Sarah Palin at a rally in Sioux City. (Photo: Douglas Burns)

And the exclusive story is no longer the exclusive domain of the traditional media. In many cases, it’s the small, independent media that are breaking stories and driving the news these days.

With that in mind, the Iowa Independent would like to share the best of the stories that you read here first.

1. Why John McCain will select Sarah Palin as running mate by Douglas Burns (June 29, 2008)

Sarah who?

That was pretty much the reaction in June when the Iowa Independent’s Doug Burns not only said the one-term governor from Alaska should be John McCain’s vice presidential pick, but that she would be his pick. By late August, McCain actually did choose Palin to be his running mate, and Burns (and his crystal ball) were vindicated.

2. Agriprocessors official who sold used cars and favors has fled the country, residents say by Lynda Waddington (June 20, 2008)

If a scoop is defined as getting a story before any other news organization, then Lynda Waddington’s story about Hasom Amara, a former supervisor at Agriprocessors, can be counted as a super scoop. That’s because she not only broke the news to the public that Amara had fled the country, she broke the news to the Department of Justice and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division.

3. Dems’ coordinated campaign largely disbanded, replaced by Obama staff by Jason Hancock (July 3, 2008)

In a year that saw Democrats expand their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, you wouldn’t think there would be much talk of missed opportunities. But in the months leading up to Election Day, Democrats were predicting (and Republicans were bracing for) huge gains that never came. This despite the fact that Obama overwhelmingly carried the Hawkeye State with his army of volunteers and paid staff blanketing the state and turning out supporters.

So are Iowans just notorious ticket-splitters, or was there something else to blame? Many point back to one of Obama’s first post-primary decisions, to forgo participating in the state party’s coordinated campaign and instead focus all efforts on his own election, a story we broke in Iowa. Many predicted at the time that this could make legislative races tighter, a hypothesis that seems to have panned out.

4. Fallon faces campaign finance questions By Chase Martyn (March 30, 2008)

Former state Rep. Ed Fallon

The Democratic primary for the Third Congressional District between incumbent Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon garnered national attention and was widely expected to go right down to the wire. In the end, Boswell cruised to victory. Two major factors seemed to pull Fallon’s support down in the months leading up to the primary vote. The first was his outspoken support for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, something Boswell repeatedly used to try and show Fallon was somehow less of a loyal Democrat. The second was a report by the Iowa Independent calling into question the campaign finance ethics of Fallon’s for-profit political advocacy organization “I’m for Iowa.”

One of Fallon’s major lines of attack was Boswell’s stance on campaign finance reform, calling the Blue Dog Democrat a pawn of corporate America due to his willingness to accept millions of dollars from corporate political action committees. So when Fallon revealed that his for-profit advocacy organization accepted contributions that would never be disclosed, cries of hypocrisy quickly followed, whether justified or not. His campaign never seemed to regain traction.

5. Iowa’s intelligence fusion center ‘connects the dots’ By Jason Hancock (July 29, 2008)

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government began creating a nationwide intelligence network with a headquarters in every state. The fusion center concept was born. Here in Iowa, very little was known about the organization, even though its major structure had been in place for years and its director, Russell Porter, was a well-known figure in the national intelligence community. As part of a nationwide series including the Iowa Independent and its sister sites in Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado and Michigan, the doors of this secretive organization were flung open. Soon after our coverage, the story of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center was being told on national television.

6.  The invocation that stole the show from Sen. John McCain by John Deeth (Oct. 11, 2008)

John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, had not yet arrived at an Oct. 11 Davenport event, so naturally very few media members had bothered to show. Luckily, the Iowa Independent’s John Deeth is much like a Marine -– first one in, last one out, which meant he was practically the only one there to file the following report:

Before McCain’s arrival, a minister delivering an invocation said, “There are plenty of people around the world who are praying to their god, be they Hindu, Buddah, or Allah, that (McCain’s) opponent wins. … And Lord, I pray that you step forward and honor your own name.”

