Homeland Security Watch

As the House of Representatives reorganizes itself for the 112th Congress, it is time to revisit, yet again, what to do about the jurisdiction of the House Homeland Security Committee.  Specifically, how should “Rule X,” which determines Committee organization and oversight, be formulated to ensure that homeland security is best served. Since its creation as a “Select” (aka “temporary”) Committee in 2003 during the 108th Congress, there has been a constant drumbeat of experts, pundits, and Department of Homeland Security officials calling for oversight and legislative jurisdiction to be unified under one Committee. Reports abound of the 100+ Committees and Subcommittees that DHS has to appear before and of legislation getting stalled because of jurisdictional infighting inside of Congress. Those outside of Washington are probably scratching their heads and wondering why does this matter? Isn’t it really an insider’s game of turf battle and power grabs?

Well, yes and no. There is obviously a tradition in DC of protecting one’s turf and preserving power. And that has played a significant role in not only how Congress treats homeland security, but in how the Department has developed. The jurisdictional fights, while inherently D.C., have a tremendous impact on how homeland security has developed and how it will continue to grow. Split jurisdiction means that the Department lacks a clear guiding voice on how it should move forward on security issues. Instead, it has many keepers in some areas — all of whom have different and potentially conflicting interest. The jurisdictional split also means that the Department does not have a clear overseer to hold it accountable and ensure that efficiencies and effectiveness are front and center. As a result, DHS reports to many, causing it to be sluggish and not able to fully maximize its resources to the homeland security mission.

When the Homeland Security Act was passed and DHS was created, 170,000 employees and 22 departments and agencies were merged. Among the entities that moved to the new Department:

• Coast Guard -  Department of Transportation
• TSA – Department of Transportation
• U.S. Customs Services – Department of Treasury
• Secret Service – Department of Treasury
• Immigration and Naturalization Service – Department of Justice
• Border Patrol-  Department of Justice
• Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – Department of Agriculture
• Critical Information Assurance Office – Department of Commerce
• National Infrastructure Protection Center – FBI
• Various other entities from Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, GSA,  Health and Human Services, Justice, & Treasury

The creation of DHS was the biggest reorganization of the government since the Department of Defense was created in the National Security Act of 1947.  In creating the agency, Congress deemed it necessary to rethink how we approached federal governance in a post-9/11 world.  The new Department was to help the nation heal and be prepared for the next attack.  Its mission was (and is) simple, as described on the DHS website:

to lead the unified national effort to secure the country and preserve our freedoms. While the Department was created to secure our country against those who seek to disrupt the American way of life, our charter also includes preparation for and response to all hazards and disasters. The citizens of the United States must have the utmost confidence that the Department can execute both of these missions.

Unfortunately for the agency, confidence is constantly being questioned as the agency has tried to manage itself over the past 7 years.  Whether uniting jurisdiction in one Committee will solve the agency’s problems is unknown and questionable, but the voices of those who say it is the right thing to do are many. For example:

• The 9/11 Commission: Of all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important.  So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.  The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional committee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership.
• CSIS/BENS Task Force on Congressional Oversight of the Department of Homeland Security: The result is a Department of Homeland Security that is hamstrung by a system of Congressional oversight that drains departmental energy and invites managerial circumvention. Until Congress confronts the hard task of correcting this mismatch, DHS is at risk of failing to achieve its full potential.
• The Center for Public Integrity: The Department of Homeland Security is still coping with an extraordinary number of demands from Capitol Hill, which are tripping up a fledgling organization. And the crazy quilt of oversight is making it difficult for Congress to provide cogent guidance on budgeting, organization, or priorities for a department still struggling on all those fronts.
• Homeland Security Policy Institute:  Congress must not let its homeland security efforts remain unfocused and dispersed. Consolidation of authority under a single permanent standing committee is the best answer to a problem that has already persisted two years too long.
• Heritage Foundation: It has been seven years since the Department of Homeland Security was created, and yet Congress has still not reformed oversight of homeland security. The lack of congressional action has become something of a joke, even catching the attention of institutions like National Public Radio that would normally dismiss oversight of a department as an “inside the Beltway” issue.
  

Left. Right. Center.  It seems that the jurisdictional issue is one that unites across the political spectrum.  I have not seen outside of Congress a good analysis of why jurisdictional should not be consolidated. The strongest argument made to not consolidate in 2003-2004 was that expertise over the various portions of the Department resided with existing Committees. To create a new Committee without that expertise and historical knowledge would lead to more chaos according to many of the Committee Chairmen in that timeframe.  Indeed, in creating the temporary “Select” Committee on Homeland Security in 2003, then Speaker Hastert tried to address this concern by naming almost all Chairmen to the Committee.  That proved disastrous as many used the position to ensure that the Committee did not encroach upon their existing jurisdictions.  The majority of Chairmen did not show up for the Committee’ mark-up of its first authorization bill, requiring then-Chairmen Chris Cox (R-CA) to defend against several dozen amendments offered by Democratic Members without a Republican majority. The result? The mark-up was canceled.

When the Committee became permanent at the beginning of the 109th, the jurisdictional fighting did not cease.  A number of Committees raised concerns with the proposed Committee’s jurisdiction and pushed back.  In a legislative history prepared by the Speaker’s Office in early 2005, a number of areas were identified as needing to remain with the existing Committees.  They can be viewed here.

At the beginning of the 110th, with the Democrats taking over the House, there was discussion about how to revise jurisdiction.  Some jurisdictional battles were resolved between Committees.  For example, the Homeland Security and Transportation & Infrastructure Committees entered into a Memorandum of Understanding on how they would share jurisdiction over emergency preparedness and related issues.  At the beginning of the 111th Congress, there was discussion once again about jurisdiction. No significant changes, however, were made to the House Homeland Security Committee’s jurisdiction.

So, looking forward to January, what changes should be made in Congress to the Committees to better oversee and legislate on homeland security issues? Here are a few suggestions:

• Emergency Preparedness/FEMA:  Jurisdiction over FEMA and emergency preparedness issues should be transferred to the House Homeland Security Committee. While the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee will object, there are few reasons to keep jurisdiction at T&I.  Under the current Rule, T&I has jurisdiction over generic emergency preparedness while Homeland has jurisdiction over emergency preparedness activities relating to terrorism.  The same entity (FEMA) and personnel are responsible for both in today’s all-hazards approach to emergency preparedness.
• Border Security and Immigration:  Homeland Security has jurisdiction over border security generally while Judiciary has jurisdiction over immigration, visa, and non-border enforcement (e.g. ICE).  There is a larger question about whether immigration administration should be married with border security and whether USCIS belongs in DHS at all (but that is a subject of another blog).  What is clear, however, is that non-border enforcement elements such as ICE should be within the jurisdiction of Homeland, esp. given its related work on CBP, over which it has jurisdiction.
• Secret Service: Currently, Judiciary has primary jurisdiction over most of Secret Service’s elements.  Since the agency was moved to DHS, oversight and legislative authority over the agency should also be moved over.
• Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC):  Another agency that moved to the Department, of which jurisdiction should be given to Homeland.
• Coast Guard:  Currently T&I has primary jurisdiction over the Coast Guard.  The agency itself is complicated and has a number of non-security functions and responsibilities. That said,  authority over it should probably be moved over to Homeland Security.’
• Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity, other than that involving government-wide cybersecurity efforts relating to government computers, has never really had a home jurisdictionally. Originally, Homeland was going to be given jurisdiction over the issue in 2005, but other Committees protested so the rules were left silent on the issue, except for the existing government systems jurisdiction granted to Government Reform.  As an issue that is too important to be left unaddressed, civilian cybersecurity efforts should be within the jurisdiction of Homeland Security. Military and intelligence efforts should remain within Armed Services and Intelligence.

