<DOC>
[109 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:20169.wais]
S. Hrg. 109-15
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY:
THE ROAD AHEAD
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JANUARY 26, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David Kass, Chief Investigative Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Michael Alexander, Minority Professional Staff Member
Amy B. Newhouse, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 4
Senator Akaka................................................ 7
Senator Domenici............................................. 9
Senator Pryor................................................ 10
Senator Warner............................................... 10
Senator Coburn............................................... 11
Senator Coleman.............................................. 12
Senator Stevens.............................................. 34
WITNESSES
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Richard L. Skinner, Acting Inspector General, Department of
Homeland Security.............................................. 13
James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, The Heritage Foundation 16
Michael Wermuth, Senior Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation......... 19
Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D., Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in
National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations........ 23
Richard Falkenrath, Ph.D., Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy
Studies, The Brookings Institution............................. 26
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Carafano, James Jay, Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 68
Falkenrath, Richard, Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 26
Prepared statement........................................... 103
Flynn, Stephen E., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 98
Skinner, Richard L.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 51
Wermuth, Michael:
Testimony.................................................... 19
Prepared statement........................................... 79
Appendix
``Major Management Challenges Facing the Department of Homeland
Security,'' Office of Audits, OIG-05-06, December 2004, Office
of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security.......... 118
``DHS 2.0: Rethinking the Department of Homeland Security,'' SR-
02, December 13, 2004, by James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., and David
Heyman, The Heritage Foundation................................ 143
``Evaluating the Security of the Global Containerized Supply
Chain,'' Technical Report by Henry H. Willis and David S.
Ortiz, RAND.................................................... 168
``Protecting Commercial Aviation Against the Shoulder-Fired
Missile Threat,'' Occasional Paper by James Chow, James Chiesa,
Paul Dreyer, Mel Eisman, Theordore W. Karasik, Joel Kvitky,
Sherrill Lingel, David Ochmanek, and Chad Shirley, RAND........ 211
Responses from Mr. Skinner to Post-hearing questions for the
Record from:
Senator Collins.............................................. 267
Senator Akaka................................................ 272
Senator Coleman.............................................. 282
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 285
Responses from Mr. Carafano to Post-hearing questions for the
Record from:
Senator Collins.............................................. 294
Senator Coleman.............................................. 297
Senator Akaka................................................ 305
Responses from Mr. Flynn to Post-hearing questions for the Record
from:
Senator Collins.............................................. 309
Senator Coleman.............................................. 312
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 316
Responses from Mr. Wermuth to Post-hearing questions for the
Record from:
Senator Collins.............................................. 318
Senator Coleman.............................................. 322
Responses from Mr. Falkenrath to Post-hearing questions for the
Record from:
Senator Collins.............................................. 327
Senator Coleman.............................................. 330
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY:
THE ROAD AHEAD
----------
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2005
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Lieberman, Stevens, Coleman,
Coburn, Chafee, Domenici, Warner, Akaka, and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. As I
convene the Committee's first hearing of the 109th Congress, I
want to express my appreciation to the Committee's Ranking
Member, Senator Lieberman, who will be here shortly. I also
want to express my appreciation to our other veteran Members
for their commitment to the Committee's work and for choosing
to return during this Congress.
The Committee also has four new Members: Senators Warner,
Domenici, Chafee, and Coburn, and we look forward to working
with them as well. Along with new Members, our Committee has a
new name, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. While the
new name will not win praise for its brevity or its style, it
does reflect the Committee's expanded jurisdiction, and so it
is appropriate that the Committee's first meeting of this year
is an oversight hearing focusing on the Department of Homeland
Security, evaluating the progress made so far and the
challenges that remain.
As we prepare for the confirmation hearing of a new DHS
Secretary, this assessment is especially timely. The title of
our hearing today, ``Department of Homeland Security: The Road
Ahead,'' has a deeper meaning than might be immediately
apparent. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established a clear
destination for the new Department. It was to prevent terrorist
attacks within the United States, to reduce our vulnerability
to terrorism, and to assist in recovery should an attack occur.
The precise route toward that destination, however, remains
under construction. We are here to continue building a road
that is as efficient, effective, and durable as possible. After
the attacks of September 11, 2001, the security of America
could not wait until this road was mapped out precisely and
built to perfection.
The Department began operating under the constraints of a
paradox. It had to meet immediately the new threat of the 21st
Century with 20th Century components, all or part of some 22
existing Federal agencies with 180,000 employees, and it had to
do so without neglecting the traditional missions of those
agencies.
Any fair assessment will conclude that the Department under
the leadership of Secretary Tom Ridge has made considerable
progress. Our borders and transportation systems are more
secure. Our critical infrastructure is better protected, and
our emergency response capabilities are improved. But other
reforms, such as the transportation worker identification
credential, have lagged and it has been a daunting challenge
for DHS leaders to integrate the 22 agencies while at the same
time developing new policies that will make us safer.
The Homeland Security Act was not the last word on how we
can best marshal our resources. As we proceed with this
assessment, I am sure we will confront and I hope address the
broad issue of better integration within the Department as well
as a great many specific issues related to efficiency and
effectiveness, accountability and authority.
Some observers may find it difficult to envision that a
Department so large and with so many responsibilities could
ever develop the efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and
durability to meet this challenge.
Yet, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense
Reorganization Act of 1986 proves otherwise. As a result of
this act, the military's organizational culture has shifted
dramatically over the last 20 years toward jointness and the
combatant commands have produced far greater cohesion among the
military services. I believe the Department of Homeland
Security should strive for that same organizational culture and
integration.
Today, we will hear from five witnesses, all of whom have
scrutinized the Department. These witnesses will discuss
several common problems that they have identified at DHS
including a lack of strategic planning. Our witnesses today
will discuss the Department's focus on managing daily crises
and whether, as a result, it is not engaged in the necessary
strategic planning.
Such planning is needed to ensure that we are directing the
resources to the right places and that we are making the
decisions today that will serve us well into the future.
Structural problems. Two years into the Department's life,
we are now able to assess whether it is configured properly.
The Heritage Foundation and CSIS have concluded that there are
unnecessary layers of bureaucracy at DHS. They recommend, for
example, the merger of two separate entities, the Customs and
Border Protection, CBP, and the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, known as ICE, into ``one unit with one uniform.''
The need for clearer authorities. Some of our witnesses
will discuss their belief that in a number of areas, there is a
muddled division of responsibility between DHS and other
agencies and departments. We will hear about the effects of
such confusion as well as some possible solutions. These three
problems and others our witnesses will discuss are obstacles in
the road ahead and they must be cleared. I am particularly
interested in the thoughts our witnesses have on how these
problems relate to several key areas of concern.
Border and transportation security were at the heart of the
September 11 attacks. We were reminded of our vulnerability
again just last week by what proved to be a false alarm in
Boston regarding possible terrorists entering our country from
Mexico.
In the hours and days after the September 11 attacks, we
saw the vital role that emergency preparedness and response can
play in reducing damage and loss of life. And we have done much
to improve our capabilities at all levels of government since
September 11. The identification of critical infrastructure and
the hardening of targets or other forms of preparedness in
which we have made some progress, but they remain a weakness in
our homeland defense.
The Department of Homeland Security also plays an important
role in our newly reorganized intelligence community. Because
of the connections that it has already forged with our first
responders, the Department is perhaps our strongest link with
State and local authorities. This is an invaluable asset in
intelligence that must be maximized. The integration of 22
agencies with thousands of employees in different cultures,
practices, and areas of expertise into one cohesive entity
remains a work in progress.
In fact, we were reminded just yesterday by the Government
Accountability Office's list of high risk areas that this
integration remains incomplete and information sharing among
the Department's components and many other agencies and levels
of government is inadequate.
We must improve department-wide management from procurement
and contracting to information sharing and technology. We must
eliminate unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and the barriers to
communication that remain from the Department's creation. But
we must do these things, always in the interest of reaching our
destination with a minimum of detours.
Our witnesses today have studied the issues related to a
stronger, more effective and efficient Department and a more
secure homeland with great expertise and thoroughness, and I
appreciate their joining us.
Finally, now that we have more Members present, let me say
how proud I am of the very heritage and the record of this
Committee. Our bipartisan collaboration and hard work last year
produced landmark legislation, strengthening our intelligence
community. It is my intention that we approach our work in the
same spirit this year.
I am very fortunate to have an outstanding Ranking Member
in that regard, and it is my pleasure now to recognize Senator
Lieberman for his comments. I would note that we also are very
pleased to have Senator Domenici returning to the Committee
after a space of a couple of years and to welcome the
distinguished Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator
Warner, who is joining the Committee, I believe, for the first
time, and, of course, our stalwart Member, Senator Akaka, who
plays such an important role, and it is wonderful to have you
here today.
Let me also--I did it at the beginning of my comments--but
welcome Senator Coburn for joining us and we have the
distinguished Member from Alaska, Senator Stevens, the Chairman
of the Commerce Committee now, also joining us. I always like
to recognize Senator Stevens because if he chose he could bump
me as Chairman. [Laughter.]
So I am grateful that he has not chosen to exercise that
prerogative and instead is chairing the Commerce Committee.
Senator Lieberman, welcome.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Thank you for your kind words. I must say that working with you
on this Committee has been one of the great pleasures of my 16
years in the U.S. Senate. You really set a standard for
bipartisan leadership and I do think ultimately the Nation has
benefitted from that and the work that we have done together. I
look forward to this new session and continuing that work.
I also want to welcome the new Members of the Committee,
those two promising rookies, Senators Warner and Domenici.
[Laughter.]
It is like calling Roger Clemens a rookie. I only wish,
John, that you were being compensated to the same level that
Clemens is. [Laughter.]
It is quite a tribute to this Committee really that as you
look around it we have Senator Stevens, Senator Domenici,
Senator Warner, and on our side Senator Levin and Senator
Carper. We have some real stature in the Senate. This may have
become in some sense the Committee of Committees, but anyway I
am honored by the two senior Members who have joined us and
also particularly want to welcome Senator Coburn. It has been a
pleasure to get to know you and I look forward to working with
you.
Madam Chairman, as you well know, this is the first hearing
of our newly named Committee, the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee, and it is quite appropriate
that we are considering, as a matter of oversight, the state of
our Homeland Security Department and looking at the road ahead.
We had substantial accomplishments over the last 3 years,
and I think one of the most important tasks we can perform in
these 2 years is to oversee the implementation of what we have
started. Even before our jurisdiction was formally expanded in
name, this Committee took the lead in restructuring our
government post-September 11, to make our people safer.
We have had, I am proud to say, some historic and far-
reaching successes. Last Congress obviously ended with the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, remaking, we
hope, an intelligence structure designed originally to fight
the Cold War into one that is designed now to address the 21st
Century challenges outlined by the 9/11 Commission.
Before the 9/11 Commission reported, we acted to address
glaring weaknesses in our homeland defense revealed by the
tragic events of September 11 by creating the Department of
Homeland Security. Scores of Federal agencies had some
responsibility for our homeland defense, but no single agency
was clearly in charge. Our homeland defenses were disorganized
because everyone was responsible but no one was accountable;
the American people were left vulnerable.
Since its creation, the Department of Homeland Security has
become the focal point in the fight against terrorism here at
home and is now the place where citizens, State and local
officials, first responders, and the private sector can look
for leadership and resources in protecting the American people
from terrorist attack.
But the Department of Homeland Security, which just
celebrated its second birthday on January 23, is still
obviously just a toddler. Those of us who worked to bring the
Department into existence did not expect that the difficult job
of creating a cohesive whole from so many different parts could
be accomplished overnight or without some bumps.
This was, after all, the largest reorganization in our
government in over half a century. We knew there would be
significant challenges and difficult obstacles to overcome, but
because the Department's mission is so vital to securing our
Nation from attacks that are a clear and present danger,
identifying and systematically removing those obstacles must be
a top priority for the Administration and for Congress.
The Department has made real progress, but as we will hear
today, there is much still left undone. And as a consequence,
the American people remain simply not as safe as they should
be. The absence of a well-designed strategy, a homeland
security strategy, is one of the Department's most significant
shortcomings. I was struck by the comment in the CSIS and
Heritage report that Secretary Ridge was too often consumed by
what was on his in-box, the immediate crisis of the day,
understandable but troubling, because beyond the crisis of the
day, this Department needs to stand up and defend us from the
crisis of tomorrow.
The report's recommendation that a new Under Secretary,
that is the CSIS and Heritage report recommendation that a new
Under Secretary is needed to develop a homeland security policy
and strategy for the longer term is, I think, a good one. It is
critical that we have such a coherent plan so that our national
priorities are known and everyone's responsibilities and roles
are clear.
Encouraging news is that legislation we passed at the end
of the last session requires the Department of Homeland
Security to lay out its overall strategy as part of its long-
term budgeting process. At the time this legislation passed,
Senator Collins and I emphasized how important we thought it
was to our homeland security efforts and what we expected to be
included in the plan, and we will follow work on that plan very
closely.
Second, DHS needs the most focused leadership and skilled
management to address the shortcomings that we are going to
hear about today from our witnesses. The Department must make
certain that those officials responsible for integrating
disparate systems and processes, the CIO, the CFO, and others,
have sufficient authority to get the job done.
We cannot tolerate a Department where lines of authority do
not align with responsibilities. From the reports that some of
our witnesses will present today, that seems to be precisely
and disconcertingly what we have in DHS. Nor can we tolerate a
Department where the officials responsible for overseeing and
managing do not have adequate resources at their disposal to
get the job done because if we give them authority but not
resources to get the job done, we are still setting them up for
failure.
And their failure, of course, is at our peril. Thus far, we
simply have not made the necessary investments in homeland
security. That is not just my conclusion, but a string of
highly regarded, totally nonpartisan reports have agreed.
We have not invested enough in securing our ports or our
rail systems, in defending our borders, or in preparing for
bioterrorism attacks. Last year I proposed a budget that was
$14 billion above the Administration's budget to address these
homeland security needs, and I honestly feel that every one of
those dollars could have been spent in a way that was efficient
and effective to our national homeland security.
In fact, there were some areas of homeland defense that
actually had their appropriations and their allocations cut,
and I know we are operating in a resource constrained
environment, but we simply cannot go in this direction and
expect that the people in DHS are going to do the job we want
them to do.
Today, we are going to hear some proposals for reform. As
we consider them, I want to note that the Intelligence and
Terrorism Prevention law that was adopted last year, that the
Chairman and I like to refer to as the Collins-Lieberman
legislation, also contains some very significant measures to
bolster our homeland security and will hopefully provide the
Department and our government more tools with which to succeed.
I look forward to working with Members of this Committee
and with the Administration to make sure that we faithfully
implement these new provisions. Madam Chairman, again, thank
you for convening this important hearing as the first of this
session for this newly named and newly empowered Committee and
for convincing so distinguished and experienced and
knowledgeable a group of witnesses to come before us.
