My Trip to a DHS Fusion Center...and How I Lived to Talk About It
Jim Capo | John Birch Society
10 April 2009
Last week, to further the situation awareness of those in the freedom movement, I followed my own advice and visited my local Department of Homeland Security Fusion Center. This is my uncensored report. It is written in a "how-to" format for activists not willing to concede defeat to central government operatives in the battle for the hearts and minds of the 700,000 state and local law enforcement officers in our country.
Personal Disclosure Statement: Do I think these Fusion Center's unconstitutional? Yes. Do I think this Department of Homeland Security program should be abolished? Yes. Do I think the concept of integrating local law enforcement into a national security apparatus is a grave threat to our freedom? Yes. Do I work to meet with and influence my local Congressman even though I know he rarely votes in defense of my freedom? Yes. Do I meet with and seek good relations with members of the U.S. military even though I do not support my country's imperial wars of aggression around the globe? Yes. Do I think everyone will get the point I am trying to make here? No. But, maybe enough will.
North Carolina's Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC) is one of at least 57 sister Fusion Centers to the Missouri Information Awareness Center (MIAC), which recently brought the Fusion Center program of the Department of Homeland Security into the spotlight.
I began my quest for a meeting with my local fusion center with a Google search on the terms, "fusion center North Carolina." The seventh match returned was a Sept 19th, 2006 press release from the Attorney General of North Carolina announcing the opening of the ISAAC Fusion Center.
The center is located in the Federal Building in downtown Raleigh a few blocks from the state legislature. I obtained my appointment at the ISAAC Center by stopping by the building and stating to the security guards that I wished to set up a meeting with the public liaison officer for ISAAC. After waiting for a few minutes, a young man in business casual street clothes arrived to meet with me on the public side of the security checkpoint. He gave me his name and that of the director for the center, Steele Myers. I made sure to clarify if that was, "Steel like iron fist or steal like theft?" He gave no indication that he recognized my attempt to suggest the irony there as he politely said, "Like the metal with an e at the end." In exchange for his information, I provided my John Birch Society business card, a copy of the leaked MIAC report, a copy of The New American issue on Ali Mohamed — a real terrorist who has spent time in North Carolina — and a copy of The John Birch Society's DVD mailer EU: Could It Happen Here?
I explained that last summer the JBS DVD mailer on the North American Union (NAU) was sent to state legislators and law enforcement personnel around the country. On the cover of this mailer is our copyrighted rendition of an NAU flag. This is the same NAU flag that appears in the MIAC report telling law enforcement officers that discussion of the NAU is a red flag for a potential terrorist.
I told the fusion center staffer that the purpose of my requested meeting was to make official contact North Carolina's fusion center and discuss The John Birch Society's alarm that a federally funded operation would suggest that the viewpoints and activities of our organization could be considered a terrorist threat. Since the stated purpose of the fusion centers is the sharing of information among all the fusion centers, I emphasized that I wanted to make contact as soon as possible before the MIAC disinformation was spread to law enforcement officers in North Carolina. The staffer jotted down some notes, took all the materials I provided and assured me that they would get back to me promptly.
After letting two business days and a weekend pass without a response, I decided to follow up with a phone call to the number listed in the Attorney General's press release. I could only leave a message at the AG office on a recording machine. Whether it was this message or the work of my first visit, within the day I received a return phone call message and a confirming e-mail message from fusion center's director himself, Steele Myers. I followed up with an e-mail (below) detailing my purpose for seeking a meeting. Mr. Myers then set a date for our meeting a few days out. His official title as stated in his confirming email is, "Assistant Special Agent in Charge, NC ISAAC, State Bureau of Investigation."
The ISAAC Fusion Center is located in east wing of Federal Building's first floor. The 2006 press release for the center notes that the facility has 2,500 square feet allotted to it, roughly the size of a comfortable three bedroom house. That's about what I saw as I walked down the hallway after clearing the security check point at the main entrance to the building.
The only other space that I noted on that wing of the floor was the 1000 or so square feet of space that was being prepared for Senator Kay Hagan's staff. It turns out that the Federal Building in Raleigh is also home to the only "local" office of our newest 17th Amendment Senator, Kay Hagan. As a state senator and campaigner, Ms. Hagan established a reputation for being approachable by her constituents. Placing her first and only office (so far) in the state between an armed federal check point and the local post for the Department of Homeland Security is probably not the "change" many who voted for her were looking for.
