The news out of Washington, DC this week is likely to focus on the failure of the “Supercommittee” to agree on a plan to cut the federal debt. Finger pointing has already begun and there is talk of undermining the automatic triggers put into law that were designed to cajole both sides into cutting a deal lest significant cuts into treasured programs and departments are made in budgets following 2012.

The focus of concern is the Defense Department and not entitlement programs, which troubles me for two reasons: (1) I’ve yet to read a non-biased argument (to give the most public of examples, it does seem to me that the opinion of the current Secretary of Defense is somewhat biased) explaining how even with the planned deep cuts into the Defense budget as called for in the triggers what near or plausibly near-peer competitor will leap ahead of us across any set of security parameters and seriously threaten our national security.  The cuts may drive a strategic reconsideration of our military footprint and national policies around the globe (for deeper thoughts on that subject, I would recommend Harvard professor Steve Walt’s blog: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/), but I do not see how they lead to North Korea, Iran, or even China coming to represent an existential threat.  That is not to say I favor this outcome–I would much rather see a considered package of defense and entitlement cuts in addition to sensible new revenue–but I am not concerned that it represents the end of U.S. military hegemony.

Oh yeah, (2): while obviously our national security is of utmost importance, the imbalance between publicly displayed concern by politicians about cuts in defense vs. entitlements saddens me at some level.  As a citizen of such a powerful nation I wonder, where is our concern about those among the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens?  How many additional fighter aircraft provide a return on defense investment in comparison to helping to provide for the health of a poor child who can perhaps then realize his or her full potential and contribute to our society? Or the health of those who have spent a lifetime contributing?

While these are general, and somewhat philosophical, observations a more concrete example of shortchanging the future recently occurred in…wait for it…Congress:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wanted to reshuffle its offices to establish a National Climate Service akin to the agency’s National Weather Service. It asked for no new funding to do so.

But in a political climate where talk of the earthly kind of climate can be radioactive, the answer in last week’s budget deal was “no.” Congress barred NOAA from launching what the agency bills as a “one-stop shop” for climate information.

Climate change is a particularly hot topic (pun intended), so this decision is not surprising. That does not make it any less disappointing.

Who would find such an office helpful?  Most likely some latte-drinking hippies:

Farmers are wondering when to plant. Urban planners want to know whether groundwater will stop flowing under subdivisions. Insurance companies need climate data to help them set rates.

The proposal has drawn wide-ranging support. NOAA’s administrator from 2001 to 2008 under Bush, Conrad C. Lautenbacher, urged Congress to approve it this year. So did scientific, weather and industry groups, including the Reinsurance Association of America, which represents huge firms that backstop home, car and life insurance companies.

This matters to homeland security because it impacts a wide range of risk areas:

Franklin W. Nutter, president of the RAA, said insurance companies are increasingly relying on the predictions of a changing future that NOAA provides. “It’s become clear that historic patterns of natural catastrophes — hurricanes, tornadoes, floods — are not good predictors of future risks,” he said. In other words, the future’s looking rougher.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change buttressed that message last week. A report from the world’s top climate science group warned of more extreme weather, more frequent droughts, worse downpours and more dramatic flooding.

Sometimes relatively small investments now can contribute to significant future savings.  Is this an example of preparedness, mitigation, or both?  Whatever box one wishes to throw it in, this decision seems to undercut our resilience.

At the very least, this decision must contribute to cutting government spending, right?

After the deal, which passed Congress last week, a House Appropriations Committee news release implied that Congress had saved $322 million in fiscal year 2012 by nixing the climate service.

The reality: Congress is still giving NOAA those funds for climate research and data delivery. But they’ll be distributed across the agency instead of consolidated under an umbrella climate service. The hundreds of millions in savings trumpeted by the Republican-led Appropriations Committee are an illusion.

Perhaps later this week there will be news that for which one can feel thankful.

Last week, I attended the Northeast Conference on Public Administration. The conference focused on efforts to build trust and confidence in public service. In principle, I have nothing against trust and confidence, but as last week’s post probably made clear, I think these feelings only get you so far.

Several theorists suggest that trust and confidence is an important prerequisite of democracy legitimacy. But practitioners know the absence of trust is often a prime mover among the disaffected who show up at public meetings to influence officials. It should come as no surprise then that the more involved someone is in the political and administrative processes of government, the more likely they are to have trust and confidence in the outcome of public processes and those who make them.

Most of the distrust in government and public officials stems from the sense that these individuals and institutions are increasingly removed from the experiences of those they serve and the effects of the decisions they make. Firefighters, teachers, nurses, and cops often enjoy public approval ratings far higher than politicians because they have intimate contact with people, and those with whom they come into contact have little or no understanding of what they actually do or how they do it. As such, routine exposure to the good works of public officials does not necessarily translate into public support much less political power.