The story quickly made its way across the Internet, and the preacher who made the remark, The Rev. Arnold Conrad, past pastor of the Grace Evangelical Free Church, was later “honored” as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World.”

7. Obama/Richardson Caucus deal by Chase Martyn and Lynda Waddington (Jan. 2, 2008)

There is a lot of wheeling and dealing on Caucus night. One day before Iowans rocketed Barack Obama to front-runner status, the Iowa Independent reported on possible deals between New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the Obama campaign that directed Richardson supporters to caucus for Obama in the second round of voting.  Both sides (and nearly every other Democratic candidate) denied the deal, but we found plenty of evidence on the ground.

8. GOP platform calls for end to ethanol mandate By Jason Hancock (Sept. 3, 2008)

It was a move that received very little attention on a night when most of the Republican National Convention was cancelled because of concerns over Hurricane Gustav, but for farm states, it was a big deal. The GOP’s national platform for the first time called for an end to a mandate that gasoline contain a set amount of ethanol. Overall, the 2008 RNC Convention was not kind to the ethanol industry, with Sen. John McCain and his vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hardly mentioning biofuels as part of the energy mix of the future. The move was seen as a putting the party in line with its presidential candidates, but many observers said at the time that it would cost Republicans support up and down the ballot in agricultural states like Iowa.

The decision, which was based on Porter’s “consistent and vocal presence in law enforcement stressing the importance of protecting civil rights in policy, training and ethical practice of the intelligence function,” was made during the mid-year meeting of IACP’s Civil Rights Committee.

“No one is more responsible for Iowa’s outstanding reputation in the field of intelligence and fusion centers than Russ Porter,” said Eugene Meyer, Iowa Department of Public Safety commissioner. “His expertise is widely recognized and sought at all levels of government, including the highest levels of government.”

Porter was presented with the award at a reception in San Diego, Calif., on Nov. 7.

“I’m proud to work at the Iowa Department of Public Safety and with other law enforcement leaders who value and strongly support the protection of privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights,” Porter said when accepting the award. “I’m honored to be a member of the IACP — an exceptional organization that appreciates and rewards these important activities.”

In addition to his efforts in law enforcement intelligence, Porter has provided hate crime training to law enforcement agencies and other groups for nearly 20 years.

Porter, who has worked in Iowa’s intelligence community since 1984, will testify on using intelligence to analyze terrorism threats and information sharing before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment. He is one of five nationally recognized experts who will testify.

Fusion centers sprung up around the country in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Today, they make up a nationwide network of intelligence gathering offices, with the goal of sharing information and avoiding mistakes that led to the attacks.

For more on the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, click here.

A Web cast of the hearing is available by clicking here. It is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m.

Since fusion centers around the country have gone largely unexamined by the mainstream media, The Iowa Independent and its sister sites in Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan and New Mexico reported on activity in their states over the course of a week.

The Fox News story features interviews Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, and Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, as they discuss the role of the fusion center and its possible shortcomings.

Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, was one of a group of people who helped lay the groundwork for the fusion center concept around the country.

Made up of law enforcement personnel and state and federal intelligence analysts, the center has six regional offices around the state and nearly 50 staff members.

Law enforcement says it’s an essential tool. Civil liberties advocates worry that creating one-stop shops for sensitive information could lead to abuses. But the fusion center concept is expanding across the country, and in the process, creating a nationwide intelligence network whose activities are barely known to the public.

Traditionally, police had little to do with counterterrorism. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it became obvious that al-Qaeda members had prepared not only in far-off Afghan training camps but also in Minnesota and flight schools in Florida. An unwitting Maryland state trooper actually stopped one of the future hijackers for speeding.

Fusion centers are where the federal, state and local cops share intelligence, sift data for clues, run down reports of suspicious packages, and connect dots in an effort to detect and thwart drug smuggling, gang fighting and other menaces to society.

Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, said the center has been very successful at its mission since it was first established 3 1/2 years ago.

“There are challenges and concerns, and we are very aware of that,” he said. “It works for Iowa because we have worked to give authority to local officials to dictate the fusion center’s direction.”

