New York State Police

One of the organizations that organize and sponsor these trainings is the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). JINSA is a think tank that advocates for US-Israeli security cooperation, increased domestic military spending, and military aid to Israel, and has board members with close ties to US defense contractors. JINSA launched its Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP) shortly after 9/11, and since 2002 has run annual trips to Israel for US federal, state, and local law enforcement. Over 11,000 additional American law enforcement officials have attended LEEP conferences nationwide, which bring in Israeli security officials as experts.

The State Police of New York is among the departments that have sent delegates to Israel. Roderick “Rod” Covington held the title of Major and served as the head of the Executive Services Detail (ESD) of the New York State Police from 2006 to 2008 under then-Governor Eliot Spitzer. The ESD has the responsibility of protecting the governor and other state officials. Covington attended a training in Israel with JINSA as a delegate of the LEEP program in February 2008. Bart R. Johnson was serving as a Colonel in the New York State Police when he attended a training in Israel with JINSA as a delegate of the LEEP program in June 2006.

Covington had been involved in the response to the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, when he held the title of Lieutenant, and in February 2002 he was one of twelve delegates that the Israeli Ministry of Tourism brought to Israel to receive an award for their heroism. On this trip, delegates met government leaders, were briefed by members of the police and military, and watched demonstrations by Israel’s “anti-terrorism” and emergency services.

While Johnson served as a Lieutenant, he was tasked with developing an anti-terrorism program within the state police. In 2003, he helped found the National Network of Fusion Centers, centers run by local and state police agencies to share intelligence from public and private databases across regions and levels of law enforcement from local agencies through the FBI. The centers use an “all-crimes approach” to data-sharing, analyzing all crimes to identify trends that may point to terrorist activity. This approach has been criticized as unregulated executive overreach into local communities, especially given that the data shared includes reports of non-criminal activity.

According to the ACLU, fusion centers can employ officials from federal, state and local law enforcement and homeland security agencies, as well as other state and local government entities, the federal intelligence community, the military and even private companies, to spy on Americans in virtually complete secrecy.

In spring 2007, Johnson presented on counterterrorism at an event in New York City alongside Simon Perry, who at the time was the Police Attaché and Liaison Officer to the USA and Canada for the Israeli Police and Ministry of Public Security.

Since then, Johnson has worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and from 2011-2014 he was the Executive Director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Since 2015, he has held the position of Federal Security Director for the DHS/Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the New York City area.