This begs the question then, what is public trust and confidence good for and how can public officials, especially homeland security practitioners, build it and use it to achieve important public purposes? For starters, we should recognize that what people say they want and what these desires mean often requires clarification.

I work in the fire service, where people often express their expectations of us as follows:

Speed — get there quickly.

Relevance — do the right thing.

Accuracy — do things right.

I imagine that these same expectations apply to many other aspects of the homeland security enterprise. Who wouldn’t like to get through passenger screening at the airport quickly, while knowing that the screening procedures were both the minimum necessary as well as sufficient to prevent any acts of terrorism from occurring?

When questions or controversies arise surrounding our service, however, it become clearer that people understand that these expectations come at a cost, and their desire for each is more or less elastic depending upon their situation and the circumstances attending their need for service. Over the years, it has become clearer to me that people assess our performance and detect deviations from their expectations a little differently than they usually express them:

Speed –> consistency, dependability — showing up at all is just as important as getting there quickly.

Relevance –> coherence, quality — actions other than the expected are acceptable when they are based on sound reasoning.

Accuracy –> compassion — whether a decision or action is acceptable depends upon how it makes people feel.

These days people are increasingly surprised to get any response at all, much less a quick one. Knowing that someone will show up every time they need help has become every bit as important as knowing that such help will come quickly. People need to know they can depend upon government to try, even if it comes up short sometimes. Inconsistency lends itself to the impression of undependability, even when the lack of responsiveness in some circumstances leads to faster responses in others.

When performance deviates from expectations, people look to experts for understanding. They need to know that the actions fit the circumstances, and they often judge this in one of two ways: 1) by how hard people are trying and 2) by whether things get better or at the very least stop getting worse. It matters very little to those watching whether the actions they observe have a direct effect on the outcome so long as they can see people making an effort. If things get better or stop getting worse, they naturally assume that the result arises from the actions undertaken.

Even if things end badly, people often judge the quality of the outcome and its appropriateness by how those engaged in the effort made them feel. People understand implicitly that when things start badly they often end badly. But they also appreciate it when those who respond to remedy the effects of their errors avoid the temptation to find fault, allocate blame or pass judgment, especially without learning all the facts first.

I have translated these observations about public expectations into three fairly simple and straightforward statements to guide operations where I work:

We always show up! We are there for each other and our community when they need us.

We take decisive action to make things better. We are neither spectators nor observers. We take reasonable risks to achieve appropriate results and accept responsibility for all of our actions.

We engage everyone with compassion and respect. We treat people they way we want to be treated. We seek understanding by looking at ourselves and the situations we face the way others see us.

I cannot tell you that this approach will transform public opinion or translate into broad public approval or political support for our agency or its actions. But I  can say with confidence that taking this approach makes me feel better about what we do and how we do it. More importantly, it speaks to why wo do what we do: We serve the public for their sake not our own.

Putting the legal issues aside for a moment (though they are certainly important: Phil has been raising important questions in his post on the matter and the blog Lawfare is a great source for approachable legal analysis), the operation that led to the death of Anwar al-Awlaqi may represent a model for homeland security operations.

According to a Washington Post article, the CIA and Defense Department worked closely in the Al-Awlaki drone strike:

Aulaqi’s death represents the latest, and perhaps most literal, illustration to date of the convergence between the CIA and the nation’s elite military units in the counterterrorism fight.

But after a decade of often inconclusive efforts against al-Qaeda, the Obama administration has relied on new levels of collaboration between the CIA and JSOC to push the terrorist network closer to collapse.

The attack on Aulaqi blended capabilities from both sides and was carried out under CIA authority that allowed for greater latitude in conducting lethal operations outside conventional war zones.

This is not  a trivial development or an expected evolution of our national security capabilities.  Instead, this cooperation that led to a fearsome ability to find, fix, and finish terrorist threats came about through the realization that the threat was greater than bureaucratic priorities and departmental politics.

Can this general outcome be repeated in the homeland security sphere?

I am not referring to dealing with identified terrorist threats within our borders.  Instead, can departments instrumental to preparedness, response, and recovery forge a working relationship as close as our intelligence agencies and military?  Can DHS and HHS and DOD etc., as well as local responders, public health officials, and other relevant non-federal stakeholders put aside their own priorities and create an incredibly efficient resilience machine?

This includes flexibility in legal statutes, willingness to let others take the credit or lead, and sharing of resources without thought to the bottom line.

I am hopeful…but wouldn’t bet on it.

Fellow New Zealander and political scientist Bronwyn Hayward of the University of Canterbury recently shared this video presentation prepared for the Gibson Group and the RESOLVE Center at the University of Surrey. Both groups are interested in the effects of policy decisions in liberal democracies on the development of notions of citizenship among youth.