I look forward to working with you and other Members of the
Committee and the Administration so that we can strengthen our
Homeland Security Department, so that we can strengthen our
homeland defense. I thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. We have a quorum right now,
and by January 31, we have to approve the Committee's funding
resolution. So with the indulgence of our witnesses, I am going
to interrupt the hearing very briefly to have a very brief
business meeting so that we can do just one item of business,
and that is to approve the Committee's funding resolution.
[Recess.]
Chairman Collins. We now return to the hearing, and I thank
the indulgence of our witnesses. We need to have the money to
keep going with these hearings. So thank you.
I have promised Members to have an opportunity for brief
opening remarks today, but I would ask the Members to be very
brief so that we can get to our witnesses. Senator Stevens.
Senator Stevens. I merely wish to announce that the
Commerce Committee will not hold a hearing on the nominee to be
Secretary of Homeland Security. We will attend your meeting for
that purpose, and I urge Members to be brief also. We have a
series of votes starting at 11:30.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Madam Chairman, I have some comments here
and a statement. I ask that my full written statement be
included in the hearing record.
Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Senator Akaka. I wanted to say that I join you in welcoming
the new Committee Members, now the Senate's lead panel on
oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. I say this
with pride because over the 15 years that I have served on our
Committee, we have considered and Congress has enacted such
landmark bills like the Chief Financial Officers Act, the
Government Performance and Results Act, and the Clinger-Cohen
Act, all of which I was proud to support. And our Committee
enjoys a strong history of bipartisanship, inclusiveness and
cooperation which I know will continue under your leadership
and that of Senator Lieberman.
I have some concerns here that I will submit for the record
that are very important, that have come about in the 2 years
since the Department of Homeland Security was established. But
I want to take time to thank Secretary Ridge, the outgoing
Secretary of the Department, for his leadership during the
agency's infancy. He undertook, as we know, an enormous and
historic task, and I thank him for his service. And I think we
can all agree there have been many successes under his
leadership.
There is, however, much more room for growth which is the
focus of today's hearing. And so I look forward to hearing our
witnesses and want to place my full statement in the record.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much, Senator.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Thank you, Chairman Collins. I join you in welcoming the new
Members to our Committee, now the Senate's lead panel on the oversight
of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I say this with pride
because over the 15 years that I have served on our Committee, we have
considered, and Congress has enacted, such landmark bills as the Chief
Financial Officers Act, the Government Performance and Results Act, and
the Clinger-Cohen Act, all of which I was proud to support. Our
Committee enjoys a strong history of bipartisanship, inclusiveness, and
cooperation, which I know will continue under the leadership of
Chairman Collins and Ranking Member Lieberman.
Today we will review how well the Department of Homeland Security
has defined and carried out its mission to protect the Nation. We must
ask how well DHS has integrated the disparate cultures and management
priorities of the 22 legacy agencies that were brought together under
the most massive reorganization of the Federal Government since World
War II. Before I go any further, I would be remiss if I did not thank
Secretary Ridge, the outgoing secretary of the Department, for his
leadership during the agency's infancy. He undertook an enormous and
historic task, and I thank him for his service. I think we can all
agree there have been many successes under his leadership. There is,
however, still much room for growth, which is the focus of today's
hearing.
Throughout the debate over the creation of DHS, I had four primary
concerns. The first was the erosion of our constitutional freedoms
through the collection, coordination, and storage of personal data. I
am pleased that the Department has a strong privacy office in place and
has replaced the proposed CAPPS II, a computer-assisted passenger pre-
screening system which was widely criticized for a lack of privacy
protection, with Secure Flight, which has more built in privacy
safeguards.
Our Committee has also taken steps to improve coordination of
activities between the Privacy Officer and the Officer for Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties. However, the fact that the Department is
reportedly operating, or planning to operate, 11 data mining activities
that use personal information, troubles me. What are the safeguards in
place to protect an individual's privacy rights? How is the Department
ensuring the quality and accuracy of the information mined from the
private sector? We must guarantee that the privacy of all Americans is
protected as these activities are implemented.
The second issue was ensuring funding and support for the critical
non-homeland security missions of those agencies merged into DHS, such
as search and rescue, invasive species protection, and natural disaster
emergency response. The unique multi-mission nature of these entities,
such as the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, requires
that special attention be paid to their non-homeland security
functions. The hurricanes that slammed into Florida and surrounding
States last year underscore the importance of FEMA's assistance to
States and localities. To make certain that non-homeland security
functions were not diminished, I introduced S. 910, the Non-Homeland
Security Mission Performance Act, in April 2003. My bill required the
Department of Homeland Security to identify and report to Congress on
the resources, personnel, and capabilities used to perform non-homeland
security functions, as well as the management strategy needed to carry
out these missions. I will continue to monitor the critical non-
homeland security responsibilities within the Department to ensure they
are not shortchanged.
My third concern was how to protect the rights of the men and women
who would staff the new Department because I feared that the new
personnel authorities granted to DHS could erode worker protections. My
initial fears were confirmed last year when DHS and the Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) issued proposed regulations on the
Department's new human resources system. This morning, DHS and OPM
announced the final personnel regulations. While I am pleased that some
of my recommendations to strengthen employee rights were included in
the final regulations, I am afraid that changes to the proposed rules
do not go far enough. The final regulations make dramatic changes in
the way DHS hires, fires, classifies, and pays employees. The
regulations call for the creation of an internal appeals panel for
certain offenses, severely restrict the labor rights of employees, and
tie the hands of the Merit Systems Protection Board to ensure that
penalties for misconduct are just.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Committee and
DHS to increase employee input, to provide opportunities for meaningful
and independent oversight of labor and employee appeals, and to
increase bargaining opportunities for employees. Together we can
improve agency efficiency while protecting employee rights.
And lastly, I was concerned that the collective failure to respond
to intelligence reports suggesting threats against America prior to
September 11, 2001 was not being addressed.
Madam Chairman, I believe my fourth concern was addressed through
the hard work of this Committee which successfully guided last year's
intelligence reform bill through Congress. However, I do remain
concerned about whether the true intent of our legislation will be
realized in the execution phase.
There are a number of other management challenges that must be
remedied for the Department to execute its many missions. For example,
I remain deeply concerned about the budgetary and morale issues that
plague Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE and Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) personnel have expressed their concerns to me
regarding the seemingly arbitrary manner in which the Immigration and
Naturalization Service was split between ICE and CBP. The result has
been mismanaged budgets, which prompted a hiring freeze for ICE and CBP
in the spring of 2004; an ongoing overall budget freeze for ICE; and
low staff morale.
The ICE agents also consider themselves disadvantaged because they
have been separated from their former colleagues at CBP with whom they
developed collaboration. The Center for Strategic and International
Studies-Heritage Foundation Report, ``DHS 2.0,'' recommends merging the
two entities. I will review this proposal carefully because the Border
and Transportation Security Directorate must eliminate the existing
barriers to be an effective guardian of our Nation's borders.
Attention must also be given to the disjointed manner in which
international affairs is handled in DHS. The Office of International
Affairs (OIA), which was created and placed in the Office of the
Secretary by the Homeland Security Act, failed to live up to its
intended vision for a number of reasons, not the least of which is
funding. The OIA has an annual budget of approximately $1 million and a
staff of 10, the majority of whom are detailees. These resources are
inadequate for an office expected to promote information sharing,
organize training exercises, plan conferences, and manage the
international activities of DHS. As a result, much of the international
coordination has been left to the individual directorates which sends a
disjointed message to the international community.
International cooperation, whether it is in the area of cargo
security or the prevention of illegal immigration, is crucial to the
security of the United States. Having the appropriate structure in
place in the Department to facilitate and foster that cooperation
should not be overlooked.
We in the Congress often speak of an agency's success in terms of
funding levels and overarching policy. These issues are important. But
I submit that internal structural, financial management, and personnel
concerns matter just as much, if not more, in the effectiveness of an
entity as mammoth as DHS. I hope we can use today's hearing as an
opportunity to explore how to improve DHS in these critical areas. I
thank our witnesses for being here with us today, and I look forward to
your testimony.
Chairman Collins. Usually we follow the early-bird rule,
but today I am just going to go in order of seniority. Senator
Domenici.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI
Senator Domenici. I will be very brief. Actually I did not
read your analysis or your testimony, but I think the biggest
problem we have is not the problem of what we are not doing,
but what we are doing, because I believe there is a significant
lack of risk prioritization. We cannot cover every risk that
people dream up. If we did, we would spend more on this than
the defense of our Nation, and we would give everybody what
they want. Every small fire department across the country would
want new fire trucks because they are part of homeland
security, and that is not disparaging of the fire departments.
There are many other groups just like them.
I am very worried that this process could lead to the
funding for homeland security to be the most recent piggy-bank,
Christmas tree, whatever you want to call it, for congressional
wish lists. And I do not know what this Committee can do about
it because it is principally an appropriations item. But when
the good senator, Senator Lieberman, said we have to do more,
and then he talked about making sure that things did not get in
here by ships and trains and the like, I believe, we cannot do
all of that and do all the other things we are asking to be
done with this funding.
I do not know, Mr. Wermuth, if you addressed that issue.
Did you?
Mr. Wermuth. I did, sir.
Senator Domenici. I think this issue is really paramount
because 2 or 3 years from now people may look back and say, we
thought we were doing homeland security, but essentially we did
not address a big need because we were doing so many things we
should not have been doing. Every city in America is not under
risk of attack by terrorists. They might think they are; they
might be worried about it. But somebody has to determine which,
why and what for every item that we fund.
Madam Chairman, I believe that you and the Ranking Member
have a very serious responsibility in this regard. Everybody is
going to be asking you to put every type of project in homeland
security. I regret to say it is very hard to turn people down,
but the truth of the matter is we cannot be a risk-free
America. Something has to be at risk or we just cannot afford
homeland security.
I thank you for giving me time.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor, we are
delighted to have you back.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. I know given your seniority on the
Committee and the change in ratios that you had to work to
remain on the Committee and we are very happy that you did.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Thank you so much. And thank you, Madam
Chairman. I look forward to working with you over the next 2
years, Senator Lieberman and the entire Committee, including
our new Members here, but I look forward to hearing from the
panel today and hope we will focus on making America more
secure in a very real and meaningful way. I would like to get
your thoughts and insights on that. Thank you. And I have a
statement for the record.
Chairman Collins. All statements will be entered into the
record as if read.
[The prepared statement of Senator Pryor follows:]
OPENING PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Thank you Madam Chairman and Senator Lieberman for convening this
hearing.
I would also like to thank the witnesses who are testifying here
today for providing their expertise and insight as we look at some of
the challenges at DHS over the last couple of years as well as the
potential changes to be made in order to address those challenges.
As the 9/11 Commission discussed in its report, since its creation
in 2002, DHS has had the ``lead responsibility for problems that
feature so prominently in the September 11 story, such as protecting
borders, securing transportation and other parts of our critical
infrastructure, organizing emergency assistance, and working with the
private sector to assess vulnerabilities.'' (9/11 Report, p. 395) Such
responsibility is monumental.
We are here today to review the challenges and opportunities at
DHS. Our Committee has worked together in its commitment to making our
country safer. We most recently, guided by the leadership and tenacity
of Madam Chairman and our Ranking Member, worked in a bipartisan manner
to evaluate and implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission,
which resulted in the recent passage of the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act.
Today we are here, guided by that same commitment as we consider
and address the development of DHS.
Chairman Collins. Senator Warner.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER
Senator Warner. Madam Chairman and the Ranking Member, I
thank you for the opportunity of serving with both of you. We
have had long associations on the Armed Services Committee, and
I view the work of this Committee as being parallel in many
respects to the overall responsibility to protect our Nation,
and I think that I can work with you in carefully following the
existing law with regard to the separation between the powers
of the military abroad and the powers to take and exercise in
the continental limits, but we have got to have a seamless
concept of protecting this country.
Also, I was privileged to be a member of the Armed Services
Committee working with Senator Goldwater when Goldwater-Nichols
was drawn up. It took us a year to really finalize that very
vital piece of law. It has proven its value, and I think it was
important that you used that as a benchmark today.
So I thank you. And lastly, I do not know that I can depart
without saying what a magnificent chair this is as compared to
the wooden benches we use in the Armed Services Committee.
Chairman Collins. Just another advantage of this Committee.
[Laughter.]
Senator Warner. A very distinct advantage.
Senator Lieberman. I do want to say, Senator Warner, that
this is a legacy of the Fred Thompson Administration.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Collins. Senator Coburn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Senator Coburn. Well, I just wanted to thank you for the
opportunity to serve with each and every Member of this
Committee. I do have a statement for the record, and ask
unanimous consent that it be in the record.
Chairman Collins. Without objection. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Coburn follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Thank you Chairman Collins. I am pleased to join you as one of the
newest Members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee. I look forward to working with you and Members of this
Committee on rigorous oversight of the Department of Homeland Security
and other Federal programs, as well as on initiatives that will reduce
and eliminate wasteful government spending.
I commend your leadership, Chairman Collins, for holding this
hearing on the future direction of the Department of Homeland Security
as the Committee's first hearing of the 109th Congress. As this
Department--with approximately 190,000 employees and a budget of over
$33 billion--enters its third year with new leadership, it is fitting
that this Committee examine the current status of the Department's
operations and proposals to increase its effectiveness.
One such proposal entitled, ``DHS 2.0: Rethinking the Department of
Homeland Security,'' was issued jointly last month by the Heritage
Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I
look forward to hearing today from Dr. Carafano, a co-author of the
report, on his call for a full assessment of the Department's
organizational structure to improve efficiency and to prevent existing
homeland security grant programs from turning into another Federal pork
barrel program.
In addition, the Department's Office of Inspector General, from
which we will also hear today, issued a report last month on major
management challenges facing the Department. Some of these challenges
include the potential for overlapping grant funding, inadequate
staffing for program administration, structural problems in the
Department's financial management organization, and deficiencies in the
Department's IT organizational structure.
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its
biennial assessment of Federal programs, and again for the second
consecutive time, listed the Department of Homeland Security on its
``High Risk List.'' The GAO recognized the steps the Department has
taken over the past 2 years, but is concerned whether the Department
will follow through on its initial efforts, whether the Department has
made enough progress in forming partnerships with governmental and
private sector entities, and whether the Department has sustained
leadership to complete the transformation.
It is clear that much work needs to be done to improve the
organization structure, reduce bureaucratic overlap, and strengthen the
financial accountability of the Department of Homeland Security. I look
forward to hearing the recommendations from our witnesses to address
these issues.
Thank you, Chairman Collins.
Chairman Collins. Senator Chafee, you were not present when
I welcomed you to the Committee so let me do so again now. We
are delighted to have you as a Member.
Senator Chafee. I look forward to serving with you and look
forward to the witnesses' testimony on this important subject.
Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Coleman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you. It is great to be back. I
appreciate your great leadership and appreciate, as the new
Members will see, the incredible strength of the bipartisan
relationship on this Committee with great respect for the work
of the Ranking Member also. So it is a pleasure to be here and
I look forward to the testimony, Madam Chairman. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Coleman follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Madam Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this important
hearing on the future of the Department of Homeland Security. I want to
join in thanking all the members on the panel for appearing this
morning before the Committee to discuss what lies ahead on this
important issue.
My home State of Minnesota has a wide range of Homeland Security
interests given that we share an international border with Canada, we
have two major cities in Minneapolis and St. Paul and we have a major
port in the city of Duluth. Unfortunately, however, this year Minnesota
witnessed an average 48 percent reduction in the allocation of Federal
homeland security dollars, including a 71 percent reduction to our
urban area security initiative alone. As the Department of Homeland
Security evolves, Members on this Committee will have to provide
effective oversight to ensure that policies and strategies pursued are
well thought out and provide the best security possible.
On that note, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is
currently pursing three areas of oversight regarding the response of
the Department of Homeland Security to the threat of nuclear terrorism:
The Container Security Imitative, the Customs Trade Partnership Against
Terrorism and the deployment of radiation portal monitors. I am also
interested in ways we can remove unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles for
students wishing to study in the United States and reverse the
perceptions about America being unwelcome to foreign students.
I am very interested to hear the panelist's thoughts on these
issues and their feelings on the long term development of the
Department of Homeland Security.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. You have been one of our most
active Members and we are delighted to have you back as well.
Thank you.
I would now like to turn to our patient witnesses. Our
first witness today is Richard L. Skinner, the Acting Inspector
General at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Skinner
will discuss the report issued last month by his office on the
management challenges facing DHS.
Next, we will hear from James Carafano, a Senior Research
Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Defense and Homeland
Security. Dr. Carafano is the co-author of the study that we
will be discussing today.
Following him will be Michael Wermuth, a Senior Policy
Advisor Analyst in Domestic Terrorism at the RAND Corporation.
I had the pleasure of having dinner recently with Mr. Wermuth
in Los Angeles and I was so impressed with the work that RAND
had done that I asked him to join us today.
Stephen Flynn is not new to this Committee. He has been an
expert witness for us before and we are delighted to have him
back. He is the Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for
National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He is also a retired Coast Guard Commander and a foremost
expert on transportation and border security.
Last, but certainly not least, we will hear from Richard
Falkenrath, a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at The
Brookings Institution. His background includes serving as
Deputy Homeland Security Advisor to the President and as Senior
Director for Policy at the Office of Homeland Security.
I welcome all of you. I appreciate your being here. Mr.
Skinner, we will start with you.
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. SKINNER,\1\ ACTING INSPECTOR GENERAL,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Skinner. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Ranking Member
Lieberman, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to be here today especially with such a
distinguished panel. I have submitted a written statement for
the record. If I may, I could just summarize that statement in
my remarks here today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Skinner appears in the Appendix
on page 51.
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Chairman Collins. Please do so.
Mr. Skinner. First, however, if I can take this
opportunity, I would like to commend Dr. Carafano and the
Heritage Foundation for the outstanding report, ``Rethinking
Department of Homeland Security.'' While we may not be able to
address each and all those recommendations in that report, you
can be sure that we will consider that report and use it as a
guidepost as we plan our work in the future.
Over the past 2 years, I have personally visited with
departmental employees at our land ports of entry, at our
seaports, airports, detention facilities, enforcement offices,
Coast Guard facilities, and in our disaster field offices. I
can assure you that at each and every site that I visited I
found dedicated, hardworking employees who are genuinely
committed to securing this country or servicing those affected
by disasters and making the Department a model for the entire
Federal Government.
There is no question that the Department has made great
strides toward improving homeland security. No one here today
can deny that our Nation is more secure today than it was 2
years ago. That said, the Department still has much to do
before it can be called a cohesive, efficient, and effective
organization.
It will not be easy and it cannot be done in 1, 2 or 3
years. GAO has noted that successful transformations of large
organizations under even less complicated situations could take
from 5 to 7 years. The Committee has asked me to focus on
challenges related to border and transportation security,
integration, intelligence, and preparedness.
I would like to highlight the significant issues that we
have reported on in the past 2 years. First, I would like to
talk about border security. Our Nation's homeland security does
not stop at our geographic borders. Programs to promote
international travel create potential security vulnerabilities
that may allow terrorists, criminals, or other undesirables to
enter this country undetected.
For example, the Department must address security concerns
identified in the Visa Waiver Program. The Visa Waiver Program
enables citizens from 27 countries to travel in the United
States for tourism or business for 90 days or less without
obtaining a visa. These travelers are inspected at a U.S. port
of entry but have not undergone the more rigorous background
investigations associated with visa applications.
Also, the Department continues to experience problems in
identifying and detecting aliens presenting lost or stolen
passports from visa waiver countries. Procedural shortcomings
permitted some aliens presenting stolen passports to enter the
United States even after the stolen passports were detected.
Information on lost and stolen passports provided by visa
waiver governments was not routinely checked against U.S. entry
and exit information to determine whether stolen passports had
been used to enter the United States.
In addition, there was no formal protocol for providing
information concerning the use of stolen passports to the
Department's Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Further, the Department also must address issues with its
visa security program, which stations officers at U.S.
embassies and consular offices overseas to review visa
applications and perform other law enforcement functions. The
Department used temporary duty officers who often did not have
the required background or training including language training
or skills to perform effectively as visa security officers.
With respect to international travels, two major border
security challenges confront the Department and that is, one,
the divergency in the biometric system used to identify
travelers and, two, the disparity in the level of scrutiny
given to the different types or classes of travelers entering
the United States.
With respect to terrorist weapons, one of the primary
responsibilities of the Department's Office of Customs and
Border Patrol is to detect and prevent terrorist weapons from
entering the United States. This includes ensuring that
oceangoing cargo containers arriving at our seaports are not
used to smuggle illegal contraband.
As you may recall, ABC News was successful in two attempts
at smuggling depleted uranium into the country. In a September
2004 classified report, we cited several weaknesses that
occurred at the time of the two incidents that made the
container protection inspection process less effective. We are
now following up to ensure that the Department has taken
corrective actions.
With regards to transportation security, the success of the
Transportation Security Administration, that is TSA, depends
heavily on the quality of its staff and the capability and
reliability of equipment to screen passengers and cargo while
at the same time minimizing disruption to public mobility and
commerce.
Our undercover audits of screener performance reveal that
improvements are needed in the screening process to ensure that
prohibited items are not being carried onto airplanes or do not
enter the checked baggage system. We plan to complete another
round of undercover tests. We should have that review completed
within the next 2 months.
While TSA continues to address critical aviation security
needs, it is moving slowly to improve security across other
modes of transportation. About 6,000 agencies provide transit
services through buses, subways, ferries, and light rail
service to about 14 million Americans daily. The terrorist
experiences in Madrid and Tokyo highlight potential
vulnerabilities in our transit systems.
Although it is currently coordinating the development of a
national transportation sector plan, which is expected to be
completed later this year, TSA's 2005 budget still focuses its
resources on aviation.
Also, the Coast Guard's willingness to work hard and long
hours, use innovative tactics and work through interagency
partnerships has allowed it to achieve its performance goals.
However, to improve and sustain this mission performance in the
future, the Coast Guard faces significant barriers, most
importantly the deteriorating readiness of its fleet assets.
Finally, with regard to integration and preparedness, we
reported that structural and resource problems continue to
inhibit progress in certain support functions. For example,
while the Department is trying to create integrated and
streamlined support service functions, most of the critical
support personnel are distributed throughout the Department's
components and are not directly attributable to the functional
chiefs. That is, the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief
Information Officer, and the Chief Procurement Officer.
The Deputy has structured the functions based on a concept
of dual accountability where both the operational leadership
and the functional chiefs are responsible for the preparation
of operational directives and their ensuing implementation.
This concept has been described as a robust dotted line
relationship.
While the concept may be workable in some environments, we
have concerns that within the Department the functional chiefs
may not have sufficient resources or authority to ensure that
Department-wide goals are addressed in an effective, efficient
or economical manner or that available resources can be
marshalled to address emerging problems.
Furthermore, on the program side of the house, the
Department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
directorate, or IAIP, which has primary responsibility for
critical asset identification, prioritization and protection
has yet to produce a condensed list of most sensitive critical
assets.
Consequently, other elements within the Department are at
risk of failing to direct their scarce resources toward
national critical infrastructure protection and preparedness
priorities. For example, in its Port Security Grant Program,
the Department awarded three rounds of grants totaling $560
million without definitive national priorities for securing the
seaport infrastructure of the Nation.
Poor integration of critical asset information with the
Department's Protection and Preparedness Initiatives meant that
the port security grants were awarded without sufficient
information about our national seaport priorities.
Department components need to integrate better their
decision-making processes with the infrastructure protection
component of the Department's IAIP directorate.
Regarding preparedness, I would like to comment briefly on
the Heritage Foundation's recommendations to consolidate the
Department's preparedness function under an Under Secretary for
Protection Preparedness. Based on my own experiences while I
was Acting Inspector General at FEMA and the Deputy Inspector
General at FEMA from 1991 to 2003, I have reservations about
segregating FEMA's preparedness function from its response and
recovery responsibilities.
Disaster response, preparedness response, and recovery are
integrally related, each relying on the other for success. The
proposal should be studied very carefully before it is put into
practice.
Madam Chairman, this concludes my remarks. I will be happy
to answer any questions you or Members of the Committee may
have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Carafano.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES JAY CARAFANO, PH.D.,\1\ SENIOR FELLOW, THE
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Mr. Carafano. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would like to
commend the Committee for having these very important hearings
and for its leadership on either the Lieberman-Collins bill, or
the Collins-Lieberman bill, or the intelligence reform bill,
but I mean your leadership was outstanding, and we certainly
would not have had the legislation that we did without your
leadership.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Carafano appears in the Appendix
on page 68.
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I have submitted a statement for the record, and I would
just like to briefly cover three points. I will talk briefly
about the report, three of the major recommendations, and then
a suggestion of a way ahead that the Congress and Department
might consider.
This began really with my prejudice both as a historian and
25 years in the Army, about a dozen of those working in and
around the Pentagon. And the lesson, when what became the
Department of Defense was created in 1947, there were
fundamental things in its structure and organization that
prevented the effective coordination between the services and
oversight of the services.
Eisenhower talked about them as Chief. He talked about them
as Acting Chairman. He talked about them as President. They
simply did not get fixed and you are absolutely right. They did
finally get fixed in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, a mere
3 years before the end of the Cold War. And I think quite
honestly the lesson we can learn is we can do much better.
We can recognize the operational challenges that have
presented themselves since the Department was created and fix
them now. With that, the Center for Strategic International
Study and the Heritage Foundation put together a team of about
30 young professionals, which I define as anybody under 50, who
did a terrific job looking at--we tasked them in four different
areas: Management, resources, authority, and roles and
missions. And they produced a report that had about 40
recommendations, and we could debate the merits of each of the
recommendations, but I think on the whole what they represent
is a pretty substantive argument that it is worthwhile to go
back and rethink the fundamental structure of the Department
and its roles and missions and fix obvious things now before
they become stovepipes and stakeholders take hold and it just
becomes too hard to do.
Reviewing the report, in retrospect, three principles
evolved for me in terms of to guide further reform, and I would
just like to cover those very quickly and illustrate them with
an example of each.
The first one is do management first. I mean the IG report
which came out very close to ours, I thought, was very
instructive. It talked about a number of programmatic issues,
but I think at the root of all of those were a cleaner
management structure, clear responsibilities, the ability to
establish priorities and set authorities would be the first
step in addressing many of these challenges. And I think one
good example of that is policy. The Department, and our
recommendation was, simply needs an Under Secretary for Policy.
This is no more clearly illustrated than in international
affairs. I mean right now there are arguably two centers of
gravity. There is an Office of International Affairs. There is
a policy advisor to the Secretary. They are competing to make
policy and all the subordinate agencies who have international
affairs, basically they get a choice. They can go to whoever
they like who has the right answer. And you do not have an
international affairs policy that is coherent across the
Department.
That particularly reflects badly in the Department's
dealings with other agencies and in international forums. It
does not have the gravitas. It does not have the long-term
experience. It does not have the cohesive position of the
Department behind it to really work well in these environments.
The second guiding principle that I really call is
envisioning the future and there is lots of debate about do we
have the roles and missions exactly right; do we have the split
exactly right? And how do you really determine that? And I
think the right answer to the question is you have to decide
where you want to be in 5 years? What do you really want this
function to be doing? And if you could make that strategic
decision, then the answer is what the organization ought to
look like ought to be pretty clear.
Now, one of our probably most controversial recommendations
is to merge the Customs and Border Protection and Immigrations
and Customs Enforcement into a single agency. That was really
based on two observations. One is we could not find a good
argument for splitting them, and what you are intentionally
doing is creating opportunities for disconnects and gaps
between investigative operations and ongoing operations in one
and the other. And why are you creating a need for coordination
when you do not need one?
And the second one is--is really the management challenge--
is in ICE and CBP. You know, ICE, for example, when INS would
split, it was the budget of INS was basically split among three
different functions. That has created an enormous budgetary
challenge and we all know that ICE had enormous financial
challenges. I think the last figures I saw were upwards of $300
million, to the point that operations simply cannot be
conducted at the end of the year. People cannot use credit
cards. People cannot go on travel. Hiring freezes. Now, is that
the right answer? Well, quite honestly, I do not know if
merging CBP and ICE will solve a lot of these problems or if
that is the best way to solve these problems or if there are
other solutions.
But I do think that the right answer is to sit back and
strategically ask what do we want border and internal
enforcement security to do--how do we want that done 5 years
from now? And if we can decide that, then I think the
organizational answer ought to present itself.
And the third point or principle I would argue for is the
clear division of responsibilities between operators and
supporters, and I think here the DOD model, Defense model
serves very well. I mean in Defense we have warfighters. We
have combatant commanders whose job it is to go out there
everyday and find the bad guy and get rid of him.
And then we have services which are basically force
providers. It is their job to provide trained and ready forces
for the warfighter. I think that model has a lot of merit to
it, and I think there are many areas where it could be applied
within DHS.
Preparedness and response, I think, is one of them.
Response is clearly an operational function. You want the guy
who is in charge of response to be ready to respond, to be
thinking about responding, and have that be the sole focus of
the organization's mission.
Preparedness, on the other hand, you could argue is a
support function, and there is a lot more to preparedness than
preparing to respond. There are protection functions. As a
matter of fact, you go through all the six critical functions
outlined in the homeland security strategy. Many of them have a
preparedness function to it, and so what we argued for in the
report is splitting them, going back and basically having a
FEMA which does the traditional things FEMA does, and then
grouping preparedness really with all the outreach activities
of the Department, State and local coordination, the domestic
preparedness, the grants, the private sector coordination,
critical infrastructure, transportation policy, and putting it
under a single Secretary of Protection and Preparedness.