There are other areas where overlapping jurisdiction can be further clarified. Among them are the Federal Protective Service, emergency communications, and some infrastructure protection programs. They should certainly be explored though the items listed above should clearly be addressed.  If we are going to demand that DHS continue to improve and evolve in its efforts to protect America, then Congress must do its part to assure the agency is well-organized and armed with the right tools.

             Representative Harold “Hal” Rogers (R-Kentucky).  Picture by the Associated Press

Earlier this week the House Republican Steering Committee and House Republican Conference tapped Harold “Hal” Rogers as the next Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  Selection of the senior member of Kentucky’s House delegation was greeted by protests from Left and Right.

Mr. Rogers previously served as both chairman and ranking-member of the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.  He also served on the transportation and defense appropriations subcommittees. (See his official biography.)

Elected in 1980 to represent one the nation’s most economically challenged congressional districts, Mr. Rogers has been effective directing federal funds to a wide array of local wants and needs.  As such he has been assailed by the Lexington Herald-Leader (KY), New York Times, and others as the “Prince of Pork.”  This accusation headlined most of the news coverage given his pending role as chairman of the Appropriations Committee.  Mr. Rogers has joined other GOP leaders in pledging no-new-earmarks.

Constituting less than .05 percent (half of one percent) of the federal budget I perceive outrage over earmarks to be one of those symptoms that complicate diagnosis and treatment of the underlying disease.  In this particular case the pork barrel critiques of Mr. Rogers also obscure his substantive legislative record and specific interest in homeland security.

Full disclosure: from 2005 through 2007 I was Chairman of the Board of a company with a facility in Mr. Rogers congressional district.  As such I often participated in local economic development activities and met with Mr. Rogers or his staff.  During several of these discussions, homeland security was a topic.  While we would not have turned down an earmark sponsored by Mr. Rogers, the company I served did not receive such support. 

From this experience I came away with three strong impressions:

1. Mr. Rogers is an accessible and intelligent man.  He has a particular interest in homeland security and especially in how science and technology can be a force-multiplier.  In my first encounter with the Congressman he quizzed me on homeland security like the former prosecutor he is.  He knows the issues. He understands the complications. He is sophisticated in his strategic approach to homeland security challenges.  He listens.  This personal impression was confirmed by watching him question witnesses in subcommittee hearings. 

2. Mr. Rogers is consistently bipartisan in his approach.  The old saw says there are three parties on Capitol Hill: Republicans, Democrats, and Appropriators. While Mr. Rogers is certainly conservative in most ways, appropriators tend to be pragmatic and less partisan.   This approach served him well in the Minority, it is likely to mark his return to the Majority and to leadership of the full Appropriations Committee.  Chairing Appropriations has been a long-time personal ambition.  On December 31 he will turn 73.  Mr. Rogers is not looking to squander this opportunity.  Leaving a meaningful legacy is one of the more constructive motivations.

3. Like all members of  Congress and most busy professionals,  Mr. Rogers is — at least in part – a creature of his staff and contacts.  Every staff member I met was smart, competent, and wildly over-worked.  Both on Capitol Hill and back in the District what I observed was a tendency for the most narrowly self-interested people to be the most assertive and effective communicators, proposers, and planners.  On several occasions I saw senior public servants choke and defer when Mr. Rogers or his staff were entirely prepared to listen to alternatives.  In retrospect I was one of a whole host of folks who should have — could have — pushed harder on key issues of homeland security.  My hesitation — our hesitation, or cynicism, or laziness, or disdain — just offers opportunity to others who are more willing and ready claim a Congressman’s attention.

Because homeland security — the mission, not the budget per se – is important to me, I will be glad to see Mr. Rogers become Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.   He is more interested in and better able to meaningfully engage homeland security than any other serious candidate for the leadership role.  

As always in democracies — even those with republican constitutions — the quality of leadership will reflect and largely depend on the quality of those who choose to seriously engage the process.

Last Thursday, September 30, the President reported to Congress on the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Courtesy of the American Federation of Scientists Secrecy News Project, you may now read the report for yourself.   It is a 1.25 megabyte download from: http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/wh-afpak.pdf

I hope we will all give the document substantive consideration, right now a comment on process:  It is reasonable — especially in a republic — for the executive to engage in discreet and confidential conversations with the legislature.  In principle, I have no problem with the practice and, in fact, would prefer to see a more principled pattern of such practice.

In this particular case everyone in the system — White House, Hill, and the Fourth Estate — knew this pdf would eventually be available on the net.  It does not advance confidence in our system for this document to be gamed and made available by a non-governmental source.   Give advance copies to Congress, fine.  But in my judgment this kind of report should have been released by the White House not later than Thursday, October 7.

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Monday, October 11 Update

The AfPak report strikes me as a reasonably accurate and professional account of what is happening and not happening in-theater.   If its Congressional readers learned anything new, they have not been paying attention. (Which again highlights that such reports ought to be provided by the government to the governed in order to facilitate their consent or dissent.) 

The report is operationally focused.  There are strategic implications — and rather clear implications — but they are understated or unstated.

In terms of Pakistan, the reader comes away with a sense that anything anyone might claim as true is  exquisitely precarious.   The political situation is especially surreal.  That this warped reality includes the world’s sixth largest military, nuclear weapons, and arguably the core of world terrorism reinforces the sense that Salvador Dali might be more effective than Richard Holbrooke as our AfPak special representative (and, of course, Dali is dead).

A few recent headlines to further complicate the context:

Pakistan’s nuclear arms push angers America — Pakistan has been secretly accelerating the pace of its nuclear weapons programme, infuriating the US which is trying to cap worldwide stocks of fissile material and improve fraught relations with a fragile ally in the Afghanistan war. (More from the Telegraph)

Non-proliferation: A nuclear exchange — More than 100 cold-war era research reactors run on uranium pure enough to be used in a nuclear weapon. But switching to safer fuel isn’t easy. (More from Nature)

Member of AQ worked at six US nuclear plants  —  A New Jersey man accused of joining Al Qaeda in Yemen spoke openly of militant views while working at American nuclear plants, according to a report by the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that proposes tightening personnel security rules. (More from the New York Times and the NRC IG (redactions)) 

           Premonition of Civil War by Salvador Dali

The existing [congressional] standing committees have expertise and decades of experience with the policy problems of which [homeland] security is now a component, and their continued involvement in the development of legislation that affects their traditional jurisdiction is a possibility. Their leverage lies in the legislative process. — Congressional Research Service “Homeland Security: Compendium of Recommendations Relevant to House Committee Organization and Analysis of Considerations for the House, and 109th and 110th Congresses Epilogue;” Updated March 2, 2007, p.58

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The leaders of the Department of Homeland Security now appear before 88 committees and subcommittees of Congress. — 9/11 Commission Report, 2004, p. 421

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The … diffused and unfocused congressional jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, and homeland security in general, not only imposes extraordinary burdens on the Department, but makes it far more difficult for the Congress to guide the Department’s activities in a consistent and focused way that promotes integration and eliminates programmatic redundancies, and advances implementation of a coherent national homeland security strategy. — “Recommendations of the Select Committee on Homeland Security on Changes to the Rules of the House of Representatives with Respect to Homeland Security Issues” 2004, pp. 1-2.

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Currently, nearly 90 congressional committees and subcommittees oversee [DHS]. With this many overseers, on a given day, there is a good chance that someone at DHS is being asked to testify before at least one of them. — Michael Chertoff, “Homeland Security: Assessing the First Five Years,” 2009, p. 182.

