity as 
"observed behavior reasonably indicative of 
pre-operational planning related to terrorism or 
other criminal activity" related to terrorism.

State intelligence analysts and FBI investigators 
use the reports to determine whether a person is 
buying fertilizer to make a bomb or to plant 
tomatoes; whether she is plotting to poison a 
city's drinking water or studying for a 
metallurgy test; whether, as happened on a Sunday 
morning in late September, the man snapping a 
picture of a ferry in the Newport Beach harbor in 
Southern California simply liked the way it 
looked or was plotting to blow it up.

Suspicious Activity Report N03821 says a local 
law enforcement officer observed "a suspicious 
subject . . . taking photographs of the Orange 
County Sheriff Department Fire Boat and the 
Balboa Ferry with a cellular phone camera." The 
confidential report, marked "For Official Use 
Only," noted that the subject next made a phone 
call, walked to his car and returned five minutes 
later to take more pictures. He was then met by 
another person, both of whom stood and "observed 
the boat traffic in the harbor." Next another 
adult with two small children joined them, and 
then they all boarded the ferry and crossed the channel.

All of this information was forwarded to the Los 
Angeles fusion center for further investigation 
after the local officer ran information about the 
vehicle and its owner through several crime databases and found nothing.

Authorities would not say what happened to it 
from there, but there are several paths a suspicious activity report can take:

At the fusion center, an officer would decide to 
either dismiss the suspicious activity as 
harmless or forward the report to the nearest FBI 
terrorism unit for further investigation.

At that unit, it would immediately be entered 
into the Guardian database, at which point one of three things could happen:

The FBI could collect more information, find no 
connection to terrorism and mark the file closed, 
though leaving it in the database.

It could find a possible connection and turn it into a full-fledged case.

Or, as most often happens, it could make no 
specific determination, which would mean that 
Suspicious Activity Report N03821 would sit in 
limbo for as long as five years, during which 
time many other pieces of information about the 
man photographing a boat on a Sunday morning 
could be added to his file: employment, financial 
and residential histories; multiple phone 
numbers; audio files; video from the 
dashboard-mounted camera in the police cruiser at 
the harbor where he took pictures; and anything 
else in government or commercial databases "that 
adds value," as the FBI agent in charge of the database described it.

That could soon include biometric data, if it 
existed; the FBI is working on a way to attach 
such information to files. Meanwhile, the bureau 
will also soon have software that allows local 
agencies to map all suspicious incidents in their jurisdiction.

The Defense Department is also interested in the 
database. It recently transferred 100 reports of 
suspicious behavior into the Guardian system, and 
over time it expects to add thousands more as it 
connects 8,000 military law enforcement personnel 
to an FBI portal that will allow them to send and 
review reports about people suspected of casing 
U.S. bases or targeting American personnel.

And the DHS has created a separate way for state 
and local authorities, private citizens, and 
businesses to submit suspicious activity reports 
to the FBI and to the department for analysis.

As of December, there were 161,948 suspicious 
activity files in the classified Guardian 
database, mostly leads from FBI headquarters and 
state field offices. Two years ago, the bureau 
set up an unclassified section of the database so 
state and local agencies could send in suspicious 
incident reports and review those submitted by 
their counterparts in other states. Some 890 
state and local agencies have sent in 7,197 reports so far.


Of those, 103 have become full investigations 
that have resulted in at least five arrests, the 
FBI said. There have been no convictions yet. An 
additional 365 reports have added information to ongoing cases.

But most remain in the uncertain middle, which is 
why within the FBI and other intelligence 
agencies there is much debate about the 
effectiveness of the bottom-up SAR approach, as 
well as concern over the privacy implications of 
retaining so much information on U.S. citizens 
and residents who have not been charged with anything.

