All they really need for the Department of Homeland Security to do is to buy a first class search engine from Google (they have all sizes available), and link it to the data bases of the important federal agencies. Let each of the agencies keep their own files, and do their own investigations as they always have. The key to stopping the terrorists is sifting independent sources of information from separate agencies. It’s making the problem worse by eliminating the independence of all the information sources; i.e. disassembling the existing agencies and stitching them together into the Department of Homeland Security. Frankenstein lives.
With a good Google Search Engine linked between the sundry intelligence services, last September they could have done a search on “terrorist aircraft pilot schools al Queda bin Laden” and would have immediately gotten a prioritized list of all the important documents revealed in the media in the subsequent investigations, clearly pointing out the imminent danger of an aircraft borne terrorist attack. Hell, there was an X-files episode that was the exact same scenario. But that’s science fiction; nobody believes that stuff.