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DHS … answers to eighty-six committees or subcommittees…. I suppose we should have been flattered by all the attention DHS and its components received from Congress. Certainly, we broke the modern record — and perhaps all records — for the number of times people in leadership positions of a federal department were cordially invited to take their seats in front of an array of senators or representatives, pour glasses of water, clear their throats, and testify. Tom Ridge, “The Test of Our Times, 2009, p. 259.

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In the 110th Congress, 108 committees and subcommittees [oversaw] the Department of Homeland Security.

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“Do you know who made you?”

“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh.

The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added,

“I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852, Chapter 20

Three announcements came out of the White House on Monday, the combination of which got me thinking, “What exactly are we protecting?” As depressing as this thought seemed, I managed to find one item of news heartening enough to give me hope that things might improve even if they keep getting worse.

First, President Obama, speaking in Austin, Texas, responded to growing concern about the decline in American competitiveness marked by the number of people graduating (or not) from its institutions of higher education. His speech announced no new policy initiatives. He did, however, highlight several programs launched earlier as evidence of his efforts to prepare students for success in the workplace. These include the Race-to-the-Top K-12 funding competition launched by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which asks states to throw under-performing schools and their faculties under the bus to qualify for federal financial assistance. Reforms to student loans, Pell Grant rules and college tax credits for working families were also cited as efforts to improve academic performance and economic competitiveness.

Later in the day, I received a request from President himself on my Facebook wall asking me to contact my representatives in Congress to let them know I wanted the Republicans to stop blocking progress on the jobs bill passed by the Senate on August 5, which helps states cover the costs of Medicaid and funds the salaries of police, firefighters and teachers. As Nobel-laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out in his Monday column, state and local governments have slashed spending since the beginning of the recession. Few areas of local service have been held harmless from furloughs, layoffs and service cuts. Public safety services were among the last to suffer serious budget cutbacks, but few communities can afford to maintain that position these days since local tax revenues always lag any recovery and the signs of such a rebound are weak at best.

Then, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that he is taking drastic steps to reduce military spending by as much as $100 billion over the next five years by eliminating one major command, freezing senior uniformed and civilian executive appointments and curtailing spending on contractors. It should come as no surprise that Gates is interested in a strategic reassessment of our defense investment profile with the U.S. struggling to “win” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while simultaneously countering threats posed by unstable regimes in Iran and North Korea despite spending what some estimates say is almost as much of its wealth on defense as all other nations combined.

Few areas of state and local government performance are harder to measure than public safety. At the same time, like defense these services have become all but sacrosanct, especially since 9/11 and the fear it provoked took hold of our society. Even those who were not moved by the threat of terrorism seemed moved enough by the sacrifices made by the men and women of New York’s emergency services to support their brothers and sister in blue elsewhere. Measuring educational outcomes using test scores, graduation rates and other objective measures has proven controversial even among those who do not consider the task all that difficult. After all, how can we truly assess the value of knowledge? Similar problems plague our assessment of efficiencies in national defense. What price can we put on our national security?

Sadly, the answer to this last question is all too clear. Our investments in government expenditures aimed at protecting us have only helped make us more vulnerable. Unlike investments in education and basic infrastructure, money invested in defense and protective services produces a very small multiplier. Even if you do not consider those who receive government salaries for delivering these services “special interests,” you would find it hard to come up with a convincing argument that these expenditures stimulate creativity, innovation or productivity in the broader economy that enhances national competitiveness. On the contrary, efforts to leverage defense spending to reduce our balance of payments deficit by exporting military technology put weapons and tactical capabilities in the hands of others who wreaked havoc in regions we consider key to our national security interests while arming those who now have become our adversaries.

Imagine how differently things might have turned out if we had invested only fraction of the money squandered on arming other nations and ourselves educating our own people and those in the countries we sought to liberate. Greg Mortensen has wondered just this. His book Three Cups of Tea has become required reading in some commands as our troops on the ground wonder how to defeat insurgents. If they follow Mortensen’s advice, this will involve building schools and educating women to develop their capacity to participate fully in shaping the future of their societies.

I know these are not either/or choices. We must spend on both defense and development. Judging by the quantum spent on security and defense compared to other programs though one might reasonably wonder what we aspire to in America. Are we a people who live in hope of a brighter, better tomorrow. Or have we been overtaken by a sense of impending doom, convinced that we are slowly sliding toward moral, cultural or environmental oblivion?

Amidst all this bad (or least not so good) news, I was heartened by one new item over the past couple of days. It seems researchers have confirmed what some might consider counter-intuitive: It seems those who identify themselves as being of lower socio-economic status are considerably more generous than those who think of themselves as better off. Researchers suggested this might be due in some small part to the fact that those who consider themselves poor are more likely to identify with those in need.

I suppose that finding should give us at least some small hope in the event the economy does not improve soon. Maybe with less to share we’ll be more willing to spread it around a bit if only so we won’t have to watch each other suffer.

I would like to believe though that we can become more compassionate and caring without suffering greater economic hardship in the short-term. But doing so will require us to rethink what we are doing and how we are going about it. For most of the post-war period, we have employed strategies consistent with a male-dominated worldview that takes an aggressive posture toward protection. Maybe it’s time we tried a more female-friendly, nurturing approach to protecting our interests? We can start simply enough by investing in the future of the world’s children and their mothers.

P.S.: It seems the former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary and University of California professor Robert Reich seems to have been thinking similar thoughts today; read his blog post at RobertReich.org.

Yesterday was a fine day for watching national homeland security leaders.

The day started (for me) watching the House Committee on Homeland Security hearings: “Flight 253: Learning Lessons from an Averted Tragedy.”

It ended with President Obama’s State of the Union talk.

The hearings were nominally about “what happened on December 25th on Northwest Flight 253, how it happened, and what can be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

But it was also a display of the multiple varieties of leadership that fills some of the homeland security ecosystem.

Democrats and Republicans complained about Secretary Napolitano’s absence from the hearings.

Her representative, Jane Holl Lute, Deputy Secretary of DHS, stayed forcefully and persistently on the “layers of security” message.

Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the Department of State, leaned into the microphone smoothly, but a tad unctuously, assuring everyone that improvements had been made since Christmas.

Michael E. Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), seemed impatient to get back to work, instead of spending  three hours in a meeting that could have been finished in maybe 30 minutes .

Chairman Bennie G. Thompson and ranking member Peter T. King showed different ways to lead — one conducted like he was directing an orchestra; the other barked.

Peter DeFazio, a democrat, praised the former leader of TSA, Kip Hawley, and complained about a “wacko republican” who believes unionizing TSA employees will threaten national security.

Paul Broun, a republican, said Napolitano should resign and be replaced by “someone who’s not in LaLa land.”

Candice Miller reminded people that Attorney General Eric Holder helped defend Guantanomo terrorists, and for free.

Bill Pascrell pointed out this was the 4th congressional hearing held on essentially the same topic.  He claimed the bureaucracy — especially in the intelligence community — is as great a threat to national security as anyone else.  Intelligence is a bureaucratic nightmare, he said, no one’s accountable.  “That’s why we create bureaucracies.”

Sheila Jackson-Lee, Daniel Lungren, Al Green, Pete Olson, Yvette Clarke, Dina Titus, Mary Jo Kilroy, Charles Dent, Christopher Carney, Michael McCaul, Emanuel Cleaver, Mark Souder, Mike Rogers, and Jane Harman all took a brief turn channeling the voice of the American people, or at least the voices they hear.