The vast majority of terrorism leads in the 
United States originate from confidential FBI 
sources and from the bureau's collaboration with 
federal intelligence agencies, which mainly work 
overseas. Occasionally a stop by a local police 
officer has sparked an investigation. Evidence 
comes from targeted FBI surveillance and 
undercover operations, not from information and 
analysis generated by state fusion centers about people acting suspiciously.

"It's really resource-inefficient," said Philip 
Mudd, a 20-year CIA counterterrorism expert and a 
top FBI national security official until he 
retired nine months ago. "If I were to have a 
dialogue with the country about this . . . it 
would be about not only how we chase the 
unknowns, but do you want to do suspicious 
activity reports across the country? . . . Anyone 
who is not at least suspected of doing something 
criminal should not be in a database."

Charles Allen, a longtime senior CIA official who 
then led the DHS's intelligence office until 
2009, said some senior people in the intelligence 
community are skeptical that SARs are an 
effective way to find terrorists. "It's more 
likely that other kinds of more focused efforts 
by local police will gain you the information 
that you need about extremist activities," he said.

The DHS can point to some successes: Last year 
the Colorado fusion center turned up information 
on Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident 
planning to bomb the New York subway system. In 
2007, a Florida fusion center provided the 
vehicle ownership history used to identify and 
arrest an Egyptian student who later pleaded 
guilty to providing material support to 
terrorism, in this case transporting explosives.

"Ninety-nine percent doesn't pan out or lead to 
anything" said Richard Lambert Jr., the special 
agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office. 
"But we're happy to wade through these things."

----

Expert training?

Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and 
Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

"Alabama, Colorado, Vermont," said Montijo, a 
former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los 
Angeles Police Department investigator who is now 
a private security consultant. "California, Texas and Missouri," he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: 
Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

"They want to make this world Islamic. The 
Islamic flag will fly over the White House - not 
on my watch!" he said. "My job is to wake up the 
public, and first, the first responders."

With so many local agencies around the country 
being asked to help catch terrorists, it often 
falls to sheriffs or state troopers to try to 
understand the world of terrorism. They aren't 
FBI agents, who have years of on-the-job and classroom training.

Instead, they are often people like Lacy Craig, 
who was a police dispatcher before she became an 
intelligence analyst at Idaho's fusion center, or 
the detectives in Minnesota, Michigan and 
Arkansas who can talk at length about the lineage 
of gangs or the signs of a crystal meth addict.

Now each of them is a go-to person on terrorism as well.

"The CIA used to train analysts forever before 
they graduated to be a real analyst," said Allen, 
the former top CIA and DHS official. "Today we 
take former law enforcement officers and we call 
them intelligence officers, and that's not right, 
because they have not received any training on intelligence analysis."


State fusion center officials say their analysts 
are getting better with time. "There was a time 
when law enforcement didn't know much about 
drugs. This is no different," said Steven W. 
Hewitt, who runs the Tennessee fusion center, 
considered one of the best in the country. "Are 
we experts at the level of [the National 
Counterterrorism Center]? No. Are we developing an expertise? Absolutely."

But how they do that is usually left up to the 
local police departments themselves. In their 
desire to learn more about terrorism, many 
departments are hiring their own trainers. Some 
are self-described experts whose extremist views 
are considered inaccurate and harmful by the FBI 
and others in the intelligence community

Like Montijo, Walid Shoebat, a onetime Muslim who 
converted to Christianity, also lectures to local 
police. He too believes that most Muslims seek to 
impose sharia law in the United States. To 
prevent this, he said in an interview, he warns 
officers that "you need to look at the entire pool of Muslims in a community."

When Shoebat spoke to the first annual South 
Dakota Fusion Center Conference in Sioux Falls 
this June, he told them to monitor Muslim student 
groups and local mosques and, if possible, tap 
their phones. "You can find out a lot of information that way," he said.

A book expanding on what Shoebat and Montijo 
believe has just been published by the Center for 
Security Policy, a Washington-based 
neoconservative think tank. "Shariah: The Threat 
to America" describes what its authors call a 
"stealth jihad" that must be thwarted before it's too late.

