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COUNTERTERRORISM INTELLIGENCE TERRORISM STUDY

Calibrating Domestic Intelligence at the 20-Year Mark

By Genevieve Lester And John P. Sullivan November 15, 2021

Michigan National Guardsmen with the 210th Military Police Battalion secure an entry control point at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 15, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class R.J. Lannom Jr.)

As the 20-year anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 passes, decision-makers are once again faced with questions of

“intelligence failure” and problematic information-sharing between security entities. This time the questions are raised by

the insurrection on January 6. Some questions are how much and when intelligence agencies and law enforcement

became aware of plans for the insurrection, how well they shared this information, who acted in response and how, and 

what, technology was used. As Congress begins its investigation into those activities, we address some fundamental

questions that have arisen in their wake.

The attacks on 9/11 catalyzed the creation of a new agency – the Department of Homeland Security – which was a hastily

organized amalgam of 22 disparate agencies. It also introduced the term “homeland” in the security lexicon, and the topic

of domestic intelligence into the discourse on national security. Domestic intelligence is an uncomfortable concept for

many – traditionally, as the trope goes, intelligence is something we do “over there,” not here in the United States, and

certainly not directed toward American citizens. By understanding the scope of domestic intelligence and the

complications that arise when collecting and analyzing intelligence in the United States, we can better understand the

evolution, current state, and potential future course of domestic intelligence activities.

What Is Domestic Intelligence?

At a conceptual level, “domestic intelligence” in the United States has been de�ned by what it is not – that is, essentially

collection of intelligence other than foreign intelligence. More speci�cally, domestic intelligence has been de�ned by one

scholar, Gregory Treverton, former Chair of the National Intelligence Council, as “e�orts by government organizations to

gather, assess, and act on information about individuals or organizations in the United States or U.S. persons elsewhere

that is not necessarily related to the investigation of a known past criminal act or speci�c planned criminal activity.”

Domestic intelligence broadly refers to intelligence activities related to internal national security, focusing on issues such

as  crime, disorder, terrorism, and insurrection. In the post-9/11 security environment, the term has increasingly come to

mean intelligence concerning homeland security, speci�cally engaging with the problem of �ghting the threat of terrorism.

Domestic intelligence supports decision-making at multiple levels – ranging from the tactical to the strategic – that

focuses on internal threat. The Intelligence Community has long de-emphasized the use of the intelligence function within

the United States because of political history and sensitivity.

The State of Domestic Intelligence

Domestic intelligence in the United States is complicated by ambiguity and overlapping systems. This is the result of

historical controversies, as well as the atomization inherent to federalism. The con�uence of diverse threats and

politicization, exempli�ed, for example, by the partisan reactions to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, further

intensify the problems of conducting e�ective domestic intelligence. Part of this complexity results from the broad range

of decision support domestic intelligence is expected to provide. For example, at the tactical level, police and emergency

responders require threat information to interdict and mitigate attacks or humanitarian consequences of intentional,

technological, and natural disasters, such as terrorist attacks, hazardous materials incidents, and wild�res. Further, police

must understand crime trends and indicators of potential epidemiological outbreaks such as COVID-19.

Operationally and strategically, emergency managers and state, local, tribal, and federal governments require similar

information, but also broader contextual awareness of issues impacting populations, such as security, economic stability, 

and governance. In addition, federal agencies need information to manage support to the states, protect federal entities,

and ensure a bundle of functions collectively known as homeland security. These range from border security issues,

organized crime, maritime and port security, aviation security, emergency response, and emergent threat warnings.

Security priorities guide intelligence collection and analysis and the organization of the national enterprise. Financial and

legal factors complicate matters as agencies vie for turf, resources, and prestige.

At the federal level, domestic intelligence is divided between DHS and the FBI, with some tactical intelligence at other

agencies such as DEA for narcotics, for example. As a result of this division, domestic threat information can become

obscured, either by legal constraints or bureaucratic hurdles. This can lead to agencies minimizing or even ignoring

emerging threats such as domestic violent extremism, or remaining unaware of the convergence between intersecting

threats, for example the relationship between crime and terrorism. Agencies also aim to avoid domestic political

challenges adjacent to First Amendment activity. This is understandable, as there is a constitutional basis for limiting

intelligence collection directed against political speech. Yet these protections don’t justify overlooking crimes.

Concerns about domestic activities in the American democracy have deep roots. The COINITELPRO (Counterintelligence)

program, run by the FBI between 1956 and 1971, and similar e�orts by the CIA and NSA were investigated and exposed by

two congressional committees – the Church and Pike Committees – and reforms were instituted, resulting in the creation

of dedicated intelligence oversight committees and a �rmer delineation between foreign and domestic intelligence.

