Without Warning, FBI Halts Intel Sharing

[Geee]

PJMedia:

Without making a public or private announcement, the FBI has ended critical intelligence sharing with all 77 law enforcement fusion centers nationwide. This policy was implemented less than two days after a top FBI official told Congress about the FBI’s extensive efforts to share intelligence with state and local partners.

On Monday, a state fusion center official told PJ Media:

The FBI has effectively put us out of business. We are right back to September 10.

 

Two other fusion center officials in other states confirmed the FBI’s new policy to PJ Media.

On March 1, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) stopped sharing Watch Encounter reports with the fusion centers. The Watch Encounter reports document incidents of individuals on terror watch lists having encounters with state or local law enforcement.

 

Until now, the Watch Encounter reports were forwarded to the fusion center responsible for the area where the encounter occurred. The Watch Encounter reports were the only means that state officials had of knowing that someone on a terror watch list had either traveled to or lived in their area.

Forwarding the Watch Encounter reports to the fusion centers had proved helpful to the FBI, according to a fusion center official:

 

When we received these reports we would get the dash cam recordings from the department in question and even interview the officer who conducted the stop. We would then double-back to the FBI with the information. We also found that while the FBI field offices were supposed to be receiving these encounter reports, they were typically unaware that anything had happened.

This official also claimed that the Watch Encounter reports are the core of the FBI’s intelligence-sharing program established after the 9/11 terror attacks:

These reports have been the life blood of the system. Now all of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent building fusion centers all across the country are essentially wasted.