Porter’s career in Iowa law enforcement dates back to 1978, with a focus on intelligence since 1984. In the national intelligence community, Porter is well-known and respected. He was working on his doctoral thesis on intelligence gathering in law enforcement when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened, and along with a number of groups and organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Porter helped craft a plan to fix what went wrong with domestic intelligence gathering while protecting fundamental rights of privacy and civil liberties.

“When 9/11 happened, suddenly there was the political will in Washington and around the country to do something,” he said. “A few of us put together the IACP Criminal Intelligence Sharing Summit in March of 2002. A colleague of mine and I served as the technical writers for that report, which was published in August of 2002. It called for the creation of a national criminal intelligence sharing plan and a criminal intelligence coordinating council.”

That laid the groundwork for “fusion centers,” with an underlying goal of keep Americans safe. Whether or not that has happened is something that is difficult to quantify. Porter, for one, does not see terrorism as the biggest threat facing Iowans.

“It’s a cliché, but, yes, Americans are safer, but we are not yet safe,” he said. “We need to keep a realistic perspective on the threats that we face. In cities across America, we still have significant gang problems. There are still issues with domestic violence. We still face those community problems. We’re stronger at how we deal with those things, and I think we’re better informed, but the danger persists.”

While the initial idea behind creating these centers around the country was to combat terrorism, the mission in Iowa has evolved to the point where its biggest successes deal with home-grown crime.

Operations are divided by regions, with Fusion Offices in Sioux City (Region 1), Waterloo (2), Oelwein (3), Atlantic (4), Des Moines (5), and Blue Grass (6). (Click for full size)

The organization

The Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center was established in December 2004. But unlike a lot of states that are building similar networks across the country, Iowa had a head start. The Fusion Center was built on the skeleton of the Iowa Law Enforcement Intelligence Network (LEIN), a system designed to share information among law enforcement agencies that has been in place since 1984.

“We took something that has been around since 1984 and said let’s invest in it to strengthen it and make it operate more smoothly,” Porter said. “So we took each of our six LEIN regions and determined one agency in each region that was willing to step up and served as the grantee for the fusion office. Really, this is just a strengthening of capabilities we’ve had in place for decades. ”

The six regional offices are located in urban areas such as Des Moines, Sioux City and Waterloo, but also in rural outposts like Atlantic and Independence. There are 21 total staffers working in the regional offices around the state, ranging from two staffers in the Region 6 office in Blue Grass to five staffers in the Region 4 office in Atlantic.

The headquarters for the state’s fusion centers is led by the Iowa Department of Public Safety (IDPS) and located in the department’s offices in the State Capitol Complex at 215 E. Seventh St. in Des Moines. There are 23 staff members, including 10 intelligence analysts and 13 law enforcement officers. Among the staff are representatives from the Iowa State Patrol, the State Division of Narcotics Enforcement, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Iowa Fire Marshall’s office and The Midwest High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also supplies two staffers to the fusion center.

Porter expects an analyst from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be assigned to the Iowa Fusion Center soon.

Dennis Rudolph, operations supervisor at the Region 4 Fusion Center, said the major difference between LEIN and the fusion centers is “the difference between reactive and proactive.”

“LEIN was a reactive thing,” he said. “You bring people together and they say what problems they were having this month, everyone talks and if a couple match up, they get together and they talk and compare notes. The fusion center is more proactive, using our resources to say this is a problem happening in western Nebraska which seems to be moving east, so you should be aware.”

Each regional office is somewhat autonomous, Porter said, forming its own governing structure depending on local needs. Each regional supervisor reports to Porter, who reports to Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Eugene Meyer, who reports to Gov. Chet Culver. There is also a LEIN Executive Board, made up of seven members: a law enforcement officer from each region and Porter.

Federal funding cut

Almost 90 percent of the main fusion center’s funding comes from state appropriation and the IDPS’ budget, Porter said. The agencies that supply staff to the center, like the FBI, cover their salaries, but the rest falls under the domain of the IDPS.

