Under the program, officials can interview just about anyone in the U.S. to gather information about national threats including transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. DHS has a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence:
For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.
The inner workings of the program — called the "Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents POLITICO reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses.
DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Kenneth Wainstein, a former federal prosecutor who took the helm of I&A last June, said in a statement that his office is addressing its employees’ concerns. An I&A spokesperson provided POLITICO with a list of steps the office has taken since September 2020 to address internal complaints, including conducting a number of new trainings and hiring two full-time ombudsmen.
The survey described in the slide deck was conducted in April 2021. A person familiar with the survey said it asked respondents about events of 2020. Its findings were based on 126 responses. Half of the respondents said they’d alerted managers of their concerns that their work involved activity that was inappropriate or illegal. The slide deck seems to try to put a positive spin on this.
Three legal texts govern I&A’s activities: Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which lays out laws about national security; Executive Order 12333, which details how the Intelligence Community works; and the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which set up the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. intelligence agencies governed by Title 50 face strict rules related to intelligence activity in the U.S. or targeting U.S. citizens.
Later in that document came a line that was even more bleak: “Showing where we provide value is very challenging.”Another document, with notes from listening sessions that the Ombudsman — an internal sounding board for employee concerns — held with Field Operations Division employees in late October of 2021, shows that concerns about Title 50 persisted into the Biden administration.
The spokesperson also said I&A has implemented new training on intelligence legal authorities. And Steve Bunnell, DHS’s former general counsel, returned to the department to advise Wainstein and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on “the strategic direction of the organization and identify any areas of significant risk.”The Management Analysis and Assistance Program survey slide deck from April 2021 details another prevalent concern: retaliation against people who speak out.
“FOD and I&A leadership are not held professionally accountable — including for retaliation against employees, inexperience leading to poor decision-making, and a lack of transparency — and are not addressing issues revealed in crisis events they presided over.” Chad Wolf, who headed the Department of Homeland Security during the last year of the Trump administration, told POLITICO via email that I&A’s challenges have “largely stemmed from lack of proper leadership and a clearly defined mission.”
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