Clearly, Fourth Amendment issues related to surveillance are important; they are already a core issue in domestic policing.

Both wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance – including mass surveillance – require warrants under

both federal law and the laws of the various states.

The divide between foreign and domestic intelligence, while grounded in legitimate civil liberties concerns, can inhibit

detection of transnational threats involving networked foreign actors operating in conjunction with domestic criminals

and extremist actors. Further, partisan political in�uences and sympathies for extremism complicate the current political

dynamic. Preserving civil liberties, however, is not a glitch in the system. It is the core of the American experiment.

Nevertheless, there is a need to balance liberties and security. In large measure, this is why domestic intelligence must be

more than a federal e�ort. Domestic intelligence has always existed at the state, local, and federal levels. The focus on

domestic intelligence as a federal function ignores that and is part of the reason state and local e�orts are incohesive.

State and local authorities conduct intelligence (usually criminal and public order intelligence). The public order

intelligence is actually better suited to local e�orts since the operational issues related to protests and riots are local

responses since law enforcement is primarily a state and local function. That operational need for public safety (the

police function of the state) resides with state and local law enforcement agencies – police and sheri�’s departments – in

our tradition. This is reinforced by practice and the Tenth Amendment.

Local police are, arguably, better suited to monitoring public order issues, but like their federal counterparts often lack the

skills and ability to address the gaps that arise from networked actors that go beyond speech into criminal activity. This

does not mean that local police are immune from abuses as seen in current controversies, such as the George Floyd 

protests, over police use of force in reaction to protest. This is natural since they are at center of policing so therefore

opportunities for abuses are ever-present. Add to this historical abuses such as the Red Squads and repressive police

operations in America’s cities during the 1960s-70s.

Additional complications include the reactive nature of decision-making in this sphere. Current intelligence for crisis

management dominates tasking and prioritization of e�ort. Little or no appreciation of warning and strategic foresight

exists as agencies focus on the demands of the current news cycle. This in turn leads to an ine�ective intelligence-

operations interface and fusion. The emphasis on federal requirements with little comprehensive understanding of the

needs and drivers of state, local, and tribal intelligence, when combined with an emphasis on bureaucratic players rather

than holistic mission needs of the diverse communities, leads to a fragmented approach.

The current situation relies upon a national network of fusion centers at state and local levels. Fusion centers have a

controversial history. Uneven performance, as well as privacy and human rights concerns, and accusations of political

partisanship are continuing concerns. In many cases, the lack of domain expertise leads to an emphasis on investigative

support rather than predictive intelligence. Information-sharing rather than the production of intelligence dominates the

domain.

Collectively, these challenges were exempli�ed in the di�culties seen in anticipating and addressing the January 6

insurrection and its related sequence of events, including drivers such as political instigation and propaganda networks,

including alt-right actors, conspiracy theorists (QAnon), and foreign information operations. Add to this existing threats –

traditional right-wing and anti-government extremists, militias, white supremacists – and emerging threats including

hybrid left-right-wing actors, and resistance to government action to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate

change. A lack of cohesive standards, transparency, legal and public oversight complicate these factors.

9/11 and Stalled Intelligence Reform

As we assess domestic intelligence 20 years after the attacks on 9/11, it is clear that the United States is facing a range of

new threats as well as further and fast development of the ones that drove the reform and realignment e�orts after the

attacks. As is oft-mentioned, cyber – including arti�cial intelligence and robotics – permeates all aspects of society and

further elides the old boundaries of foreign/domestic and public/private. Large-scale, border-spanning, global challenges

are on the rise, such as climate change, environmental degradation, and pandemics. Transnational crime is evolving as

technology develops, empowering nontraditional actors in the international system at an alarming rate. Where do we go

from here?

It has become commonplace to suggest, after the fact, relying on the assertions from the 9/11 Commission, that the

attacks on 9/11 were the result of the failure to share information, connect the dots, or have the appropriate level of

imagination to pre-empt the attacks. It is, however, much harder to build a structure to withstand the as-yet unknowable

than it is to perform a postmortem. This is the conundrum of intelligence. 9/11 rightly focused e�orts on detecting foreign

terrorist threats but, in doing so, inadvertently minimized continuing surveillance of domestic threats, despite being only 

six years after the Oklahoma City bombing. Overemphasis on foreign threats was part of the problem but the law

enforcement agencies should have already been addressing public order issues.

The domestic intelligence domain is once again in need of signi�cant reform – a reform that remains largely un�nished

after the initial impulse to build new capacity after 9/11. The current system created and funded centers but did not

provide the training and doctrine needed to e�ectively bring the local perspective(s) to the table. By framing the initiative

as an information-sharing issue we missed the opportunity to develop an e�ective and comprehensive national domestic

intelligence network. By framing domestic intelligence as a federal issue, the necessary local responsibility and

accountability is diminished. This allows local authorities to elude responsibility and pass the buck to the federal agencies.

