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Parties Split in House Over U.S. Security Reorganization By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Less than 24 hours after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a far-reaching overhaul of his young department, congressional Democrats yesterday criticized the plan for what they called an excessive focus on bureaucracy and a failure to address some major concerns, while Republicans praised the proposed changes in glowing terms (see GSN, July 13). “The department’s broken. Some of us have been waiting for quite a long time for the repairman to show up and fix the agency,” said the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee’s top Democrat, Bennie Thompson (Miss.), as the panel opened the first Capitol Hill hearing on the restructuring. The restructuring plan, however, “does not address the department’s most serious defects,” Thompson said. Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) lauded nearly all the plan’s major facets, notably Chertoff’s announcement that Homeland Security would concentrate on what the chairman called the “most consequential kinds of terrorism that America may face.” Chertoff said in presenting his plan yesterday that Homeland Security’s preparedness efforts would focus “first and most relentlessly on addressing threats that pose catastrophic consequences,” such as weapons of mass destruction, and place only secondary priority on threats of high likelihood and areas of great vulnerability. That hierarchy of priorities is “absolutely right,” Cox said today. The plan generally addresses the priorities of congressional Republicans for reforming Homeland Security, the chairman added. “I have no question that you have been listening carefully,” he told Chertoff. The overhaul is meant to increase the risk basis for Homeland Security priority-setting and the department’s sense of “urgency” about its mission, as well as to improve the “stewardship” of financial and human resources and to draw more fully on the “network” of governmental and private-sector systems that feed into the department’s work, Chertoff said Wednesday. He announced a set of “imperatives” for the “near term” that included improving catastrophe preparedness, border security, immigration policy, transportation security and information sharing with other government agencies and with business, as well as a structural reorganization of the department. Chertoff highlighted specific proposals such as the creation of a “preparedness baseline” with which to measure and compare efforts around the country, an infusion of personnel and funds for border security and accelerated development of WMD sensors for public transit systems. As part of the departmental reorganization, he said he planned to create several new positions, including an overall head of departmental policy, a chief intelligence officer, a head of operations and, within a new preparedness directorate, a chief medical officer and a head of cybersecurity and telecommunications security. At yesterday’s hearing, Thompson complained that Democrats were consulted less than 24 hours before yesterday’s release of the plan and presented highlights from a report they released today detailing their reactions to the proposals. Party leaders support some measures in the plan, Thompson said, naming the cybersecurity post, the strengthening of biological defense through creation of the chief medical officer position, progress Chertoff announced on plans to fingerprint visitors to the United States and the repeal of a requirement that air passengers using Reagan National Airport here remain seated for 30 minutes after taking off from the airport or before arriving there. Thompson said the plan is “vague” on other counts, though. He expressed particular concern that the department has failed so far to produce a national transportation security plan that was due April 1. Chertoff refused to set a precise timeline for development of the transportation security plan. Replied Thompson, “Waiting for another event to happen to take best learned practices from it is probably not the way to go.” Democrat Jane Harman (Calif.) took Chertoff to task for what she characterized as a focus on bureaucratic reform at the expense of substance. “Your primary audience is not government junkies or graduate students but the general public,” Harman said. She called for reforming the department’s color-coded terrorist threat warning system, the delivery of a national threat and vulnerability assessment mandated under the 2002 law that created the department and a greater focus on establishing a national system of interoperable communications for use by emergency responders in catastrophes. “I hope I’m representing the anxious public” in asking such questions, Harman said. The secretary provided no specifics on the three points but said each was a priority for the department. Chertoff also thanked Congress for its general support of his decision to increase the centralized, risk-based aspect of spending and priority-setting at Homeland Security, rather than continuing with a system that has long been criticized as haphazard. “We owe the American people putting a set of priorities on the table that will address those issues of greatest concern,” he said.
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