They spoke about controlling and sharing intelligence, whether anyone was disciplined for the December 25th incident (not yet), what the State Department does, the role of the NCTC, Miranda rights for the attacker, “preparing, not scaring” the public, “the part of the system that did work was the aware public on Flight 253,” how to revoke a visa, using dogs that can smell “the vapor wake” when someone walks past, the fiscal obligations of other nations to assist us, continuing vulnerabilities, whether NCTC has the money, people and authority it needs (no), new and improved technology, are Custom agents trained to interrogate terrorists, we’ve tried terrorists before in criminal court and it worked out ok, how to avoid political correctness, how to build a system that will be able to detect an adaptive enemy that tomorrow might show up as a blond Anglo Saxon, and whether anything could be done to make sure Congressman John Lewis is not always getting hit by secondary screening.

I’m not sure what I learned about homeland security leadership watching the hearings.  But it did strike me that the representatives are as pressed for time, and their cognitive bandwidth as compressed, as everyone else in the complexity that is the homeland security enterprise.

I’m not sure I know what the country wants or expects from its homeland security leaders.

“Do the best you can,” one of the congressman said.  Anything less is unacceptable.

I think that’s what all the people at the hearing were doing: the best they could.

Obama outlined his idea about the best we can do toward the end of his speech:

Throughout our history, no issue has united this country more than our security. Sadly, some of the unity we felt after 9/11 has dissipated. We can argue all we want about who’s to blame for this, but I’m not interested in re-litigating the past. I know that all of us love this country. All of us are committed to its defense. So let’s put aside the schoolyard taunts about who’s tough. Let’s reject the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values. Let’s leave behind the fear and division, and do what it takes to defend our nation and forge a more hopeful future — for America and for the world.

All in all — amidst symbol, stupidity, caring, tediousness, anger, posturing, thinking, reacting, recommitting, hoping –  it was a pretty good day for bananafish.

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UPDATE

J.D. Salinger, 91, Is Dead

It was a bizarre coincidence.

Last night I used J.D. Salinger’s “A Fine Day For Bananafish” (later published as a “Perfect Day for Bananafish”) indirectly, as a broad theme for the post.  I hadn’t thought about Salinger or Bananafish for maybe a decade.  Not sure why I thought about him last night.

Around 11 AM Pacific time today (January 28th), I learned J.D. Salinger died in his New Hampshire home.

I had nothing to do with his death.

I hope no one criticizes the New Hampshire authorities  for failing to connect the dots.

Monday’s New York Times featured an article by William J. Broad on renewed collaboration between U.S. intelligence agencies and climate change scientists. Efforts to exchange arctic surveillance photos and other data for improved understanding of the national security impacts of climate change seem eminently sensible.  (See also the CIA press release on the opening of the Center for Climate Change and National Security.)

Why then do some overseers in Congress, like Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso object to the idea? Well, for starters, they got their way on this question for the past eight years while President George W. Bush and former Wyoming Congressman, Halliburton CEO, and Vice President Dick Cheney were in office. The recently restarted program known as Medea – Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis – was suspended on their watch.

Economic, social, and political instability in oil-rich Muslim nations is among the biggest potential national security challenges presented by global climate change. At the same time, growing concern about the impacts of ice melt and habitat loss on northern climes and their fragile ecosystems has influenced the debate on drilling and exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other remote regions.

The circumstances attending such instability strike most of us as particularly bad news. But that is not the case for those with a vested interest in America’s energy addiction. Enabling instability suits them just fine. Driving up the price of energy makes exploration in previously unthinkable places more attractive and indeed competitive. Defense contractors benefit from our sense of insecurity and our desire to arm our enemies’ enemies.

The U.S. government, on the other hand, gains very little from these exchanges. We face a world in which the effects of climate change drive up the costs of combating terrorism while fueling the cause of extremists seeking to recruit and convert new radicals.

But as Broad’s article makes clear, not all of the consequences of climate change, at least in the arctic region, should strike opponents of this renewed collaboration as negative. Barring international agreements or other new regulations, melting sea ice will facilitate navigation and open access to previously untapped fish stocks and mineral reserves.

According to sources quoted in the article, the fiscal impacts of this program are negligible. U.S. spy agencies maintain extensive sensor networks that produce a very detailed picture of conditions in the arctic region where the effects of climate change have already become quite apparent. The scientists with whom intelligence agencies work receive degraded imagery and must hold appropriate security clearances. In exchange, they aid the country in achieving a better understanding of the world in which we and our children will live.

For once, by bringing our spies in from the cold, it seems we might just be fighting the next war instead of the last one. The next question we must ask ourselves is what we will do with the new information produced by this partnership and the insights it yields.

More information on national security and climate change is available from these sources:

CNA Analysis & Solutions

Council on Foreign Relations

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

At first I thought they were being funny.

“Let’s hold a hearing about measuring preparedness and do something wacky to see if anyone’s paying attention.  Let’s attack something for being subjective.  And use subjective data to support our claims.”

On Tuesday, the Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response held a hearing titled “Preparedness: What has $29 billion in homeland security grants bought and how do we know?” [You can read the prepared testimony and watch a video of the hearings here].

During the hearings, members of Congress criticized DHS for using a particular assessment tool — something called “Cost to Capability.” Otherwise known as C2C

The primary criticism: the tool was too subjective.

And what data were offered to demonstrate how subjective the tool was?

Opinions of the committee members.  Opinions of witnesses. Opinions of constituents.

Two examples (with my emphasis):

The tool “… remains entirely subjective. Grantees are simply asked to guess the impact of the grants on their grants.” said Chairman Henry Cuellar (according to his prepared remarks).

“I am … concerned that the tool requires a subjective judgment of our base capabilities and perhaps more importantly how much an investment has increased a capability,” said the unfailingly gracious Dave Maxwell, Director and State Homeland Security Adviser of Arkansas’ Department of Emergency Management.

Were Cuellar and Maxwell offering objective or subjective assessments?  Aren’t opinions — even informed opinions — subjective?

If they were being subjective, what’s so bad about subjectivity?  Why do intelligent, well-meaning people seem to be at war with it?
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Tuesday’s hearings were not a joke.  Anyone interested in this topic can see a dozen thoughtful, knowledgeable and concerned people struggling over this very wicked problem: “What has $29 billion in homeland security grants bought and how do we know?”

Those are important questions.  They seem ripe for what FEMA Deputy Administer Tim Manning later described as “rigorous analysis and the development of precise metrics which will enable us to connect dollars spent to results achieved and ultimately to improvements in preparedness.”

How hard could it be to figure out some objective way to answer those questions?

“I thought C-2-C was supposed to get rid of the guesswork.” said Chairman Cuellar.
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No wonder he thought that.  Here’s how C2C was marketed:

With the tools generated by the C2C Initiative, [homeland security] grantees will be able to maximize their local preparedness investment strategy with respect to the Nation’s Homeland Security priorities. By design, these tools will adapt to changes in the Nation’s Homeland Security Strategy, translating national priorities into a clear prioritization of capabilities-based investments that all levels of government can use. C2C tools will inform grantees’ use of limited grant funding and better measure how grants increase the capability of States and local communities to respond to all-hazards.

Tools, maximize, preparedness, strategy, adapt, priorities, prioritization, capabilities-based, investment, limited funding, better measures, all-hazards — one can hear buzzers going off all over the place.

Whatever C2C is supposed to do, one is comforted by the promise that it will provide tools.  Tools are things we can hold in our hands.  We use tools to fix things.  So C2C will fix things.  It will fix the thorny problem of how to measure preparedness.

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I do not want to add to what Cuellar described at the end of the hearings as “a tsunami of concerns” about C2C.  In my view, C2C is only the latest iteration of the quest to measure preparedness — the homeland security equivalent of trying to turn straw into gold.

In 2003, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 commanded that there be an annual status report of the nation’s preparedness.