When federal agencies intervene, which may be appropriate when there are national dimensions to the threat, they can

misread local conditions and actors. When the speech issues are politicized and manipulated by the executive they cripple

intelligence e�orts, lead to improper and disproportionate responses – including both inaction or overreaction.

The results of the early reform e�orts were uneven. Currently, there are still signi�cant levels of bureaucratic competition,

for example, between the FBI and DHS, where roles are often competing and duplicative. Further, fusion centers still lack

uni�ed network standards in terms of common training, doctrine, and de�ned standards for multi-lateral communication

and the “co-production of intelligence.” Finding the appropriate balance among civil liberties, privacy issues, and security

is a challenge, but one that can successfully be addressed to meet core constitutional requirements and the reasonable

expectations of all Americans. Beyond these operational issues, there are the problems of increasing extremism within

policing and the military, and the role of social media in expanding exposure to mis- and disinformation. Partisanship

imbues a wide range of aspects of society at this point, from education to public health, to how we construe an existential

threat.

The Future

The need to examine domestic intelligence in a holistic, national – rather than federal – framework remains. It is time to

revisit the network architecture of a national ‘domestic’ intelligence capacity on functional and operational levels. Also,

considering change in the area of domestic intelligence requires a fundamental shift from the mindset of 20 years ago – a

mindset that has hindered adaptation to the emergent domestic threat. Built deeply within the domestic threat picture of

the past 20 years has been the stark image of the Islamic terrorist. This has allowed the American polity to construe an

adversary, which can easily be “othered” when countermeasures are concerned. Increasingly, this picture may miss the

mark, as it must expand to include all American citizens. The future is already here. It is dominated by threat convergence

where multiple threat streams, such as crime and terrorism (the crime-terror nexus), exist and amplify potential threats.

This convergence also includes blurring the lines between domestic and global threats. The existence of globalized

networks of non-state actors – such as global alt-right extremism –complicates matters. Domestic agencies are

restrained by law on addressing issues of speech and assembly. These First Amendment concerns are the cornerstone of

our political process. Yet hate speech, ampli�ed by social media, and propaganda manipulated by foreign intelligence

disinformation campaigns empowers extremists and elevates potentials for violence. Domestic terrorist threats now 

compete with foreign – jihadist – terrorism for attention and resources. Global threats have local implications that in turn

in�uence the global security arena (that is, they have global-local-global manifestations). Multiple threats demand

ubiquitous monitoring, prioritization, and a recognition of synergetic and cascading e�ects. Cyber issues including

arti�cial intelligence (AI) and robotics – both threat and capabilities – increasingly permeate everything. Additional

concerns include climate change, environmental degradation, pandemics, state fragility and transition (including internal

strife and migration pressures). Transnational crime complicates matters serving as a both a standalone threat and

ampli�er for other threats.

Conclusion: The Way Forward

Addressing the current and future threat landscape demands a reassessment of the domestic intelligence architecture.

This will require a comprehensive critique of the post-9/11 threat response, the state of domestic intelligence functions at

all levels, and an assessment of current, evolving, and emerging threats. All relevant stakeholders need a voice in this

assessment. That includes state and local law enforcement, other public safety agencies, the medical public health

communities, state and federal legislators, and civil society (including civil rights, privacy, and human rights concerns).

Surveillance, privacy, and equitable distribution of justice under the rule of law must be balanced with the complex threat

environment. We can start with a comprehensive assessment of the attack on the Capitol and e�orts to obscure and erase

recognition of the underlying threat. Multilateral/networked adversaries and networked responses, including the co-

production of intelligence, rather than mere information-sharing, must be explored.

The way forward would �rst involve impaneling a national commission to look at these e�orts.  This e�ort could examine

the entire scope of domestic intelligence, look at the state of fusion centers, and assess foreign experiences with

domestic intelligence and public order. It could also look at e�ectively integrating domestic intelligence into the overall

national intelligence framework, along with providing an evaluation of the politicization of intelligence and potential

mechanisms for bridging responses to domestic, international, and transnational terrorism.

This reassessment must look at oversight, transparency, privacy concerns, the rise of new technology, counterintelligence,

and the growing connections between domestic and global threats, such as the rise of global networks composed of

authoritarian states and violent non-state actors. The suitability of current organizational roles, including potential

reforms to fusion centers, and the potential role and model for a new domestic intelligence service is once again a

necessary. The time for this examination is now; the threat(s) won’t wait.

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily re�ect the o�cial policy or position of the

U.S. Army War College, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

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