Homeland Security Watch

A new book comes out next week entitled “Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security” by Wall Street Journal reporters Bobby Block and Christopher Cooper. The WSJ had an article last Thursday that highlights one of the linchpin issues in the response to Katrina: the information flow regarding the breach of the levees in New Orleans. The article describes how the Homeland Security Operations Center became a bottleneck to information rather than a centralized clearinghouse:

…Likewise, Matthew Broderick, the director of the Homeland Security Operations Center, or HSOC, saw no reason for extraordinary action without definitive proof that there was a catastrophe in New Orleans. And his view of what constituted a catastrophe was pivotal: As HSOC commander, he was responsible for giving Mr. Chertoff and the White House virtually all of the ground intelligence they would receive during the disaster.

To Mr. Broderick, the trigger for a heightened response was clear: If the city’s levee system was seriously breached and couldn’t be repaired immediately, it was a catastrophe. Flooding over the levees, by contrast, even if it was severe, was “normal, typical, hurricane background stuff,” he would later tell Senate investigators. “You know, we have floods in Pennsylvania all the time. We have floods in New Jersey all the time. Every time there’s a hurricane, there’s a flood.”

A retired Marine brigadier general with some 30 years of experience, Mr. Broderick was determined that the information he delivered to Mr. Chertoff and the White House be stripped of innuendo and boiled down to only the hardest facts. “One of the jobs of HSOC is to not overreact, not get hysterical and get the facts,” Mr. Broderick told investigators. Under this rubric, he simply didn’t pass on much of the information he collected.

The result is that even though the breach of the levees began on Monday morning (8/29), and there were numerous channels by which this information was reported, it did not make it to the senior decision-makers until late that night (in part because contradictory information was given undue value), and Katrina was not declared an Incident of National Significance (activating the NRP) until the next morning.

Block is one of the top DHS beat reporters, and Cooper came to the WSJ from the Times-Picayune, so I’m expecting the whole book to be a worthwhile read, in terms of synthesizing the narrative of the response to Katrina. I’ll post a full review at some point in the near future.

Update (7/31): Here’s another longer excerpt.

The DHS inspector general released an audit of Virginia’s homeland security grant spending last Friday, attracting the attention of the Washington Post over the weekend. The audit points out examples of irregular grant spending in 2002 and 2003, but these represent less than 1% ($408,000 out of $53.5 million) of the funds in 2002-03 to the state for the programs examined, and I think former Virginia homeland security advisor and current DHS Under Secretary George Foresman is correct when he defends the state’s activity in the Post:

In an interview yesterday, Foresman said the audit failed to take into account the frenzied atmosphere after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “You have to put this period in context,” he said. “They will find the same thing in all 50 states.”

Meanwhile, the Tulsa World reported yesterday that Oklahoma has spent only one-third of the money awarded to it in homeland security grants in the 2002-2006 period, and finds problems in the execution of many important state preparedness and response programs:

A $16.6 million regional response system using special trailers is unfinished and partially unequipped after years of planning. The system is the centerpiece of the state’s disaster-response plan. Funding for some segments of the plan has been extended since 2003 and probably cannot go beyond December.

A second key element of state’s preparedness plan also faces challenges. The state is spending $28 million to extend an 800-megahertz radio signal linking first-responders across the state. While the radio channel will cover a large swath of Oklahoma, key cities such as Broken Arrow and Oklahoma City would be dead to the signal without a frequency patch. The patch and other transfer methods have their limitations and could be problematic for responders during a disaster.

The findings in this story are much more serious than the IG report on Virginia, and are surprising for a state that has experienced domestic terrorism on a tragic scale. It raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the state’s homeland grant bureaucracy, and prompts questions as to whether Oklahoma deserved to be in the top 50% of states in terms of discretionary homeland security grant spending per capita for FY 2006.

Eighteen months after the announcement of the office, DHS has named a director for the Screening Coordination Office (SCO). From a statement by Sec. Chertoff:

I am pleased to announce that Kathleen L. Kraninger has started as Director of the Office of Screening Coordination for the Department of Homeland Security. In this new role, Kathy will oversee efforts to enhance our security measures by integrating the department’s terrorist and immigration-related screening efforts, creating unified screening standards and policies, and developing a single redress process for travelers.

Kathy’s unique expertise in screening and credentialing programs will foster new and innovative approaches to how the department detects and interdicts threats of all types. She will also play an important role in improving the experience for legitimate foreign travelers entering the United States.

I appreciate Kathy’s willingness to return to service at the department after her time at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. She helped to stand up the Transportation Security Administration and then the Department of Homeland Security as a policy advisor to the Secretaries of Transportation and Homeland Security. She has specialized in border, maritime and transportation security policy, privacy issues, and intelligence. Kathy is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Marquette University, and a native of Cleveland, Ohio.

I think that there’s a real need for this office, given the insufficient level of coordination among the Department’s (and the rest of the federal government’s) multiple screening and targeting programs, but this office is going to face significant challenges in pursuit of efforts to enhance coordination. The original name for this office was the “Office of Screening Coordination and Operations.” The dropping of these last two words reflects an already scaled-down vision for this office.

Kraninger will also face the challenge of running an office that technically has no money. The $4 million that was appropriated for the SCO in FY 2006 was rescinded in the FY 2006 wartime supplemental, according to page 12 of the Senate’s conference report on FY 2007 DHS appropriations. And neither the House nor the Senate included funding for the office in the respective FY 2007 appropriations bills, insisting that the Policy Office’s budget should cover this account.

