The Los Angeles TerrorismEarly Warning Group was designed by LT John Sullivan. It provides local responders and community leaders with information on the current threat and future prevention. Terrorism Early Warning Groups are a model of that emphasizes operations-intelligence fusion for all phases of response and community protection. TEWs serve law enforcement investigative needs, fire service response, and medical, as well as public health. The LA TEW was named among the “Top 100” innovative programs by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government: 16th Annual Innovations in American Government Awards, and as a Finalist in Mitretek Innovations in Homeland Security Award issued by Mitretek and the Ash Institute for Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.
TEW Mission
Terrorism Early Warning Groups constitute a multilateral, multidisciplinary, networked effort. Each individual TEW shares the following attributes:
Serves as the focal point for analyzing the strategic and operational information needed to respond to terrorism and protect critical infrastructure;
Performs net assessments to aid mission planning, decision-making, and allocation of resources in support of incident command during actual events.
Collectively individual TEWs form a node in the TEW network. The overarching mission for individual TEWs and the collective network follows: Overarching TEW Mission To develop operational intelligence for area of operations, and contribute to the co-production of intelligence across the TEW and intelligence fusion community in order to prevent, counter and respond to terrorism and emerging threats by conducting indications and warning and operational net assessment.
Sharing Intelligence
The 9/11 Commission Report illustrated some shortcomings in intelligence sharing. The TEWs are examples of state and local efforts that provide a mechanism for the collection, analysis and sharing of information. The emerged from the TEW network and other fusion center initiatives.
Resources
The LA Terrorism Early Warning case study: John P. Sullivan and Alain Bauer, Eds. T, Los Angeles: Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, 2008. Also a resource guide: National TEW Resource Center, ', 2005. These Masters theses looked at the effort:''' 1) Sunchar M. Rust, "," Masters Thesis, Monterrey: Naval Postgraduate School, March 2006. 2) Michael Grossman, "," Masters Thesis, Monterrey: Naval Postgraduate School, September 2005. 3) William A. Forsyth, "," Masters Thesis, Monterrey: Naval Postgraduate School, September 2005. 4) James Madia, "," Masters Thesis, Monterrey: Naval Postgraduate School, September 2011.
TEW Conferences
Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group Conference. 2005
Academic Papers
John P. Sullivan & James J. Wirtz, "," International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 21:1, 13-25
