CBP intelligence, internal policing highlight Basham legacy

CBP intelligence, internal policing highlight Basham legacy Ralph Basham is most proud of having institutionalized anticorruption, integrated intelligence and outside partnership initiatives during his 30-month tenure as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, he said at last month’s Trade Symposium.

Basham

   In his last speech to the import-export industry before leaving office with the Bush administration, Basham said he focused on those organizational priorities because the agency already had solid cross-border cargo and traveler security programs in place to protect the nation.
   One of the commissioner’s first acts was to establish an Internal Affairs office similar to those found in other law enforcement agencies. Internal Affairs, headed by Jim Tomcheck, is responsible for investigating ethics breaches and training employees on how to resist inducements to ignore criminal activity.
   “As we get control of our borders, I recognize our adversaries are not going to stop trying to” smuggle in drugs, undocumented aliens, violent gangs, or terrorist weapons, Basham told a group of reporters invited to his headquarters’ office to discuss the agency’s progress.
   “My concern,” the former Secret Service chief said, “is they are going to target our employees and try to use them as a means to penetrate the border.”
   The merger of multiple agencies into the new Department of Homeland Security in early 2003 resulted in legacy Customs losing its Internal Affairs division to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. CBP subsequently relied on ICE to investigate trade violations, internal corruption and other law breaking while the agency focused on detection and interdiction at the border.
   Basham said CBP, which now includes the Border Patrol, needed to get in front of any potential problems with a systematic approach to maintaining employee integrity because of the agency’s rapid growth and the fact that ICE didn’t have all the necessary resources.
   Internal Affairs, created with the help of ICE and the DHS Inspector General’s office, will have almost 200 investigators by the end of the year compared to five when it first started, he said.

Banks

   Sam Banks, an executive vice president for Sandler & Travis Trade Advisory Services who once held the deputy and acting commissioner positions, praised Basham for tackling potential corruption issues.
   “One corrupt insider can undo the good work of thousands of dedicated officers,” he told American Shipper. “Basham’s emphasis on Internal Affairs is fundamental to a law enforcement agency that is hiring thousands of new officers. Internal Affairs is not a sexy program, but it reflects Basham’s commitment to make CBP a premier organization for the long term.”
   Basham’s second major area of focus was to make CBP an organization that relied on intelligence to drive all enforcement and border security efforts.
   A year ago, he formed the Office of Intelligence and Operational Coordination, headed by Rodney Snyder. It includes the legacy Office of Anti-Terrorism, the Office of Intelligence and contingents from the Office of Field Operations and the Border Patrol.
   By combining operations and intelligence personnel the agency hopes to better push actionable information it collects out to the field, rather than limiting it to policymakers, to help agents and officers more efficiently target potential risks. The Intelligence Office is also working to improve information sharing with DHS sister agencies and the broader intelligence community. And it is striving to expand its analytical sources by teaching field officers how to collect information and feed it back into the intelligence loop.
   “We began by re-defining the term ‘intelligence’ within CBP. Many think intelligence is only top-secret agents using top-secret technology to capture enemy secrets. But, I view intelligence as any type of information, from any source, that can be analyzed and interpreted to help our men and women in the field do a better job of protecting this nation,” Basham said in his speech.
   The Intelligence team, along with the National Targeting Center and operational offices, studies daily shipment data, law enforcement tips and historical enforcement patterns, to develop selection criteria Customs officers use to identify which shipments to examine.
   Expanded intelligence capabilities are the only way CBP will be able to keep up with growing international passenger, container and truck traffic, he said, implying that inspect-everything approaches do not improve security and gum up trade.
   “We’re going to have to be smarter about going about this job of protecting the country,” he said during the press briefing.
   Basham also deserves kudos for beefing up CBP’s intelligence capabilities, Banks said.
   “Arming CBP officers with actionable intelligence is the key to better results, effective resource utilization, and safer borders. Basham is strategically leveraging the push for more interagency sharing of intelligence after 9/11. The trick is being able to convert highly sensitive intel into usable information on a specific container, vehicle or person crossing the border — that’s the challenge for his new intel unit,” he said.
      Basham also stressed the importance he has placed on developing working partnerships with foreign governments, other federal agencies and the trade community.
      Industry, he noted, has all the information and systems for managing the movement of goods that also is valuable for CBP’s risk-based strategy of applying limited inspection resources towards real threats.
   But government needs to be “very sensitive” to the cost imposed on the trade from information mandates “and make sure what we ask for is truly relevant to our mission,” he said, alluding to CBP’s pending rulemaking that will require importers to file additional data about their shipments.
   Basham is also credited with consolidating various trade-related programs in an Office of International Trade. CBP officially articulated its trade strategy in a document published late last month. The new office appears to have helped coordinate several enforcement functions, but there are mixed views in the trade community about whether International Trade has made a difference yet in trade facilitation or interagency coordination. ' Eric Kulisch