My fellow North Carolinians who may be considering a visit to their Senator's office to demand the fusion centers be defunded and shut down should take note: With a guarded security check and all the U.S. codes that restrict public activity on federal property, Senator Hagan's staffers can avoid a repeat of what local staffers for North Carolina's Senator Richard Burr experienced during the Amnesty battle of 2007.
About half of the ISAAC space is on the interior, non-window side of the building. Those working in the other half can enjoy sunshine. I had been instructed by the front door security guard to knock on a door on the interior side of the building. There I was met cordially by the Center's director, Steele Myers. He then directed me further down the hall to his corner office where we sat down for our hour chat.
Throughout our meeting, agent Myers was professional yet personable. He is a career member of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). He applied for and accepted the assignment to head up the state's Fusion Center as he works out his last few years to retirement.
Agent Myers confirmed to me that he had not seen the MIAC report until I brought it to his attention. But, he also confirmed that fusion centers around the country do share their reports as that is their stated raison d'être. He explained that he gets hundreds of emails a day, and that it is easy to pass over non urgent, general info type reports. He said that what individuals in the system look at in their in boxes is still highly dependent on who sends it to them and how the subject line is worded. It remains a "whose email do you think is worth reading" system. Critical information is not handled by hoping someone opens an e-mail mixed in with hundreds of others for the day.
The two things agent Myers found unusual about the MIAC report were that at 8 pages it was much longer than the 1 to 3 page report he was used to seeing and that something so poorly done could be issued on the authority of one person. He said that reports issued by the office under his direction were in standard 1-3 page bulletin format and have at least two to three people signing off on them, himself being one of them.
He also confirmed that he is familiar with the partisan nature of what is produced as "intelligence reports" by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC). He noted that, as one might imagine, many of those going into law enforcement tend to have "conservative" values and would be offended by anyone suggesting that being opposed to abortion, for example, is potentially dangerous. He said that while the bad news is that he honestly couldn't say that something like the MIAC report couldn't happen again, the good news is that he is confident that good professionals in law enforcement would find a way to get this type of material into the public domain.
Of course I don't fully share agent Myers confidence in the good men of law enforcement always being able to foil the bad men, but we did find strong agreement on what might have been the primary motivation behind the egregious MIAC report: job security. Agent Myers reviewed for me how the fusion centers are staffed and funded. The federal government (DHS) pays the rent (to itself) to house the fusion center. It then gives grants to cover a few administrative staff positions (secretaries) and equipment (phones, computers, etc.) Due to agent Myers' pleasant demeanor, I chose not to ask him if DHS covers the costs of running the interrogation rooms that surely must be on the windowless side of the hall and rendition flights that start with a trip down the first floor stairs to the labyrinth of tunnels below the building.
With the exception of the one DHS liaison officer assigned to the center, Nicholas Klem (whose name does not Google), the dozen or so law enforcement professionals working in the ISAAC facility are all supplied by and paid for by state or city agencies: North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, State Police, Sheriff Departments, City of Raleigh Police, Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE — Yes, they really go by that.) and (post V-Tech) the university Campus Safety Task Force.
Agent Myers explained that due to economic conditions the City of Raleigh recently pulled back their one staff member assigned to duty at the ISAAC Center. From the state and local level then, the fusion centers are not immune to financial constraints. He was sympathetic to the job security explanation for the MIAC debacle. He would not be surprised to find out that the SPLC cut and paste 8-page MIAC report was issued by someone trying to justify the continuation of their position. I took him as being sincere when he confessed his experience was that law enforcement agencies were just like any other big organization that has people trying to make themselves look useful to higher ups.
On this point, he reiterated his earlier caveat that there are no procedures in place that can assure that another MIAC type report won't be produced again by someone in the national fusion center system. And, he again offered that the circuit breakers in the system are concerned law enforcement personnel who would release egregious material to the public through channels they trusted, as demonstrated in the case of the MIAC report.
How else can the public know? I asked if there were any public reports that the fusion centers issued that I could see. Agent Myers replied that they do issue "public sector" reports, but that they are only available to the public entities they were produced for, like Bank of America and Duke Power. (Hey, they don't call it Duke Power for nothing. As for BOA, are they really even public anymore?)