This webpage at DHS.gov describes current plans to relaunch the website in the early fall with a new look, and adjust its information architecture, making it so that “information is organized according to topic, NOT according to organizational structure, and that the choices are clear to visitors.” This document provides an outline for that new “information architecture.”

This new architecture is a slight improvement over the current site, but I think it’s still too hierarchical, in the manner of a static website circa 1998-2000, and not designed in a way that reflects the inherently networked nature of homeland security, linking content across the multiple content verticals. And I don’t see anything in the plan that indicates that DHS.gov will develop newer capabilities such as RSS feeds, live streaming video, podcasts, and online chats. (For example, see how the State Department’s website uses these tools.) Finally, the new info architecture diminishes the importance of critical infrastructure protection, which should be one of the most important areas for general outreach via the website. It would split CIP-related information into multiple categories, instead of providing a single portal where those responsible for the security of different types of infrastructure can find information.

The Washington Post published two long, excellent pieces on bioterrorism yesterday and today, the first story focused on the controversial creation of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), and today’s story focused on the disturbing threats could arise out of the development of synthetic biology. Together, the two stories provide a solid precis of the key issues in bioterrorism today, and raise important questions:

• The work of the NBACC is intended to defeat new bioterror threats, but could it also help create them?
• Will there be enough accountability and oversight at the NBACC, given the shroud of secrecy in which it is covered? (See this link for some of the scraps of info on it.)
• Does the creation of the NBACC help create a de facto bioterror arms race in the world?
• Will synthetic biology become a terrorist tool, or a tool used by rogue nations?
• What’s the best way to counter these threats?
• Does the Select Agent rule need to be expanded to account for synthetic biology-related risks?

Overall, two very interesting stories, worth reading in full.

Update (8/1): David Stephenson weighs in on the stories.

Update (8/2): A good post from Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist on the two stories.

Below is a list of homeland security policy events in the DC area next week (as well as the occasional listing outside of DC). I post a list each week and will sometimes update mid-week when I find new items. You can always find current and previous postings under the “Events” category tab at right. And please note that many events require prior invitations and/or RSVPs.

7/31-8/4: 15th USENIX Security Symposium. Vancouver, BC.
8/1-8/2: Midwest Security Conference. Rosemont, IL.
8/1: National Association of Manufacturers-hosted event to release a report entitled “Innovators in Supply Chain Security: Better Security Drives Business Value.” 1331 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 600, 10am.
8/1: Cato Institute event on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for a Growing Economy” with Sec. of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. 1000 Massachusetts Ave NW, 12 noon.
8/2: Aspen Institute discussion of the new book “Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security” by WSJ reporters Robert Block and Christopher Cooper. 1 Dupont Circle, NW, time TBD.
8/2: Senate Finance Committee hearing on “Border Insecurity, Take Two: Fake IDs Foil the First Line of Defense.” Dirksen 215, 10am.
8/3: Commercial Operations Advisory Committee meeting. Reagan Building, Horizon Ballroom, 9am.
8/3: Heritage Foundation event on “Rethinking Immigration Proposals: Security and Enforcement Gaps” with DHS Asst. Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker. 214 Massachusetts Ave NE, 3pm.

(Please e-mail me if you have suggestions about additions to this list for this week, or future weeks).

A subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee held a hearing today on “Cyber Security: Recovery and Reconstitution of Critical Networks.” DHS Under Secretary George Foresman testified at the hearing, and found himself having to respond to a GAO report also released at the hearing that lambasted DHS’s efforts to coordinate preparedness for a catastrophic cybersecurity attack. The hearing is summarized well in this story at ZDNet:

A Republican senator on Friday blasted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s readiness for a massive cyberattack, saying he hasn’t seen any improvements since bringing in department officials for questioning last summer.

“Despite spending millions of dollars over the past year, DHS continues to struggle with how to effectively form and maintain effective public-private partnerships in support of cybersecurity,” Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said at a hearing convened by a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee, of which he is chairman.

Coburn, the only politician present at the 90-minute hearing, grilled top computer security officials from Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). He also asked private-sector companies for suggestions for government action.

The Oklahoma senator joined industry groups and congressional colleagues in chiding the agency for failing to appoint a high-level cybersecurity chief one year after the post’s creation. He said having a strong leader in charge is critically important to defend against a crippling cyberattack that could take out not only e-commerce and communications capacities, but also “electrical transformers, chemical systems and pipelines” controlled by computers.

“There’s going to be an assistant secretary (for cybersecurity and telecommunications), I promise you, even if we have to raise the salary for the position,” he said.

The problem isn’t just the salary, as I’ve noted previously. There’s no good reason to apply a political litmus test to a technoratic position.

….Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity post has remained a low- to mid-level position ever since Congress passed a 2002 law that melded 22 federal agencies and made the department chiefly responsible for protecting cyberspace. Numerous audits have faulted the sprawling cabinet department for its lack of readiness to handle large-scale attacks and for shortcomings on its internal networks.

That blistering critique continued on Friday with a new GAO report, which accused Homeland Security of failing to finalize clear plans that detail the responsibilities of state and local governments, other federal agencies and the private sector before, during and after Internet disruptions. “Today, no such plan exists” despite a federal mandate to devise one, Keith Rhodes, the GAO’s chief technologist, told the committee.

Overall, a useful hearing, one that will hopefully prod DHS into filling this year-long vacancy and addressing the important concerns outlined in the GAO’s report.