I do not believe that command was ever obeyed.  But I do know of a half dozen pilot efforts to figure out how to do it.

In 2006, the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act reissued the command as a requirement to establish a “comprehensive system to assess, on an ongoing basis, the Nation’s prevention capabilities and overall preparedness.”

Three years later, from C 2 shining C, the nation still waits to find out. (I am sure I am not the first to make that horrible pun. Still, I do apologize.)
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Congressman Cuellear wrote his 1998 doctoral dissertation on government performance: “A Comparative Analysis of Legislative Budget Oversight: Performance Based Budgeting In The American States.” He volunteered to help FEMA and offered what he called “free advice” (on a single piece of paper) about how to measure preparedness: figure out the mission and what preparedness means, determine your goals, your strategy, your performance measures….

Really smart people have worked on this wicked problem for six years. If it were as straight forward as Dr. Cuellear suggests, perhaps it would have been done already.

That national preparedness hasn’t been measured – in spite of major efforts to do so — ought to count as objective data to support the hypothesis that perhaps it cannot be done.
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Cueller said (regarding C2C) “It’s better to not defend something that’s not working.”

Maybe those words should be directed to those who believe we can measure preparedness objectively.

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Can we try something different?

Perhaps an approach could be built around blatantly subjective impressions of preparedness.  The impressions would come from the professionals charged by their constituents with the mission to make sure their communities and the nation are prepared and resilient. Maybe we can trust that — in general — they know what they are talking about.

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Here’s an example: One of the witnesses was Kathy B. Crandall, Director of Homeland Security & Justice Programs from the Columbus, Ohio Urban Area.  She said, in response to a question, that “Yes, we have solved the [interoperable communications] problems in the Columbus urban area.”

You read that correctly.  She actually said the interoperability problem in her jurisdiction had been solved.

Was she being subjective?  I think she was. She offered no objective data to support that claim.

But I believed her.

Should other people believe her?  Can we build a national assessment program around trusting the “word” of people in a position to know whether or not they are prepared?

But what if the people we ask have other motives?  What if they are just in it for the money and will say whatever they think they need to say?  What if they lie?

On the other hand, what if they are giving as accurate a picture of preparedness as we are ever likely to get?

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The War on Subjectivity is fundamentally about not trusting each other.  I can’t trust what you tell me because, being human, you probably have some hidden motive for what you’re saying.  Or worse, you may not even know what you’re talking about.

And you can think the same about me.

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Preparedness — as the participants in Tuesday’s hearings acknowledged in one way or another — is not an “external object” subject to the same kinds of measurement processes as physical objects.  Preparedness – like the resilience Phil has been writing about this week – is a subjective concept.

We can objectify it as much as we care to.  But like the term “homeland security,” preparedness means different things to different people.  That’s not likely to change anytime soon.
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So what has $29 billion in homeland security grants bought and how do we know?

Tim Manning provided a compelling answer:

Intuitively, we could answer the question “Are we better prepared?” with a “yes.” We could validly point to the amount and type of equipment that has been purchased, the physical security improvements that have been made, and the planning and training improvements that have occurred, and conclude that we are better prepared. Our national, state, local, tribal and territorial efforts have certainly increased our interagency planning across the spectrum of preparedness. This is in itself an achievement that greatly improves our ability to act decisively in a crisis.

I think it’s more than intuition that allows one to say that.  Talk with any experienced practitioner in a homeland security-related activity and ask if we are better prepared for a variety of events than we were on September 10, 2001.

When I ask that question, the subjective but consistent response is almost always yes.

Ask the same question about equipment, training, collaboration, information and intelligence sharing, border and transportation security, immigration, interoperability, critical infrastructure protection, private sector preparedness, attention to privacy and civil rights concerns, terrorism finance, weapons of mass destruction — pick your list.

Are we better prepared now than we were on September 10, 2001?

When I ask, the answer is almost always yes.

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Don’t get me wrong.  There is still a lot to do in all of these areas.  I have objective evidence to prove that assertion.

And while we’re at it, the preparedness grants I want for my community ought to get priority attention from Congress, DHS and FEMA.

But that’s an argument for a different hearing.
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Our country has enough wars going on right now.  We do not need another one.

I propose we open negotiations with Subjectivity.  We should seek at least a tentative peace with it.

I believe once we trust — and verify — what Subjectivity has to say, we will learn that we are an increasingly prepared nation. And homeland security can move forward from there.

Of course that’s just an opinion.

As Jessica Herrera-Flanigan pointed out in her Tuesday post, a Homeland Security authorization bill has never been sent to the President for signature.  In its absence the power of appropriators is amplified, as if appropriators were not already plenty powerful.

In prior posts I have offered an exegesis of what has been said by President Obama, Secretary Napolitano, and John Brennan, the Deputy National Security Advisor.  To be an exegete is to closely analyze what is said or written by another in order to derive guidance. 

Appropriators don’t leave exegesis to others.  The official Conference Report of the House and Senate regarding the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2010 is 149 pages long (and a 12 megabyte download).  It is followed by a semi-official (for lack of a better term) ”Joint Explanatory Statement”  that is 12o-plus  pages long (depending on whether you include the list of earmarks).

A House-Senate Conference highlights agreements and resolves differences between related legislation passed by each chamber of Congress. In doing this, provisions of each body’s legislation is adjusted with the agreement of conferees from both bodies. There is much horse trading both before and during a conference.  If the conference is successful, a compromise measure is presented to both House and Senate for passage.  The House approved the Homeland Security Conference Report on Thursday afternoon.

The explicit purpose of the Joint Explanatory Statement is to set-out, “the effects of the action agreed upon by the managers and recommended in the accompanying conference report.”  It is not the law, but it has at least as much power as the law.  I have usually been more interested in what is in the ”Joint Explanatory Statement” or its equivalent than in the law itself.

I am usually looking for a single obscure sentence, something that most others will not even recognize as having importance.  But I know — and senior Hill staff and senior public servants know — that this represents the formidable intent of a conferee or conferees.  I assume there are dozens of such discreetly pregnant sentences.  I recognize a few in this explanation.

At times formidable intent is a matter of how much money goes where.  So, for example, on page 67 we read,

The conference agreement provides $64,179,000 for NCSD Strategic Initiatives as proposed by the House instead of $57,679,000 as proposed by the Senate. As discussed in the House report, the total amount includes: $3,500,000 for a Cyber Security Test Bed and Evaluation Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; $3,500.000 for cyber security training at the University of Texas at San Antonio; $3,000,000 for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) at the New York Office of State Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination; $3,000,000 for the Power and Cyber Systems Protection, Analysis, and Testing Program at the Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho; $500,000 for Virginia’s Operational Integration Cyber Center of Excellence (VOICCE) in Hampton, Virginia: and $100,000 for the Upstate New York Cyber Initiative at Clarkson University.

Some will immediately see this as “pork.” I am not so inclined.  Since many of my family and friends raise hogs, I don’t have a prejudice against pork.  Depends on how it is raised and slaughtered.  The proof is in the tasting.

On other occasions the amount of funding is not mentioned, but a preferred “partner” is identified. On page 79 the explanation reads, “The conferees direct FEMA to consider utilizing the National Virtual Translation Center (NVTC) to enhance its translation services. FEMA is to report to the Committees, as specified in the House report, on possible uses of NVTC.”

You can anticipate the outcome.  But, again, I have seen this power-of-the-purse be constructive, even innovative and creatively disruptive.  I have also seen the power cynically abused.

But especially in the absence of an authorization bill, the guidance given through these explanations can go well-beyond what we might reasonably expect of appropriators. The following is excerpted from page 76 of the conferees self-exegesis.

