Aye SGM,

I had a discussion awhile back w/one of our agents, about the time when we had just undergone the "big marriage" into DHS. I had basically taken the viewpoint that, for a large part (and from a more military midset) the DoJ can be subsumed under DHS as in the end, crime has (always been tbh) emerged as another factor that effects National Security concerns. Not everyone agrees with that assertion but there it is. Crime facilitates terrorist activities. From providing methodologies/TTPs to funding streams for operations, crime is intimately related to terrorism in ways beyond falling under a lump legal classification of "illegal activities".

Case in point is meth production and trafficking. My group was involved in a number of cases where individuals and groups were importing the precursor chemicals, manufacturing, then distributing meth. The procedes from these operations were then plugged back into the cycle to purchase additional quantities of precursors to continue the operation. A significant portion of the money was also remitted to charity organizations known to be associated with terrorist groups and/or the terrorist groups themselves. Time and competition from traditional criminal organizations has caused their share of the meth market to go down but it hasn't stopped them from continuing to find other traditionally criminal enterprises to enter in order to continue raising money. The secondary benefit, from the terrorist leadership standpoint, is that the "enemy" is having to deal with the problems of narcotics. it adds up to another way to wage war, in effect, another front in the fight.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, the intimate relationship traditional criminal activity has with terrorism, and therefore National Security, is still something some folks (both in and out of LE) have a time getting their heads around.

Does it mean we should federalize all LE and just plop the DoJ under the DHS? No. But we really have no over-arching plan, no joint concept of operations that ties ALL the disparate agencies and operations together.

I had proposed that something along the lines of the combatant commands, with unified and specified commands throughout conus. The reason behind this is twofold. First, none of our organizational structures coincide with each other. For example, the DEA has it's SACs and Field Offices as do we (ICE), but our organizations are not structured to support each other. Much less the FBI or anyone else. We each just tend to our own backyards and address our own particular priorities of the moment (read administration) but beyond that nada. Secondly, as we have seen with 9/11, but has really been apparent to anyone who's been paying attention for the last few decades, when we have noone who is in charge, noone who is in a position to make decisions that cut across organizational boundries and assign priorities that affect conditions right there at the ground, all the notions of inter-agency cooperation goes out the window.

We need someone to be in charge of the California AOR, for instance, who can keep tabs on what all the little indians are doing and direct them to accomplish certain objectives. Of course, not many, if at all, of the agencies are going to like that kind of setup because it relegates them to second tier status like the service heads.

I didn't mean to go so far afield with the rant but the point is that the fusion centers are just a small part of what needs to be put into operation. And without the overriding structure and organization to go along with it, their effectiveness will be about as good as our success in the "War on Drugs", pretty minimal. They are great ideas and should have been up along time ago. But as it stands, they still won't add up to much beyond just what they are, individual parts of a system that should be acting as just that: a system.