Department of Homeland Security to be overhauled

The intelligence arm of the Homeland Security Department is facing a massive overhaul, an admission of shortcomings at what was originally designed to be the government's chief center for analyzing information about terrorist threats.

Homeland Security's directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection was a top justification when President George W. Bush and Congress created the department in 2002 -- the largest US government reorganization in 50 years.

As part of a department-wide review, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said he will announce major changes at the agency by the end of June, and several current and former federal anti-terror officials say a major overhaul will be made at the intelligence unit.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich said Friday that Chertoff "has received a variety of recommendations, but no final decisions have been made yet."

The officials said the changes probably will include focusing the unit's analysts on identifying potential terror targets instead of also gathering raw intelligence.

Turf and vague congressional mandates have led several current and former department and outside counterterror officials to question the effectiveness of Homeland Security's mission within the nation's intelligence network.

Homeland Security's intelligence unit "was the foundation of why the department was stood up. There's no doubt about that," said John Rollins, a former top intelligence official at the department who now works on terrorism issues at the Congressional Research Service.

But officials realized the intelligence unit "did not have the numbers of people, or anywhere near the expertise required, to fulfill the mission of being the US government's focal point for threat information related to the homeland," Rollins said.

Under leading option, the new office would oversee intelligence analysts from Homeland Security's disparate agencies -- including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Coast Guard. It would also gather and distribute terror-related information for state and local governments and the private sector.

But Homeland Security is likely to cede most raw intelligence gathering to the CIA, FBI and other agencies, and leave analyzing the data to the new National Counterterrorism Center.

That center's predecessor, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, was created two months after Homeland Security but had a larger, more experienced cadre of analysts to do a similar job. As a result, the center ate into much of what Homeland Security considered its mission.

One senior intelligence official who said he has spoken to Chertoff at length about the review said Homeland Security is seeking to eliminate duplication and carve out a niche among the nation's spy agencies. Part of the problem is the perception that Homeland Security is a junior member of the intelligence community -- and is often left out of the loop.

That will only change on demand by the White House, said William Parrish, a former Homeland Security acting assistant secretary for intelligence. He said it is unclear if the proposed changes will boost the department's status on intelligence issues.

"One of the frustrating things I felt was lack of the intelligence community to welcome new members," said Parrish, now in charge of homeland security programs at Virginia Commonwealth University. "And if [Homeland Security] is not a major player, then how do we know all of the information is getting out?"