The six regional offices, on the other hand, are funded almost entirely out of federal Department of Homeland Security grants. In fact, one of the biggest determining factors of whether a municipality would be the site of a regional office was its willingness to take on the responsibility of working to attain federal grant money.

“As you can imagine, it can sometimes be very arduous,” Porter said.

To make matters more difficult, the federal government has cut the amount of money it puts into the fusion center program in recent years. According to an October 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office, Homeland Security grants totaled more than $130 million from 2004 to 2006. But in 2006, the total amount allocated dropped from $57 million to $43 million. Iowa was not immune.

“I think next year is going to be tough for us,” Rudolph said. “I think some thought has gone into turning to local municipalities to try to get some funding, but budgets are tight. I think law enforcement and emergency management are going to lose something very good if the federal government squeezes this program financially.”

The mission expands

The intelligence scope of the Iowa fusion centers is defined as “all crimes,” not just counterterrorism.

This all-crimes approach is essential, Porter said, in order to keep Iowans safe and protect the country against terrorism. Rudolph said while you won’t see cases in Iowa opened because “someone is a terrorist,” you will see someone busted early on before getting the chance to commit a terrorist act. Groups plotting terrorist attacks could first commit crimes such as money laundering, drug dealing or illegal gun sales to finance their operations.

“You have to fund terrorism somehow, and a lot of times it’s through illegal activity,” he said. “We start seeing a guy in Iowa selling dope, then all the sudden you see his name come up in a meeting with Nebraska, and he’s selling guns there. You start looking at him a little harder.”

Porter said the Iowa fusion centers follow the traditional model for the intelligence process. That begins with defining information requirements, or things that are important for people to know about. For example, crimes involving children are required to be reported up the chain of the fusion center. So earlier this year when a man tried to entice a young girl into his car in rural Guthrie County, local law enforcement told the fusion office, which reported it up to the central fusion center. That is when it was determined that another incident had occurred, which warranted a bulletin to be sent out to law enforcement personnel.

“I hate using this phrase, but it is our job to connect the dots,” Porter said.

In August 2006, the Department of Homeland Security issued “Fusion Center Guidelines,” which, among other things, defined information requirements on a federal level. Now, certain information is automatically shared with surrounding states or the Department of Homeland Security.

When information comes down from Washington, D.C., sometimes there is a disconnect, Porter said.

“Sometimes, priorities may be different, or lexicon might be different,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to get everyone on the same page.”

The Iowa fusion centers also played a role in the recent flooding. While their mission does not include “all hazards,” as some states’ do, Rudolph said the fusion centers, since they work with many different agencies, can work to help them overcome their interoperability issues.

One of the best aspects of the fusion centers, Rudolph said, is the fact that it has created a working relationship among law enforcement on many levels.

“It is very helpful that we all are starting to know one another and work together regularly,” he said. “Prior to the fusion centers, no one really knew who to turn to or talk to. Now, we work with the FBI, [the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms], [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and several other agencies at least a couple times a month. That was unheard of before.”

Porter said in many cases, criminal activity cannot be ruled out right away, so it is the fusion center’s responsibility to become involved.

“If a chemical plant explodes, it could be criminal, it could be human error, it could be negligence. You can’t rule anything out,” he said.

The fusion centers’ job is not investigative, Rudolph said, but rather as a way for all information to be gathered in one location, analyzed and sent to the places it needs to go.

“We’re a clearinghouse for intelligence, not a storage facility. We’re a middle man,” Rudolph said.

The Iowa fusion centers have access to national data bases such as Law Enforcement Online and Regional Information Sharing Systems Intranet. They also have access to Homeland Security Information Network, but only the “controlled but unclassified” version. Porter anticipates that with the addition of a Department of Homeland Security employee to the fusion center staff, the center will gain access to the “secret” version of the network.

“We think the fusion center would benefit from the assignment of a U.S. DHS employee, and access to HSDN-Secret, so that the DHS employee is here and the system is accessible before the onset of a crisis,” he said. “We also know that the information environment is constantly changing, so we are always keeping an eye out for information systems that might be developed that will help us serve Iowa and our communities better.”

