U.S. Response I:  Pentagon Asks for “Intelligence Czar”

The U.S. Defense Department sent a confidential request this week asking Congress to create an “intelligence czar” to improve coordination between military and other intelligence agencies, the Washington Times reported today (see GSN, May 31).

The Pentagon wants to create a defense undersecretary for intelligence, according to the Times.  Under the plan, the undersecretary-level position would have bureaucratic weight to force military intelligence units to coordinate information with other agencies, officials said.  The position would also act as a direct conduit to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Times reported.  The main candidate for the new position so far is Richard Haver, Rumsfeld’s special assistant for intelligence matters, defense sources said.

The Pentagon has also requested that Congress eliminate the office of assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, according to the Times.  An assistant secretary for homeland security would replace the office, and a deputy assistant secretary would handle policy concerns for U.S. special forces, the Times reported.

The Pentagon made its requests in a letter sent to key members of Congress yesterday, the Times reported.  Both changes would have to be approved by Congress, a source said.  The Pentagon hopes to have the changes written into the fiscal 2003 defense authorization bill currently being debated by the Senate, the source said (Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, June 26).

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U.S. Response II:  New Department May Take Years to Create

By Michael Posner

National Journal News Service

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker yesterday presented Congress with a reality check: Getting the proposed homeland security department up to speed could take years to accomplish and require a lot more money than anticipated.

Walker, who heads the General Accounting Office, handed legislators a new 30-page report on President George W. Bush’s plan to consolidate some 22 agencies with 170,000 people into a new department with an anticipated first-year cost of $37.5 billion. The Senate Budget Committee’s staff director has already cited that figure as about $9 billion too low.

In a no-nonsense report, Walker told Senate Judiciary Technology, Terrorism and Government Information Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her panel that Congress has a “unique opportunity” to set up the agency to protect borders and guard against terrorism.  But he cautioned that it will take “substantial time” and effort and “additional resources” to do the job properly.

“Numerous complicated issues will need to be resolved in the short term, including a harmonization of information technology systems, human capital systems, the physical location of people and other assets, and many other factors,” Walker said.  “Implementation of the new department will be an extremely complex task and will ultimately take years.”

In response to Feinstein’s questions, Walker suggested Congress start with recommendations of a terrorism commission headed by former Senators Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and Gary Hart (D-Colo.), then use GAO’s recommendations to evaluate the difficulties and also consider a White House office of homeland security with Senate confirmation of its director.

Rudman, whose report suggested a department with fewer consolidated agencies, called Bush’s larger plan “a sound proposal, but it can be improved by Congress and it probably will be.”

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International Response:  Bush Ready to Ratify Anti-Terrorism Conventions

By Kerry Boyd
Global Security Newswire

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday signed into law legislation to implement two U.N. conventions designed to strengthen international efforts to combat terrorism (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2001).

The United States will now become a party to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, Bush said.  The United States signed the conventions in 1998 and 2000 but has not yet ratified them (see GSN, Feb. 4).

“These two conventions strengthen international efforts to defeat terrorism of global reach.  They underscore — along with 10 other international terrorism conventions — the broad moral consensus that violence against innocent civilians is a criminal act and must be punished,” Bush said in a statement.

The Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1997, requires parties to enact legislation to make terrorist bombings — or attempted bombings — punishable, to extradite or prosecute people accused of such acts and to cooperate on related criminal proceedings.

The Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism requires countries to detect and seize funds that are allocated for terrorist acts, extradite or prosecute those accused of providing or collecting funds for terrorist purposes and cooperate with other states to combat terrorist financing (see GSN, April 9).  The U.N. General Assembly adopted the convention in 1999.

For further information, see:

U.N. Conventions on Terrorism

International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings status

International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism status

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U.S. Response I:  Report Urges Employing Science in Terrorism War

The United States should create a program designed to help prevent terrorist attacks through science and technology, and should create a new security institute to aid in the effort, according to a National Research Council report today.

“The scientific and engineering community is aware that it can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation from catastrophic terrorism,” Lewis Branscomb, a co-chairman of the committee that prepared the report and a professor emeritus at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said. “Our report gives the government a blueprint for using current technologies and creating new capabilities to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks and the severity of their consequences.”

In the report, a committee of National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine members recommended a number of measures that could be immediately implemented to help protect the United States from attack, according to the New York Times.  Committee recommendations included protecting nuclear materials in the United States and abroad, producing large stockpiles of vaccines (see GSN, May 16), protecting U.S. power grids and improving ventilation systems in public buildings, among others (see GSN, May 14).

The United States, however, needs a coherent national strategy to take advantage of the ways science and technology can help fight terrorism, said Richard Klausner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the other committee co-chairman (Warren Leary, New York Times, June 25).

“Research performed but not exploited, and technologies invented but not manufactured and deployed, do not help the nation protect itself,” the report says (Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post, June 25).

The committee recommended that the Homeland Security Office create a security institute composed of experts who could detect problems in critical systems throughout the United States and develop ways to solve such flaws, the Times reported.  The institute should be set up as a nonprofit organization and should be run by contractors, the committee said (Leary, New York Times).

House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) praised the report after an early briefing.

“I like what I see. It says we have to have a coordinated (research and development) strategy,” Boehlert said.  “It says we have to have somebody in charge, and I’m enamored with the idea of the institute.  A lot of what I’m reading falls under the heading of common sense” (Gugliotta, Washington Post).

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U.S. Response II:  U.S. Inspectors Will Operate at Dutch Seaport

The U.S. Customs Service will station inspectors at the Rotterdam, Netherlands, seaport to inspect cargo heading for the United States, the service announced today (see GSN, June 5).

A U.S.-Dutch agreement will “provide a significant measure of security for the Netherlands, the United States and the global trading system as a whole,” Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said.

In 2001, shippers sent 291,000 cargo containers to the United States from the Rotterdam seaport, Customs said.  Similar agreements to station U.S. inspectors at the seaports in Antwerp, Belgium, and Le Havre, France, could be announced by the end of the week, a Customs official said (Associated Press/New York Times, June 25).

It is the agency’s goal to negotiate inspections agreements with the top 20 seaports that ship cargo to the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal.  About a third of the imports entering the United States and 68 percent of all seaborne imports originate at the top 20 international seaports, the Journal reported.

The United States has taken the right step in negotiating inspections agreements with foreign governments, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.  The magnitude of trying to find a weapon of mass destruction smuggled in one out of millions of cargo containers, however, makes the agreements a small step, he said.

“It would be stupid not to try to expand inspections to foreign ports,” Pike said.  “But it’s a very small part of a very big problem” (Gary Fields, Wall Street Journal, June 25).

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U.S. Response III:  Ridge to Appear Before Congress

U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is expected to testify before four congressional committees this week to answer questions on the proposed homeland security department (see GSN, June 21).

Ridge is expected to testify today on the Bush administration’s plans to move biological, chemical and radiological response activities from other departments to the proposed department during testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

He is also expected to appear before the House and Senate Judiciary committees tomorrow and before the House Intelligence Committee Thursday, according to Reuters.

Other members of the Bush administration are also scheduled to appear before congressional committees this week to discuss plans for the new department, Reuters reported.  FBI Director Robert Mueller is expected to testify before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday during its hearing on the potential relationship between the new department and U.S. intelligence agencies (Reuters/New York Times, June 25).

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