So above all, what you could get is somebody who is really
looking coherently at the whole picture and really making
decisions on where are we going to get the biggest bang for the
buck? Where can we really get our best investment? How can we
really make these things work together?
So those are the three principles that I would propose that
should guide the next steps, and very quickly. I think there
are two courses of action. We recommended in our report was to
create a Presidential commission. I think that was kind of 9/11
Commission stars. But quite frankly that recommendation was
made before both Houses made a decision to have a permanent
committee to focus on the management of the Department. I think
having that now provides a new opportunity to maybe do things
differently, and what I might propose is a three-step process.
One is fix management first, create the Under Secretary for
Policy, create an Under Secretary for Protection and
Preparedness. Create strong COO functions in the Deputy
Secretary, so we get rid of the dotted line thing which I think
is simply not working. Abolishing the Under Secretary for
Management. Abolishing the Under Secretary for Preparedness and
Response. Cleaning up the management structure, making it very
tight.
The second step is maybe we should steal a page from
Goldwater-Nichols and establish a QSR, Quadrennial Security
Review. And in the first Quadrennial Security Review, we should
task the Department to review not just its resources and
missions, but to do that in light of making assessment about
envisioning the future, tell us where the Department is going
to be 4 years from now, so we can make smart decisions about
should we merge CBP and ICE and other things like that.
Now, in conjunction with that, I would also recommend that
the Congress establish a national security review panel, much
like we did the national defense panel when we did the first
QDR, and it would have two missions. One mission would be to
review the work of the QSR so we have an independent assessment
about if their vision in the future is right, if their
recommendations for organizational change are right, and also
to look at how DHS fits in conjunction with all our other
initiatives and all the other departments. And how it works in
an interagency context and provide that report back to the
Congress.
Then I think in 2006, the Department and the Congress could
sit down and make some very far-reaching decisions about
further organizational changes and perhaps other things that
need to be changed. And with that, I look forward to your
questions. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Wermuth
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL WERMUTH,\1\ SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, RAND
CORPORATION
Mr. Wermuth. Madam Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member,
distinguished Committee Members, thank you for the opportunity
to be here and I am particularly pleased to be on this panel
with so many distinguished colleagues and friends. Within the
context of those four functional areas that you have asked us
to address this morning, I am going to discuss six critical
challenges facing DHS.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wermuth appears in the Appendix
on page 79.
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The first, as has already been mentioned several times, is
this lack of robust strategic planning and analysis
capabilities in the Department.
The second, and this is one of the items that goes to the
very heart of what Senator Domenici was mentioning, is the lack
of fully comprehensive performance metrics for the way we are
spending homeland security dollars.
The third is the structure of the organization. We have
already heard some of that. The fourth clearly is intelligence,
particularly as it relates to the fulfillment of the DHS
operational mission. And the last two, almost entirely external
to DHS, have to do with some missed opportunities of both
strategic guidance and oversight on the part of the White House
and the Congress.
First, on border security. In our global economy, the
United States is dependent on a variety of supply chains of
both goods and services from all over the world. One that was
not created with security at its core and we will hear more I
am sure on that from Steve Flynn.
These supply chains involve government agencies, the global
transportation and communications networks, the suppliers,
marketers and users, but there is as yet no comprehensive
approach to address all these various aspects of supply chains,
not only in security terms but also the impacts that they have
on economies, diplomacy, government stability, societal well-
being, and much more.
RAND recently published a report entitled ``Evaluating the
Security of the Global Containerized Supply Chain,'' \1\ which
reflects in its analysis of that issue the need for a more
holistic approach to the entire spectrum of supply chain
matters, and it is just one example of the way some of these
issues need to be addressed in a more comprehensive fashion.
And we respectfully request that this report be included in the
record of hearing, Madam Chairman.
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\1\ The report entitled ``Evaluating the Security of the Global
Containerized Supply Chain,'' appears in the Appendix on page 168.
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Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Mr. Wermuth. We are in full agreement with James Carafano
and others who have made recommendations for the Department to
have a more robust capability to engage in long-range strategic
thinking and only suggest that the entity that is created be
called an Under Secretary for Policy and Planning to make it
clear that its responsibilities include both of those important
and somewhat different functions.
As we get better with security at the designated official
ports of entry, for example, we would push terrorists and other
criminal enterprises to unregulated points, and we must have a
system in place to consider those second order effects and
develop long-range plans and strategies that are flexible
enough to meet the changing threats.
We have been asked to comment on recommendations for
organizational change including the one that Jim Carafano just
mentioned on the potential merger of CBP and ICE. We are not
yet convinced that such a move is necessarily indicated and
would be more flexible. Consider, if you will, that they do
have fairly separate disparate functions. CBP performs
ministerial tasks at the border points of entry. ICE performs
critical law enforcement functions to identify actual or
potential lawbreakers and engage in the arrest and seizure.
That is not to say that those entities should not be in a
central organization as BTS was originally envisioned and that
they do not have a requirement in order to communicate with
each other and to perform tasks that sometimes overlap.
But the skills required for the performance of those tasks
may require different recruiting, retention, training,
performance evaluations, operational procedures and the like
and such a change without further comprehensive analysis of all
the issues, structures and dynamics involved may not result in
the intended consequences of more efficient and effective
border security.
And in my written testimony, I have drawn some other
analogies about the way other parts of our government are
organized.
Second, in the area of transportation security, there must,
and we argue can be, more holistic approaches that cut across
old bureaucratic lines in various missions, and again to
address Senator Domenici's concern, we believe that one of
those needs to be a move toward a more risk management approach
to decisionmaking including better prioritization for resource
allocations in the development of future strategies, plans and
programs based on that risk management approach.
I mentioned TSA as an example in my written testimony and
the rationale that would apply in that case. And there are many
other examples about this strategic holistic approach to
planning. Yesterday, RAND released a report that is in the news
this morning on defending our commercial airline fleet against
attacks using shoulder fired missiles, and there are some
important conclusions in here about how to approach very
difficult issues like that. We have sent electronic copies of
that report to the Committee staff in preparation for today's
hearing, and we would also ask that that report be included in
the record of the hearing today.\1\
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\1\ The report appears in the Appendix on page 168.
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Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Mr. Wermuth. These better, more comprehensive, more
authoritative measures of performance and effectiveness--a
valid metrics program for the Department must be developed more
completely than they have been and implemented, and that
program will include clearly identified targets for specific
performance at designated points in time or other proven
techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of resource
expenditures and other criteria.
For the structural side of transportation security, on the
same rationale expressed above in connection with the proposed
merger of CBP and ICE. It is still not clear without much
further analysis that major changes should be made in other
parts of the transportation and border security directorate.
Third, on emergency preparedness and response. Existing
structures may not work and a thorough analysis is required in
this area. DHS must have tighter geographic links to the field
for closer coordination and more comprehensive collaborative
arrangements with other Federal partners. And again, in the
written testimony, drawing on both the issue of FEMA that Jim
Carafano mentioned and the prevention piece of responsibilities
as well as the preparedness piece, we have laid out some that
we think should be considered in the deliberations of this
Committee and others.
DHS should move quickly to implement its regional structure
given the critical importance of closer cooperation with States
and localities and the acknowledged differences in preparedness
and response issues based on U.S. geographical diversity.
In the written testimony, I have offered other examples for
external coordination including enhanced relationships with
other Federal entities such as DOD and a long discussion about
the better, more formal relationship that needs to be
established between those two departments.
Fourth, for intelligence, clearly the Chairman and Ranking
Minority Member have had an important role in the leadership of
better intelligence across our entire government. I only hope
that the vision that you have had for that new structure and
process will prove to be effective in actual practice.
Clearly, DHS needs to have intelligence to help support its
operational missions, but it is not yet completely clear what
parts of intelligence DHS is expected to obtain for itself and
what it receives from others.
In my written statement, I note important differences in
strategic, operational and tactical intelligence, and some of
the entities that have been established that will hopefully
provide some more strategic approach to intelligence, but DHS
clearly must have its own robust intelligence capabilities to
perform fusion analysis and dissemination functions that will
enable effective implementation of its own operational
missions.
I also discuss in the written testimony the issue of closer
coordination with entities at the State and local level who can
help feed that entire intelligence process as well as issues
related to security clearances and classifications, and I have
offered some important discussion and recommendations that were
contained in the fourth report to the President and Congress of
the Gilmore Commission in December 2003 to support those
suggestions.
Let me close on two points dealing with DHS oversight. It
is a fact, of course, that DHS does not own everything related
to homeland security. The Secretary has no authority to direct
other Cabinet officials to do anything nor directly to command
or control any assets other than those belonging to DHS.
The Executive Office of the President has important
responsibilities to provide continuing strategic guidance and
ensure proper coordination of all Federal resources through the
development of national strategies and policies even beyond the
Department of Homeland Security.
DHS should not be expected to develop the overall national
strategy even though an important player. That is clearly a
function for the White House. And Madam Chairman, respectfully,
Congress is still part of the problem. It is still perplexing
to me and I think to others that the Congress has not yet
achieved a coherent logical process for handling these issues.
It does not seem to make sense to us that the Department of
Homeland Security does not get its primary authorization in its
entirety from a single committee in each House of the Congress.
No other Cabinet agency is subjected to the same treatment.
Madam Chairman and Members, thanks again for this opportunity.
In our view, neither the Congress nor DHS should rush to any
judgment about major changes in structure or authority without
cautious, deliberate, well-informed circumspect debate and
consideration.
Clearly, there are some changes that we and others have
proposed that should rise to the top of the list for
consideration. But please consider the fact that the Department
of Homeland Security is relatively new, still just barely 2
years old, and men and women of goodwill both inside and
outside of DHS are struggling to make the Department work more
effectively.
DHS has already gone through much turmoil in its first 2
years of existence and it would be well to consider in that
context the impact of yet more changes. I will, of course, be
happy to answer any questions from the Committee and thank you
again, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Flynn.
TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN E. FLYNN, PH.D.,\1\ JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK
SENIOR FELLOW IN NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN
RELATIONS
Mr. Flynn. Yes, good morning, Madam Chairman and
distinguished Senators. It is an honor to be back here in front
of your Committee testifying on this important issue and on
this historic occasion of the first hearing of the Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Like so many of us
at this table and I know around the podium who were doing these
issues before they were fashionable, it really says something
about where we are to have you leading this Committee and to
have such a distinguished group of Senators participating in
it.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Flynn appears in the Appendix on
page 98.
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I would like to have my written testimony submitted for the
record, but I would like to spend a few moments highlighting, I
think, the rationale of how to keep ourselves focused on this,
and then two or three items that I have that I think need to
reinforce the messages that have been presented here.
In assessing where we are after 2 years, I think we really
have to keep in mind what the challenge really is and where we
started from. And there is no question, it is so important that
we get this right because I maintain the position that what we
saw on September 11 quite simply is how warfare will be
conducted against the United States in the 21st Century.
The use of catastrophic terrorism directed at the non-
military elements of our power, our civil society, and the
critical infrastructure that underpins that power is how our
enemies will confront us in the 21st Century. And when we,
therefore, think about the allocation of resources for the
defense of this Nation, we have to think about homeland
security in tandem with the tremendous investment and sacrifice
we have been willing to make in the national security arena.
In this context, we have a very daunting challenge if we
talk about the asymmetric threat particularly dealing with
something like a weapon of mass destruction coming into our
society, and as we focus our attention and decide about the
structure of this Department and how we resource it, and
ultimately what emphasis and level of urgency we give this
mission, I think we have to keep clear in our minds that we are
dealing with a tenacious adversary. It has grown from probably
an organization to a movement operating in about 60 nations
around the world, who has shown that it has tremendous
organizational capabilities to exploit the cracks in our
globalized society.
Part of the thing that makes it such a daunting challenge
is that, of course, homeland security just cannot be done at
home. At the end of the day, the opportunities for exploitation
and targeting is of global networks, of transportation and
logistics, of energy, of finance, of information, that were
driven in the globalization era of the last 20 years with four
imperatives of the marketplace: How to make them as open as
possible; how to make them as efficient as possible; how to
make the network's use as low cost as possible; and as reliable
as possible. And these were cascading. The lower the cost, the
more users, the greater the reliability and efficiency, the
more people were willing to depend upon them, but security was
viewed as raising costs, undermining efficiency, undermining
reliability, and putting pressure to close the networks.
We are dependent on our power, on global networks, that
essentially have virtually no security built in. The job of
this Committee overseeing the job of homeland security is, one,
getting the nodes in the United States right, but also dealing
with this in a globalized context that clearly expands beyond
the jurisdiction of this one Department.
The second issue--so we have a daunting challenge that we
have to sort of really keep our eye on when we look about what
structure and the resource we put here. The other issue is that
we have to really recognize how poor the starting line was we
started from. The agencies that we have pulled together into
this Department a little over 2 years ago were not in the
strong state really for a decade or more. They did not get a
lot of care and feeding from their parent departments at the
time. That was one of the rationales for consolidating. They
routinely did not get much in the way of appropriations either
from OMB and so forth.
They started off hobbling to do their non-security mission,
and now all of a sudden we have asked them to play this
enormously important role of securing our Nation on the backs
of basically broken agencies. So we start from a very weak
baseline, and Coast Guard is a perfect illustration of
operating an ancient fleet of ships and aircraft which we knew
a long time ago we should be investing in. Now, their
operations tempo is expanding enormously, and yet we have a 2
to 4 year plan to try to replace this capital plan. It simply
will not be around in 3 to 4 years in most instances because we
have run it into the ground. We are asking too much of it in
the context of what this new mission requires and the
traditional missions it must do.
All these other agencies have similar sort of legacy
problems. And I ask us to keep in mind when we use the
Goldwater-Nichols Act as an example, as it really is, of
bringing things together, that was after 5 years of growth in
the Department of Defense, when essentially those independent
armed services were made whole after years of neglect after the
Vietnam War made the opportunity for coming together something
they could take on.
I do not think it would have worked so well in 1979 or
1980. It probably would have been a food fight then if they
were all struggling just to do their core mission to try to get
them to come together.
The final issue is that we are obviously dealing with
merger and acquisition problems which any sort of 101
consultant will tell you that when you have for the first 18
months to 2 years of a merger even of just two companies, you
are going to find rising costs, reductions in efficiency and
losing good people. The public sector obviously makes that even
more complicated. So we have to be willing to give a grace
period obviously as we struggle to work through these because
these are just practical challenges that we know from all
elements of efforts to organize and manage.
But as we look ahead at the Department, while there are
things that are sort of inevitable, this huge mission they are
charged with, the low baseline they start from, the challenges
of merging 22 agencies together, I would like to highlight, I
think, particular problems that I think we can attend to
relatively quickly and need to.
One is just simply the staff; there is no cadre of senior
executives essentially being developed for this development.
There is just one Senior Executive Service employee in this
Secretariat for the Department of Homeland Security. If we had
a presidential transition this time around, we would have had a
mass exodus of those political appointees and the remaining
players are detailees, people from the agencies who are
essentially operating and trying to manage this environment.
