Little San Diego intelligence

There’s a dearth of professional online spies at San Diego’s so-called fusion center, the costly, high-security law-enforcement complex set up in Kearny Mesa by the federal government to combat terrorism by sharing super-secret data between local cops and the feds. That’s according to recent findings of the inspector general of the Homeland Security department regarding “Domestic Sharing of Counterterrorism Information.”

The problem, says a March 30 report, involves the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which deploys intelligence officers nationwide to “access, receive, and analyze law enforcement information, intelligence information, and other information from federal, state, and local government agencies and private sector entities, and to disseminate such information to those partners.” But the government “does not have intelligence officers at all the fusion centers near major [Homeland Security] component field concentrations, such as along borders, including those fusion centers in El Paso and San Antonio, Texas; and San Diego, California.”

That’s not good, the report says, because Homeland Security “has unique access to information about travelers, including known or suspected terrorists, and is well-situated to intercept and identify travel by potential terrorists and foreign fighters.” Even where they exist, none of the intelligence agents interviewed for the report “said they regularly develop intelligence reports from terrorism and counterterrorism information,” the report says.