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U.S. Response: Agencies Have Not Yet Created United Terrorist “Watch List”U.S. agencies have yet to create a unified terrorist “watch list” out of the dozen separate lists currently in use, USA Today reported today (see GSN, July 24). The Homeland Security Department has said it is working to combine various lists of potential terrorists currently maintained by at least nine separate agencies, but there is no timetable set for creating a final list. Officials said there have been technical delays involving computers and databases not designed to share information. “The administration is getting closer to the end of its planning process,” said Homeland Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “But this is a very complicated issue, and we’re not going to rush something out that isn’t completely effective,” he said. Some experts, however, have criticized the delay. If U.S. agencies had been sharing information, “then 9/11 might not have happened,” Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution said. “I find it criminal that it hasn’t happened yet,” he said (Mimi Hall, USA Today, Aug. 11).
From August 8, 2003 issue.U.S. Response I: States Rush to Assess Terrorism Threat, Define StrategiesBy Joe Fiorill In a process launched July 1, state homeland security agencies are to submit to the department their statewide assessments of the threat of terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction. These reports, expected also to include the states’ planned strategies for preventing and dealing with such attacks, are due by Dec. 31 to the department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness, formerly part of the Justice Department. Among other uses, the data will be provided to the DHS Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate, which is working on a national threat assessment, a DHS official said yesterday. The information will also determine how the federal government distributes billions of dollars in funding to state and local emergency responders. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last week that he expects “about $7.5 billion” yearly to be available to state and local governments over the short term, including ODP emergency responder grants, ODP Urban Area Security Initiative funds and Assistance to Firefighters grants from DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency. About $4 billion in DHS funding will be available this fiscal year to state and local governments, according to DHS, with the bulk of the money channeled through ODP’s emergency responder grants. In terms of contributing to a better national picture of the terrorist threat, the statewide assessments are a “great first step, and if that’s where it ends, it’s of little value,” said PSComm President John Cohen, who advises state and local governments on homeland security matters. Cohen contributed to a recent Progressive Policy Institute report criticizing the Bush administration’s handling of homeland security (see GSN, July 24). Among the report’s recommendations was a call for urgent work to complete a national threat assessment, which observers on all sides have called crucial to better deployment of resources to protect the United States against a terrorist attack. Interviewed this week, Cohen credited DHS with taking some steps toward a comprehensive threat assessment ― ODP, for example, requires cities to conduct threat assessments before they can receive the bulk of funding they are awarded under the office’s Urban Area Security Initiative ― but said the process should be broader in scope and “should have been done about a year and a half ago.” “Why has it taken 20 months for this to start? … Now that we’ve started it, is the abbreviated time frame going to impact the accuracy?” he asked. The DHS official acknowledged that Dec. 31 is a “pretty tight deadline” but said the new urgency reflects changes in the homeland security environment since 1999, when the first assessments were submitted to ODP. “It’s a lot different than the last time around. … It wasn’t a top priority within the states, let’s just say, to get these things done,” said the official, citing changes such as new fears of a WMD attack following the September 2001 attacks on the United States and the resulting availability of new funds for counterterrorism efforts. New Focus for DHS, States In one sense, this year’s plans are merely the states’ latest submissions in a process that has existed for four years, but DHS and state officials indicated the process has taken on a new national importance with the 2001 attacks and the resulting creation of DHS early this year. The DHS official said ODP was already seeking an “overarching” assessment process with the 1999 submissions but that many states viewed the process as more narrowly tied to grant money at the time. State officials, including Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director David Sanko, indicated this week that DHS has made it clear this year that it is seeking an overall picture of counterterrorism needs and strategies, not just data to be used in determining grants. Pennsylvania is submitting “a much more comprehensive document” than in the past, according to Sanko, who called it “encouraging” that ODP appears set to begin basing funding on threat, rather than on widely criticized population-based formulas now in use. ODP has provided handbooks to states and local jurisdictions to help them navigate the process, and state and local submissions of data are coordinated and standardized via an online system created by ODP for the purpose. Local jurisdictions are to provide most of the data, submitting precise information about sites perceived as potential targets, the likely outcomes of attacks on such sites and local agencies’ resources for responding to an attack. “Never before,” according to the state handbook, “have these precise requirements been as well identified for planning, organizing, equipping, training and exercising local jurisdictions and states to respond to a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) terrorism incident.” The local jurisdiction handbook indicates