He said he could tell me about one investigation report since its details had become public owing to the fact that it turned out not to be a security risk. This was the case of bulk cell phone purchases. The ISAAC Center did investigate cases where individuals had made large quantity purchases of cell phones in North Carolina. In this they were assisted by cooperative cell phone stores. The end result of the investigation, however, was that the people making the purchases were simply involved in legal market arbitrage. Some enterprising entrepreneurs have figured out that you can make money buying prepaid cell phones in North Carolina and reselling them in higher cost markets like California.
I asked if there was any way for The John Birch Society to get in front of law enforcement personnel receiving training on domestic terrorist threats so that we could explain who isn't a terrorist. The short answer was, "No." The ISAAC Center itself has to lobby local law enforcement to set time aside for allowing its own materials to be presented. They are not in the business to market information on behalf of others. However...
This is where the freedom movement has let outfits like the SPLC out maneuver us. The SPLC does not have an exclusive pipeline for getting its material stove piped into Fusion Center reports because most everyone in law enforcement agrees with the SPLC. The SPLC has an exclusive because the freedom movement, preoccupied with threats to liberty from every conceivable angle, has not focused enough effort on this issue.
Agent Myers, who is not a federal agent but a career public servant in the State Bureau of Investigation, closed our meeting by asking to receive a copy of our John Birch Society Monthly Bulletin so that he could have access to an alternative worldview to that presented by the SPLC. He had also been reading the copy of The New American I left for him before our meeting, so I will be sending him additional copies of The New American magazine as well.
Is my small individual effort going to roll back the surveillance über alles juggernaut that is Homeland Security? On it's own, of course, "No." Should we just give up, then, and assume that all 700,000 local law enforcement officers in the United States just can't wait to get the call to don their black riot gear and give us a good jackbooted stomp and taser zap before tossing us in a rail car headed to a FEMA camp?
How you answer that question determines if you have already accepted defeat. Fantasize all you want about what you plan to do if they come knocking at your door, if a substantial majority of local law enforcement and military professionals decide to align with tyranny you are toast. From my point of view, I prefer to assume that there are yet enough educated professionals in these ranks that would-be tyrants must still give pause. That a certain presidential candidate received the bulk of individual donations from active and retired military personnel encourages me.
Make your own call if you think it is worth educating your local law enforcement officers, who have been assigned to work in your local DHS Fusion Center, on the dangers of centralizing police powers. If that does not work for you, please share with us your plan B.
Note: Considering that the FBI is the primary supplier of federal manpower for the DHS fusion centers, does anyone remember this guy from the JBS speaker circuit in the 1960's?
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MY THANK YOU LETTER TO AGENT MYERS
Mr. Myers,
Thank you for following up.
At your earliest convenience, I would like to schedule a brief 20-30 minute meeting with you to formally introduce myself. I am on the paid staff of The John Birch Society as the State Coordinator for North Carolina.
The objective of the meeting is to establish a contact point between our two organizations. We are looking to avoid the confusion that was created recently by one of your sister fusion centers in Missouri. I am referring to the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report on militias. This leaked report has already found its way onto national network TV programming as a public relations debacle.
The concern of The John Birch Society is that as currently worded the MIAC report could give the impression to law enforcement officers that supporters of certain legitimate political candidates might be considered persons of interest in counter-terrorism investigations. The report also reproduces the copyrighted flag of The John Birch Society we use in literature discussing the possible creation of a North American Union patterned on the European Union model. The MIAC report, by either error or intent, indicates that discussion of the North American Union effort is a red-flag for law enforcement. This is particularly troubling for The John Birch Society as last year we did a mass mailing of a DVD on the North American Union/European Union issue. One of the target groups for receiving this mailing was local law enforcement officers. I provided a copy of this DVD mailer to Bryan House. I encourage you to review at least the first 5-10 minutes of the DVD for reference.
Understanding that sharing of information is one of the top deliverables in the DHS fusion center program, we would like to pursue the course necessary to assure that the confusion caused by the MIAC report does not spread further in the system.
I have recently relocated to the Raleigh area from Greensboro and can make time in my schedule to meet you at a convenient time in the days ahead. This Thursday and Friday are particularly good days for me.
Thank you for considering our request and our effort to provide the best possible communication between our two organizations.
Best Regards,
Jim Capo
State Coordinator - North Carolina
The John Birch Society
336-253-1936
www.jbs.org
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/us-constitution-blog/4736
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