By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — While a new U.S. military command responsible for North America began operating today — codifying the Pentagon’s new role in supporting homeland defense — the Bush administration and Congress remain deadlocked over the establishment of a new civilian homeland security department to spearhead the domestic war on terrorism and the prevention of future attacks.  Administration officials had intended both the U.S. Northern Command and homeland security department to become operational today.

Both sides have all but given up on reaching a deal this year on the proposed homeland security department, and the disagreement threatens the U.S. ability to mount an adequate defense, government officials and experts said.

Northern Command Begins Operations

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz today joined Northern Command leader Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart to dedicate the new command, which will begin operations with an annual budget of $70 million and 582 employees in Colorado Springs, Colo., and other locations around the country (see GSN, May 9).

For the first time in the country’s history, a single military command will be assigned the mission of defending the continental United States and Alaska.  In addition, the new command will oversee U.S. military activities in Canada, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the oceans surrounding the United States out to 500 miles.  Hawaii will remain the responsibility of the U.S. Pacific Command.

“This is very, very much new territory, especially for the U.S. military,” Peter Verga, special assistant to the defense secretary for homeland security, said at a Heritage Foundation discussion last month.  “We haven’t operated inside the United States since the Civil War, and we like it that way.  But this is a different world, and we have prepared to do that.”

Today’s opening ceremony will also mark the merging of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs with the U.S. Strategic Command at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska.  Navy Adm. James Ellis plans to head the modified Strategic Command (see GSN, June 25).

The Northern Command will not have a significant number of combat forces permanently assigned to it but will nevertheless be able to call on air, naval and ground forces to respond to a threat emanating from outside U.S. borders as well as specialized units to support recovery efforts after a domestic terrorist attack, including chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological attack.

“If it’s an external threat coming in, we will have the lead,” Eberhart said recently.  “If it’s internal, we will assist.”

Verga said the Northern Command’s most valuable contribution to domestic security, however, would be its ability to plan for worst-case scenarios.  “With regard to what we are calling the ‘high-end’ problems — the extraordinary circumstances under which we might have to operate — having a single command responsible for both the planning and execution of those activities is important,” Verga said.  A hypothetical “high-end” event, he said, would be a simultaneous detonation of nuclear weapons in multiple U.S. cities.

To meet its new responsibilities, the Northern Command will rely heavily on the National Guard.  “We can’t have a Northern Command, we can’t provide for the homeland defense … without the National Guard,” Eberhart told guard leaders in California in early September.

Still No Homeland Security Department

The Northern Command is just a small piece, however, of the homeland security puzzle.  It is beginning operations as the proposed civilian agency designed to take the lead in homeland security has fallen victim to Washington politics.

While there is little disagreement about the structure of the proposed colossal homeland security department — to include 170,000 personnel from 22 different federal agencies — the White House and congressional Democrats are locked in a struggle over workers’ rights (see GSN, Sept. 18). 

Bush wants to reserve the right to hire or transfer department employees or to deny them union rights in the name of national security, while critical lawmakers are arguing that the new department’s employees should have the same labor rights as all other federal workers.  The debate has degenerated into an election-year fight, in which the White House has accused Democrats of caring more about their union supporters than defending the United States.

As lawmakers begin debate this week on an Iraq war resolution, observers expect the homeland security department to be placed on the back burner until after Nov. 5 elections and possibly until a new Congress meets next year.

Government officials and experts have contended that the delay in coordinating the various homeland security missions into a single domestic agency will stall efforts to improve overall security.

For example, the new department would serve as a critical link between national intelligence agencies that are gauging the terrorist threat and the local and state authorities that will probably be the first responders to a terrorist attack and be in a unique position to act on new intelligence to shore up vulnerabilities.

According to Winston Wiley, the CIA’s associate director for homeland security, it will be increasingly important for nontraditional customers such as state and local officials to be provided with classified and unclassified threat information.  He said at an August homeland security conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the Government Emerging Technology Alliance that a presidential directive is being crafted to improve information sharing with state and local officials.

Meanwhile, the new department should be important in helping intelligence agencies provide better vulnerability assessments of U.S. infrastructure, officials said.

“Generalized threat assessments do not do anyone any good,” said James Simon, assistant director of central intelligence for administration.  Local and state authorities need specific information to match general threat information, he said.  For example, a general assessment from intelligence agencies might say that a fertilizer plant next to a railroad in Iowa is a target.  What is needed, officials said, is a specialist at the homeland security department who knows there are only one or two possibilities that match that specific profile.

Perhaps the most worrisome scenario is the need to coordinate recovery efforts following a domestic terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction.  The proposed homeland security agency would call on the military and other agencies for assistance in this regard, but would be ultimately responsible for the government’s response.

Officials said that the least work has been done in this area.  “This is serious stuff and it’s critical we get it right,” said Steve Cooper, special assistant to the president and chief information officer of the White House Office of Homeland Security, intended as the precursor to the new department.  “We do not have a good handle around bioterrorism and weapons of mass destruction.”

Moreover, he said, the government has not done a good job of communicating with the U.S. public, which he believes knows little about what the proposed department is designed to do.

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