A threat to civil liberties?

Civil liberties advocates worry that the growing tentacles of these networks, linking many government agencies and potentially private industry as well, could breach the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

They argue that laws were put into place to avoid these types of networks because history has shown they lead to abuse. They add that the “all crimes” approach sounds suspiciously like the government is building a distributed domestic intelligence service that could easily begin keeping tabs on Americans who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

“We don’t think we have to give up the privileges that come with being a law-abiding citizen in order to be safe,” said Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. “The danger with this sort of thing is that you end up making everyone a suspect, and that’s not the way you do law enforcement.”

Earlier this year, the ACLU issued a report entitled “What’s Wrong With Fusion Centers,” which cited concerns about military units operating in the centers, as well as the potential for scope creep and data mining. How, the group asked, can citizens contest information about themselves, given the patchwork of state, local and federal sunshine laws that may or may not apply?

Porter not only understands the concerns, he takes them very seriously.

In April, he testified before Congress about the history of the fusion center concept, and the history of the abuse of civil liberties by law enforcement in the name of making the country safer. He pointed to the FBI’s notorious Counter Intelligence Program, known as Cointelpro, during the 1960s and early 1970s, which included a series of covert and often illegal projects aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. When exposed, Cointelpro was greeted with lawsuits, complaints and headlines, and the program was shut down.

“It is critically important that we avoid the historical practices that led to reoccurring violations of privacy rights and civil liberties,” Porter said in his testimony.

Since his testimony before Congress, Porter said he has been traveling the country to teach other state fusion centers the history of intelligence gathering abuse, in the hopes that it will remain a priority.

“It has got to be given high visibility and high attention because it is one of the things that causes us to fail in this business,” he said. “From my past study and research, it’s a pivot point to success or failure. It’s essential to protect the principles on which this country was founded. With the fusion centers, we built on the history, successes and the problems that we had in the past.”

Standards for centers include a ban on information concerning the political, religious or social views of an individual or group unless the information is directly related to criminal activity. Also, there must be a reasonable suspicion that an individual is involved in a crime before information is collected.

“These have been court tested, civil liberties advocates find them acceptable and so we held those out to make sure that if you’re going to do this business, you need to adhere to those regulatory frameworks,” Porter said.

“There is so little that is publicly known about the fusion centers,” the ACLU’s Stone said. “I think that is why some people are worried. History has shown that when people get unfettered power, it will be abused. So I believe there should be an inherent skepticism with this.”

An uncertain future

Iowans can rest assured that law enforcement is doing everything it can to keep them safe, Porter said. But there are storm clouds on the horizon for the fusion center program in Iowa and nationally.

A decrease in federal funding could mean a loss of training for many employees, Porter says, which could lead to the types of abuses civil liberties activists fear.

“What you run the risk of is people doing this work without the proper training, and then we have the problems we have had in the past,” he said. “I think fusion centers are a good way to spend money, because they can help in so many areas, like anti-drug, anti-gang and anti-terrorism. I think we’re on the right path. I just hope we don’t take a step backward.”

Rudolph said losing funding could be a major blow to law enforcement in Iowa.

“What can be accomplished is really incredible,” he said. “In the past, you might have two deputies and a sheriff trying to work a burglary ring that involves multi-counties and multi-states. Now, you have 60 officers from all these counties and states going after it. It’s a huge difference.”

So if the program is making people safer, why is it suddenly having problems getting the federal government to pay for it?

“I think the further away we get from 9/11, the more we start to lose some of the urgency of this type of thing,” Porter said. “I think that’s part of it. But even more than that, I think it becomes one of many priorities for the government to spend money on. Lots of really good programs end up falling through the cracks. The hope on the ground is that this doesn’t become a victim of that sort of thing.”

See also, Minnesota Independent on fusion centers: “You don’t know MN-JAC: Anti-terror fusion center grapples with security flaw, new privacy policy.”