Yes We Are Safer

Last week, the nation marked the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in solemn fashion, focusing on memorials and reflection, rather than on point scoring. Too bad Richard Clarke couldn’t manage to do the same.

Clarke, the official in charge of antiterrorism efforts before 9/11, commemorated the anniversary of the attacks by publishing a finger-pointing screed in U.S. News and World Report.

Clarke’s argument went something like the following: Here we are, seven years after 9/11. We haven’t been attacked. But we could be. Al Qaeda still exists, Bin Laden remains at large, and terrorists still commit terrorism. We’re backsliding, and no safer now then we were then. On the home front, our borders are still porous, we’re still not screening people, and security grants are too much about pork and not enough about real risk.

Clarke is mostly wrong.

In fact, we are safer today than we were seven years ago. We haven’t been attacked since 9/11 in part because we have destroyed al Qaeda’s headquarters, enhanced our intelligence assets across the globe, captured and killed terrorists on nearly every continent, and partnered with our allies on information sharing and other security-related efforts.

Today, al Qaeda no longer has a state sponsor. Contrary to Clarke’s claims, most of its original leadership has been captured or killed. It is losing in Iraq -- thanks to the surge and to the Awakening movement among the Sunni tribes--and its savage attacks on innocents have reduced its popularity there and across the Muslim world. Muslim scholars and clerics are increasingly condemning its beliefs and behavior as a desecration of Islam.

This progress has come because we abandoned the practice of treating terrorism solely as a criminal matter – exactly the kind of September 10 policy that Clarke celebrates in his article.

Closer to home, the Department of Homeland Security has made clear progress that belies Clarke’s claims.

At the border that Clarke thinks is so porous, DHS has built hundreds of miles of fence and will double the size of the Border Patrol. We’ve also deployed fingerprint-based screening and radiation portal monitors at all of our border entry points.

To protect against a repeat attack, DHS has built nearly two dozen layers of security into our aviation system, and it has developed comprehensive security plans for other critical infrastructure.

Clarke claims that the executive branch has proved incapable of managing new terrorism programs to success. Tell that to US-VISIT – a massive government IT project that compares fingerprints of travelers to a database of millions and does it in 30 seconds for officials all across the country and the world. We got it up and running from scratch, despite the doubters. And it’s so successful that we’re expanding it to collect all ten prints and to compare them to prints found in terrorist safe houses around the world. We’ve done all that since Dick Clarke left government – and without a word of support from him.

Despite his claims of backsliding, it’s DHS that has been battling complacency, and Clarke who seems to have been sitting on the sidelines.

We’re the ones who’ve been fighting for the carefully targeted, risk-based homeland security grants he favors. It’s Congress that has added billions and made them less risk-based. Has Clarke criticized Congress or praised DHS for our risk based approach? If so, I missed it.

On our southern border, DHS’s fence-building and increased border enforcement have been hampered by local NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) forces and advocates for illegal immigration. Did Dick Clarke speak out against them? Not so I’ve noticed.

To secure our northern border, we’re implementing tougher document standards, and we were ready to require all travelers to produce a passport or passport-equivalent by the end of this year. Where was Dick Clarke when Congress decided to push back that deadline to mid-2009? I don’t remember an op-ed then complaining about how porous this would make our Canadian border.

Clarke says that terrorists who look European have been trained by al Qaeda and may have European Union passports and clean identities unknown to intelligence agencies. He thinks such people could enter the United States almost as easily as did the 9/11 hijackers. It’s indeed true that during Dick Clarke’s tenure, Europeans could come to the US without any opportunity to screen them before they were in the air. As of this January, though, no foreign travelers other than Canadians will be able to come to the US without supplying -- in advance -- the information we need to screen them. At last, we’ll have the time and information we need to investigate risky travelers (and to prepare a rude surprise for terrorists who try this route). That’s all happened since Dick Clarke left government, and without any support from him.

There’s no question that Dick Clarke contributed to strengthening our national security, but his recent assertions are not only incorrect, they disrespect the work of many national security professionals he once called colleagues. That is indeed unfortunate.

Stewart Baker
Assistant Secretary for Policy

9/11 Anniversary

It's been a year since we launched the leadership journal, and I'd like to thank our readers for keeping up with our posts and sharing your thoughts. The journal has been a valuable way to get information out to you and to receive your feedback; and it's been a useful medium to share some personal insights about what we see and do on a daily basis. I've learned from our exchanges, and I hope you have as well.

In my initial post, I asked readers whether they thought 9/11 was fading. Perhaps a partial answer to that question can be found in Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times, which again referred to the "fading memory" of 9/11 in an article that recounted the stories of several individuals who were injured in the attacks but managed to survive against overwhelming odds.

I can tell you from my own perspective that while the memory of 9/11 has aged another year, it has certainly not faded. This was reinforced today when I visited Ground Zero in New York City to participate in the annual 9/11 memorial ceremony. Thousands of people – friends, family members, government officials, and ordinary citizens – came together to pay their respects, honor the victims, and read their names aloud. It was an important reminder of the horrors of that day, but also the tremendous valor and sacrifice of the first responders and ordinary citizens who gave their lives trying to save their fellow citizens.

We have now gone seven years without another major attack on our own soil. Few would have thought that possible in 2001. It is a testament to the men and women who work every day to protect our country and who have not allowed the memory of 9/11 to fade. By remembering that day, it helps us recommit ourselves to our present purpose.

It also reminds us that we must strike a balance between fear and hysteria on the one hand and a dangerous complacency on the other. That is a balance we try to achieve every day at the Department of Homeland Security. I'd like to thank you for your interest in our perspective and for sharing your views on our efforts. We look forward to hearing more in the future.

Michael Chertoff