Now these are very dedicated people but all of us know we are a
little bit of a bureaucracy. You tend to be more loyal to where
you came from and where you are going back to than where you
are at when it is in the context of a short-term assignment. We
need to build a cadre of people who are basically providing
some of the core base of capability.
The second--and this is just nuts--we do not have enough
staff support for these senior managers. The Department, the
Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the
third biggest Federal Department, has a staff of five people to
support his mission. The Chief Operating Officer of the third
biggest Department undertaking the most daunting merger and
acquisition has five people, and some of the lousiest office
space in Washington.
We obviously need to give these players the tools to do the
job right. There is no wonder why they are stuck in the in-box.
Staff support is important and trying to professionalize this.
Next on the list is an issue I would argue of training
these folks. This is an enormous new task we are asking people
to do, and we are doing it with no training backbone in their
system. Senator Warner certainly knows the Navy particularly
puts a lot of investment in a naval officer. We do it because
the stakes are enormous and because it is a very technically
demanding environment. You do not want a guy in a ballistic
missile submarine getting it wrong.
Forty percent of a naval officer's career is in training or
education. Compare that to the Customs and Border Protection,
training billets, zero, no time to do any training except
during operations at a time when we are asking them to step up
those operations.
We are asking people to do an increasingly complicated job.
The Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection has this
daunting job of one face at the border. All of us are relieved
to not have to run through the gauntlet coming into our
airports or coming across the borders, a very sensitive move,
but you are asking a front-line agent, usually a very low pay
grade, to be an expert on customs law, an expert on animal and
plant health, to be an expert on immigration law, where your
adversary is tenacious. It is trying to play around the gaps of
that, and you do it with on-the-job training by a senior
inspector who has also got a very full in-box.
We really need to look at how we resource the training of
these people that we are depending upon to be our front line in
this new war on terror.
Next, I would highlight the international dimension. I
spent quite a bit of time overseas in various places. We do not
have a lot of coherence. There are a lot of issues that are
roused by various activities of government. There are just not
enough people in the Department to respond to these queries and
to be able to handle real policy issues that are rising, nor
are the State Department, USTR, those assigning people to the
Department to do liaison.
And so what we end up with are crises that end up in the
in-box and absorb a lot of senior management time to sort out
when they could have been managed in advance without conflict.
The last thing I would raise is the fuzzy line issue,
particularly with Department of Defense, over this issue of
homeland defense and homeland security. The definition
operationally does not work so well. The bad guys are not going
to advertise they are coming from outside the United States to
attack the United States. It is likely we will have an event
here and then we are worried about follow-on attacks. If we
have not merged more aggressively the homeland security
activities and the Department of Defense activities, instead of
having DOD essentially operating independently, we are worried
about coming from the outside and DHS working from the inside.
I just do not think operationally the threat is going to play
out that way.
We need an ongoing, a very hard look at how we make that
together. I know I am out of time, and with many of these
issues we go on for a long time. I am honored that I have the
chance to appear before this first hearing on this important
topic and look forward to questions. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Falkenrath.
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD A. FALKENRATH,\1\ VISITING FELLOW, FOREIGN
POLICY STUDIES, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Falkenrath. Madam Chairman and Members of the
Committee, I am very grateful for the invitation to be here
this morning. I am particularly honored since this Committee
has been the cradle of two of the most important pieces of
legislation since the end of the Cold War, the Homeland
Security Act and then the Intelligence Act of last year.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Falkenrath appears in the
Appendix on page 103.
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I will be very brief so we have a little time for questions
before you have to go vote. My direct experience with the
management of the Department ended in May of last year, when I
left the White House and so I am really most knowledgeable
about that period. But I will address some of the criticisms
about the internal management of the Department. I am a little
surprised by some of them, and I think some perspective is
worthwhile here.
This is probably the hardest management task that any
Cabinet member has ever been asked to take on. Not only are we
in a war, not only are we asking these agencies to do more than
they have ever done before, but we are asking them to conduct
the largest reorganization in 50 years. And so, yes, there are
some troubles with the management of this organization, but I
will say, as someone who was involved in the initial design of
the Department, that the performance of the Department's
leaders has exceeded my expectations. I will agree with what
Senator Lieberman said in the beginning, that no one thought
this was going to be easy at the beginning and we were all
right. This is very difficult.
But I think that Secretary Ridge and Deputy Secretary Loy
have done a very fine job, and I am grateful, Senator Akaka,
for your kind words about Secretary Ridge. I think they really
deserve more commendation than criticism for what they have
done. There are some difficulties, of course. Another bit of
perspective, however, is to identify one Federal Department or
agency that has not had difficulties. They all do in various
ways and it is sort of inherent in public sector management.
Frankly, the studies that have been done, and my own experience
with the Department, I am not persuaded that the management of
DHS is substantially worse than any other department or agency
in the Federal Government.
None of the other departments and agencies, by the way,
have to deal with the reorganizational challenge that DHS has
had to deal with. So that was my impression at least watching
things from the White House. The Department does have a
strategic plan. There is a public document that has been
released by the Secretary that all of you, I am sure, have seen
and your staffs have seen. And there is an internal set of
milestones and goals, over 900 milestones and goals, all of
which have a timetable and all of which have presidential
appointees associated with every single goal who meet on a
regular basis with the Deputy Secretary to go over how the
Department is doing.
These goals were developed in consultation with the Office
of Management of Budget and the Homeland Security Council, and
so I think they are a pretty good strategic plan. I am not
going to say everything is perfect in the Department. There are
lots of difficulties, but these are extremely difficult choices
and challenges that we have asked these appointees to take on,
and I think on the whole they have done a pretty fine job.
With respect to Congress, I really think we should commend
what the Appropriations Committee has done. They did exactly
the right thing by reorganizing the subcommittees in the
Appropriations Committee. Those two subcommittees have passed
really fine bills on time, both years, with a minimum of
earmarks and really following quite closely the President's
request.
The Appropriations Subcommittees for DHS have become
genuine partners in the Congress on how the Department has to
perform because they know that this is now how it goes. There
is going to be an appropriations bill done every year. It is
taken extremely seriously. The Department needs to be highly
responsive to their requests for information and consultation.
The same could not be said for the authorizing committees. I am
not going to belabor the point.
The 9/11 Commission made it, but it is really unfair
circumstance to put the Department in on the authorizing side.
The authorizing committee should do what the Appropriations
Committee did in my judgment.
The third point: Reorganization. Heritage and CSIS have
released a report recommending major internal changes in how
DHS is organized. I think there is nothing sacrosanct about how
DHS is organized internally, and there may well be changes that
need to occur, but I think it is exactly the wrong time for a
statutorily driven internal reorganization of DHS for four main
reasons.
First, we are about to get a new Secretary in place. Give
him the opportunity to get familiar with his new agency and his
job and let him form an opinion and work with him in terms of
what he thinks needs to be done.
Second, I think we need to follow through on the
organization that we have established for DHS, not redo it all
from the beginning.
Third, reorganization imposes a near-term penalty on
performance. We know this very well. We have imposed a lot on
various different parts of our government since September 11.
Let us not impose any more is my judgment.
And fourth, the Secretary has certain limited
reorganization authorities already, so he can unilaterally do
things that he needs to do based on the authorities that were
conferred in the Homeland Security Act. If Congress really
wants to help him in the near term, I would recommend that you
increase his unilateral reorganization authority, his ability
to manage his Department flexibly.
He could use some additional reprogramming authority. He
could use a better working capital account. He could use
greater flexibility about the names and the number of under
secretaries, and he could use a stronger reorganization
authority, Section 872 of the original Homeland Security Act,
which we worked on a lot. There are things that, if conferred
on him, would help him right now, today, do his job. He does
not need another statutorily driven internal reorganization.
Now I think management of the Department is an important issue,
and the overseers need to watch it very carefully. The
Inspector General does. The GAO does. But I do not think it is
the most important issue. I do not think it is his highest
priority. I think the highest priority is what he does with his
power. The Secretary of Homeland Security is one of the most
powerful officers in the entire country, vested with vast
regulatory authority and budgetary authority to do things out
in the country.
And he has done a lot, I think. I am not going to give the
laundry list of accomplishments, but there are a few things
still that need to be done--which I have reflected on, and I
wish I had managed to get more of them done when I was in
government--but which I think are the highest priorities.
I will just tick them off. First, credentials and
identification standard. This is a glaring gap, a systemic gap
in our overall security system. The intel bill has a good
provision about Federal standards for driver's licenses, but it
does not go far enough. What we need is a national voluntary
standard for secure identification that would become mandatory
for all federally-controlled portals.
These issues I discuss in a little bit greater length in my
written statement.
Second, we need to dramatically expand the amount of watch
list screening that we do. We have two kinds of watch lists,
name-based watch lists, which is lists of names and date of
birth and that sort of thing, and biometric watch list. The
name-based watch list is now consolidated at the terror
screening center so that was a problem pre-September 11, now
fixed.
Biometric watch lists are still divided. Eventually they
need to be consolidated. We spend billions of dollars trying to
get terrorist identifying information. We need to use it. We
need to use it at every possible opportunity. This expansion of
screening against watch lists needs to be inside the United
States primarily the Secretary of Homeland Security's job, and
I urge you to encourage him to do that and to enable him to do
it. Abroad, many officers are involved in it. He needs to
assist.
Third, the defining characteristic of the September 11
attack was that al-Qaeda attacked a system in our midst that
was inherently dangerous that we had become complacent about--
airplanes--and was able to have catastrophic secondary effects
on that attack. We have now taken care of that. Airplanes are
no longer in that category.
Fortunately, there are a finite number of other such
targets that are in that category. One, in my judgment stands
out above the rest as uniquely dangerous and acutely
vulnerable, and that is hazardous chemicals, in particular
toxic-by-inhalation chemicals, ammonium, methyl bromine,
phosgene, and chlorine.
These are basically World War I era chemical weapons which
we move through our cities in extraordinary large quantities
and quite low security. I am sorry to say since September 11,
we have essentially done nothing in this area and made no
material reduction in the inherent vulnerability of our
chemical sector. If a terrorist were to attack that sector,
there is the potential for casualties on the scale or in excess
of September 11. I hope it does not happen, but it is just a
fact that this is the case.
This needs to be the next big push in critical
infrastructure protection. The Executive Branch has the
authority to regulate this area when it is in transport, when
it is being transported. It needs no new statutory authority
there. It just needs executive action.
We do need new statutory authority if we are going to take
care of the facilities because we cannot currently regulate the
facilities, but we can if it is in transport. It is my biggest
single concern for critical infrastructure protection. It is
the one target which I think fits exactly into what Senator
Domenici said, priorities. This should be the highest priority.
The other ones do not matter nearly as much. This one does.
Fourth, we have made great progress on securing our air
transportation system, substantial progress securing our
maritime transportation system, very little on ground
transportation systems, very little on rails, mass transit
systems, trains and trucks. There is no silver bullet. There is
nothing we can do, but we need a coherent program to deal with
these vulnerabilities. It will involve some combination of
access control sensors, telematic tracking, and geo-fences.
There are things to be done. We need a push there. DHS needs to
lead it.
Finally, and I apologize, terrorism insurance. The
Terrorism Insurance Act will expire this year. Primary insurers
have dropped terrorism insurance from their general commercial
policies and so now there is basically no buildings in all of
America that are ensured against terrorism risk. We should
reauthorize the Terrorism Insurance Act and mandate that all
general commercial insurance policies include terrorism risk
coverage.
Thank you very much for your attention and I am happy to
take any questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you for your testimony and thank
you all for excellent statements. Dr. Flynn, you made a very
good point in your comments about the legacy problems that some
agencies brought to the new Department. The Coast Guard despite
the strong support of many of us here had been underfunded for
years. The INS was possibly one of the worst managed agencies
in the Federal Government. And those problems did not disappear
when the new Department was created.
The Department has, however, now been in existence for
almost 2 years. Looking at the record of the Department and
evaluating its success and integrating the various components
and pursuing policies to make us safer, what overall grade
would you give the Department if you had to assign a grade to
it?
Mr. Flynn. I was always a hard marker. My students
complained about it. Again, one thing I highlight in my written
testimony here, the people who are in Nebraska Avenue working
these problems are the most selfless hardworking people in this
town. But I think because of the reasons of what I lay out here
I think we are in a C minus kind of state right now, and again
it would be almost impossible not to be given the challenges
that are confronting them, but this is a war on terror.
We are treating the overseas dimension of this with a
tremendous level of urgency and with a real commitment of
resources and we are treating this a bit like we are going
through Social Security reform stuff. It is like an ongoing
process, better government kind of thing, and I do not think we
are adapting to the nature of warfare moving in this direction.
It clearly has worked, when we first deliberated this in
the Hart-Rudman Commission about the need for consolidation, it
was really because the parent agencies were not very good
advocates for particularly the security mission, but often most
of the other missions of these particular departments, whether
it was Customs at Treasury or INS at Justice or Coast Guard at
DOT, particularly. I think the Secretary has been an enormously
strong advocate for his organization, but he clashes with other
competing budget priorities and his issues are not looked at in
the same budget column, of course, of our national security
investments are made.
His are looked at vis-a-vis other domestic priorities, and
if we are saying that the nature of warfare has changed and
that line has blurred, then I think we really need to look
hard. Is another weapon system vis-a-vis what needs to be
recapitalization of the Coast Guard? How do we have that
conversation right now because clearly there is security value
to both, but how do we carry on the conversations of inevitable
tradeoffs of the setting of priorities?
Chairman Collins. Dr. Falkenrath, you have a different
vantage point. What overall grade would you give the Department
for its first 2 years?
Mr. Falkenrath. Well, I, too, was a very hard grader when I
was on the faculty and I would give it an incomplete. I do not
think I would give it a grade. It depends what the curve is.
And here, whose curve do you want to use? There is a lot more
to be done. No question about it, but a lot has been done as
well.
And if you want to look at the glass half full or half
empty is sort of perspective. I think half empty tells us all
the things that still need to be done.
Chairman Collins. Let me ask you this then. If you look
over the Department's record, what would you say has been its
greatest accomplishment during the past 2 years and what do you
think has been its most disappointing failure?
Mr. Falkenrath. The greatest accomplishment, I think, is to
create a presence and an entity to which we can give missions
that previously did not have homes. So we now have a place to
go and say we need a domestic protection plan for America as we
go to war with Iraq. Before we did not have anywhere to do
that. We now have a Cabinet Secretary who wakes up every
morning with vast authority who has security in his job title
and knows his job is to advance this cause whenever he had the
opportunity.
Previously to September 11, we did not have that. We, at
the White House, could go to a place and say we need to develop
a plan to deal with problem X, which previously did not fit
into any coherent boundaries, and so that now exists and I
think it is a major accomplishment that they became responsive
to those sort of unconventional requests.