The book's co-authors include such notables as 
former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former 
deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence 
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, along with the 
center's director, a longtime activist. They 
write that most mosques in the United States 
already have been radicalized, that most Muslim 
social organizations are fronts for violent 
jihadists and that Muslims who practice sharia 
law seek to impose it in this country.

Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the center, said 
his team has spoken widely, including to many law enforcement forums.

"Members of our team have been involved in 
training programs for several years now, many of 
which have been focused on local law enforcement 
intelligence, homeland security, state police, 
National Guard units and the like," Gaffney said. 
"We're seeing a considerable ramping-up of 
interest in getting this kind of training."

Government terrorism experts call the views 
expressed in the center's book inaccurate and 
counterproductive. They say the DHS should 
increase its training of local police, using 
teachers who have evidence-based viewpoints.

DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the department 
does not maintain a list of terrorism experts but 
is working on guidelines for local authorities wrestling with the topic.

So far, the department has trained 1,391 local 
law enforcement officers in analyzing public 
information and 400 in analytic thinking and 
writing skills. Kudwa said the department also 
offers counterterrorism training through the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which this 
year enrolled 94 people in a course called 
"Advanced Criminal Intelligence Analysis to Prevent Terrorism."

----

A lack of useful information

The DHS also provides local agencies a daily flow of information bulletins.

These reports are meant to inform agencies about 
possible terror threats. But some officials say 
they deliver a never-ending stream of information 
that is vague, alarmist and often useless. "It's 
like a garage in your house you keep throwing 
junk into until you can't park your car in it," 
says Michael Downing, deputy chief of 
counterterrorism and special operations for the Los Angeles Police Department.

A review of nearly 1,000 DHS reports dating back 
to 2003 and labeled "For Official Use Only" 
underscores Downing's description. Typical is one 
from May 24, 2010, titled "Infrastructure 
Protection Note: Evolving Threats to the Homeland."


It tells officials to operate "under the premise 
that other operatives are in the country and 
could advance plotting with little or no 
warning." Its list of vulnerable facilities seems 
to include just about everything: "Commercial 
Facilities, Government Facilities, Banking and 
Financial and Transportation . . ."

Bart R. Johnson, who heads the DHS's intelligence 
and analysis office, defended such reports, 
saying that threat reporting has "grown and 
matured and become more focused." The bulletins 
can't be more specific, he said, because they 
must be written at the unclassified level.

Recently, the International Association of Chiefs 
of Police agreed that the information they were 
receiving had become "more timely and relevant" over the past year.

Downing, however, said the reports would be more 
helpful if they at least assessed threats within a specific state's boundaries.

States have tried to do that on their own, but 
with mixed, and at times problematic, results.

In 2009, for instance, after the DHS and the FBI 
sent out several ambiguous reports about threats 
to mass-transit systems and sports and 
entertainment venues, the New Jersey Regional 
Operations Intelligence Center's Threat Analysis 
Program added its own information. "New Jersey 
has a large mass-transit infrastructure," its 
report warned, and "an NFL stadium and NHL/NBA 
arenas, a soccer stadium, and several concert 
venues that attract large crowds."

In Virginia, the state's fusion center published 
a terrorism threat assessment in 2009 naming 
historically black colleges as potential hubs for terrorism.

 From 2005 to 2007, the Maryland State Police 
went even further, infiltrating and labeling as 
terrorists local groups devoted to human rights, antiwar causes and bike lanes.

And in Pennsylvania this year, a local contractor 
hired to write intelligence bulletins filled them 
with information about lawful meetings as varied 
as Pennsylvania Tea Party Patriots Coalition 
gatherings, antiwar protests and an event at 
which environmental activists dressed up as Santa 
Claus and handed out coal-filled stockings.

----

'We have our own terrorists'

Even if the information were better, it might not 
make a difference for the simplest of reasons: In 
many cities and towns across the country, there 
is just not enough terrorism-related work to do.