Forbes Magazine published a couple of stories today on the state of the homeland security market, one on SAIC’s upcoming IPO, the other providing a more general survey of the market. The latter story is a bit convoluted in its analysis, not surprising given the challenges of trying to define and apply clear parameters to the homeland security market, but it does a better job than most similar stories at pointing out the multiple factors and points of evidence that must be considered in assessing the general trajectory of the market.

The website for a homeland security-related conference held last month recently posted a presentation from the event, on the Coast Guard’s intelligence-related activities:

Coast Guard Intelligence and Criminal Investigations, Mike Payne, U.S. Coast Guard

It’s an interesting presentation, as an insight into the Coast Guard’s generally low-profile intelligence activities, which were also discussed in this Congressional testimony last month.

A couple of other interesting presentations from the conference:

Information Sharing Environment, Clark Smith, DNI
NGA and Multi-Level Security, Robert Laurine, NGA

DHS issued a press release today announcing its intention to post intelligence analysts at state and regional fusion centers around the country - a decision that DHS intelligence chief Charlie Allen mentioned in his remarks last week. The announcement coincides with the official opening today of LA’s Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC). I’ve been somwhat skeptical in the past about these state & local fusion centers, worrying that they would be disconnected from the federal intelligence apparatus. But as it has become apparent that DHS and DOJ are making a serious commitment to support them, I’ve changed my mind, and I think that they can potentially play the same role that a federal domestic intelligence agency (like the British MI-5) would serve.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight aired one of the most asinine, slanted pieces I’ve heard in a long time tonight, on the state of play of the immigration and border legislation. The transcript is here - the segment by correspondent Lisa Sylvester is about 1/3rd of the way through the document. She begins (emphasis added):

Lou, the Senate passed its immigration legislation after only 10 days of full debate. Many questions were never answered, including, how would the federal government screen the millions of illegal aliens and what guarantee is there that terrorists could not exploit the system? Today, the House took up some of those issues.

Ten days? Hmm, how many days did the House spend debating H.R. 4437 on the floor last December? TWO.

And later, at the end of the segment, Sylvester says:

Supporters of the Senate bill want to settle these issues in conference committee. Members of the House say the issues are too large and too important to be decided behind closed doors. House members are concerned the amnesty provisions are so generous, the United States would still have less, not more, control over its immigration system. As one witness put it, he said, “The Senate bill almost ignores that there ever was such a thing as a 9/11 attack on the United States”

Hmm, so the negotiations on the Bill of Rights in 1789 were suitable for a House-Senate conference, but this bill is “too large and too important” for doing things the way that Congress is supposed to do them? And this last sentence is bunk. Both bills contain relatively strong border security language that would add more guards, fencing, and technology; the main dispute at this point is over the temporary worker program, which is primarily an immigration and economic issue, not a terrorism-related issue. So how exactly does the Senate bill ignore 9/11? Did illegal immigrant Mexicans carry out the attacks of 9/11 and no one told me?

The debate on immigration and border security is getting to the point of shrillness where I’m beginning to think that it’s undermining the #1 mission of DHS: preventing terrorism. So much of the DHS senior leaders’ time is spent these days doing photo-ops at the border and at worksite crackdowns that I’m starting to wonder whether they’re taking their eye off the ball. I’ve supported the passage of border security legislation this year because I do there are important terror-related vulnerabilities at our land borders, given the statistics about the number of people from “countries of interest” who have been intercepted trying to cross the border. That’s why I think certain provisions in the House bill (i.e. more border fencing) are better than the Senate’s bill. But I worry that the highly-politicized, demagogic debate that’s emerged on these issues over the last six months is creating an unhealthy dynamic that is distracting us from our fight against the real enemy: al-Qaeda.

The House Government Reform Committee released a report this morning entitled “Waste, Abuse and Mismanagement in Department of Homeland Security Contracts”, in conjunction with a hearing on the topic. The report earned front-page treatment in the Washington Post today - surprising given that it contains little new information. The report make a number of attention-getting claims, but many of these are misleading when you look at the underlying data and check the sources cited in the footnotes.

For example, one of the report’s banner claims is that it “identifies 32 DHS contracts collectively worth $34.3 billion that have been plagued by waste, abuse, or mismanagement.” Sounds shocking, right? If I was reading this quickly, I would think that DHS has wasted $34 billion of the taxpayers’ money. But take a look at the distribution of this “$34.3 billion.” Nearly half of it - $17 billion - is for the Coast Guard’s Deepwater program, their effort to modernize their fleet of ships and planes - a program that usually ranks up there with mom and apple pie. While projected costs have risen for this program, the most likely reason for this is not waste or fraud, but the Coast Guard’s transformed requirements after 9/11. And keep in mind that this $17 billion includes spending out into the next decade - as is the case with the next largest item on the list, the US-VISIT program (at $10 billion, only a small fraction of which has been spent to date).

The remaining $7.3 billion of this total largely consists of two things: first, TSA contracts back in 2002 before the creation of DHS, which were no doubt flawed (something that the Congress itself deserves a share of responsibility for, given the deadlines that it set for complying with ATSA mandates). And second, post-Katrina FEMA contracts which were also flawed (and which I’ve also frequently criticized).

The list does include one additional recent contract - the acquisition of Radiation Portal Monitors - but the report’s treatment of this contract makes a very erroneous claim. The report states that:

According to press reports, on an average day at the combined ports of New York and Newark, only 6% to 7% of the shipments are run through the radiation portals.

