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<font size=3><br>
</font><font size=4><b>Monitoring America<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>Dana Priest and William Arkin<br>
Monday, December 20, 2010; 1:40 AM<br>
<a href="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</a>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100 interviews and 1,000
documents, found that:<br>
<br>
* Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq
and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies
in America.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Counterterrorism on Main Street<br>
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 »<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
The Obama administration heralds this local approach as a much-needed
evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism.<br>
<br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
From Afghanistan to Tennessee<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Suddenly, a red light flashed on the car's screen along with the word
"warrant."<br>
<br>
"Got a live one! Let's do it," an officer called out.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The examples go far beyond Memphis.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
* 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br><br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
That wasn't the end of it, though.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
There are 96 million sets of fingerprints in Clarksburg, a volume that
government officials view not as daunting but as an opportunity.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
The FBI's 'suspicious' files<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br><br>
"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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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?"<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Authorities would not say what happened to it from there, but there are
several paths a suspicious activity report can take:<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
At that unit, it would immediately be entered into the Guardian database,
at which point one of three things could happen:<br>
<br>
The FBI could collect more information, find no connection to terrorism
and mark the file closed, though leaving it in the database.<br>
<br>
It could find a possible connection and turn it into a full-fledged
case.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
Expert training?<br>
<br>
Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law
enforcement officers all over the country.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the
United States want to impose sharia law here.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Now each of them is a go-to person on terrorism as well.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br><br>
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."<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the center, said his team has spoken
widely, including to many law enforcement forums.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
A lack of useful information<br>
<br>
The DHS also provides local agencies a daily flow of information
bulletins.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br><br>
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 . . ."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Downing, however, said the reports would be more helpful if they at least
assessed threats within a specific state's boundaries.<br>
<br>
States have tried to do that on their own, but with mixed, and at times
problematic, results.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
In Virginia, the state's fusion center published a terrorism threat
assessment in 2009 naming historically black colleges as potential hubs
for terrorism.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
'We have our own terrorists'<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, another post-9/11 unit in Tennessee has had even less
terrorism-related work to do.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Red icons of explosions dot Tennessee, along with blinking exclamation
marks and flashing skulls. The map is labeled: "Terrorism Events and
Other Suspicious Activity.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this story.<br>
<br><br>
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