Hearing on "Responding
to Homeland Threats:Is Our Government Organized for the
Challenge?"
Opening Statement of Chairman
Joe Lieberman
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
Friday, September 21, 2001
This morning, this Committee will be
considering the question of whether the Federal Government, and
specifically the Executive Branch, is adequately organized to
meet threats to the security of the American homeland. Today’s
hearing complements the series of hearings that the Committee
has been conducting on protection of the nation’s critical
infrastructure. It is also, of course, a response to the
terrible attacks on American that occurred on September 11.
My personal response to those attacks has
probably been like the response of most other Americans and most
other members fo Congress. I have gone from shock to anger to
remorse to determination that we must together do everything we
can to make as certain as possible that nothing like what
happened on September 11 happens again
The nature, scale, and motivation of the
attacks were unprecedented, and so must be our response.
This Governmental Affairs Committee is
primarily an oversight committee. What we must attempt to
understand is how this violation of our nation was possible. In
particular, we must ask the difficult question of whether the
government did enough to protect our citizens. With the
horrifying images of devastation at the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania still fresh in our minds, the
answer to that question must, sadly, be "no." The
purpose of these hearings, in one sense, is to make sure that we
never have to give that answer to that kind of question again
After the attacks had occurred, the government
did all that was humanly possible to respond. We owe a debt of
gratitude to the firefighters and police whose courageous
efforts saved countless lives, at the cost of so many of their
own; to the EMT personnel and doctors and nurses who
administered aid to the injured and dying; to the public
servants who manned the crisis support machinery at all levels
of government -- managing priorities, handling logistics, and
making key services of relief and rescue available; to members
of the military who deployed to guard against further loss of
life; and, to elected leaders who brought a sense of hope,
unity, and purpose to a nation stunned by tragedy, including the
most recent the magnificent statement of American principles and
purpose that President Bush delivered to the Congress, to the
nation, and indeed to the world last night..
Our primary purpose this morning is not to
assign blame. It is to prevent future attacks.
Even before last week’s tragic attacks, we
had important warnings that our government was not as well
prepared to meet these new threats to our American homeland as
it should have been.
For that we can thank the dedicated efforts of
at least two important commissions that recently looked at this
issue – the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century,
also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission, and the Advisory Panel
to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving
Weapons of Mass Destruction, referred to as the Gilmore
Commission – which have identified serious deficiencies in our
nation’s efforts to prepare for, respond to, and prevent
terrorist acts.
And I’m proud to say that we can also thank
our own General Accounting Office, whose oversight Committee
this is, and whose Comptroller General, David Walker, will
testify this morning. GAO has given us repeated warnings that
are relevant to our agenda this morning.
The chief members of the panels I referred to
are with us today, Senator Hart, Senator Rudman, Governor
Gilmore, and Ambassador Bremer. I should note that Ambassador
Bremer is the former chair of another commission, the National
Commission on Terrorism, that in some respects laid the
foundation for the work of that has followed.
Though they differed in their approach and
recommendations, I do see agreement between the Hart-Rudman and
Gilmore commissions on three key points: First, they concluded
that there was a growing threat of homeland attacks; second,
that the nation lacked a clear strategy to prevent and protect
against these threats; and last, that responsibility for
homeland security was spread among too many agencies without
sufficient coordination.
In fact, current responsibility for addressing
terrorism and other homeland threats is diffused throughout all
levels of government – local, state, and federal. At the
federal level, coordination, operational planning, and
implementation are divided and subdivided among at least 40
agencies, bureaus, and offices, which spend over $11 billion a
year.
Both commissions criticized this state of
organization and offered recommendations to improve homeland
security.
The Hart-Rudman Commission proposes the
establishment of a National Homeland Security Agency, an
independent agency whose director would be a member of the
President’s cabinet. The agency would be responsible
for coordinating an array of federal activities relating to
homeland security. FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service,
the Border Patrol, and other relevant entities would be
transferred to the new organization, which would be functionally
organized around prevention, protection of critical
infrastructure, and emergency preparedness and response.
The Gilmore Commission went in a different
direction, recommending the creation of a National Office for
Combatting Terrorism. This new White House office would report
directly to the President and would be responsible for
formulating anti-terrorism strategy. It would also coordinate
terrorism policy and have some influence over national budget
allocations for anti-terrorism activities.
I must say that I come to this hearing
favoring the Hart-Rudman approach. But I want to hear from all
sides in this important discussion. I favor the Hart-Rudman
approach because it seems to me that creating a homeland
security agency has special merit. If you want to get a job
done, there is no substitute for having an organization with
line, as opposed to advisory, authority and a budget of its own.
In such a context, real people are responsible – and
accountable – for making decisions and taking the necessary
and appropriate action. Within an executive agency, all the
policy, budget, and programmatic activities can be integrated
and focused toward very specific programs and goals.
Last night, a funny and good thing happened on
the way to this hearing about a national homeland security
agency – President Bush endorsed such an idea, and going
beyond that, by executive order, created this agency with
Governor Ridge of Pennsylvania as its designated head, with
cabinet status. This morning, it is not clear exactly what the
contours, makeup, and powers of the agency will be. I certainly
look forward to having this Committee meet with Governor Ridge
and others in the Administration to discuss this proposal. But I
feel very strongly, though I greet President Bush’s action
last night as a welcome and significant first step toward
greater homeland protection, that Congress needs to pass a law,
after deliberate consideration, to make this homeland security
agency permanent, because it is clear that we crossed a bridge
on September 11. In a way that has not been true for most of our
history, for the future as far as we can see, we will have to be
prepared to protect the American people as they live and work in
the fifty United States.
In the history of America’s government,
major organizational changes have occurred during times of
crisis. General Marshal transformed what was a small peacetime
Army in 1939 into the planet’s most powerful military force by
1945, helping to bring victory in World War II. resident Truman’s
realignment of our national security infrastructure in 1947
helped us successfully prosecute the Cold War. And more
recently, the sweeping defense reorganization mandated by the
Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 was an essential factor in helping
us win the Gulf War just five years later.
Similarly, bold organizational change is
demanded of us now, given the events of September 11, 2000. This
Committee can lead the Congress to that change; I hope and
believe that we will. |