In Utah on one recent day, one of five 
intelligence analysts in the state's fusion 
center was writing a report about the rise in 
teenage overdoses of an over-the-counter drug. 
Another was making sure the visiting president of 
Senegal had a safe trip. Another had just helped 
a small town track down two people who were 
selling magazine subscriptions and pocketing the money themselves.

In the Colorado Information Analysis Center, some 
investigators were following terrorism leads. 
Others were looking into illegal Craigslist 
postings and online "World of Warcraft" gamers.

The vast majority of fusion centers across the 
country have transformed themselves into 
analytical hubs for all crimes and are using 
federal grants, handed out in the name of 
homeland security, to combat everyday offenses.

This is happening because, after 9/11, local law 
enforcement groups did what every agency and 
private company did in Top Secret America: They followed the money.

The DHS helped the Memphis Police Department, for 
example, purchase 90 surveillance cameras, 
including 13 that monitor bridges and a causeway. 
It helped buy the fancy screens on the walls of 
the Real Time Crime Center, as well as radios, 
robotic surveillance equipment, a mobile command 
center and three bomb-sniffing dogs. All came in 
the name of port security and protection to critical infrastructure.

Since there hasn't been a solid terrorism case in 
Memphis yet, the equipment's greatest value has 
been to help drive down city crime. Where the 
mobile surveillance cameras are set up, criminals 
scatter, said Lt. Mark Rewalt, who, on a recent 
Saturday night, scanned the city from an altitude of 1,000 feet.

Flying in a police helicopter, Rewalt pointed out 
some of the cameras the DHS has funded. They are 
all over the city, in mall parking lots, in 
housing projects, at popular street hang-outs. 
"Cameras are what's happening now," he marveled.

Meanwhile, another post-9/11 unit in Tennessee 
has had even less terrorism-related work to do.

The Tennessee National Guard 45th Weapons of Mass 
Destruction Civil Support Team, one of at least 
50 such units around the country, was created to 
respond to what officials still believe is the 
inevitable release of chemical, biological or 
radiological material by terrorists.

The unit's 22 hazardous-materials personnel have 
the best emergency equipment in the state. A 
fleet of navy-blue vehicles - command, response, 
detection and tactical operations trucks - is 
kept polished and ready to roll in a garage at the armory in Smyrna.


The unit practices WMD scenarios constantly. But 
in real life, the crew uses the equipment very 
little: twice a year at NASCAR races in nearby 
Bristol to patrol for suspicious packages. Other 
than that, said Capt. Matt Hayes, several times a year they respond to hoaxes.

The fact that there has not been much terrorism 
to worry about is not evident on the Tennessee 
fusion center's Web site. Click on the incident 
map, and the state appears to be under attack.

Red icons of explosions dot Tennessee, along with 
blinking exclamation marks and flashing skulls. 
The map is labeled: "Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.

But if you roll over the icons, the explanations 
that pop up have nothing to do with major 
terrorist plots: "Johnson City police are 
investigating three 'bottle bombs' found at homes 
over the past three days," one description read 
recently. ". . . The explosives were made from 
plastic bottles with something inside that 
reacted chemically and caused the bottles to burst."

Another told a similar story: "The Scott County 
Courthouse is currently under evacuation after a 
bomb threat was called in Friday morning. Update: 
Authorities completed their sweep . . . and have called off the evacuation."

Nine years after 9/11, this map is part of the 
alternative geography that is Top Secret America, 
where millions of people are assigned to help 
stop terrorism. Memphis Police Director Godwin is 
one of them, and he has his own version of what 
that means in a city where there have been 86 murders so far this year.

"We have our own terrorists, and they are taking 
lives every day," Godwin said. "No, we don't have 
suicide bombers - not yet. But you need to remain 
vigilant and realize how vulnerable you can be if you let up."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this story.




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