U.S. Response I:  White House Proposes Domestic Security Strategy

A Bush administration plan released today lays out several proposals to help improve homeland security, including creating a plan to protect U.S. infrastructure and reviewing laws that regulate the military’s role in domestic law enforcement, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 17).

White House proposals on domestic security include improving interagency communications, creating national standards for state driver’s licenses and increasing inspections of shipping containers at foreign ports and U.S. borders, according to the plan (see GSN, July 2).  The administration has also called for creating an “intelligence threat division” in the proposed homeland security department.  In the division, teams of experts would improve U.S. defenses by simulating terrorist attacks on vulnerable U.S. targets, the plan says.

The Bush administration has also called for the first comprehensive review of critical public and private U.S. infrastructure and for development of a plan to protect it, according to the Times.

“That’s one of the big points,” said a senior Bush administration official.  “The whole society is vulnerable with hundreds, thousands of targets we have to protect, but the most important stuff we do won’t be released” (Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, July 16).

The homeland security plan calls for an increase in the use of sensors to detect nuclear and radiological weapons at borders, ports and highways, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, July 3).  The United States would provide funds for developing improved sensors to detect chemical and biological weapons, according to the plan.

“We must defend ourselves against a wide range of means and methods of attack,” the White House plan says.  “Our enemies are working to obtain chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons for the purpose of wreaking unprecedented damage on America” (Miller/Haughney, Washington Post, July 16).

The plan also says the United States should review the military’s abilities to operate within the United States.  Previously, senior Defense Department officials had said they would not request Congress to amend the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the military’s ability to act as domestic law enforcement, the Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 28).

Private businesses and federal, state and local governments should share both the responsibilities and the estimated $100 billion annual costs of domestic security, President George W. Bush said in a letter accompanying the plan.

“We must rally our entire society to overcome a new and very complex challenge,” he said.

The Bush administration has the authority to enact some of the proposals in the plan on its own, but Congressional approval would be needed for others, according to the Times.  Several administration proposals fall outside the domain of the proposed homeland security department, according to the Times.  The proposed department itself was developed during discussions on the larger homeland security plan, the senior Bush administration official said.

“People were asking for a strategy, but we weren’t ready,” the official said.  “We announced the department first because we had finished that part of the study” (Becker, New York Times).

Ridge Attacks Department Changes

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge yesterday criticized several recommendations made by congressional committees on the proposed homeland security department, in testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee (see related GSN story, today).

The proposed department needs to have authority over the Customs Service, Secret Service, Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration, Ridge said (see GSN, July 12).  The new department secretary also should be given the ability to run the department like a private corporation, he added.

The Bush administration, however, does support some of the smaller changes recommended by lawmakers, including a House Science Committee plan to create a Homeland Security undersecretary for science and technology, Ridge said (see GSN, July 8).  The White House is also examining plans to remove immigration services from the proposed department and making them into a separate agency, he said.

The administration is in favor of an amendment offered by Representative Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) concerning who would have responsibility for issuing visas, Ridge said (see GSN, June 19).  The Hyde amendment would continue to give the State Department control over consular offices, but the proposed homeland security department would have the ability to review individual visa applications that raise security concerns (Brody Mullins, CongressDaily, July 16).

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U.S. Response II:  Fiscal 2002 Supplemental Becoming Unnecessary, Lott Says

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) yesterday said the fiscal 2002 supplemental bill is becoming increasingly unnecessary.  He suggested that the Senate put the bill aside (see GSN, May 24).

“I’m beginning to question whether we need a supplemental at all,” he said.

The bill, which the House of Representatives approved in May, was proposed four months ago and it is unlikely that all of the funding could be spent by Sept. 30, Lott said.  Republican members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees were scheduled to meet yesterday to hold negotiations on the bill, according to CongressDaily.

“We’re still going to try to cobble something together that everyone can be happy with,” a House Appropriations Committee spokesman said.

President George W. Bush yesterday called on Congress to quickly finish work on the supplemental.

“The Senate needs to act, and the House needs to act to get this ... to my desk so we can fund programs,” he said (CongressDaily, July 15).

Military Lacks Funding for Antiterrorism Programs

Meanwhile, the Bush administration did not request funds for $2 billion in military counterterrorism programs in its fiscal 2003 defense budget request, according to White House Weekly.

The programs identified by the military as lacking funding include a $102.9 million Army program designed to protect and maintain stockpiles of chemical weapons, the Weekly reported.  The administration also did not request funds to cover the costs of a $92 million Air Force program to improve readiness of first responders to a incident involving weapons of mass destruction and a $33.7 million program to purchase gas masks and decontamination equipment.

The Defense Department might receive more funds because of lower-than-expected inflation estimates, according to the Weekly.  The Senate has adopted an amendment by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that would require those funds to be spent on the anti-terrorism programs.   Several Republican legislators and Bush administration officials have said they want to see the funds go toward missile defense programs, the Weekly reported (John Donnelly, White House Weekly, July 16).

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U.S. Response:  Proposed Security Department Too Large, Report Says

A new report by the Brookings Institution says the White House plan to create a homeland security department is too large and would probably cause many problems, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, July 12).

The Bush administration and Congress should instead create a smaller department to focus on border and transportation security, intelligence and threat analysis and infrastructure protection, according to the report, which was released Saturday.  Congress should also postpone any decision on whether to include research for WMD countermeasures in the proposed department, the report says (see GSN, June 28; Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, July 14).

According to the report, the proposed homeland security department needs to have more access to raw intelligence information than the Bush administration has proposed (see GSN, July 2).  Rather than creating a new center to analyze information gathered by U.S. agencies, the department should control an FBI unit that focuses on terrorism-related intelligence analysis, the report says (Bill Miller, Washington Post, July 14).

Also counter to the Bush administration’s proposal, the report recommends keeping the Federal Emergency Management Agency separate from the proposed department, according to the New York Times.  The department’s mission would be compromised if it had to take on FEMA’s natural disaster response efforts, according to the report.

“Fortunately, terrorist attacks are rare, but you can count on national disasters every year — right now there are floods in Texas, fires in Arizona — so why should the Department of Homeland Security be pulled away from its mission and worry constantly about those disasters?” asked James Lindsay, an author of the study.

The Bush administration does not agree with many of the recommendations in the Brookings report and President George W. Bush “looks at homeland security in total,” said Homeland Security Office spokesman Gordon Johndroe in response to the report.

“Our mission is not only to prevent against attacks, but to respond to them, and FEMA is the response mechanism in the government,” Johndroe said (Becker, New York Times).

Congress Continues Work on Proposed Department

Both houses of Congress are expected to hold hearings on the proposed homeland security department this week to finalize legislation to create it, CongressDaily reported.

The House Homeland Security Committee, a special committee created to oversee homeland security department legislation, is expected to hold a series of hearings featuring testimony from Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge as well as the heads of the agencies that might be transferred to the new department.  Leaders in the House of Representatives hope to be able to vote on the homeland security department legislation next week — the last week the House is in session before the August recess — if the committee can get a bill out by the end of this week, according to CongressDaily.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee plans to finish producing a version of proposed homeland security legislation next week and move it out of committee, CongressDaily reported.  The Senate Agriculture, Finance and Health, Education Labor and Pensions committees are expected to hold hearings on the proposed department this week.  Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has said he wants the Senate to vote on the proposed department by Aug. 2, the last day the Senate is in session before its August recess, CongressDaily reported (CongressDaily, July 15).

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