| abstract
| - In May 2003, the leaders of the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense established the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) (without a statutory mandate) to merge all threat information in a single location. TTIC itself has no independent authority to collect intelligence, and instead operates by combining the data elements and information on transnational terrorist activity collected by component agencies. The TTIC reports to the Director of Central Intelligence. TTIC has the primary responsibility in the U.S. government for terrorism analysis (except information relating solely to domestic terrorism, which is the responsibility of the FBI). Some Members of Congress expressed concerns about the possibility that the roles of the DHS intelligence analysis office and TTIC might be confused, but DHS was a partner in TTIC and gradually came to concentrate on serving as a bridge between the national intelligence community and state, local,and tribal law enforcement agencies that had never been components of the national Intelligence Community. In 2003, the TTIC launched TTIC Online — a database of terrorist-related intelligence information. In collaboration with the FBI and DHS, TTIC formed an Information Sharing Program Office to address policy impediments to information sharing across the federal government. TTIC is leading an interagency effort to establish standards to allow broader sharing of relevant information while protecting sources and methods.
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