Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All (24 page)

This model is a greater danger because the self-radicalized members (or small groups in the case of the Tsarnaevs) have limited incriminating links and will leave fewer investigative and intelligence clues about the planning and operational stages of their attacks, making them harder to detect and prevent. Adding to the difficulty is the trend toward the expansion of the already segmented federal law-enforcement bureaucracy. Sole-proprietorship terrorism by nature does not involve the networks of individuals the franchise model relies on, and it will reduce the potential that these terrorists will somehow be flagged.

One example of the fragmentation among federal agencies comes from my experience in the Melville field office in conjunction with a bank fraud investigation. Although the investigation was initially referred to the Secret Service as a bank fraud case, as it unfolded and my target’s network of contacts materialized, it became clear that members of his network were targets of other agencies’ investigative antiterrorism efforts. This connection was uncovered by coincidence and not due to interagency operability.

The situation demanded that I contact the respective agencies and we work together to advance the investigation and apprehend the individuals. The cooperation was unnecessarily difficult at times because of the clashing of the bureaucracies involved, but eventually we accomplished our mission. When there is no network or cell, or the group is small and localized and its connection to the larger network is through cyberspace, the trail of investigative warning signs dries up. As leads become harder to follow and the interagency communication and information trading becomes more challenging and stressful, the fragmented nature of the investigative bodies can result in a sole-proprietor terrorist never being detected at all, as we saw in Boston.

A sole proprietor may make only a limited number of contacts that would be of investigative interest compared to the larger franchise cells that generate much more chatter. If any of these limited opportunities are missed, the chances of stopping an attack may be lost. Of course, information trading among agencies would be unnecessary if there were not so many different federal law-enforcement agencies acting as their own independent enterprises and contributing to the growing bureaucratic
fog. The explosive growth of interagency segmentation and bureaucratic layering within agencies, in conjunction with the growing potential for sole-proprietor terrorism and limited investigative bread crumbs left on the trail, are significant factors working against government initiatives to combat terrorism.

We witnessed this exact phenomenon play out in the aftermath of the Boston attack, as details emerged about investigative clues about the attackers that were missed. Again, these missed clues were not due to any lack of dedication and mission focus by the individual federal agents who were involved, but by a broken and overly bureaucratic, multilayered federal law-enforcement structure.

The way the system works now, each agency exists primarily to protect its own turf, and the many layers within the agencies exist to protect the layer above, diffusing responsibility so no one is really responsible for the outcome of the game. The Boston Marathon case reminds me of the fraud investigation I conducted during my short tenure in the Baltimore field office. We found a number of co-conspirators in the target’s network that I would uncover as the investigation progressed. Each time I entered a subject into the Secret Service’s antiquated database and another Secret Service agent was interested in that subject, a message would appear with the agent’s phone number and his case number. As a matter of standard investigative practice, I looked into the investigating agent’s case for background information using the same system and would follow up with a detailed phone call to make the connections and put together the pieces of the investigative puzzle.

If this data-sharing process I described sounds simple, that’s because it was. Even with an antiquated system like the one the Secret Service had at the time, agents were still able to find the information they needed and the contacts necessary to move the investigation forward. Compare this old, poorly funded system to the multibillion-dollar investigation into the radicalization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev by current federal law enforcement. His name was entered into numerous databases, including the FBI’s Guardian Database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDES), the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), and the Treasury Enforcement Communication System (TECS), which is managed by US Customs and Border Protection. Even with a search through all these
sophisticated data platforms, federal law enforcement failed to produce any interagency investigative communication of value, and innocent American lives were lost as a result.

After the Boston Marathon attack, we learned that the Russian FSB (the former KGB) had already notified the FBI of Tamerlan’s suspected radicalization in March of 2011. The FBI conducted a preliminary investigation that didn’t produce anything of significance and concluded in June of 2011. The Russian FSB then notified the CIA of Tamerlan’s suspected radical ties in September of 2011. Tamerlan traveled to Russia in January of 2012, causing an alert to initiate within the TECS database, and he returned to Boston from Russia in July 2012, initiating another TECS alert.

Why were the alerts not followed up on? The answer to this question is simple: too many agencies, too many databases, and too many competing agendas. The expansion in bureaucracy at the expense of agents in the field who are laser-focused on counterterrorism only serves to diffuse responsibility among the bureaucratic layers, none of which are incentivized to actually produce an answer and be accountable for the American lives lost and traumatized by a terror attack.

The American public must demand a real set of solutions to this problem. Having worked inside this bureaucratic fog, I am consistently confused as to why no one is seriously proposing an obvious solution that would fix these issues: a streamlined, decompartmentalized federal law-enforcement organization, under one umbrella, with one person at the top responsible for its mission.

This umbrella organization could be organized by the various law-enforcement specialties (financial crimes, drug enforcement, counterterrorism, diplomatic protection, etc.), and the problems of communication and information sharing between agencies would be replaced by far less serious intra-agency squabbles, which are more easily fixed. Under one agency, databases could be merged and access to them refined and expanded. The elimination of redundant missions would open up personnel for reassignment based on national priorities. The suffocating layers of management would be eliminated and strict accountability chains created. Office space could be downsized, and equipment and sophisticated law-enforcement laboratories could be combined for “one-stop shopping.” The thousands of duplicative federal administrative forms that accomplish
the same goal through redundant agency administrative paths would be eliminated and, most importantly, a new era of accountability would begin.