The major disappointment--there are a number of them that I
have. I think it is the third thing that I mentioned, which is
the chemical security system. We took a lot of action to secure
air transportation systems, we have done a bit on ports, and
containers. I think this one stands out as an enormous
vulnerability that we had the authority to address. It exists
already, at least for transportation, and we failed to do so. I
certainly take some responsibility for that.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Carafano, same question for you.
Greatest accomplishment of the Department in the last 2 years
and most disappointing failure?
Mr. Carafano. I think the grading question is actually the
greatest question, and the reason for that is because you can
not give the Department a grade because there are lots of
things going on in the Department, some of them going extremely
well, and some of them going extremely poorly, so if you give a
grade of C minus, that is an average of 15 different things,
and that is exactly the point. The Department is not moving
forward as a coherent entity. It is moving forward as a bunch
of individual programs.
Basically what we have done is create four demi-departments
who are moving along at various different stages depending upon
how they are run and how they are organized and how they are
funded. The biggest problem is the inability to answer the
question of where do I get the biggest bang for the buck? If I
have 5 bucks to invest tomorrow, where I can invest it and get
the most security? The Department cannot answer that question.
The great success, of course, is that we have created the
Department. It is a place full of absolutely wonderful men and
women who work very hard every day to make us safe, and I love
them all dearly, and they are doing a terrific job.
But they need to be able to do their job more efficiently
and effectively and they need as a coherent body to be able to
answer the question. If we have $10 to invest tomorrow, explain
to me how I can make this investment and get the most for the
$10 I am investing, and they simply cannot do that right now.
Chairman Collins. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. I apologize to
the witnesses whose testimony I missed. I had to go to the
floor, but I have read most of them and will read the rest.
Chairman Collins asked you to grade the Department. I want to
in some sense ask you what you think the plans for the next
semester should be, which is to say that Judge Chertoff is
going to be coming before the Committee soon, nominee for
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
I want to ask each of you, if you were coming before us as
the nominee, knowing all that you know about the Department,
what would be your top two priorities that you would state to
us? Mr. Skinner.
Mr. Skinner. The new Secretary certainly is going to have
many challenges. I think the most important thing that he is
going to have to address, though, is reaching a consensus among
all the elements within the Department, each with their own set
of priorities and each competing for the limited resources that
are provided the Department of Homeland Security, on exactly
what are the department-wide priorities, what do we want to
accomplish this year, what we want to accomplish in 5 years,
with the resources that we know that we have available.
Now this is going to require development of a strategic
plan. I know the Department has a strategic plan, but I am
talking about an operational plan that is developed at the
highest level, possibly under an Under Secretary of Planning
and Policy as the Heritage Foundation has suggested, but
somewhere at that level, a plan that clearly sets forth what
the priorities are, a plan that clearly articulates what our
goals are.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Skinner. A plan that specifies the costs associated
with the goals, with milestones, that is time frames when
should we attain those goals, with performance measures and
related evaluation tools, so that we can gauge progress and so
that we can assign accountability.
Senator Lieberman. I appreciate the answer. In some sense
it is a response to what Senator Domenici asked earlier which
is we cannot do it all, but----
Mr. Skinner. Yes.
Senator Lieberman. And we know that. We cannot cover every
risk, but we need the Department to help us with a plan that
sets priorities, and the plan that they have now which was
adopted in I believe 2002 is very vague and lacks any
specifics. Dr. Carafano, what would your top two priorities be?
Mr. Carafano. Well, first, I would create a management
structure that would allow the Secretary to impose his will on
the Department much in the way the Secretary of Defense can
impose his will on the Department of Defense to make it do what
he wants.
The second thing I would do is create that strategic vision
of where do you want the Department to be in 5 years, and what
do you want it to be doing, and then I would use that vision to
drive my resourcing and organizational decisions.
Senator Lieberman. So statutorily now, you think the
Secretary of Homeland Security is weaker than he ought to be?
Mr. Carafano. Absolutely in terms of his ability to create
and disassemble under secretaries. I think he needs authority
to do that because I think there is some movement there. I
think in the Chief Operating Officer realm, I think there is
sufficient legislative authority now for him to coalesce more
power under the Chief Operating Officer and to create more
authority under the deputy, and I would urge him to do that and
not wait for legislative, although you could see where creating
a Chief Operating Officer legislative authority in the
Department that would permanently be there, I do not think
would necessarily be a bad thing.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Mr. Wermuth.
Mr. Wermuth. You were not here for Richard Falkenrath's
statement but it picks up on the point that Jim Carafano was
just making. Clearly, the Secretary, if the Secretary were here
asking this Committee what it could do to help, this capability
and authority to do some reorganizational structure, whether it
is the Under Secretary for Policy and Planning that some of us
have recommended or some of these other things that Jim was
talking about.
That is the first one. More authority to do things on his
own as he sees priorities unfolding and then not to sound like
a broken record, but on another point that I strongly agree
with Richard Falkenrath about and I mentioned in my statement,
that Congress provide a single source oversight and
authorization authority for the Secretary to come to, and I
know this Committee is making great strides in that direction,
but even this Committee does not yet have authority over all of
the programs and processes of the Department of Homeland
Security.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. I think maybe CSIS and
Heritage did a chart of the various committees involved in
homeland security and it compares with the legendary Arlen
Specter chart on health care in America and we ought to blow it
up at some point for interest. Dr. Flynn.
Mr. Flynn. Senator, I think there are two things that I
would put on top of his list. One is to deal with the issue of
complacency. I mean it really is the focal point in the U.S.
Government to remind the American people about the ongoing
threat that confronts us and the need for us all to work
together as a collective society and work towards that, and
that sort of public function I think he has to really make sure
he continues to play the role that Secretary Ridge, I think,
provided a very fine example of how you try to do that.
The second one is, I think, he simply has to come in and
ask his organization and push across the U.S. Government, let
us assume there is a bump in the night. A lot of the thinking
that permeates the Department is if we have an event, we have
failed. I think we have to act more grown-up than this. Our
intelligence services are just not up to speed to give us a
level of tactical information that is going to give us the
threat-based with managed approach we are taking today. It will
probably be a decade or so. Thanks to your law, we will get
there probably in a decade.
This is a long time coming. You do not throw a switch and
get the human intelligence to probe these networks and so
forth. So we will not have the advanced warning likely to
prevent these. So I think the thing that can help drive change
is you say what if this goes off, what is your plan, and force
the players to see. That is what brings them together.
And just a quick example of that: We have a plan to close
all our seaports and our borders should we have an incident
involving a dirty bomb or something worse in our society. But
the Federal Government today still does not have a plan how to
turn them back on. They have not sat down and played it out how
to do that. Well, trying to do that in a crisis, that can be
done. That is not a cost issue. That is a planning and focus
issue, but as soon as you begin that process of saying how do
we turn it back on, you get people--the light bulbs go on, why
we have to communicate, why we have to set the priorities, and
the rest of it. So forcing the folks to really confront the
reality of this threat and play back from it is something that
I think could be very constructive.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much. I am over time, but
Dr. Falkenrath, would you give me a brief response?
Mr. Falkenrath. Sure. Most of the important things that
need to be done are outside of his direct unilateral ability to
make happen, so people--all the under secretaries and the
assistant secretaries--need to be appointed. He does not select
them. The President does, and they are confirmed by the Senate.
Budget. It is decided by OMB, passed by the appropriators.
Relationship with other Cabinet agencies, subject to the will
of the other Cabinet agencies. Relationships with authorizing
committees subject to the structure of the--within his domain,
two most important things: Chemical security, as I talked
about, and expansion of terrorist watch list screening.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Thank you all. It has been
extremely helpful.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Stevens.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS
Senator Stevens. Well, I am glad I came to listen to this
panel. I am not sure but what you ought to listen to
yourselves. Having been through 7\1/2\ years now of being
Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and reviewing all the
money that is spent by the United States on a discretionary
basis, what I am hearing is more and more of the Federal
Government ought to be in homeland security.
Homeland security affects every single agency in the
government and you seem to be saying more staff in the
Department of Homeland Security. We would much rather see them
cooperate with the people who are out there now that know what
they are doing. Should we put all the Department of Agriculture
into Homeland Security because of the problem about importation
of beef or importation of various substances?
Should we follow through in terms of this chemical problem
which is a vast problem and travel, put more and more authority
in the Department of Homeland Security or all interstate
transportation or anything that is hazardous?
Now, guys, I think you ought to settle back. You should
have been through World War II. The people of this country
jumped in and lot more people got involved from the grassroots
and made the thing work very quickly. You seem to think
everything has to come to Washington and be in Homeland
Security in order to make this country secure.
I would urge that you go back and think a little bit more.
You are all very brilliant men, but we have a government that
is involved in AIDS, now $15 billion in 5 years; in the
tsunami, we are spending more than 50 percent of the money is
being spent on that tsunami out there.
We have got more and more problems as far as terrorism in
Indonesia, Philippines, etc. Money outside the Department of
Defense and outside of Homeland Security is being spent over
there in ways that you probably do not even know. I think Mr.
Wermuth may. But as a practical matter, homeland security ought
to be a concept that every single individual in the United
States is part of.
And you are not going to do it by bringing it all to
Washington and putting them in a new agency called Homeland
Security. I hope that we can plan to diversify this agency and
have it be the advisors to every entity in the government,
whether it is the local police or the local fire department or
the county sheriff or the FBI.
Now, this problem, each one of you has mentioned more
money. Mr. Skinner, you did. I can tell you Homeland Security
has had as much money as we could possibly afford in the period
since September 11. More money than anyone ever thought they
would get. And to have you tell us now that we have to have
more money, I do not think is going to be there, and I urge you
to help us find ways to do the money, use the money we have got
to improve the system. And part of this jurisdiction is down in
Commerce, by the way, and I understand what you are saying.
You seem to think that it ought to come here because we
have jurisdiction of all transportation. Why should we have
to--we will still have jurisdiction over transportation, but
this Committee wants jurisdiction over transportation security.
Can you split the line and tell me where it stops? Where is the
problem about transportation and the problem of transportation
security?
And the same thing exists throughout our system here. All
the committees of this Congress have jurisdiction over entities
that this Committee, that I am privileged to serve on, is
involved with, too. I think you should help us find ways to
coordinate the existing functions of government, where the
money is already, and not say let us bring more of it out of
those entities and put into Homeland Security to make sure we
have enough money there.
I would be happy to visit with any of you along those lines
privately personally, but I do not think there is going to be
more money. Matter of fact, I know there is not going to be
more money. [Laughter.]
So I would urge you to review your situation from the point
of view how we can get the job done better with the money that
is there now? Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Senator Warner.
Senator Warner. Well, as my distinguished senior colleague
is leaving, I think we have to find a midpoint for this
pendulum. Mr. Flynn brought it home to me. I was once an under
secretary of a department of the government and had well over
100 on my staff alone.
I think we have to consider--first, I think Tom Ridge ought
to get an A for effort. He has tried hard with what he has done
and his team. But, folks, I think only by the grace of God have
we been spared another attack here at home, and we cannot allow
these expenditures to be directed in other areas without
thinking, first and foremost, of our own security.
So I come somewhere between my dear friend and colleague of
many years--a quarter of a century--here in the Senate, Senator
Stevens, and I think we have to augment. But to a couple of a
specific questions, we are likely to be faced in this Congress
with a decision of a national ID card. Is this an agenda item
the new Secretary ought to put on and begin to address? It is a
divisive issue I want to think through very carefully. I
frankly lean towards--I have not any reluctance--but I think
the voices of those who do should be heard. But it is an
important part of our security.
Do you have a view on that?
Mr. Falkenrath. Yes, Senator, a national ID card is
typically a mandatory card that the national government says
every citizen must have and I do not think that is necessary
here.
Senator Warner. You do not think what?
Mr. Falkenrath. I do not think that is necessary here. What
is, I think, necessary and prudent, would be standards, a
national standard for secure identification that would be
voluntary and that any provider of identification documents
could build to if they met the proper standards.
Senator Warner. I think that is a very interesting idea. I
would then turn to Mr. Flynn. You, I think, were right on
target with your thoughts that we have to bring all of our
assets to this Nation, but the military, active duty military
and the homeland first responders to work together as a team.
They are doing it now. It has got to be strengthened, but there
is this famous old law, posse comitatus. I do not know whether
you have ever studied the history, but it emanated from, I
think, Grant trying to send some Federal people down to monitor
an election in the South in the 1860's or something like that,
and it has been very rigid. Does this need reexamination in the
light of this allocation of responsibilities?
Mr. Flynn. I think Michael Wermuth can probably speak most
directly because of his experience at the Defense Department at
the time when this was being worked on the drug war. I think
there is enough wiggle room in it right now that it does not
require us to make too much of an issue of it.
The real issue is the Department of Defense has basically
said homeland defense is when the threat comes outside. Then
they take the lead role and then preparing for that
contingency. But everything we know about this adversary is
that they are going to try to blend in. They are going to look
like a passenger. They are going to look like an operator and
so forth.
So the challenge here is really how does the Department of
Defense get more engaged in the ongoing efforts with the
Homeland Security to talk to the first responders, and do it in
a real collaborative way, not that we have got a mission, DHS,
you have got a mission.
Senator Warner. Did you wish to make a comment, Mr.
Wermuth, on the posse comitatus?
Mr. Wermuth. I would certainly agree that there is not a
lot that needs to be done in terms of authority for the
Department to be able to do significant things. We have got the
Stafford Act, which not only authorizes the military to be used
for natural disasters, but little known in the Stafford Act is
also the capability to use the military in the event of an
intentionally perpetrated attack. We have got the insurrection
statutes. We have got two very specific statutes, one dealing
with chemical and biological terrorism, another dealing with
nuclear terrorism in Title 10, Section 382 in one case, in
Title 18, Section 831 in another. So there is plenty of
authority there.
We just need to do what I think you were suggesting, what
Steve has also suggested. And articulate that more clearly so
that we understand the roles and missions of the Department of
Defense juxtaposed with the Department of Homeland Security so
that everybody knows when and where those capabilities and
authorities will be used.
Senator Warner. Thank you. One of the principal inducements
for me to join this Committee was, of course, first and
foremost to work to get the maximum effect of both our forces
abroad and the forces at home.
But I am privileged in my State to have one of the largest
ports in America, Norfolk. And this issue of port security,
where on the scale of resolving some of this, who is the expert
on this? Because just start with this, what appears to be an
insoluble problem, of what is the 8 million containers, what is
the statistic a day that will land on our shores?
Mr. Flynn. It is just about 20,000, about 9 million that
came in last year, up to 30 tons of material per container. The
basic challenge, Senator, is that I think we are really
struggling to adapt to it. We have a process right now that if
we target a container we want to look at, we now have the means
to check it.
Believe it or not, on September 11 we could not do that.
There wasn't gamma X-ray equipment in any of our seaports but
one in Fort Lauderdale looking for stolen cars going out of the
country. And we just did not have the manpower and resources.
So we have made a big step forward with that.