…linking to the transcript of a 60 Minutes report in March 2006, which clearly states that the 6%-7% applies to the VACIS x-ray imaging equipment - not the radiation portal monitors.

Finally, the report makes the claim that “Procurement spending at DHS has surged 189% since the creation of the new Department, rising from $3.5 billion in 2003 to $10 billion in 2005.” I’d like to see the underlying data that supports that claim. Since 2003 I’ve tracked DHS spending as closely as anyone outside of government, and this doesn’t square with my prior analysis, which would suggest that the % growth in contracts between 2003 and 2006 is actually quite small. I suspect that the Committee is using a source that has incomplete data for DHS’s first year or two, given the lack of reliable public data on contracts for this period. Or perhaps this increase is due to the fact that DHS was heavily reliant on contracting through other agencies in its first 2-3 years, and the database that the Committee used credits this spending to other agencies (this is why it’s important to cross-check with budget documents). Or perhaps the report uses one-time post-Katrina contracts to falsely denote a meaningful trend. My sense is that that this “increase” is actually an indicator that the DHS procurement shop has done a better job in the last two years of accounting for all DHS contracts.

There no doubt have been problems with homeland security-related procurement in the past few years, especially during TSA’s first year of existence and the post-Katrina spending spree. But this report is an error-filled and misleading account of this record.

Update (7/27): Overheard on the DC metro this afternoon, confirming my contention that this report and the Washington Post story give misleading impressions: “You won’t believe this story…it says that DHS has wasted 34 billion dollars in the last two or three years!”

Update 2 (7/28): More misleading press coverage of this report, this time from AP:

The Homeland Security Department spent $34 billion in its first two years on private contracts that were poorly managed or included significant waste or abuse, a congressional report concluded Thursday.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, $27 billion of this total is for full costs of the Deepwater and US-VISIT programs, out over the next 10-15 years. The vast majority of this total - at least 75% of the $27 billion - has not yet been spent by DHS.

DHS released a notice in the Federal Register today (noticed quickly by the New York Times) that announces plans to increase the categories of people who will be required to enroll in the US-VISIT system (i.e. be fingerprinted and have their picture taken) when they enter and exit the United States, to include:

• All legal permanent residents (green card holders) living in the United States;
• Aliens seeking admission on immigrant visas;
• Refugees and asylees;
• Canadians who are in the United States as students, journalists, crew members, temporary workers, intracompany transferees, and athletes (but not Canadians visiting for short-term business or pleasure…they will be covered under pending WHTI regs).

Is the U.S. entry system ready for this additional work burden? This could potentially lead to longer wait times at certain land border crossings and airports if not managed correctly. Also, I would expect there to be some serious privacy-related backlash on this decision, given the fact that lawful permanent residents are considered “US persons” from a legal standpoint, and under law should have the same privacy rights as U.S. citizens.

IEEE Network magazine published an intriguing paper in a recent issue entitled “A wireless biosensor network using autonomously controlled animals.” (An earlier version of the report is available here). The authors envision using rats for homeland security-related search & rescue options, giving them instructions via autonomous control algorithms and creating a wireless sensor network among multiple rats wearing backpacks. This would in theory make it possible to search a rubble-strewn disaster site (perhaps after an earthquake) in a rapid manner and quickly pinpoint any survivors. The report contains this amusing chart that shows what this network would look like:

Is this idea feasible as a tool for practical homeland security applications? As is the case with any single research effort like this, it’s difficult to say. Although I have a high degree of confidence that collectively R&D efforts like this will lead to real improvements in the nation’s homeland security capabilities over the coming years.

Are air marshals forced to make monthly quotas in terms of reporting suspicious activity, leading them to report on innocent passengers…potentially leading to these individuals being watch-listed? Yes, according to air marshals interviewed by a TV station in Denver:

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal.

These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system.

If this is true, it’s deplorable. The leadership of DHS and TSA need to intervene immediately to end these quotas and inform the public that this issue has been resolved.

The DHS Inspector General released a redacted version of a report entitled “Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Points of Entry.” It tells the story of an inspection regime that is not yet able to fully leverage the significant investments in improved systems and databases over the past few years, because of mundane issues like the lack of security clearances for frontline CBP officials and inconsistent procedures for reporting suspicious incidents.

The IG makes the following recommendations for improving the point-of-entry processes:

• Expand a biometric information collection program to include volunteers who would not normally provide this information when entering the United States;
• Authorize POE supervisors limited discretion to make more timely admissibility determinations;
• Review port of entry staffing models to ensure the current workforce is able to perform the entire range of CBP mission;
• Establish a policy for more consistent reporting to intelligence agencies the details gathered during secondary interviews;
• Ensure all counterterrorism personnel at POEs are granted an appropriate security clearance.

These are all low-cost, high-value recommendations; diligent efforts to address them would be time well spent.

Some good news on the pandemic flu front:

A British company reported Wednesday it had achieved the best results ever seen on an experimental human vaccine for bird flu and said mass production might be possible by 2007.

A global health official called GlaxoSmithKline’s early results “an exciting piece of science.” If future tests are as promising, it would be a major step in the frustrating campaign to protect people from a possible deadly flu pandemic.

The U.S. government’s chief infectious disease scientist also was very optimistic.

“The data are really very impressive,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It changes the whole complexion of the issue that we have to face of getting enough vaccine for people who might need it in a pandemic.”