In addition to needing a complete reorganization of our federal law-enforcement bureaucracy, I believe new models of security need to evolve. The threat of terrorism is not going to disappear anytime soon, despite the current administration’s belief that evil is purely a product of societal failings. I would strenuously argue that the long history of humankind refutes that premise. Violence has always been about a raw display of power, and the reasons humans can find for engaging in violence are too numerous to count. There is a disturbing but very real power in violence for someone who feels disenfranchised or to whom society has not provided economic power or the power of prestige and societal acceptance that accompany success. When society has left you behind, for whatever reason, either due to your own failings or circumstances beyond your control, you will seek some meaning for what has become a meaningless existence. That meaning may come from the group acceptance of a gang, the personal empowerment of violence at the expense of others, or a perverse ideological platform that provides an explanation for your own failings. Jihadist propaganda, readily available in a world made small by the growth in Internet communication, will become that platform for increasing numbers of the world’s Tsarnaev brothers, in search of a cause and a way to make their statement to the world.

It is not surprising to the intelligence or law-enforcement communities that jihadist propaganda would appeal to a segment of our society, and that self-radicalization is not only possible but very likely for some of our own citizens. The rigors of daily American life, as well as our responsibilities to our families and our jobs, lend order and structure to our lives and eliminate the need to pursue violent propaganda. We tend to view the world as a series of actions and consequences, and the idea of engaging in deadly violence to further a cause is repulsive to most of us. But violence to achieve an ideological goal, however repulsive to civilized men and women, has been the norm for most of human existence. The ability to use force to subjugate people you perceive as your enemies or to take what you desire, whether earned or not, is quite natural, and the power achieved can reinforce that kind of behavior. It is our unprecedented level of prosperity, and the corresponding fulfillment of most
of our fundamental needs as humans, that make this idea of “violence as natural” so foreign to us.

This presents an obvious danger for a society looking to prevent terrorists from causing the mass chaos they caused in Boston. Once again, the franchise model of terrorism requires interaction, and each interaction leaves a ripple that if detected could be used to investigate and thwart an attack. One person acting alone will not leave as many of these ripples and has a substantially greater chance of avoiding detection. Sadly, this is likely to result in a new series of security measures and encroachments on individual liberties that we are not accustomed to in the United States. These encroachments will not be voluntary and will inevitably change the way we view public events in the future. Subjecting yourself to a frisk at a public event may become standard operating procedure, and security cameras will proliferate to the point where any public area of a major city will likely be monitored.

The New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square and the presidential inauguration are examples of high-profile outdoor events with large crowds that have successfully implemented security plans that have kept all participants safe to date. The security models used by the New York City Police Department and Secret Service for these events will most likely be the standard going forward. These events attract millions of revelers and despite some setbacks they have never had a major security breach. Security officials accomplish this by creating “access zones” where the public can view the event. Similar to the “box within a box” approach I described earlier in the book, these models do not attempt to do the impossible.

During a number of interviews I conducted prior to the 2012 presidential inauguration, I was asked, “How does the Secret Service secure the entire city for the inauguration?” The answer is: they don’t. The same approach is applied to the city of Washington that I used at the Caterpillar factory visit that I coordinated for President Obama. The factory was full of dangerous equipment and chemicals, so we built a “box” within the factory and focused our limited assets on securing that limited area. The DC Metro police and other law-enforcement agencies can secure the streets of Washington, DC, but the Secret Service PPD has to secure the president’s location only. During the inauguration we accomplished this by utilizing strategically placed barriers to ensure that people who entered
locations where they would be close to the president did so only through specific “people-funnel” checkpoints.

For a presidential inauguration we insist that everyone pass through a metal detector, but this is not necessary to substantially reduce the risk of another Boston-type attack. The Boston bombers were carrying antipersonnel improvised explosives devices (IEDs) designed to kill or maim large numbers of people and inspire fear. In order to carry out that type of attack, you need a dense crowd in which to detonate the device. If the Boston Police Department had a plan in place for the marathon similar to the NYPD’s Times Square plan, where anyone accessing such areas as the starting line, the halfway point, and the finish line, where people tend to congregate, was subject to a bag check and quick pat-down in lieu of metal detectors, the attackers would have been forced to rethink their plans.

It troubles me to have to suggest a “new normal” way of life in our country because of the evaporation of individual liberty that will result as a consequence of increased security. So far lawmakers have not made any progress in revising laws that protect individual freedoms and the right to privacy. Provisions within poorly written sections of the PATRIOT Act, for example, have been misused and will continue to be until the law is refined. In addition, the billions of dollars spent on federalizing airport security have consistently failed to produce the desired results, while subjecting the public to frustrating, often embarrassing security screenings.

A lesson to take from this move toward a surveillance state is that no security measure comes without a trade-off. As Israeli major general and terror expert Amos Yadlin has stated, “it’s not the tools but the rules of engagement.” The PATRIOT Act was a tool with poorly defined rules of engagement that were left open to law enforcement’s interpretation. When the rules are open to interpretation, law enforcement will always seek the broadest interpretation to make their case. It is not personal; the men and women of the federal law-enforcement community whom I have worked with are members of our wider communities—fathers, mothers, neighbors, soccer coaches—and have no personal interest in violating your liberty. They are simply working with a set of imperfect tools.

The same can be said for expanding the use of surveillance cameras. There is nothing inherently evil about surveillance cameras, but when government officials are unclear about the rules of engagement as to where
these cameras will be placed, why they will be placed there, and what will be done with the footage, Americans grow understandably concerned. From my experience, surveillance is nonthreatening only to those doing the watching, not those being watched.