The problem is that the intelligence that underpins our
targeting is very frail because the quality of the manifests
and so forth, and we are basically taking on 95 percent of the
universe as low risk. I worry about for this adversary, if they
spent 3 years acquiring a weapon of mass destruction, they will
game out who we have defined as a low risk universe, and it
turns out not to be rocket science.
They have things like Wal-Mart and Ford and GM written on
them. And in that universe if something happens, the real risk
is not that it will just get into the streets of Norfolk but
the whole rest of the system would be contaminated. If it came
from the 95 percent low risk, every mayor and governor would
see every container as a high risk. In 2 weeks, we would shut
down the global trade system.
So along with the chemical industry, that is a huge one for
loss of life. Is our global manufacturing and retailing sector
an incident away, potentially, from a real problem?
Senator Warner. Thank you very much. I thank the Chairman.
I just conclude by saying in the misfortune of another
incident, this Committee will be held accountable for whether
or not we did provide adequate funding for the various
responsibilities. I want to give the support to the Chairman
and the Ranking Member to achieve those dollars that are
necessary.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I would note that both the
Chairman and the Ranking Member held a hearing on port security
last year. We do expect to do more work in that area. I think
it is our greatest vulnerability.
I would note that we have less than 5 minutes left in the
vote. I would inform Senator Coburn that unlike the House we do
not end votes on time. So I think there is time for you to
question. I am going to go vote and I would ask you to put the
hearing in recess after your questions, and I will get a full
report on what you asked. And we will come back and allow any
other Members who wish to come back to question and plus you
will be shocked to know I have a few more for you as well. So
thank you.
Senator Coburn. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am sorry I
missed some of your testimony. One of the things that strikes
me--and if I missed this in your testimony, please bring it
forward--but individuals talked about the Visa Waiver Program
and substitute visas and port security and chemical risk.
But nobody is really focusing on our borders where millions
of people come through illegally every year. You can do all you
want on ports and you can do all you want on chemicals. But if
you do not stop the transient crossing of the borders where we
do not see them, where we do not stop them--or we have made the
effort to make the difference, for we impact people who are
coming across the border--why would you come through on a false
visa when you can walk across either the northern or southern
border almost without harm?
Do we have the technology to control our borders and what
do we see happening on that to truly control our borders?
Because we can do all these other things, every other
interface. But I cannot imagine, my imagination of some
chemical or some biological weapon coming into this country is
not through one of our ports. It is coming across on somebody's
shoulder walking across either the northern or southern border
of this country, and anybody that would like to answer that, I
would love to hear.
Mr. Flynn. Well, Senator, I spent--before I got to
September 11--I had a 2-year project where I essentially went
along our borders, both in the Southwest border and the
Canadian border and also visited our seaports asking front-line
agents basically how you filter in the bad from the good given
the volume and velocity.
And the short answer was we are not. At the ports of entry,
we are just facing a tidal wave without the capacity. And the
in between spots, particularly on the U.S.-Canadian border, we
are talking a total of 300 Border Patrol agents that were then
working there. That is about 1 every 5 miles. It is a challenge
to think about in the broader context.
My basic conclusion was that you certainly need border
capability, but it has to be just one of the layers and levers.
What we really have, at least I think the opportunity in the
North American context, is we have certainly a friendly
neighbor to the north. The real threats are likely to emanate
from outside the hemisphere. So it becomes important to think
about the level of cooperation and intelligence sharing that
you have with RCMP and other players on that side and
development in Mexico.
We have got to put that in the context. The port of entry
issue is about facilitating legitimate trade and travel. There
is no issue on frontiers, the in between places, except for
resources, if you want to police it. It is obviously a daunting
challenge with 5,000 miles of real estate, a third of it water
on the northeast, to think it would get adequately controlled.
I started my career as a Coast Guard officer trying to patrol
our coastline, and it is a huge task to imagine we have the
means without tremendous resources.
Some tools are available, the UIVs and other kinds of
stuff, but without the intelligence to decide where to look,
there is a move afoot to say, well, let us monitor all the
small vessels that are moving in our waters. Well, there are 6
million of them on the Great Lakes, 2 million Canadian, 4
million American. On a busy holiday weekend, there may be 2
million out there.
So monitoring with technology 2 million blips does not
probably give you a whole lot of capability. You need the gum
shoe, the guy who is out there seeing so many fish where there
is no fish, and you need to have an intelligence apparatus.
So we certainly see at the border a real set of challenges,
but most of those challenges emanate from beyond that border.
We need a layer there. We need to push out and think and I
think that is something that the Administration should be
applauded on is the extent to which they recognize that we need
a strategic depth and be able to work their way through that.
Senator Coburn. Dr. Carafano.
Mr. Carafano. If your goal is to reduce illegal entry and
unlawful presence in the United States, you have to have a
comprehensive solution that addresses internal enforcement,
border security, and your relations with Latin America. And the
point I will come back to, again from the report, is the
Department of Homeland Security simply lacks the structure to
create an efficient strategy to implement those three legs and
effectively allocate resources against those three legs. And
you have to do all three. Otherwise, it is really like trying
to bail out the bottomless boat. I mean if you put resources
into one without addressing the other two, then the problem
simply will move other places.
Senator Coburn. OK. Anybody else? Well, the Committee will
stand in recess until after the vote.
[Recess.]
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come back to order.
Mr. Skinner, I want to ask your opinion of a very interesting
recommendation that is in the CSIS and Heritage Foundation
report concerning the potential merger or recommendation to
merge the Customs and Border Protection agencies with ICE,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The testimony of Dr. Carafano makes the case that it would
bring together under one roof all of the tools of affected
border and immigration enforcement--inspectors, border patrol
agents, special agents, detention and removal officers, and
intelligence analysts, and realize the objective of creating a
single border and immigration enforcement agency.
When I was in Los Angeles recently, I was very interested
in the favorable reaction to this proposal among law
enforcement officials from several different levels of
government and different agencies including the FBI agent-in-
charge, the sheriff of LA county, the director of the terrorist
early warning center. All of them saw advantages from their
perspectives in having this merger.
As someone who has studied the Department closely, what
would your recommendation be? Do you think this is a good idea
or not?
Mr. Skinner. First, I would just like to point out we have
not really studied the implications of such a recommendation so
we cannot offer an informed opinion as to whether such a merger
would be worthwhile or not.
I would caution, however, because we are in our infant
stages, the Department is in its infant stages, and to
reorganize again, in an area such as CBP and ICE, for example,
may do more harm than good, but again that is just pure
speculation on my part. It is something that I think should be
studied very carefully as to what the impact would be on
operations up and down the chain before a decision is made to
do something to that effect.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Carafano, I discussed your resolution
recently with a high level official at the Department because I
am very intrigued by it and also because it did receive such a
positive response from these law enforcement officials in
California. He expressed to me the concern that it would have a
very negative impact on employee morale if the two agencies
were to be merged into one. What is your response to that?
Mr. Carafano. Well, I think that we are going to find all
kinds of good reasons not to do something. I mean you really
cannot counsel your fears. You have to have a vision of where
you want to go. I really think that needs to be the driving
force. I mean we need to decide how we want to do border and
transportation security in this country and once we have
reached that goal, then we need to structure to get there. This
is very similar to the debate we had about should we split off
and have a separate Air Force from the Army. It was based in
large part on a vision of where warfare is going to be in the
21st Century, and the answer was, well, air power is going to
be such a significant function, a domain, that it necessitates
being its own separate identity.
And we live with the grace that people made that correct
decision. I think we need to take the same intellectual energy
to this. We need to take counsel of our fears and say where do
we want to be in 5 years, and then let that drive our decision.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Wermuth, you mentioned that you
thought that this should be studied more thoroughly. Is that
something the RAND Corporation could undertake or how would you
suggest that we determine whether this is a good idea?
Mr. Wermuth. Well, without giving the Committee an
advertisement for the work of the RAND Corporation, certainly
we and others have done this in different contexts for some of
our defense clients as well as for other government agencies.
But without further study, I tried to highlight in my
testimony the potential that with the different skill sets
involved in inspectors at border ports of entry, and law
enforcement people who actually go out and arrest folks, with
those differences in skill sets, the recruiting and retention
that backs that up, the training that applies differently to
those different kinds of skill sets, without looking at that
more closely, as I said, we are not yet convinced that the
merger of those two is an essential requirement at this point.
And I used the analogy in the written testimony, in the
military we have combat forces and we have combat support and
combat service support forces. The skill sets are different.
The training regimes are different. The recruiting and
retention methods are different. The professional development
to a very great extent in those two different kinds of
functions is different.
We think that the same might apply. That is not to say this
may not be the solution when you really dig into it and
consider all those issues and balance the advantages or
disadvantages of one particular structure or not. We just
happen to think that it needs a great deal more attention and
that is not to take anything away from the great work these
guys did sitting around and based on their own great wealth of
experience come up with some potential pathways ahead. We just
think it needs more study.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Flynn, you have a lot of experience
in this area. Do you think merging those two agencies would
improve the operation of the Department?
Mr. Flynn. It is a bit like, I think, where we were on
September 11 when we first talked about merging. I cannot
imagine how things would be any worse. I mean ICE is in a total
disarray, and I do not know how it could be more demoralized
than it is right now. It is an agency in search of a mission.
But when I think functionally, and I go back to the Hart-Rudman
rubbing which was about the course of national security in the
21st Century, the commissioners could have talked about how to
reconfigure the national security establish to handle these
threats.
What they recognized, though, was it was the non-military
elements of these agencies that often gave them the particular
skill set to deal with this kind of adversary. It was their
regulatory role, their enforcement role, the relationships that
gave them in these sectors that were critical, the Coast Guard
is an illustration where you have both regulatory enforcement
and military all in one organization, and you get a lot of
value from that.
If you tried to break that up in the maritime arena, it
would be very dysfunctional and very expensive to try to
achieve it. I think we went in the wrong direction separating
ICE from the Customs Service initially, primarily the
immigration enforcement arm, because the intelligence, the
incidence of criminality helps you set your framework for the
risk analysis that is being done on your prevention and front-
line players' expertise there.
And they, in turn--the enforcement folks--often need the
leverage of the regulatory player to create the incentives.
Wal-Mart plays by rules as other good companies do, not because
of fear of criminal investigations. They happen very rarely and
the fines are not that big and so forth. The driver is the
regulatory arm of that agency that says if you do not behave
this way, we might have to slow things down, and so you really
want that all, I think, under one roof versus separated from
it. It is where it used to be. Of course, we are merging both
Immigration and Customs but as we know with Immigration, we
could not make things worse there.
But this decision to parse off I do not think was well
considered. ICE is just not a functional entity today. That is
what I hear from U.S. attorneys. It is what I see when I go out
and talk to seaports and so forth. Nobody knows what their job
is.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Falkenrath, what is your opinion of
that recommendation?
Mr. Falkenrath. I would not support it. First, I am not
sure what problem it is trying to solve. There are serious
problems in ICE. I agree with Steve. It is a troubled agency
and has a lot of work still to do. There are some problems at
CBP also. There are some problems within BTS also with the
relationship with TSA. I am not sure what this reorganization
solves.
Second, I think by doing it, you create new performance
problems in the near term and you should give these agencies
the opportunity to complete the reorganization they have been
set to do and so forth. But the two most important reasons are,
I think, the missions hang together pretty well as currently
configured. CBP is our face to the traveling public and to the
trade. And they enforce many different statutes and many
different regulations at the border. And it is a law
enforcement function, but it is one that deals with an enormous
throughput every day.
ICE are investigators, mostly 1811s, mostly undercover.
They can get Federal wiretaps. They are part of the JTTFs. They
are part of our drug task force that deal with things, and they
run investigations against criminal behavior across borders, in
the United States or in some cases abroad. Their core
relationships are not with the traveling public or with the
trade. It is with other Federal law enforcement agencies like
the Secret Service or ATF or DEA or FBI.
So I actually think they hang together pretty well, and
their missions are sufficiently distinct to justify the current
configuration. Oddly, I think the bigger problem within BTS is
between CBP and TSA, where there is a serious seam and a sort
of dysfunctionality. Look at an international airport. You have
on the top floor TSA screeners screening people going in. And
on the bottom floor, you have CBP screeners screening people
coming out. They both work for the Secretary of Homeland
Security, but they have completely different backroom support
structures.
That is where I would rather see integration, where we
could save some money, get a little more flexibility. Both of
them have targeting systems. TSA has the Office of National
Risk Assessment. CBP has the National Targeting Center. They do
basically the exact same thing. They have different
contractors, different methods. ONRA has taken more out of the
box approach and has gotten off the ground much more slowly.
NTC is working right now today. They really should not be
separate. They should be merged.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Carafano.
Mr. Carafano. I would just like to add one follow-up point.
Chairman Collins. That would be helpful.
Mr. Carafano. I do think we have to recognize that
organization is really--and I am not saying that, again,
merging this is necessarily absolutely the right answer, but
all we have done is trade one set of problems for another.
Before border inspectors and special agents worked together in
one agency and that seemed very effective. The problem was that
we split people from goods. Now, all we have done is created a
new seam. Now, all the border inspectors work together, but all
of a sudden somehow it is not appropriate for those people to
work with investigators anymore.
So I do not know, I do not understand the advantage of what
we have done, and I do agree with both Mike and Richard. I do
think that this does require careful study, but I think the
presumption that this is any better off than we have had before
is certainly wrong, and I certainly agree with Stephen's point
that these are agencies which are deeply troubled and I do not
think we should just leave them alone and assume they are just
going to get better.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Skinner, we clearly have differing
views on the desirability of this merger, and I would like to
ask you as the Acting IG to do a study of this issue and report
back to the Committee, say, in 3 months or if that is too
aggressive, maybe we would give you a little bit longer.
We do hope ultimately to do an authorization bill. For
example, we have heard today about the desirability and there
seemed to be unanimity on the need for an Under Secretary for
Policy, and there are other changes that would require legal
revisions, so it would be very helpful for us, and I would ask
you to undertake that task to assist the Committee.
Mr. Skinner. Madam Chairman, we will be happy to do that,
and if I can I'll work with your staff so that we can set some
time frames and milestones to report back to you.
Chairman Collins. That would be great. Thank you. Senator
Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks to you,
Mr. Skinner, for your response to the Chairman's request which
I appreciate and support. Dr. Flynn, I wanted to ask you a
question about critical infrastructure, 85 percent of which is
owned by the private sector. I know you have really focused on
this and in your book you talk some about it.
There is a feeling, I think, among some people, maybe more
than some, that the market forces that normally affect the
private sector are essentially enough to get the private sector
to do what it needs to do to protect itself and the country. I
am talking about the critical infrastructure part of it.
I know that you feel, I believe you feel otherwise, and I
wanted you to talk about that distinction a bit and evaluate
where you think the Department of Homeland Security is now in
its interactions with the private sector in regard to homeland
security?