There are still risks that the virus could mutate into forms that the vaccine would not contain, but this is certainly a positive development for the scientific community’s effort to combat this potential global threat.

Another new homeland security-related CRS report:

RL33555: Trends in Terrorism 2006, July 21, 2006.

The report provides a useful summary of key findings in the State/NCTC counterterrorism reports, considers trends cited in non-governmental reports, and offers a list of issues for Congress to consider, including international counterterror cooperation, developing mechanisms to address the strengthened terrorist-criminal nexus, dealing with radicalization at madrasas, and responding to unattributed terrorism.

This press release from CBP today makes me nostalgic for my childhood, and hours spent in the morning, while waiting for the school bus, pouring a salt shaker over the hapless creatures:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists here recently intercepted a slug in a shipment of fresh mushrooms from Bulgaria. The slug, identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as Lehmannia nyctelia, is established throughout Europe, north and south Africa, Australia and New Zealand and could potentially pose a tremendous threat to agriculture in the United States.

The shipment of mushrooms arrived at Sea-Tac Airport from Bulgaria via London on Monday, July 10th, and was examined by CBP agriculture specialists. As the numerous (62) cartons of mushrooms were being unloaded from the air cargo container, an agriculture specialist crawled into the container to check for pests. The slug was found on the floor of the container, apparently after crawling out of the mushroom shipment. The shipment was bound for an importer in California.

The live slug was captured and sent to the USDA National Identification Services located in Philadelphia. If a sample is “actionable,” that is, not known to exist in the United States, or is an exotic invasive species detrimental to American agriculture, the shipment is ordered for fumigation, destruction, or reexport. On July 12th, scientists there dissected and identified the slug and verified that it was the first positive identification of this species intercepted at any U.S. port of entry. The shipment of mushrooms was destroyed.

The Lehmannia nyctelia species of slug is a voracious feeder on a variety of trees, shrubs, crop and greenhouse plants. It can also transmit the tobacco mosaic virus to some plants, which unchecked can have devastating effects on several crops including tomatoes, peppers, other vegetables, flowers and weeds.

What I can say? It’s been a slow news week.

As the House-Senate conference to negotiate the differences between their respective border security bills continues to languish, new proposals are emerging to try to break the impasse and/or shift the political dynamic.

For example, yesterday Sen. Kyl and Sen. Cornyn proposed the need for $3.5 billion in additional border security funding. And today, Sen. Hutchison and Rep. Mike Pence introduced a compromise plan, as summarized by Reuters:

The plan calls for implementing border-security measures before a guest-worker program backed by President Bush is put into place. Once the borders are determined to be secure, a temporary-worker program and an employment-verification program would go into effect.

The U.S. government would license private employment services to match workers with employers. They would operate out of Canada, Mexico and Central American countries that are part of trade pacts with the United States.

Illegal immigrants from those countries seeking to legalize their status would have to travel home to get a two-year visa, which could be renewed for a total of 12 years. After that time, those seeking to continue in the United States could apply for a visa that would allow them to say for another five years before they could apply for permanent status.

I’ve read through the full proposal, and my initial reaction is that it’s an idea that sounds OK in theory…but the more you think about, the more unworkable it would be in practice, requiring the creation of a massive new bureaucracy to administer. For example: What happens to illegal immigrants who don’t leave the country to enroll? What happens to families who are currently in the U.S. where some (but not all) members have legal status? How would the hiring process described in the proposal address the need for seasonal or short-term workers in certain sectors? What happens when someone loses their job through no fault of their own? Are they allowed to find work in the U.S. without returning to their home country? The proposal doesn’t account for these likely outcomes.

Perhaps there is a compromise proposal that wouldn’t create a giant new bureaucracy and doesn’t leave so many unanswered questions. The right way to find out is for the House leadership to appoint conferees and sit down with the Senate to work out a compromise that builds on the hundreds-of-thousands of hours of work that have already gone into the existing legislation.

Stephen Barr writes today in his Federal Diary column at the Washington Post about a new report from the Naval Postgraduate School that provides a case study of the proposed civil service reforms that were debated in the process of passing of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. A lot of this story has been told in bits and pieces already, but it contains a few new wrinkles, and this is the first time I’ve seen it in a single comprehensive narrative, featuring interviews with many of the principals involved with the process.

The report a number of interesting details, such as the fact that White House officials had a total of five days to write the initial draft of the Homeland Security Act and get it transmitted to Congress, based on a promise from VP Cheney to Speaker Dennis Hastert. And it quotes former OHS & DHS official Bruce Lawlor on the thought process behind the creation of the four initial DHS directorates:

When we originally built the Department, if you think about it, you’ve got information, critical infrastructure protection—that’s two of your functions. That’s one Directorate. We’ve got the borders, law enforcement and transportation security. There’s another Directorate. And emergency response and recovery—that’s the third Directorate. We only had three Directorates when we started. Then the Vice President came along and said, “You’ve got to do something more about bio-terrorism.” That’s the fourth Directorate, Science and Technology.

Overall, an interesting report - Chapter III (the narrative) is definitely worth a read.

Is there a new concerted effort among supporters of the Collins-Lieberman chemical security bill to fight for its passage? Sen. Collins and Sen. Lieberman sent a letter to Majority Leader Frist recently lobbying for floor time, and this editorial from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune yesterday (home state of bill co-sponsor Norm Coleman) makes a strong case for action:

Here are some statistics we’d rather not think about: At perhaps 700 sites around this country, toxic chemicals are stockpiled in quantities that terrorists could turn into weapons threatening at least 100,000 lives. At more than 120 of those sites, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the right kind of attack could kill or injure more than a million people. And in some big cities, according to the Surgeon General, the toll could be twice that high.