The conferees recognize that since September 11, 2001 there has been a rush to increase, restructure, and reinvest in preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation policies and capabilities. This effort was reemphasized after Hurricane Katrina. Major preparedness and response policies have been developed or reshaped including: the National Preparedness Guidance; National Incident Management System; the National Response Framework; Comprehensive Planning Guidance; Disaster Housing Strategy; and Hazard Mitigation Assistance. Countless guidance documents have been issued to address specific issues or disasters. Additionally, over $27,000,000,000 has been invested by the federal government in grants, and an untold amount at the local and State level. These investments have provided equipment to make our public infrastructure safer, our first responders better protected and prepared to respond to all hazards, and to ensure a more coordinated effort among the levels of government. Efforts to fully assess these investments and improved capabilities have not yet come to fruition, though disparate attempts to find a more comprehensive measure through programs such as Cost-to-Capability, the Target Capabilities List, and the Comprehensive Assessment System are ongoing.

The conferees note that tremendous time and fiscal investments into preparedness have been made to date and believe it is time to take stock of such efforts to find ways to ensure the most efficient investments are made in the future. The reality of a constricted economy and competing interests make it imperative that current efforts related to homeland security and all-hazards response and recovery be streamlined. Therefore, the National Preparedness Directorate (NPD), in cooperation with the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, shall lead the administrative effort of a Local, State, Tribal, and Federal preparedness task force. The task force is charged with making recommendations for all levels of government regarding: disaster and emergency guidance and policy; federal grants; and federal requirements, including measuring efforts. The task force shall especially evaluate: which policies and guidance need updating, and the most appropriate process by which to update them; which grant programs work the most efficiently and where programs can be improved; and the most appropriate way to collectively assess our capabilities and our capability gaps. Representation on the task force shall include: decision makers and practitioners from all disciplines including, but not limited to, firefighters, law enforcement, emergency management, health care, public works, development organizations, mitigation, and information technology, elected officials, the private sector. NPD is directed to brief the Committees within 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act on its approach to establishing this task force and milestones for accomplishment.

I am not questioning the potential value of such a task force.  On the face of it, sounds like an entirely reasonable idea.  I suppose there may be a couple of discreetly pregnant sentences here as well, but too discreet for me to recognize.  Depending on who is appointed to the task force it might be cats fighting over scraps… or saints leading us to salvation.  Don’t know.  Will be interesting to see.

But I do question the wisdom of such a far-reaching endeavor emerging from the bowels of a conference this late in the process.  Someone recently said that reality can be layered, messy, inefficient, and randomly revealed.  This is true of most conference reports.  But that’s not the best benchmark for effective legislation.

CQ’s Rob Margetta posted a story last night, “Panel Worries Congress Isn’t Ready for Worst,” that reminds us of the “what ifs” of 9/11 – what if the Capitol and White House had been successfully hit?  What if that or another event was so catastrophic that it caused mass casualties among our political leadership? What if there were few to none left in Congress to legislate after such an event?

Margetta  profiles the Continuity of Government Commission, formed in 2003, by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institute, which has  “pushed for years for a constitutional amendment that would allow emergency interim appointments to replace members of Congress who are casualties of a catastrophic emergency.”

The Commission, co-chaired by former Senators Alan Simpson and David Pryor, issued its second report earlier this summer, which concluded that our nation’s current legal and constitutional framework is not well-suited for resisting a catastrophic attack on our nation’s Capitol.  As Margetta notes, the Commission gathered “in a largely empty conference room” this week to continue it push “for a constitutional amendment that would allow emergency interim appointments to replace members of Congress who are casualties of a catastrophic emergency.”

Currently, existing law does not readily allow such action as the Constitution provides that governors whose states have Congressional vacancies shall call for elections to fill such vacancies or, in the case of the Senate, may temporarily appoint persons, if state law allows.   Under this provision, House Members cannot be appointed, even temporarily.  As a result, in the event of a catastrophe, some states that have longer time-frames for calling and hold elections, could be left without representation.

To be fair, Congress has taken some action to deal with catastrophic circumstances debilitating its bodies. House Rule XX contains a requirement that if the “House shall be without a quorum due to catastrophic circumstances,” then quorum shall be determined based upon the provisional number of the House.  This “provisional number” shall be the number of Members who are able to respond.

That said, while the House may be “operational” in the very basic sense of the word, its legitimacy and functionality could easily be called into question, especially if controversial measures are undertaken.  AEI’s Norm Ornstein, who played a critical role in putting together the Commission, has written extensively on this issue.  As he noted in Roll Call column on October 4, 2001 in an article entitled, “What If Congress Were Obliterated? Good Question:“

Even if it could convene, for Congress to operate under those circumstances for long–passing sweeping anti-terrorist laws, emergency appropriations and economic recovery measures–would tax its legitimacy, particularly if there were much greater partisan and regional differences among the surviving (and ambulatory) lawmakers than existed in the full House.

Imagine the uproar if the USA Patriot Act were passed today with 15 votes.  What if economic recovery funding were determined by a handful of Members concentrated in one region?

A handful of proposals have floated around since 9/11 to overcome these potential issues. Most of these were last seriously considered in 2003.  The House, after rejecting a proposed constitutional amendment,  actually approved legislation (H.R. 2844) that would require states to hold special elections within 45 days after the announcement of vacancies resulting from a catastrophe.  The Senate, however, did not take up the House bill or move any of the bills introduced in the Senate on the issue.

Eight years after 9/11, we’ve failed to address effectively one of the most devastating gaps in our nation’s security.  There is no question it is a wonkish and inside the beltway issue to many, especially when compared with first responder funding, security at our airports, and threats to our computer networks.   It is, however, one of the most local issues out there on the homeland front, as residents of almost every district of the House would not want to be without their voice should an incident occur.

Our nation has been fortunate enough (or prepared, depending on who you ask) to have not been successfully attacked again.  It would serve the U.S. government and citizens well for there to be renewed dialogue on the issues that the Commission is calling to be addressed.

President Obama nominated Tara O’Toole as Under Secretary for the Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this summer.   While approved by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and sent to the full Senate, her nomination was one that did not make it through in the final days before the Congressional August recess.

If and when Dr. O’Toole is confirmed, she will have a significant job ahead of her at S&T.  Tasked with being the research and development arm of DHS, S&T has a budget of nearly $933 million (FY 2009) and is in charge of research in such areas as Chemical/Biological, Infrastructure, Command, Control and Interoperability (CCI), Explosives and Maritime.  The Directorate also oversees the Department’s Centers of Excellence/University programs and runs partnerships with a number of the Energy Department’s labs.

S&T also oversees the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA),  an entity which has struggled to find its mission.  Originally, it was intended to be Homeland’s equivalent of the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a scientific arm that focuses on high-payoff, innovative, and potentially risky R&D.  HSARPA, in its early days, focused significantly on conventional R&D that was not cutting edge but potentially provided some better returns.  In the past year or so, there was a push to mold HSARPA into the DARPA model but it hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

One idea that Dr. O’Toole and others at DHS may want to consider as they take the helm is to create a “Grand Challenge” for HSARPA, similar to the well-known and successful DARPA Grand Challenge.   The DARPA Grand Challenge, for those not familiar, is a competition sponsored by DARPA to facilitate robotic development for national security purposes.  Teams from the robotics, automotive, and defense industries, as well as from academia and elsewhere, design autonomous ground vehicles to complete a course set up by DARPA, with the winners of the competition receiving cash prizes.  There have been three DARPA Challenges to date, with the Urban Challenge, held in 2007, offering prizes of $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000, respectively, to the top three teams.