Mr. Flynn. Thank you very much, Senator. This is an issue
that I probably find myself focusing the most on of late,
taking that our adversary, the one we need to worry about the
most, is interested in economic disruption, not just loss of
life. Our critical infrastructure has clearly become their
target and 85 percent of them are privately owned, and we are
talking about how we create the incentives for that
infrastructure to become more secure, again recognizing its
baseline was it started off as open, low cost, efficient and
reliable as those market drivers. Security was essentially
pushed to the sidelines because there did not seem to be a
threat that warranted making those investments.
So now we are having to integrate it in, and we should be
doing it with some level of urgency. The Administration has
stated in its homeland security strategy that there is
sufficient market incentive for the private sector to protect
itself. The data though after 3 years is that there has been
very little investment by the private sector, particularly in
an industry like the chemical industry but also in areas like
food supply and so forth.
And I think the explanation for it is pretty
straightforward. It is one I have talked with a number of CEOs
about. And it is a tragedy of the commons problem. That is no
single entity owns all of the critical infrastructure. And
security is base line costs. If they therefore decide on their
own to absorb those costs, protect their one element of it, it
does not solve the problem because these folks will stake out
the other players who are free-riders, exploit, but the whole
infrastructure will be affected. There is also the practical
issues. When it happens, Congress typically jumps in then, and
the prescriptions may look different from the initial
investments.
And I also think there is a liability concern. There is an
issue that it is very difficult for the private sector to
define how much security is enough, because it is the ultimate
public good. And the fear is unlike other things like quality
control and so forth, we say we agree as a trade association
this is sufficient security, and we have an event, and the
post-mortem is it failed. It was not enough.
Then there is some liability exposure. You acknowledged the
threat but you did not do sufficient. Now the only way to
vaccinate them from this is essentially when the public sector
says that is a good judgment. We are willing to, knowing that
this is a tradeoff issue, as we have been talking about all
morning, we agree that that is an adequate level to achieve and
we will hold the industry to it, so it is not a free-rider
problem. The market playing field gets leveled.
The challenge here is that this is not going to happen by
just illustrating best practices because you are not affecting
that structure and that has been the focus of the Department's
approach to try to garner the best experiences and then share
that with the private sector.
The incentive structure is carrots and sticks typically. I
think the issue is how do you form the standards? It has to be
arrived at with their input because there are very few people
in government who understand the sector sufficiently to make
good calls about how much security is enough and what will work
and not.
I advocate a very ambitious plan, something modeled on the
Federal Reserve System which I am calling the Federal Security
Reserve System. Just like in the financial sector, we had to
find a way in which we had common rules, but we allowed it to
largely keep it apolitical, and we want to make sure the
expertise was resident to make good decisions. We found a
framework that basically allowed that private folks agree how
to clear checks and set up rules, the government to bound the
risks that if something went wrong, that we would not see the
system failure historically with the panics that lead to the
requirement for that Reserve System. We need to similarly adopt
that, I think, kind of thinking into thinking about critical
infrastructure.
The role for the Department then would be the public face
that would interact with those I would argue regionally based
to nationally based to make sure that government sanctioning of
that is a good call, and the information that comes out of the
Justice Department or that comes out of DHS informed it. But we
have got to think about a structure and we have to think about
incentives. And what we have is almost 3 years of data that
shows that investments, real investments, making a big
difference on protecting what is the basis for our way of life
and is the most likely target is, in fact, getting the kind of
investment that we need to make ourselves a more secure, more
resilient society when we face this threat.
Senator Lieberman. Very important and leaves a lot for us
to think about doing in this authorization. Mr. Wermuth, I
share your concern that the existence of the Department of
Homeland Security does not alleviate the need for
intergovernmental coordination because there is obviously a lot
of other agencies of the Federal Government and beyond that
have to be involved that are not part of the Department of
Homeland Security.
There is, as you well know, the White House office dealing
with homeland security. I wonder how you would assess the
performance of that office, what it has or has not been able to
do, and what if any recommendations you would make to the
Committee about how to strengthen the office, if that is
necessary, or to create some other entity to perform those
intergovernmental outside of DHS functions?
Mr. Wermuth. Thank you very much, Senator Lieberman, for
the opportunity to address that, and I do some of that in
greater detail in my testimony than I did in my oral remarks.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Wermuth. And at the risk, of course, perhaps offending
one of my colleagues at the table who was involved in that
process, but I think Richard will agree, first, I mention
things about just doing a better job of conceptualizing
homeland security and explaining what that means. What is
homeland security? Is it a subset of national security or is it
something all out there by itself?
What is homeland defense as a component of that? Is that a
subset of homeland security? Is that more a subset of national
security? We have the principal architect, of course, of the
2002 National Strategy on Homeland Security sitting at this
table, and we happen to think in evaluating that shortly after
it came out that that was a very good start.
It is now 2\1/2\ years old and unfortunately it still only
talks about combating terrorism, and we now know that certainly
in the case of the Department of Homeland Security there is
more to what DHS does, natural disasters and a whole lot of
other things, than just combating terrorists.
So we have suggested, I suggested again in the testimony,
that maybe it is now time to take a look at the national
strategy for homeland security again and tie up some of these
loose ends including such simple things as terminology, which
we happen to feel very strongly about.
In addition, suggested in the testimony and in other RAND
publications that, perhaps understandably, the Homeland
Security counsel staff and the White House has also been
focused a little bit too much on current exigencies and not in
that longer range strategic focus that we have talked about in
terms of the Department itself. But in the case of the HSC
staff and the White House, it clearly has a broader role.
Senator Stevens, of course, is right in several of the
things that he says. The Department of Homeland Security cannot
be responsible for everything. There are important pieces
elsewhere in government that have responsibilities for some
elements of homeland security, lower case, if you will, rather
than Department of Homeland Security, upper case.
So there has got to be better strategic focus on the White
House of bringing together all of those entities of the rest of
the Federal Government and including some of our international
considerations in the same way that we are suggesting that the
Department itself needs to have a better strategic focus for
its own operational elements.
I would argue that it is time that the HSC staff now
perhaps move beyond being involved in perhaps more of the day-
to-day operations of the Department and focus a little bit more
on the strategic planning, the intergovernmental/interagency
coordination functions that are called for here.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Helpful answer. I am going to
ask Dr. Carafano to comment on something that Dr. Flynn said
and maybe he wants to respond, which is about the relationship
between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department
of Defense. His language was very good here. I thought he said
the Pentagon has been keen to maintain its autonomy--we have
seen that--by assigning itself the mission of homeland defense,
which it defines as involving terrorist acts that emanate only
from outside the United States.
And then he goes on and makes some points, and basically
says that the artificial line drawn between homeland defense
and homeland security needs to be--in some ways it picks up on
what Mr. Wermuth has just said--needs to be reexamined with an
eye toward expanding the operational support role the DOD will
play in carrying out DHS's mission. What do you think about
that
Mr. Carafano. I think Steve and I, exactly agree on that
point. The creation of the term ``homeland defense'' was done
by the Department of Defense so they could define what they
want to do and what they did not want to do. It is an
artificial line that has absolutely no utility as a doctrine or
in terms of the deciding roles and missions.
And they should really be forced to get rid of it and we
should have a term which is homeland security. So I think Steve
and I exactly agree on that point. I think there are three
areas where the Department of Defense needs to be a much better
team player. Maritime security is clearly one. There should not
be a gap between what the Coast Guard does and what the
Department of Defense does. It should be seamless and it should
be complementary. It is not.
Two is catastrophic terrorism. I mean no matter how much
money we put in State and local governments, they are never
going to have the capacity to deal with catastrophic terrorism,
nor is it, and we are talking the tsunami style, tens of
thousands of casualties, nor should they do that kind of
investment. There is an appropriate, and Mike and I disagree on
some of this, but there is an appropriate role here for the
Department of Defense. They have always said that they will do
that.
The last thing I want to see is the Department of Defense
figure out how they are going to do catastrophic terrorism on
the day after the catastrophic terrorist attack.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Carafano. We need structures and forces in place now
that are designed to do this and do this well. I have argued in
other places that if you built that kind of capability right in
the National Guard that you would actually have a very useful
force that could be useful for a range of homeland security
missions and would also be very useful for post-conflict
operations overseas and would also be used for theater support
operations overseas.
So if you had it large enough and organized correctly, it
would actually be a multi-purpose force which would have a wide
range of utility and would prepare us well for the day that we
all do not want to think about.
And then the third area really is in S&T. Quite frankly,
there is just too much S&T going on in the Department of
Defense which marries up very well, not in the specifics, but
conceptually, and in terms of research and development and
testing with what is being done, what needs to be done in
homeland security. Weapons of mass destruction research, for
example, is one classic example.
The fact that they are not welded at the hip in terms of
gaining the efficiencies of what they are both doing is just
wrong. So those are three areas that I think that much more
could be done.
Senator Lieberman. Excellent. You want to add anything, Dr.
Flynn?
Mr. Flynn. No, I completely agree, I guess. I think that
captures it so well. And it has gotten so just where it is at
in terms of dysfunctionality, shortly after the Department was
created, Secretary Rumsfeld said that any request from the
Department of Homeland Security for any asset of the Department
of Defense would have to be cleared through his office. So this
has made it very difficult. Unless Tom Ridge personally got on
the phone and pleaded, you could not have any lateral kinds of
connection, and it has been very structured under the Assistant
Secretary of Defense, even where the Northern Command cannot
talk to, they have to go through the Pentagon in order to deal
with the Department of Homeland Security even though they play
that critical role.
There is no question on the maritime that this is, and
there is a distortion towards collecting of information and
patrolling, but without thinking about incidence management or
capitalizing on the kind of assets that we have with the
homeland security agency. So it deserves a very good look.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you all for the time you took to
prepare your testimony and for your responses to our questions.
Madam Chairman, this has been an excellent first hearing for
the Committee and it really does say to us loud and clear that
even though the oversight has not been as consolidated in this
Committee or any Committee, as we would have liked, we kept
saying during the floor debate put it somewhere else, but at
least consolidate it somewhere.
We have a very important role here to play, whether the
rules exactly say it as much as we would like or not, in
leading the Congress in oversight, and further implementing the
laws that are on the books now and improving them because we
have come a long way, as you have all said since September 11
in raising our defenses. We have got a long way to go against a
threat that is clear and present and potentially devastating.
So thank you all very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator. I am going to ask
just a couple more quick questions, but you do not have to stay
and hear them. Thank you. I would like to ask each of you if
there is any agency or program that is now within the
Department of Homeland Security that you think should be moved
out of the Department and does not belong there?
Sort of the opposite question from what we have been
discussing. Mr. Skinner.
Mr. Skinner. Right at the moment nothing comes to mind. But
I would like to give that some more thought. I never looked at
it from that perspective. I have always been looking outside to
see what should be coming in. I have never thought about that.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Dr. Carafano.
Mr. Carafano. Yes, I would just like to add for the record
that nowhere in our report to we advocate increasing the size
of the Department, increasing the funding to the department or
adding authorities to the Department. I do think one area which
still requires some fine-tuning is in the area of bioterrorism
response. I think the notion to try to split response of police
between HHS and DHS has largely not been helpful. I am not
really sure DHS needs a role in bio-shield at all. I am not
sure that it needs much of a role--I know they have already
moved the pharmaceutical stockpile back. But I just think that
other than kind of a general supervisory role in terms of the
overall response effort, I am not sure DHS needs to have much
involvement in this area.
Thank you. And I appreciate your response to Senator
Stevens' comments. I have a feeling I would hear that repeated
across the panel.
Mr. Wermuth.
Mr. Wermuth. As I was just getting ready to repeat them,
Madam Chairman, because certainly our focus, the focus in this
testimony and the focus in other contexts is not necessarily--
in fact, I say very clearly the best measure of performance
cannot be how much more money we are spending.
It has got to be a rationalization and a prioritization of
resources. I have to agree nothing particular comes to mind
that we would think should be moved outside the Department of
Homeland Security, but it certainly requires a close look to
see whether that is the case.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Flynn.
Mr. Flynn. I have to swim against the stream on the
resource pitch. A lonely business here, but this is about
national security. The President said we have a two-front war.
And we are talking about a nickel on a dollar in terms of what
we are spending on homeland security vis-a-vis what we are
defending on national security. So if we are talking about
resources, I think we have to look at the totality of the
investment the American people are making.
They think national security is about protecting the
Nation, and homeland security is clearly an element of that. So
that is a big challenge that is out there. It is not that
bigger is better. Most of what I have been advocating actually
is much more push it out, but there needs to be a competent
Department where we consolidate this.
In terms of pushing out, I do not see that and also I do
not want this huge entity to take over, as Senator Stevens was
sort of alluding that might happen ultimately, but it is
recognizing that it is the non-security dimensions of these
agencies that often give them the most value-added. It gives
them the authorities. It gives them the relationships with the
citizenry and the public sector. In a way that a Navy SEAL
never can, a Coast Guard cutter can.
There is a much different sort of flavor to that
interaction when that sort of thing happens, and it gives them
the presence in terms of where they are in a space that we know
the bad guys are going to pursue. So at the end of the day, we
are really thinking about not saying rob Peter to pay Paul. If
these agencies are--if Customs is incompetent in managing its
trade rules, it will not spot a bad guy who is exploiting those
trade rules to hide what he is up to, whether it is to launder
or to potentially bring something in.
If the Coast Guard basically is not doing its job of
fisheries patrols and so forth, it is not going to spot the
terrorist who is pretending to be a fisherman but he is fishing
where there are no fish. We are drawing on skills that we have
to value and invest in, but we need to make sure we tether it
into our national security framework because the threat
requires it.
I think that is the kind of thinking we have to bring to
the table versus stop doing this--public health--do not do
public health, only bioterror. That is not a sustainable
approach and it is a wrong-minded approach.
Chairman Collins. Dr. Falkenrath.
Mr. Falkenrath. Senator, to your question, Plum Island. We
should give it back to USDA.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. My final question I am
actually just going to submit to you for the record, but just
so you know what the issue is. We still have a coordination
problem, and bioterrorism is a perfect example, between DHS and
other departments, DHS and HHS in this case. We also have the
problem with the two fingerprinting systems, one the FBI's, the
other is DHS's, not being compatible.
I would like you to think and for the record respond to how
do we deal with the problems, the coordination problems that
involve other departments? Because I think those are at least
as daunting as the ones within the Department. When I think of
how long it has taken to get a consolidated watch list and when
you look at the investment in the Justice Department and DHS
fingerprinting systems, and the fact that they are two
different systems and the inefficiencies that produces, it
seems to me we need to look at those issues as well, as well as
what is going on within the Department.
So I will formulate a more precise question for the record
for you on that.
But I do want to thank each of you for being here today and
for sharing your expertise. I cannot imagine a more expert and
interesting panel to start off the hearings of this new
Congress. So I thank you very much for your contributions. The
Committee has no more important mission than an oversight
responsibility for homeland security, and that is why I wanted
to begin the new year focusing on that issue.
I hope we can continue to call upon you for your expertise
and I thank you for your participation today. The hearing
record will remain open for 15 days, and this hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the Committee adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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<all>