Maritime ‘Fusion’ Centers Expand Coast Guard Intelligence Capabilities

By PATRICIA KIME
Sea Power Correspondent

The Coast Guard’s intelligence branch is undergoing an unprecedented expansion as it aims to solidify its role in the national intelligence arena.

Under the 2002 Fiscal Intelligence Act, the Coast Guard was inducted into the U.S. Intelligence Community, the 14 foreign intelligence agencies and organizations that report to the Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, who also heads the CIA. As a new member of the Intelligence Community, the Coast Guard has increased the number of personnel dedicated to intelligence gathering and added equipment, systems and facilities to improve its intelligence capabilities.

Since 2002, the number of active duty Coast Guard personnel working on intelligence has more than doubled, from 194 to 437. Those working for the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) — which is responsible for internal and external investigations, as well as personal security for high-ranking officers — also has risen, from 146 to 196.

In the Coast Guard Reserves, the figures for intelligence have increased as well, from 23 to 65, while the number of reserve CGIS members has stayed the same, at 161.

The additions are part of a service-wide effort to better provide real-time intelligence to Coast Guard ships and aircraft, create a foundation for analysis and increase communication with other intelligence agencies, James Sloan, the Coast Guard’s assistant commandant for intelligence, told Sea Power.

“We have a strategic plan. … We need to be providing actionable intelligence to our operators and we need to be able to respond to requests for intelligence that we get from other agencies,” Sloan said.

Since September 2003, the service has inaugurated two facilities it calls “maritime intelligence fusion centers” that provide a round-the-clock watch over maritime traffic and developments. These centers monitor areas of interest, track events, follow vessels of interest, provide analysis and evaluate trends.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, the service gathered information principally for use at the operational level. Each area commander had — and still has — a small intelligence shop to analyze data and project long-term trends in such areas as drug trafficking, migrant interdiction and fisheries enforcement.

But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the nation’s homeland security demands increased and, concurrently, a larger maritime intelligence-gathering capability was needed. The fusion centers were created to serve partly as a collection and distribution point for all Coast Guard-gathered maritime intelligence.

“They are at the point at which the intelligence comes up and the tactical information spreads out to the user,” Sloan said.

Recipients can include nearly everyone in the Coast Guard chain of command, from President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Thomas J. Ridge, to the commandant, area commanders, district offices, ship operators, maritime safety offices, port security personnel and air crews.

“We are not doing what others do, we are providing that tactical information that is critical to decision-making,” said Capt. Bill Davidson, commanding officer of Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center Atlantic.

Located in Dam Neck, Va., the Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center Atlantic touts itself as a “one-stop tactical intelligence provider for Coast Guard decision-makers within the Atlantic Area.”

The facility — with 75 personnel, military and civilian — provides direct intelligence to Atlantic Area commanders. “We’re here to push information. If we are looking two weeks back or two weeks forward, we are not doing our job,” Davidson said.

At the fusion center’s hub, the watch office, Coast Guardsmen survey individual computers while a large television screen displays tracking maps, station locators, radar, CNN and other news networks. Recently, the center enjoyed a quiet celebration of sorts when it learned that some of its intelligence landed on President Bush’s desk during the Haiti crisis.

“We are a lot more efficient now than we ever have been,” said Chief Operations Specialist Paul Stoddard, who oversees the watch office. “Linkage is vastly improved, and we are free to take advantage of what is coming in from other agencies.”

The Pacific Area Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center is located in Alameda, Calif.

The two fusion centers provide information to operational units, but also work in concert with the Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination Center (ICC) at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Md. The ICC is responsible for producing and disseminating intelligence with a Coast Guard perspective to support U.S. policy makers and operations. Co-located with the Navy and other agencies, it also provides quick access to others responsible for the nation’s maritime domain awareness.

“We believe in the maritime domain that there are two entities that are first among equals. Together, particularly at the National Maritime Intelligence Center, the relationship between the two entities is important. The Coast Guard brings to the table a lot of authorities and equities that the Navy doesn’t have, but the Navy brings information to the table that the Coast Guard needs,” Sloan said.

While the personnel figures for Coast Guard intelligence are not huge by Defense Department standards, the growth, from a half-percent to 1 percent of the active total force, is significant for a service whose membership was stagnant before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Sloan said the service’s national intelligence mandate stems from the fact that its personnel are spread along the nation’s 95,000 miles of shoreline and peppered throughout U.S. territorial waters, and can serve as the nation’s maritime “eyes and ears,” much as it did during the Prohibition-era Rum Wars and in World War II.

“This is recognition that we bring to the national level the information people need to do their jobs,” Sloan said.

Many experts consider the maritime terrorism threat to be among the most significant affecting global security. With countries beefing up airline and land transportation security, terrorists are likely to exploit “soft targets” — those that lack a security infrastructure or are penetrable.

Terrorists already have found vulnerabilities at sea, as demonstrated by the October 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole and the bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen nearly two years later.

It’s also believed al Qaeda owns or charters a fleet of more than a dozen cargo vessels, mainly to earn revenue for the group through smuggling operations, but also for possible terrorist use.

“We are on the forefront of being the eyes and ears of maritime security,” Sloan said. “Our biggest plans right now are to exploit, for the benefit of the nation, the equities of both services.”

To reach its potential, the Coast Guard expects to train more personnel in intelligence through its own schools and in classes offered by other agencies. The service also is considering creating an intelligence rating or specialty for officers and enlisted personnel.

“They need to do something. I’ve got guys who have been in intel for two-and-a-half years and getting ready to depart [for other duty stations]. When they walk out that door, we lose all that knowledge,” Stoddard said.

Sloan said he expects that within a few years, the Coast Guard will have a career intelligence cadre. “Not only is it necessary, but we are taking great strides in that direction,” he said.

The overall effect is for the service to play a major role in finding the information that will help arrest more drug smugglers, stem the flow of illegal migration, increase fisheries law enforcement and stop a terrorist attack by sea.

“What we are looking for is to have a Coast Guard intelligence program that is not a ‘mile wide and an inch deep,’ but robust in places we need to look at,” Sloan said.

The Navy and Coast Guard coordinate extensively with one another on maritime intelligence, with the Navy monitoring activity globally as the Coast Guard watches activity closer to U.S. shores.

Cmdr. Reese Madsen, chief of work force management at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C., described the relationship as in “lock-step.” The Navy concentrates on intelligence in the areas where it operates while the Coast Guard focuses on its “world at work.”

“We’re concerned with pressing out our borders, and the Navy is interested in doing what it can without overstepping its legal bounds under Posse Comitatus,” laws and regulations that prohibit the military services, except the Coast Guard, from engaging in domestic law enforcement, Madsen said

The two cooperate on numerous intelligence issues, including drug trafficking, migrant interdiction and maritime security.

“We rely on each other now more than ever. Before, we shared information in a congenial manner, but now, it’s reliance,” Madsen said.