Since the tragedies the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States and most importantly to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.
Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.
The beautiful thing about my intelligence is that it doesn't really come in one specific department. So even if something hasn't happened to me I have information on how to get you through whatever you may be going through.
Judy we think that since the 11th of September 2001 we've faced a similar heightened threat level. And we've been enhancing both the exchange of intelligence and security information and the assessment of that information because that's the crucial element.
Since 2001 the Patriot Act has provided the means to detect and disrupt terrorist threats against the U.S. Prior to enactment of the law major legal barriers prevented intelligence national defense and law enforcement agencies from working together and sharing information.
One is to ensure that the war fighters and the intelligence analysts get the information that they need when they need it in a format that's useful to them.
Over the course of two years we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community both defense and national.
My understanding is that what was provided was general order of battle information not operational intelligence. I certainly have no knowledge of US participation in preparing battle and strike packages and doubt strongly that that occurred.
I am committed to ensure that our intelligence community law enforcement medical professionals and military have the information and funding needed to protect the American people from threats at home and abroad.
But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.