State Patrol – The Washington State Fusion Center

The Washington State Fusion Center

Originally called WAJAC – The Washington Joint Analytical Center – the WSFC was formed during the Global War on Terror between the middle 2000’s and 2010. Washington State Patrol and its Organized Crime Intelligence Unit were the primary architects, and the Joint Terror Task Force of the FBI was eventually its building host.

From what I can gather, WSFC was built out of a requirement for such a structure for administering Federal Grants to States for their participation in the ongoing National Emergency that was the Post September 11, 2001 United States. It was built in part from the OCIU’s ongoing Domestic Terror Conference, held annually in Spokane, Washington.

Quoting the 2006 organizers:

“Thank you once again for your participation in the 2006 Domestic Terrorism Conference. The conference is unique in that participants provide the intelligence information to be shared. To ensure compliance with CFR 28 part 23 (third party rule), the copy and print function has been disabled. Attendees must obtain permission from the contributing agencies prior to further dissemination of intelligence information from the CD.

The 2006 conference critiques have indicated that we go back to discussing new entries for the “DT Book” and we concur, and feel we should discuss new entries as well. It will still be expected of the submitting agencies to up-date or delete old entries.

The password for the DT Book /file is: (Short and dumb and redacted)

The 2007 Domestic Terrorism Conference will be at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA from October 30th to November 1st. Registration information / invites will be sent out in early summer. Please don’t hesitate to call or email with ideas for

this year’s workshop. We are always looking for speakers, case studies, and/or current trends that would benefit conference attendees.

As a reminder the Domestic Terrorism Conference (Workshop) is intended to be a true intelligence information sharing conference. In order to make this conference a success and continue to grow each year, we strongly encourage a representative from each attending agency to present an “area report” on domestic terrorism intelligence from their regions and/or disciplines.

Sincerely,

Detective Mike Brearty Detective Chris Webb

Washington State Patrol Washington State Patrol

Organized Crime Intelligence Unit Organized Crime Intelligence Unit”

– Monday, May 07, 2007 12:33 PM EMAIL

Quoting 2007’s organizers:

“On behalf of the Washington State Patrol Organized Crime Intelligence Unit, we would like to thank you for attending the 2007 Domestic Terrorism Conference in Spokane. We truly believe that this conference, more than others, is successful because of the attendee’s participation and networking.

Part of the information sharing at the DT Conference is the tradition of receiving the DT Book; a compact disc with subjects known to be involved in extremist activities or terrorist groups. The CD is normally sent-out to attendees in early April, followed by a password and information regarding this year’s

conference. Unfortunately, for several reasons, we have experienced some delays in sending-out 2007 DT Book. We hope to have the 2007 DT Book finished in about a month and, soon after, send it out to all 2007 DT Conference attendees.”

– Tuesday, May 27, 2008 9:10 AM Chris Webb, KCRIG EMAIL

The haphazard integration – slowly, over the course of three to five years – of the actual record custody procedures required by the quoted Code of Federal Regulation (28 CFR 23) indicates that the traditions of the DT Conference described pre-date the WSFC’s more formal procedures. The late 2009 emails around the then abandoned “DT Book” Compact Disk distribution are key to understanding the WSFC as the cut-out organization it was intended to be. This list is written just five months after US Army Civilian Employee John Towery was outed as a spy for RIG5 in Pierce County – and eventually, as a spy directly for his boss in the Army, as well. The inclusion any Military names in ordinary emails was to be avoided by Pierce County in all their subsequent Public Record Disclosures.

“1) Intelligence information must be vetted through a supervisor and the Section Commander for inclusion into the database (to comply with LEIU standards and 28 CFR part 23).

2) No Intelligence data should be kept in separate files/locations.

3) The information for the book is derived from multiple sources and there is no verification that it been vetted for accuracy and completeness nor the reliability of the source and the content.

4) In reference to the purge requirements, the information is not WSP’s information thus we have not established the retention period and at time of purge we would have to verify the information has not been updated prior to that purge creating more work than necessary for WSP.

5) We do not know how the information was collected. Each state, as well as federal agencies, has different collection and retention standards that could be in conflict with WSP requirements. That could easily open all of us to extensive scrutiny and outside audits.

6) Finally, WSP OCIU has limited ability to continue to devote such intense levels of time and resources toward putting together this information, maintaining it, and distributing it to these other agencies.

We welcome discussion on submitting information or intelligence into another database, such as the RISS Network nodes (WSIN, RMIN, etc), which would enhance the aspects of the original concept of the “book”.” – Beverly Wood, OCIU Secretary

-Thursday, November 19, 2009 2:06 PM Email