The theory between the DARPA Grand Challenge is that it “mobilizes the technical community to accelerate research and development in critical national security technology areas.“   If that is the case, why not develop a Homeland Security Grand Challenge?

There are countless specific technological challenges in the homeland security space that need to be addressed.  The Department has continued to struggle with pairing technology with solutions in a number of areas, including in the areas of border security, transportation security, and infrastructure protection.   As a result, Congress continues to mandate deadlines for implementing certain programs – deadlines that the agency has not always been able to meet.

A few ideas on some potential HSARPA Challenge subjects:

• Technology to address the 100% maritime cargo scanning mandated by the “Implementing the 9/11 Commission’s Recommendations Act of 2007.”
• Improved technology for identifying weapons, liquids, explosives, and the like at TSA security screening points to facilitate quicker and more effective travel.
• Technology to improve border crossing times at the Southern and Northern Border Ports of Entry (POE), especially at peak travel times and during special events.
• Technology to improve perimeter and access security at critical infrastructures and federal government buildings.

Admittedly, there are a couple of private sector-run security challenges already in existence.  Those may be good for generally promoting emerging technologies for general homeland and national security purposes. They are not the same as a government-initiated challenge to a specific problem. If anything, those programs would compliment what the government could be doing to furthering security technologies.

In addition, there are companies who claim they have technologies that can address the issues described above.  Allowing those companies, along with others, to openly and transparently demonstrate capabilities in a “crisis” designed environment would go far in getting these technologies out of the lab and pilot programs and into the field.   This effort may also help Congress better understand what can and can’t be done with technology and what R&D still lies ahead.

Yesterday the Senate unanimously passed a measure that would triple non-military assistance to Pakistan (S. 962).  The House passed similar  legislation on June 11 (H.R. 1886).  A conference committee will now seek to resolve differences in the legislation, especially in regard to tougher House provisions for financial auditing and accountability.

The Senate measure provides $1.5 billion per year for five years in humanitarian and economic support.

Since mid-April roughly 2 million people have been displaced as a result of operations against neo-Taliban forces in the Swat valley.  Tens of thousands more are streaming out of South Waziristan where a sustained fight against Taliban, neo-Taliban, and al-Qaeda is expected in the next several days.

“In Pakistan, some 300,000 refugees are living outdoors, in tents or similar structures, said Michael Kocher, vice president of international programs for the International Rescue Committee.”

According to CNN, “extreme heat plagued Pakistan, with temperatures in May and June soaring past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). The heat is escalating the discomfort for many.”

“People are living in cramped situations, often unsanitary situations, and it’s very hot,” Kocher said. “In many places, there is not enough clean water or adequate sanitation. Heat exacerbates that problem.”

The refugee — or internally displaced persons (IDP) – camps are, however, only the tip of a sharp spear.  According to a report released yesterday by Refugees International, “the vast majority of the displaced – over 80 percent – are staying with host families who are quickly running out of resources. One aid organization has even reported ‘pockets of starvation’.”

The same report notes, not surprisingly, that “Jihadist groups” have begun to fill the assistance vacuum.  Taliban and their allies are providing food, shelter, and medical assistance where the Pakistan government, United Nations, and others are not.  The Taliban is also seeking to intimidate NGOs that are in place to leave.

For years the United States has urged Pakistan to be more aggressive against our adversaries along the Afpak border. These include several who have specifically threatened attacks on the United States.  Since mid-April, there has been a substantive change. Pakistan is fighting hard.  Our adversaries over-reached and they are paying the price.

But for our resilient foe, every crisis presents an opportunity.  The more Pakistanis who are displaced, the longer they are displaced, and the more difficult their displacement, the more opportunity is given our adversaries.

The annual budget of Pakistan, adopted Saturday, is roughly $36 billion.  Another $1.5 billion in non-military assistance from the US is not insignificant. But unless this funding is deployed quickly and effectively there is a real danger it will be entirely too little, too late.

The House and Senate bills, hyperlinked above, are worth reading.  Each are well-crafted pieces of legislation.  The legislative  requirements for audits and reports are entirely reasonable, if at times just a tad anal.  There is a very real concern the funds will be squandered by bureaucracy, corruption, and the purchase of military toys. (For Pakistan’s track-record in this regard, please read Pakistan on the Brink by Ahmed Rashid.)

But I hope and pray the House and Senate conferees have the ability, “to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and (have the) wisdom to know the one from the other.”  And to do so with remarkable alacrity.

As we learned in sixth grade social studies, the power of the purse is the premier legislative power.

Recently a Congressional Budget Office staffer was part of a discussion  about defense strategy.  He noted, “I pay less attention to what they say about strategy than where money is spent.”  Indeed.

The power of the purse is especially concentrated in the hands of Congressional appropriators and, if anything, as politics, finance, policy, and strategy has become more complex, the comparative power of  appropriators has grown. 

The House Appropriations Committee has reported out its Bill for the FY2010 DHS budget.  The 93 page document is easily available from the Committee website.

Often less readily available is the Report together with Additional Views of the House Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee.  But the International Association of Emergency Managers has made this 211 page document available on their website.  Thank you IAEM.

The Report together with Additional Views  and — even more — the later Appropriations Conference Report, where House and Senate differences are resolved, is a Talmud for our budgetary scripture.  The chairs of the appropriations sub-committees are known as the Cardinals and the reference is to the Vatican, not Busch Stadium.  How the Bill is interpreted by the Cardinals is often what matters most.  The Report together with Additional Views is a Magisterium for our secular republic.

For the next several weeks, at least once a week, HLSwatch will excerpt a passage from the Report together with Additional Views for the House Appropriations Committee’s DHS Bill.  It will be offered for your close reading and commentary.  If I feel compelled to comment I will join you “behind the wall” in the comment function.

I will proceed through the report as it is written, excerpting what seems interesting to me.  You are welcome to use the comment function to give attention to passages I neglect. 

At its best a Committee Report gives context and expands on Congressional intent.  At its worst a Committee Report seeks to manage specific Department decisions with little context or explanation. I expect we will encounter examples of each end of the continuum and everything in-between.

Starting on page 7 and continuing on page 8 of the Report together with Additional Views to accompany H.R. 2892:

In fiscal year 2008, DHS’s immigration agencies set several new records: deporting the most people in any year in U.S. history (369,409); holding more people in immigration detention per day than ever before (30,429); and initiating 1,191 worksite enforcement investigations that resulted in 6,287 arrests, the largest numbers since the formation of DHS. These figures reflect the billions of dollars the Committee has invested in immigration enforcement activities since 2003. But rather than simply rounding up as many illegal immigrants as possible, which is sometimes achieved by targeting the easiest and least threatening among the undocumented population, DHS must ensure that the government’s huge investments in immigration enforcement are producing the maximum return in actually making our country safer. A closer examination of the data may give some pause:

·         Since 2002, ICE has increased the deportation of non-criminals by 400 percent, while criminal deportations have only gone up 60 percent.

·         Of the nearly 370,000 deported by ICE in fiscal year 2008, less than a third, or 114,358, were ever convicted of a criminal offense. This, despite the fact that up to 450,000 criminals eligible for deportation are in penal custody in any given year, according to ICE estimates.

·         Less than one-quarter of those interdicted by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams last year were actually convicted of criminal offenses.

·         Over three-quarters of those arrested in ICE worksite enforcement raids last year were not charged with any crime.

Since 2007, the Committee has emphasized how ICE should have no higher immigration enforcement priority than deporting those who have proved their intent to do harm and have been convicted of serious crimes. In fiscal year 2008, ICE received $200 million to identify incarcerated criminal aliens and remove them once judged deportable. In fiscal year 2009, ICE was directed to use $1 billion of its resources to identify and remove aliens convicted of crimes, whether in custody or at large, and the Congress mandated this be ICE’s number one mission. In this bill, the Committee directs ICE to use $1.5 billion of its budget to expand efforts to locate and remove those criminal aliens who have proved they are a threat to our communities.

