From Newsday:

Still a Long Way to Go For Safety

BY CAROL EISENBERG
Newsday Washington Bureau

September 6, 2006

Despite intelligence and aviation security advances, experts say the government is far from where it should be in efforts to safeguard against terrorism. And 3 1/2 years after a massive government reorganization, the Department of Homeland Security still faces criticism for its treatment of communications technology and funding for high-risk areas.



WASHINGTON

Michael Wermuth pulled no punches that day, in March 2002, as he laid out all the things likely to go wrong if the government created a huge, new homeland security department.

Wermuth warned Tom Ridge, then-director of a White House Homeland Security Office, that lashing together pieces of two dozen agencies would be a Herculean undertaking, bound to produce infighting and snafus. The Rand Corp. expert on homeland security also predicted it would be at least five years - and more likely, 10 - before such a sprawling bureaucracy would function smoothly.

The unspoken question six months after the attacks on New York and Washington was: Do we have that much time in the face of an implacable enemy bent on inflicting grievous casualties?

That question lingers 3 1/2 years after the department was rushed into existence in March 2003 in the largest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years. To this day, it remains unclear whether a fledgling start-up, with more than 180,000 people drawn from two dozen different agencies, can go from zero to 100 miles per hour in sufficient time to deter another attack.



Call for stronger focus

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the department's second director, cites thwarted plots and the absence of any new attacks as evidence of significant strides. And a White House report released yesterday asserts that America is safer since the Sept. 11 attacks, "but we are not yet safe."

But critics say the track record of the first few years is mixed, at best. They point to the botched response to the thousands stranded in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina and the pork barrel decisions that purchased metal detectors for the Nebraska Cornhuskers football stadium, but denied video cameras for lower Manhattan. Government audits, meanwhile, have detailed millions of dollars wasted in no-bid contracts and fraud.

"If you're a business person trying to get a loan at a bank, you have to have a strategy," said Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana and a member of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks. "But five years after the Sept. 11th attacks, we still don't have a national homeland security strategy with basic metrics ... to enable us to invest our money wisely and hold people accountable.

"Instead, Congress has allocated precious tax dollars for pet projects like Kevlar vests for dogs, and air-conditioned garbage trucks, rather than implementing standards and metrics for hardening chemical plants. And we have states putting together lists of petting zoos and popcorn farms among their critical assets, and no one holding them to account."

Members of the former Sept. 11 Commission give mixed or failing grades to both the executive and legislative branches for lack of progress on several homeland security priorities - among them, the failure to award money to state and local governments based on risk, delays in granting emergency responders a bigger slice of the broadcast spectrum to improve communications, and the failure to check airline passengers against a terror watch list.

"Sorry to say, we've still got a long way to go," said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the commission and now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.



Tailoring approaches

Many also point to the evolution of the threat from a centralized al-Qaida to a more localized and leaderless movement.

"The reality is, it's not a one-size-fits-all, monolithic threat any longer," said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "This new iteration will be largely domestic ... In the future, we're not only going to have to fight fire with fire, but ideas with ideas, diplomacy and reaching out to constituencies in the community we're talking about and having them be a part of the solution."

No one disputes that the task confronting the $42-billion-a-year agency is daunting - something akin to that of a goalie with multiple balls coming at him, and with no margin for error. The potential vulnerabilities are almost limitless in a vast country with 450 commercial airports, 6,000 miles of border and 143 seaports, not to mention a critical infrastructure, including chemical and nuclear power plants, largely in private hands.

"It is a big task, and I wouldn't underestimate that," said Stewart A. Baker, the agency's assistant secretary for policy. "But we're approaching it with a sense of urgency, and we've made a lot of progress. The secretary's priorities are now clear. We've developed mechanisms for following up on those priorities ... We're not going to accept the 10 years [timeline] as an excuse not to do a better job tomorrow."

As evidence of an increasingly decisive and agile bureaucracy, Baker cites the quick reaction to the foiled British plot.

"As soon as we got word of the British plot, we began asking, 'What does this mean for our air security procedures,'" he said. "And we did a six-hour turnaround with a major change in protocols, and in terms of what we were telling the traveling public. I think that's working pretty nimbly."

Some are not impressed, noting that British, not American authorities, foiled the plot, and that the conspirators probably would have been able to sneak liquid explosives past screeners a decade after a similar conspiracy had been uncovered.

"The view of this administration has been to buy a strong offense, but not do much on defense," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a Democrat, who graded homeland security efforts at "C minus" in a report earlier this week.

"The department is constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul. That's why they cut in half the pitifully small budget to look into devices to screen for liquid explosives."

Yet there is broad agreement that we are at least marginally safer now than we were five years ago - albeit not where we need to be.

Clark Kent Ervin, the department's first inspector general and a persistent critic, said that advances have been made in breaking down the walls between intelligence agencies. Ervin, now director of the Homeland Security Initiative at the Aspen Institute, credits the department for making aviation safer by hardening cockpit doors, increasing the number of air marshals protecting flights, and federalizing air screeners and offering them better training.

Still, vulnerabilities remain at our ports and chemical plants, to name just a few. And the inadequate response to Katrina underscores major problems with preparedness, he said.

"If terrorists had targeted those levees rather than Mother Nature, the consequences would have been the same," he said. "We knew it was coming, and yet even then, we didn't have well-thought-out evacuation plans, we didn't have a clear chain of command and we didn't have interoperable communications so that first responders would be able to communicate. And to a large extent, we still lack those things in many places."

Baker, the assistant secretary for policy, said the agency has learned from its mistakes during Katrina. Many, like Hamilton of the Sept. 11 Commission, are skeptical, saying they will wait to see proof.

But at least one sometime critic of the department said he is cautiously optimistic.

Despite his condemnation of recent grant cuts to New York and Washington, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said he is heartened by progress in intelligence sharing and improved border, aviation and port security.

"Secretary Chertoff has been in now for a year and a half, and is getting more of his people in place," said King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. "I think they are going in the right direction.

"As for whether they're going to get to the finish line, the jury is still out."

HOW WE HAVE CHANGED

Drafted the week after the attacks and passed overwhelmingly by Congress, the anti-terrorism Patriot Act has come to stand for a wide range of controversial actions taken in the domestic war on terrorism.

The act did expand government powers to help authorities hunt down suspected terrorists - making it easier to tap calls and e-mails, obtain business and library records, and conduct covert searches.

But it did not create tribunals, spying on mosques or the warrantless wiretaps - those were ordered by the president.

Polls show the majority of Americans approve of most anti-terror efforts - until they think their own calls, e-mails and library records are being reviewed by federal agents. Earlier this year, after a few tweaks to add protections, Congress overwhelmingly reauthorized the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.

Where the money went

Breaking down expenses in the fiscal year 2005 Department of Homeland Security budget. Figures are in billions of dollars.

Expense allocation for management and operations $0.583

Security and enforcement (including border security, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration and Secret Service) $21.260

Preparedness and recovery (including counterterrorism, emergency response) $15.971

Research/training (including citizenship and immigration service, science and technology) $2.396

Total $40.210

SOURCES: CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS; DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.