that local risk assessments being carried out for the state submissions constitute “the first step in ensuring nationwide preparedness.” “It’s actually pretty good,” Cohen said of ODP’s guidance to states and municipalities in preparing the assessments. He said ODP is providing more detail to state and local authorities and better guiding them through the assessment and strategy development processes. If jurisdictions follow the steps laid out by ODP, Cohen said, “We’ll have taken a major step in doing a national threat assessment.” DHS Accused of Slowness, Lack of Overall Strategy While some critics acknowledge the state assessment process is a step forward, many continue to charge DHS with moving too slowly on the national assessment, lacking a discernible overarching strategy for distributing resources to counter terrorism and failing to consult adequately with state and local authorities in its bid to assess the WMD threat nationwide. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Jamie Metzl, who directed a study released in June that indicated U.S. emergency responders are largely unprepared for a terrorist attack, said federal authorities “keep confusing self-assessment with national standards” (see GSN, June 30). State and local authorities, according to Metzl, must be brought into the process of defining risk and need, not simply asked to provide data in a standardized format. What is needed, he said, is for “everybody to come together and develop a national framework of what does it mean to be prepared.” Cohen warned that this year’s process will be of little value without subsequent feedback to state and local jurisdictions and frequent updates in the years to come. He said the federal government should “blend” the kinds of data being collected in the current effort with broader intelligence and other kinds of information to establish a national list prioritizing potential terrorist targets, which would then be “bounced back” to state and local agencies to help them not only to prevent or respond to an attack, but also to conduct their assessments and develop strategies. “Part of the problem,” said Cohen, “is that you have ODP distributing a survey and asking for answers to very specific questions so that they can qualify the level of preparedness, without telling anybody really clearly what it is they’re being prepared to confront.” “Somebody, somewhere, knows what the risk is that we face in defined terms, but that hasn’t been shared with the people who are out there on the front lines,” Cohen said. Confusion Apparent in the States State homeland security officials indicated various approaches to preparing their submissions to ODP, with some confusion apparent as to the nature of the undertaking and the precise requirements. Although Missouri Homeland Security Director Tim Daniels credited ODP with providing “a lot of guidance” and a “very tightly controlled template,” some other states’ homeland security offices said they will mainly repackage existing data, while others said they intend to use the federal template only as a loose guideline for their assessments. The DHS official said all states are expected to use ODP’s data collection system so the information received by DHS is in a standard format and, therefore, usable in national planning efforts. In addition, some states have expressed frustration at the new format for submissions to ODP, according to observers familiar with the process. Besides the handbooks it provided to state and local authorities, ODP has been conducting regional conferences on the process and is making teams of advisers available to states and local jurisdictions. It is unclear whether all states will be able to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for submitting the assessments and strategies. While stopping short of Cohen’s characterization of the six months allotted as an “abbreviated” schedule, Pennsylvania’s Sanko called the time frame “aggressive.” Officials from other states said the time allotted is sufficient. “It’s a very big job. … It’s critically important that it get done,” Sanko said in defense of the deadline. Better Grant Distribution Could Be Ahead At a conference last week in Arlington, Va., Ridge linked this year’s state assessments with a bid to base federal grants for responders on locally driven assessments, rather than on the unpopular population-based formulas. “Our department has asked the states and the locals to submit statewide homeland security plans … so that, from the 2005 budget forward, the money can be expended consistent with a plan that is state-coordinated but driven from the local government up,” the secretary told emergency personnel from local agencies around the country. “We want those plans by the end of the year, so that, in future years, we can make those allocations and distributions to the state, knowing where those dollars are going to be invested and knowing that those decisions were made from local government on up,” Ridge said. Criticism of the current formula for funding emergency responders came to a head at a July 17 hearing of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee. Several representatives, as well as invited speakers, criticized the current approach. “Two things are clear: First responders are underfunded, and a better process must be put in place to coordinate and disseminate these funds,” Representative Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said at the hearing. At last week’s conference, Ridge stressed the importance of locally driven counterterrorism work, as opposed to state-controlled efforts. Amid debate between states and local governments over who should get the bulk of federal funding for homeland security, he threatened that states that are slow to fund local jurisdictions could see their funds withheld. “We will make sure that it gets down to you, even to the extent if we ― and I don’t think we’re going to have to do this, but one of the things you do have in this town is you have a little leverage. And if we said to the governors, ‘You don’t get your 20 or 25 percent until the other 75 percent is distributed,’ I suspect they’d send it out the door pretty quickly,” Ridge said.