Last evening the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee completed its mark-up of the FY2010 DHS budget.

In his statement, Chairman Price explains, “Overall, the discretionary total in the bill for the Department of Homeland Security is $42.625 billion. This is $2.6 billion, or 6.5 percent, above the comparable fiscal year 2009 amount and about 1 percent below the Administration’s request when you exclude the cost of the Coast Guard overseas operations. This funding level reflects the hard decision Congress made in adopting this year’s budget resolution, which reduced overall funding levels by $10 billion. This Subcommittee had to take its share of that cut.”

In what may be the most significant difference from the administration’s budget request the sub-committee substantially increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations on the Southern Border. “The mark provides $97.8 million, or $27.8 million more than requested, for ICE programs that support the Southwest Border Initiative including: a $10 million expansion of ICE investigations of transnational gangs; an additional $10 million for ICE to improve investigations of cross-border weapons smuggling; $5 million more for ICE drug smuggling investigations; and an additional $2.8 million to expand human smuggling and trafficking investigations.”

In its latter years the Bush administration had, winking and nodding, discontinued many first responder grants. OMB knew that these would be restored by the Congress. This year the White House budget included these grants. “DHS requested $3.867 billion for grants to assist them with everything from planning to equipment. The Subcommittee strengthens that commitment to our State and local partners by providing $3.96 billion for comparable grant programs, including: $330 million for Emergency Management Performance Grants, our one true all-hazards grant program; $800 million for Firefighter Assistance Grants to equip our Fire Service and help stem the tide of layoffs that diminish public safety; $950 million for the State Homeland Security Grant Program; and $887 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative, which is security money targeted to the highest risks of terrorism.”

I always associate June mark-ups with my flower garden. The blossoms are beautiful. But the real story is deep in the soil. It is worth digging deeper into the details of both the mark-up and the eventual conference report.

A bit more — including the ever-popular summary table and earmark list – is available from the subcommittee’s website.

Presidential nominees receive a set of questions from “their” Senate Committee in advance of testimony.  In all but a few nominations — for example, supreme court justices — both questions and answers are rather pro forma. 

Pro forma does not mean unimportant.  The questions serve as markers for the Committee — or individual members — to signal their priorities.  For oversight committees the written Q&A is the beginning of a give and take that will continue while the nominee holds the position.

Many of the questions recently asked of Paul Stockton,  the President’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, related to roles within DoD, between DoD and the Department of Homeland Security, relationships with the National Guard, with the States, and so on. This collection of questions and answers highlights the complicated matrix of players, authorities, and responsibilities that make up homeland security. Today, for example, Secretary Napolitano is in Colorado Springs meeting with General Gene Renuart the head of USNORTHCOM.

The Committee questions I found most interesting are collected below.  In the original document these questions are scattered, but taken together may suggest a pattern of concern by the Committee.  In this case the questions — and their ongoing implications – may be more important than any current answer.

The Secretary of Defense has issued guidance to establish 3 CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces (CCMRFs) by October 1, 2010. Please provide your understanding of the roles and capabilities of the CCMRFs. Do you have any concerns about the ability of the Department to implement the Secretary’s direction to create the three CCMRFs on the prescribed schedule?

If confirmed, what would be your role with regard to the oversight, training, and employment of the CCMRFs?

Concerns have been raised about CCMRFs having a possible peacetime role that is inconsistent with other laws (such as Posse Comitatus). Do you agree that the purpose of CCMRFs is as a DOD support element for CBRNE incidents, and not for peacetime or civil disturbance missions?

There is currently considerable debate about the role the National Guard should play in defending the Homeland and in providing civil support assistance in Homeland security missions. The Commission on the National Guard and the Reserves recommended that the National Guard and Reserves be given “the lead role in and form the backbone of DOD operations in the homeland. Furthermore, DOD should assign the National Guard and Reserves homeland defense and civil support as a core competency consistent with their warfighting tasks and capabilities.” What role do you believe that the National Guard and Reserve should have in Homeland defense, as compared to the Active Component?

The Department of Defense has a mission to provide support to other federal agencies in the event of a domestic incident that requires a federal response, if directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits military personnel in a federal status from engaging directly in domestic law enforcement “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” Use of National Guard personnel in a state status is not prohibited by this act, but the use of military personnel, including the National Guard in a Federal status, is prohibited.

What is your understanding of the legal issues and authority associated with using National Guard and Reserve personnel in security roles within the United States?

In your opinion, does the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) or chapter 18 of title 10, U.S.C. (which regulates the use of the armed forces in support of civilian law enforcement and related activities) require amendment to deal with the present homeland security situation?

Under what circumstances do you believe that it is appropriate for the Department of Defense to provide assistance to law enforcement authorities in response to a domestic terrorist event? What about a non-terrorist event?

None of these are new issues.   Most of the issues are far from having a consensus answer.  Many of these questions are a kind of Pandora’s box of policy problems for ongoing attention.  Raising the question is helpful to keeping the issue on top of the list for both the Committee and the nominee.  Trying to provide an entirely complete answer, especially in public session, would open the box and release an army of curses on  the Committee and — especially — the nominee.  This is usually understood by all involved.

On Tuesday, though, Senator McCain found Mr. Stockton’s answers to some of the Latin America related questions “lacking.”  Here, perhaps, is an example:

Question:

In the past few years, Bolivia has experienced extreme political unrest and, lately, President Morales has taken some positions that could complicate U.S. relations with Bolivia. How do you assess the situation in Bolivia and, if confirmed, how would you seek to accomplish the goals of combating drug trafficking and enhancing military engagement goals?

Answer:

The situation in Bolivia is of concern. I have not had the opportunity to review the existing DoD plans, approaches, and actions for Bolivia. If confirmed, one of my priorities will be to review such plans, approaches, and actions and make recommendations to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

I understand a new set of answers to the questions of interest to Senator McCain will be provided. The lid on Pandora’s box will, however, be kept closed and the nominee will be confirmed to the position for which he is highly qualified.  Along the way the ranking member and his staff has made a point regarding their role in oversight, the minority’s continuing place in the process, and the ranking member’s own place.

The complete original set of advance policy questions and answers can be found at the Senate Armed Services Committee website (pdf).

In Wednesday testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, David Heyman, the President’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security (Policy), emphasized the need for catastrophic risk-readiness.

The following is excerpted from his prepared statement:

In the realm of homeland security, we may face challenges— naturally-occurring disasters and deliberate attacks—so large, they require the full force of our nation—of our cities, states, and federal government—to come together to respond. We face a continuing terrorist threat that is both nimble and dynamic. It exploits the seams of our society, operating in the gaps between bureaucratic notions of foreign and domestic, state and federal, civil and military. To counter these threats, I believe we must have in place a truly national homeland security enterprise—one that is as agile and seamless as those who seek to harm us, and as capable and responsive as needed to prevent, protect against, and, if needed, rapidly recover from all hazards, natural and deliberate. If I am confirmed, I will work every day to meet these challenges, and to help develop a national culture of preparedness that focuses on building more self-reliant communities and individuals. We must institute a greater real-time situational awareness capacity, which means better information sharing consistent with privacy and civil liberties. We need also need to institute a national risk-based planning capability. And we must extend and bolster our capacity at home, by working closely with our international partners abroad.

Mr. Heyman’s complete remarks and an archived webcast can be found on the Committee’s website.