Plenty of opportunities to enhance Americans’ security have been missed since 9/11 supposedly changed everything. In some areas, like inspection of cargo arriving in U.S. ports, the protective measures are necessarily complicated, expensive and time-consuming. Beefing up security around several hundred refineries, chemical factories and water-treatment plants, however, is relatively simple, cheap and quick.

It’s hard to understand why Congress has let this vulnerability persist for so long, but it’s easy to grasp the current snag. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has derailed new security legislation for the twin purposes of helping corporate friends and skewering environmental foes.

The measure is the work of Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and it’s pretty simple: The Department of Homeland Security would be given authority to set and enforce security standards at chemical facilities, with plant operators given considerable flexibility to choose their own solutions.

At her insistence, the bill was stripped of a requirement that some facilities shift to less noxious chemicals — for example, replacing chlorine gas with liquid bleach or ultraviolet light for drinking-water treatment. Such shifts make up a growing trend known as “inherently safer technology,” or IST, and they’re gaining favor for reasons beyond anti-terror security — workplace safety, cost savings and community relations among them. This spring, the Center for American Progress found that more than 200 chemical facilities (including five in the Twin Cities) had voluntarily adopted IST.

Now, some people might think it a good thing when a single solution improves security, lowers environmental risk and maybe even saves some money. Certain sectors of the chemical industry, however, oppose writing IST into law — and for Inhofe, the mere prospect of IST provisions being amended back into the Collins bill was enough to justify bottling it up in his Environment and Public Works committee, a graveyard for all sorts of green legislation.

The Collins bill has other opponents; some Republicans want it to prevent states from adopting stricter security standards, and some water-treatment operations would prefer to be regulated under a different law. But these are the sorts of disagreements that Congress resolves routinely.

Inhofe’s objections, on the other hand, are to something that isn’t even in the legislation, and therefore can’t be brokered. His stalling would be shameful even if this were a bill where little was at stake. But here is a measure to head off plausible scenarios in which any among hundreds of chemical facilities become weapons of mass destruction. The Senate GOP leadership ought to recognize this and nudge Inhofe out of the way.

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last eight months, we can’t afford to wait any longer to get this legislation passed.

Stuart Taylor has a long interview with Sec. Chertoff on the website of The Atlantic magazine. It’s an insightful interview, largely because of Taylor’s well-researched questions and his follow-ups to Chertoff’s initial answers to certain questions. It’s behind The Atlantic’s subscription wall, but below are some notable excerpts:

On Chertoff’s qualifications to run DHS:

Nobody doubts your intelligence, your dedication, [or] your legal skills. But what qualifies you to run a brand new department consolidating 22 sub-agencies with 184,000 employees? Is there anything that you’ve learned the hard way that you wish you had known from the start?

Yeah. I think that, when I took the job, what I had in mind was my experience when I was at the Department of Justice, having to bring a lot of different teams together—whether it was the FBI or the IRS, state and local law enforcement—to build a case or to build an investigation and drive it through the conclusion. And I felt that the key to success in the job I did as a prosecutor was bringing a lot of groups together and forcing them to identify their mission and driving them to accomplish the mission. The one thing about being a prosecutor is that it’s a very unforgiving job. You know when you’ve won and you know when you’ve lost. And so you have a very clear sense of the fact that success in the end is the only real measure that counts.

So that was the philosophy I think I brought into that role [and] into this job. And although the scale here is much greater, in some ways the challenge is the same. You’ve got a lot of different components, and you’ve got to transform them from agencies that are focused on doing their own jobs to a team of agencies that are focused on an overall mission. And I do think the experience I had making cases and making tough cases and working with a lot of different agencies has been a real help in this job.

On what he sees as the greatest homeland security threats:

I prioritize nuclear and biological events at the top of the heap. And radiological and chemical close behind because they have the largest capacity to affect the largest number of people and to really be earth-shattering in terms of the impact on the United States. That’s not to say we don’t also look at bombings in subways and bombings in supermarkets and shopping malls, but as bad as those things are, they are the kinds of threats we have dealt with previously and we are well-equipped to deal with. The catastrophic event is the kind that has never happened before and that could really be just transformative in its disastrous effect. So I think that, from a federal standpoint in particular, where we add real value is in developing the tools to prevent, protect against, and respond to those catastrophic events. We still want to be mindful of the less catastrophic and work across the board to raise the level of terrorism [preparedness], but nuclear and biological are, to me, at the top of the heap in terms of consequence.

His reflections on the Dubai Ports World controversy:

Dubai Ports was never going to be entrusted with the seaports. They were going to buy a company that basically owns and operates the cranes that lift the containers out of the cargo holes and puts them on the dock until they can be moved off by trucks. The impact and the danger to security was negligible and, as a condition of agreeing on the deal, we had actually put into place agreements that would have given us much greater security and much greater control of the security overseas than we would have had without the acquisition.