From August 8, 2003 issue.U.S. Response II: Homeland Security’s ‘Intractable Problem’By Siobhan Gorman National Journal Every day, Gil Kerlikowske looks out over one of the country’s largest terrorism targets. From his office window, Seattle’s police chief sees two sports stadiums and one of America’s busiest seaports. In the back of his mind, he thinks about the Seattle area’s close calls: “Millennium Bomber” Ahmed Ressam in 1999, and more recently, suspected Qaeda trainer and Seattle resident James Ujaama, as well as others still under investigation. Then there was the news about a year and a half ago that a laptop computer found in a cave in Tora Bora contained photos of Seattle. “I was shaken, to say the very least,” he says. Now Kerlikowske is being shaken by what he calls “a perfect storm” of budget cuts, new homeland-security duties, and rising crime. And while Seattle has received $11 million in federal homeland-security grants for equipment and training, the police chief’s problem isn’t lack of training so much as lack of people to train. And without more officers to assume increased homeland duties, he says, ultimately, “the [security] outcome will be that nothing will have changed.” Or the outcome could change for the worse. Before he retired last month, Seattle’s local FBI chief Charles Mandigo issued a report warning that the reduction in police forces made the area more attractive to terrorists. In fact, even as federal dollars start to roll in, many states and localities are experiencing homeland security’s cruel twist on the all-dressed-up-with-nowhere-to-go dilemma: They have a lot of shiny new equipment, but can’t afford to hire anyone to use it. And regardless of whose responsibility it is — federal, state, or local — to fill the gap, the budget deficit is translating into a homeland-security capacity deficit. “Without question, the single largest challenge is that we are unable to really hire people to support a lot of the federal equipment we’re being asked to deploy,” says Clifford Ong, director of Indiana’s Counterterrorism and Security Council. “That is an intractable problem for us.” In Seattle, a $60 million deficit meant the loss of 75 positions from the police department — 25 officers and 50 support staff. Though the cuts were achieved through attrition, not layoffs, they still leave Kerlikowske down 25 officers — not to mention the 30 additional he had hoped to hire. And Kerlikowske is not alone. Los Angeles estimates it has 1,000 fewer police officers than it needs. New York, under union pressure, relented on plans to cut more than 200 firefighting jobs, but still shut down six fire stations. No comprehensive national numbers are available on this state and local “homeland-security deficit.” The U.S Conference of Mayors surveyed its members during the country’s last bout with an orange alert, and found that cities collectively spent $70 million additional each week under that elevated threat level. House Democrats are distributing a survey to mayors in their districts to gauge their “hometown-security” needs. They plan to release the results next month. Meanwhile, the International Association of Fire Fighters says that firefighter staffing levels in two-thirds of American cities are below national standards. The answer, says Seattle’s Kerlikowske, is federal help. “There has to be a point where, in this small number of [high-target] cities, that federal dollars have to be made [available] for personnel,” he says. He has plenty of company in that sentiment. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley says if the federal government wants to beef up security quickly, then the federal government has to pay for a substantial part of the increased capacity demanded by the new homeland mission. He quips that homeland security has become “this new unfounded mandate called ‘the common defense.’” While homeland security is not entirely unfunded, the federal government has made it clear that under no circumstances is it going to get into the expensive proposition of hiring local police and firefighters. “The bottom line is, we have a responsibility to equip them, to help train them, to exercise them, to help them plan,” says Josh Filler, director of the Homeland Security Department’s Office of State and Local Coordination. “The basic responsibility to hire police and firefighters, we believe, rests with the state and local levels.” Filler emphatically points out that the federal government is spending an “unprecedented” amount of money on state and local homeland-security needs, which is true. So far, the department has provided $4.4 billion, and another $3.5 billion should be on the way in the next fiscal year. State and local officials acknowledge that the federal government has done a relatively good job of funding bioterror preparations, emergency response equipment, and to some degree, training. Worried that homeland-security dollars will get funneled off to fill other budget gaps, the federal government has insisted that homeland grants go to programs that are primarily, if not exclusively, oriented to homeland security. That means no money for salaries, fire trucks or infrastructure. The rationale sounds reasonable on its face, but unfortunately, homeland security doesn’t work that way. Indiana’s Ong is struggling to balance the federal requirement to spend the state’s money on homeland security with the reality that layering homeland-security money on a crumbling infrastructure is not going to do much good. “There are a lot of challenges being thrown to the intelligence-gathering community, the public health community, and the emergency management community,” he says. “That requires the organizational capacity that just isn’t there. It’s not enough to say to people, ‘You need to find a way of assimilating these duties into your existing budget.’ It just doesn’t happen.” Filler acknowledges the fuzzy line between what is and isn’t homeland security, and for now, he is using the I-know-it-when-I-see-it rule. That’s both good news and bad news for cash-strapped states. The good news is that federal money can probably be used for programs that state officials have been assuming are off-limits. Installing targeted information-systems software, Filler says, probably would qualify. But beefing up 911 systems (which have proven unreliable in Washington, D.C., for example), would have a harder time qualifying, he says. “This is not just money for generic public safety.” The bad news is that personnel and infrastructure, a top priority for local homeland-security officials, are a no-go. Experts such as John Cohen, a cop-turned-homeland-security-consultant, get red-faced when policy makers try to separate day-to-day safety activities from homeland security. Those everyday activities provide the foundation for all homeland-security efforts, Cohen says. How can you expect that Washington, D.C.’s emergency responders will be able to don their new protective gear and run off to the site of a terrorist attack when the 911 emergency response system is repeatedly on the fritz? What’s needed is to “reorient the philosophy at the federal level,” Cohen says. “Until we move away from this flawed philosophy that homeland security is something adjunct [to] or separate from the day-to-day public safety or public health activities, we’re not going to truly benefit from all these millions of federal dollars.” The Homeland Security Department’s priorities have relegated state and local duties almost entirely to cleaning up rather than preventing, says Rob Atkinson, vice president of the centrist Democrat think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute. While Filler says he’d consider funding information systems, Atkinson contends that the people he’s spoken with at the department couldn’t even persuade the powers-that-be to squeeze $20 million into the 2004 budget for a pilot project to link federal, state, and local information systems. (This week, though, the department did announce support for two smaller information-sharing pilot projects in Florida and the mid-Atlantic region.) “We can’t expect state and local law enforcement to win this war with the current tools they are using,” he says. “That’s going to require a significant investment to modernize the tools. States can’t do it on their own. ... It absolutely increases our vulnerability.” Without federal chaperoning, Atkinson says, the country will slowly evolve a patchwork of state and local information systems that can’t talk to each other. Budget shortfalls are stunting other forward-thinking homeland-security efforts. States and localities that are living in the budgetary moment don’t have the time or money to think and invest long term. California, says Rick Martinez, the state’s chief deputy for homeland security, has focused its spending largely on equipment. If he had more money, Martinez says, he’d put it toward personnel, infrastructure, long-term training facilities, long-term strategizing and a unified communications system for emergency responders. In Miami-Dade County in Florida, Homeland Security Director Joseph R. Pinon says he’d love to have 20 people assigned just to assessing the threat. “I have a whole list of things that if I had the ability to do, we would feel a lot more secure; but we don’t have that luxury,” Pinon said. “Could we have it? Yes. We just spent how many billions of dollars on the war? It’s not that it’s unreachable, but it’s politically incorrect.” With an ongoing home-front war on terrorism, lack of long-term planning may be the most dangerous budget casualty of all. It puts all levels of government in a state of perpetual catch-up that emphasizes response over prevention. And that’s not the best recipe for out-thinking terrorists.
From August 6, 2003 issue.U.S. Response: China Formally Joins Container Security InitiativeChina has formally agreed to join the U.S. Container Security Initiative, U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said last week (see GSN, July 23). Under the agreement, U.S. inspectors will be stationed at the Chinese ports of Shanghai and Shenzhen, which account for eight percent of all sea containers that enter the United States. With China joining the CSI, countries representing 19 out of the top 20 ports in the world have now joined the initiative, Bonner said (U.S. State Department release, Aug. 5).
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