Senator Joe Lieberman
Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee
Hearing on Department of Homeland Security
Thursday, June 20, 2002
This morning, this Committee returns to its
consideration of the creation of a new Department of Homeland
Security, a focused domestic defense agency which would guard
our great country against those who seek to suppress our values
and destroy our way of life by terrorizing our people.
Our challenge and our responsibility after
September 11th is to adapt, respond, and reform to
protect our people from future terrorist attacks. It should be
no contest. We have so much more strength, wealth, talent, and
technology than our enemies. And we have our enduring faith,
unity, and patriotism to guide us in our work.
Two remarkable realities of American history
are that no matter how much we’ve changed to meet the challenges
of each succeeding generation, we’ve stayed, in essence, the
same nation committed to the same values. Now, we’ve got to
change again—to become not just safer, but better. In part, this
is a matter of executive reorganization. But it’s also, more
broadly, a test of whether we can transform the people’s
government at a time of crisis, against the friction of
entrenched interests, while protecting our freedoms.
The urgency of our circumstances after the
terrorist attacks of September 11th requires us to
proceed with a singular focus on swiftly creating a new
department of our government that has an unequivocal mission,
broad jurisdiction, defined lines of authority, and adequate
resources to get the job of homeland security done.
In our work here, we have strong foundations
to build on: the excellent work of the Hart-Rudman Commission,
the proposal reported out of this committee last month and the
President’s proposal of two weeks ago, all of which call for a
cabinet-level homeland security department. I am grateful that
the President’s plan is in many respects similar to our
committee’s proposal. That will certainly make our task more
manageable.
But there are differences between the two
plans, and we will have to reconcile them. We must also be open
to constructive additions of ideas not included or adequately
covered in either proposal. We’re not trying to create the
biggest possible department here, but we are determined to build
a structure that will give the American people the protection
they need and deserve.
With all due respect to the critics of this
reorganization, this isn’t about rearranging the deck chairs on
a sinking ship. It’s about building a stronger ship of state
that’s better equipped to carry the American people safely
through the rough waters ahead.
Among the unsettled questions we face in our
work are the following:
First, we must improve the collection of
domestic terrorism intelligence and decide how to redress the
awful lack of coordination and information sharing among key
agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, that now appears to
have been the most glaring failure of our government leading up
to September 11th. The legislation authored by
Senators Specter, Graham, and myself, would create a statutory
Office for Combating Terrorism within the White House to oversee
such coordination. The President’s proposal would create an
information analysis center in the Department which would
collect and synthesize intelligence from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and
other agencies. Neither proposal may be adequate to the threat.
Others have suggested that we should take an even bolder step by
creating a Domestic Intelligence Agency similar to those in
Britain and other European countries, perhaps within the
Department of Homeland Security, perhaps outside it. We should
consider those alternatives and others.
Second, we must determine how best to
integrate the resources and expertise of our military into this
effort. The Department of Defense is itself in the process of
being refocused to meet the challenge of asymmetrical,
high-tech, and terrorist threats—including the creation of a new
Northern Command, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
which will take on the new responsibility of homeland defense. A
Department of Homeland Security that ignores the evolving
contours of our military will be the weaker for it.
Third, we must optimize coordination between
the Department of Homeland Security and the hundreds of
thousands of local police officers, firefighters, emergency
response workers, and public health officials on the frontlines
in our states, counties, and municipalities. Those
professionals, those public servants, can be critically
important not just as first responders, but as intelligence
gatherers. They must be in the mix, not on the sidelines, as we
formulate this agency. And they will need to receive significant
additional funds to do the job that we are asking them to do.
There are likely to be other important areas
that will need resolution and clarification. But this cannot be
a leisurely process. "Slowly but surely" won’t do it in this
case. We must proceed swiftly and surely, because our
terrorist enemies have clearly not abandoned their intention to
do the American people terrible harm. I intend to move this
legislation through Committee, and to the Senate floor, by
mid-July. I hope we can pass it and send it to the President by
the end of this session at the latest.
After September 11th, the meaning
of security has changed in America. The painful fact is that we
allowed ourselves to become vulnerable. But as we rebuild and
raise our defenses, we must not begin to believe that future,
successful terrorist attacks are inevitable, or that future loss
of American life must be accepted as a necessary casualty of
freedom. That is why we need to raise our guard and organize our
strength quickly and surely in this new department.
A long time ago, in 1777, William Pitt the
Elder advised the British with regard to the feisty colonies
that had broken away from the Crown to secure their freedom,
"You cannot conquer America." Two hundred and twenty-five years
later, we will prove Pitt right again.
Creating a Department of Homeland Security now
is a direct fulfillment of the mission those feisty and
principled Founders of ours gave those of us who are privileged
to serve in our national government when they wrote the preamble
to our Constitution more than two centuries ago. It reads, "We
the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure
the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
When we come together in this 107th
Session of Congress to create this new department, as I am
confident we will, we will have formed a more perfect union,
insured domestic tranquility, provided for the common defense,
and secured the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity.
Senator Thompson… |