So the furor about Dubai Ports to me is a case where the politics and the public appearance overwhelmed what actually was a perfectly rational and sensible decision. And I think in a nutshell that sums up the challenge of homeland security. To do this job right, we’re often required just to make a lot of decisions that are a little complicated. [The decisions] require a fair amount of factual investigation and sometimes they require us to balance a lot of different considerations. It’s been really hard sometimes to sum that up in a sound byte. And it’s easy to take something like Dubai Ports and say, “Arabs, ports, bad.” I think that it was unfortunate—not only in the individual case, because I think it led to a result that was probably unfair to the company—but [also because] I have since heard from our allies overseas, “What are we going to make of America now? Does that mean that if we help Americans but we’re foreigners, Americans are going to retaliate against us?” And one of the things I said at the time and I believe to be true is [that] it would be a shame if the message we sent to the world was, “We don’t understand who our friends are and we’re going to punish our friends.” To me, one of the huge issues we face in homeland security is how do we boil down and explain decisions that are sometimes complicated and even difficult in a way that is immediately intelligible in a world of blogs and instant messages and slogans.

Since he mentions blogs, I’ll respond to this with a bit of friendly advice: DHS can use blogs and other new media to its advantage if it makes the effort. I try to assess DHS fairly, based on the facts, in a way that acknowledges that the people running DHS have a very tough job. But when issues like the NY/DC grant controversy and the National Asset Database IG report come along, it’s difficult for me (and I would imagine, for the DHS beat reporters) to respond positively, because the backdrop to these issues and decisions are kept opaque, and it seems like the only information coming out of the DHS press office at these times is spin or snarky criticism. Similarly, on the Dubai Ports World issue, I wanted to write more posts that were sympathetic to the Department’s perspective, but DHS was slow to publicly circulate information about the scope of the deal that would have made it possible for me to write timely, favorable posts. A greater effort to increase transparency at DHS - something that can be done without “helping the terrorists” - would go a long way to improving the favorability of media and blogosphere commentary on the Department.

Finally, Sec. Chertoff on chemical security legislation (emphasis added):

But I am the first person to tell you, I think this year we owe the American people a chemical security bill that we can put into law, and then with that we can start the process of correcting exactly the kind of freeloader problem you’ve identified.

It’s time to get this done. Sec. Chertoff, and possibly even the White House, need to put their credibility on the line and get certain intransigent Senators to stop stalling this legislation.

Update (8/1): The link to the interview no longer works. For some reason The Atlantic took it down.

McClatchy’s DC bureau published a very interesting piece on Sunday that tells the inside story of the Nationwide Plan Review, citing numerous examples of confusion and disagreement resulting from DHS’s survey and final results:

The results of the $5 million attempt by DHS to determine whether states and cities have adequate emergency plans are troubling, and they offer a glimpse of serious behind-the-scenes disagreements among government officials over how prepared the nation is for another catastrophe.

DHS challenged the self-assessments of almost 60 percent of the states, cities and U.S. territories that participated in the review, according to the internal records obtained by McClatchy Newspapers.

The documents, which Homeland Security officials refuse to make public, reveal that, in most of those cases, the federal agency gave the states and cities significantly higher marks than they gave themselves.

The differing assessments reflect continuing confusion over how states and cities need to handle a catastrophe and what types of disasters they should be prepared to handle. That, in turn, threatens to undermine the federal government’s $18 billion effort to help them prepare for disasters and terrorist attacks.

“There’s a substantial gap between our understanding of preparedness and that of Homeland Security’s,” said Jim Mullen, the director of Washington state’s emergency management division, which rated itself less prepared than federal officials did. “There is not a recognition of the full thrust of what has to be accomplished at the state and local level, and that’s because there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what we do and what we need.”

….Of the 131 jurisdictions that DHS reviewed, only two - Florida and California - agreed with the federal government’s assessments. Fifty-eight states and cities rated themselves less prepared than Homeland Security did in at least four of nine categories, including evacuation plans, disaster warning systems and the ability to provide emergency medical treatment. Eighteen said they were better prepared.

The story goes on to provide several specific examples of these disagreements between state officials and DHS.

After reading this story, and looking at the Nationwide Plan Review documents, I get the sense that this process has fallen prey to risks that face any attempt to understand the world via a survey-based methodology. The capabilities, institutions, processes, and threats that compose and interact with national emergency preparedness system do not easily lend themselves to the imposition of a clear, logical template, and as a result, any effort to survey baseline preparedness is going to face a trade-off between getting results that can be meaningfully compared across states and results that acknowledge this complexity and are sufficiently rich in their findings. It’s certainly a worthwhile exercise to try to carry out such baseline assessments, but there needs always to be an understanding of the tradeoffs and imperfections in the information-collection process.

GovExec reported on Friday on a media briefing by Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen:

The Coast Guard is developing a maritime security strategy that will guide its decision-making, rulemaking, technological requirements and requests for legislation into the future, the agency’s chief said Friday.

Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said he hopes to unveil the new strategy within four months, adding that it will serve as the basis for making decisions. “It’s going to provide us a template of how you increase maritime security,” Allen told reporters during a briefing sponsored by Defense Daily.

….The Coast Guard is developing a maritime security strategy that will guide its decision-making, rulemaking, technological requirements and requests for legislation into the future, the agency’s chief said Friday.

Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said he hopes to unveil the new strategy within four months, adding that it will serve as the basis for making decisions. “It’s going to provide us a template of how you increase maritime security,” Allen told reporters during a briefing sponsored by Defense Daily.

There have been a number of maritime security strategies developed in the last few years, including the National Strategy for Maritime Security and its supporting plans, and the “Maritime Sentinel” strategic plan developed by the Coast Guard earlier this year. Based on these comments, I would expect this new plan to be more holistic than current strategies, and also more useful in terms of informing operational decision-making.

Below is a list of homeland security policy events in the DC area next week (as well as the occasional listing outside of DC). I post a list each week and will sometimes update mid-week when I find new items. You can always find current and previous postings under the “Events” category tab at right. And please note that many events require prior invitations and/or RSVPs.

7/24: Heritage Foundation event on “Rethinking Visa Policy for the 21st Century” with DHS policy chief Stewart Baker et al. 214 Mass Ave NE, 11am.
7/25: National Maritime Security Advisory Committee meeting. USCG HQ, 2100 Second St SW, Room 4202, 9am.
7/25: House Government Reform Committee hearing on “Is the Federal Government Doing All it Can to Stem the Tide of Illegal Immigration?” Rayburn 2154, 10am.
7/25: House Financial Services Committee & House HSC joint hearing on “Terrorism Threats and the Insurance Market.” Rayburn 2128, 10am.
7/25: House Ways & Means Committee hearing on “Customs Budget Authorizations and Other Customs Issues.” Longworth 1100, 10am.
7/25: Heritage Foundation event on border security with Rep. Mike Rogers (Alabama) et al. 214 Mass Ave NE, 10am.
7/26-7/28: NACCHO annual conference. San Antonio, TX.
7/26: U.S. Conference of Mayors media forum on disaster preparedness. National Press Club, 529 14th St NW, 10am.
7/26: House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “Is Our Nation Prepared for a Public Health Disaster?” Cannon 210, 2pm.
7/26: House Ways & Means Committee hearing on “Impacts of Border Security and Immigration on Ways and Means Programs.” Longworth 1100, 2pm.
7/27: House Homeland Security Committee markup of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006. Cannon 210, 10am.
7/27: House Government Reform Committee hearing on “Code Yellow: Is The DHS Acquisition Bureaucracy a Formula for Disaster?” Rayburn 2154, 10am.
7/27: HSGAC business meeting to markup several bills including the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act of 2006 (S.3721). Dirksen 342, 10am.
7/27: House Appropriations Committee hearing on “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement.” Rayburn 2359, 10am.
7/27: House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Whether Attempted Implementation of the Senate Immigration Bill Will Result in an Administrative and National Security Nightmare.” Rayburn 2141, 11:30am.
7/27: Center for American Progress event on “New Strategies to Protect America: A Market-Based Approach to Security.” 1333 H St NW, 10th Floor, 12:30pm.
7/27: National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee teleconference. 2pm.
7/27: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Detecting Smuggled Nuclear Weapons” with DNDO director Vayl Oxford et al. Dirksen 226, 2:30pm.
7/28: HSGAC hearing on “Cyber Security: Recovery and Reconstitution of Critical Networks.” Dirksen 342, 9:30am.

(Please e-mail me if you have suggestions about additions to this list for this week, or future weeks).

From an announcement sent out by DHS this afternoon:

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Hugo Teufel III as Chief Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security. Hugo is an outstanding professional, who I have counted on for steady judgment and sound advice as the department’s Associate General Counsel. Hugo is highly regarded throughout the department and the legal community for his expertise on privacy, employee relations and civil rights issues.

As Chief Privacy Officer, Hugo will be responsible for ensuring privacy compliance and the protection of personal information as the department continues to carry out its vital mission. Hugo brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this leadership position, having served previously as Associate Solicitor at the Department of the Interior, the Deputy Solicitor General for the state of Colorado, and as an attorney in private practice. Hugo is a graduate of the Washington College of Law at American University, where he was an editor of The Administrative Law Journal, and he is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.

I look forward to Hugo’s many contributions to the important work of the Privacy Office and his efforts with the Privacy Office staff to continue to grow a culture of privacy protection throughout the department. Hugo has my appreciation for his continued service, and he has my complete confidence and support as Chief Privacy Officer.

Update (7/24): The AP story on the nomination.

The House of Representatives is convening a series of hearings this month on the immigration and border security legislation, with stilted titles like:

“Should We Embrace the Senate’s Grant of Amnesty to Millions of Illegal Aliens and Repeat the Mistakes of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986?”

And:

“Whether Attempted Implementation of the Senate Immigration Bill Will Result in an Administrative and National Security Nightmare.”

There have already been more than 50 hearings on immigration and border security in the 109th Congress, according to the Washington Post. But even though there’s nothing new to discuss, House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicated today that he might gin up another wave of hearings, and continue them into September, instead of appointing conferees to negotiate with Senate and reconcile the two chambers’ bills. That decision might have merit as an electoral strategy, but it’s one that is detrimental to the security of the United States.

Both the House and Senate bills have their flaws. But that’s the reason why our political system forces members of the two chambers to pack into a proverbial “smoke-filled room” and resolve differences in legislation via tedious negotiation. Perhaps the gap between the two bills really is too wide for a compromise. But by holding out from negotiations, the House Republican leadership isn’t even bothering to try to find out. If the 109th Congress ends without the passage of immigration & border security legislation, then we’re back to square zero in the 110th Congress - the worst possible legislative outcome for efforts to strengthen security on our borders.

If members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, really care about border security, they need to stop the electioneering B.S. and get this done. Perhaps the final bill would be minimalist, consisting of the 70-80% of content that the two chambers already agree on. Or perhaps the two chambers could strike a ‘grand compromise’ that establishes a guest worker program but also authorizes more fencing and strengthens state & local law enforcement authority on immigration enforcement. Both of those options are preferable to the status quo in terms of border security. It’s time for Congress to stop playing games and get this done.