Resilient Citizenship & the Christchurch EQ (Dr Bronwyn Hayward)

As Dr Hayward notes, resilient citizenship describes the ability of youth to develop and define themselves as efficacious advocates of their own needs and the common good. She identifies three seed principles essential to the development of capable young citizens:

1. Social agency: the ability to organize and collaborate for the common good;
2. Ecological education: a deep understand of the natural world and their place in it, particularly the forces that shape the future; and
3. Embedded citizenship: a sense of the importance of individual action, personal responsibility and fairness.

The recent example of the University of Canterbury Student Association’s Volunteer Army, which mobilized 24,000 students through Facebook to help clear hundreds of thousands of tons of silt brought to the surface through the forces of liquefaction, illustrates these principles.

The UCSAmobilization demonstrated not just the efficiency of social media, but the importance of using it to leverage existing relationships among real people with common ties to a particular place. The willingness of the students to get involved rather than sit back and blame seismologists, geologists, civil engineers or political leaders for not preparing them for the effects of liquefaction or for clearing the residue quickly without their assistance reflected a keen understanding of the natural processes at work in the event. Finally, the way in which students identified the focus of their work and initiated action to complement the efforts of public officials by supporting the neediest residents and those least able to take care of themselves demonstrated a sound understanding of equity in action.

The end of one year and the beginning of another gives one pause. New beginnings are a chance to start over. If we’re honest with ourselves, a bit of reflection can help us enter the knew year equipped with insights that help us avoid or at least reduce the impact of new calamities like those that confronted us in the year before. As I look back at 2010 for lessons, here are the top five things I saw that make me wonder what the year ahead holds in store:

We still don’t know security when we see it. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped in a landmark First Amendment case that he knew hard-core pornography when he saw it. Unfortunately, the naked truth about homeland security is we still know know what it is when we see it. Full body scanners and aggressive pat downs to search airline passengers have, however, hinted at the limits of public support for security theater. That said, we still have few clear hints how we should balance the competing interests of civil liberties like privacy and security.

We may be smarter, more successful and skillful than our adversaries, but that ain’t saying all that much; or, maybe it’s just hard to find good help these days. Most of the homeland security successes we witnessed this year, seem more like lucky strikes than genuinely skillful performances by our security services. Maybe that’s because our adversaries have had less success recruiting skilled operatives than we might have imagined. This makes me wonder: with unemployment still running nearly 10 percent nationally (and much higher in some minority communities) why is it so hard to find skilled help? What’s more, as local and state governments find themselves in the death grip of fiscal austerity, how will they meet public expectations of them for safety and security? Judging by public criticism of the response to severe weather events as we end the year, not well at all.

It’s the economy, stupid. Before we had even managed to stop writing or typing 2009 when we meant 2010, Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake that some estimates suggest killed more than 250,000 people and left millions more homeless. As the year came to a close, the country languished in the grip of a cholera epidemic and a presidential succession crisis. The flow of aid lagged far behind pledges from international donors, leaving the impoverished country barely clinging to life. If we ever had any reason to doubt the fact, Haiti confirmed that poverty is any adversary or calamity’s best friend. The corollary to that observation is equally clear and simple: Resilience is about resources. The fungibility of capital — that is the ability of any individual or group to apply their stores of human, social or political capital to conduct transactions that transform natural, economic or material resources to their own or others’ benefit — depends on both the sufficiency and diversity of those hard assets as much or more than any degree of cleverness or incentive to apply themselves. Necessity is the mother of chaos, not invention. In the absence of resources, don’t expect that to change unless you are willing to watch things get worse not better.

Victory (sometimes) favors the unprepared. The benefits of diverse stores of all forms of hard and soft capital was aptly illustrated by the New Zealand response to September’s earthquake in Christchurch and the numerous and still ongoing aftershocks. People there weren’t all that well prepared (especially for the specific event that occurred), but they knew how to use what they had to take care of what they needed. As such, they fared much better than the Haitians and required no outside assistance. The Chileans too, although better prepared than either the New Zealanders or Haitians, demonstrated that was all the more true when a society’s resources and mindsets are both well-adapted to the environment they inhabit.

Casting oil on the water sometimes makes waves. Rather than calming turbulent seas, the explosive destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the resulting release of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea made waves for months. Rather than crystallizing public opinion on energy policy and the need to invest in alternatives to petroleum, the federal response — both on a regulatory level and an operational level — came under intense criticism for ignoring the needs of local citizens who depended upon the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihood. Never mind that some depended upon industries that posed a risk to these ecosystems while others depended on the ecosystem itself, the debate never fully confronted the difficult policy choices facing the country now or in the future. As the federal government continues its work with Gulf Coast states on a recovery plan we should be looking forward not backward for answers about the future.

Clearly, many more things happened in 2010 than I have covered here. What were your top lessons learned from 2010? And what are your hopes for the year ahead?

Last week I noted in response to Arnold Bogis’s post on nuclear attack readiness and recent research on the effectiveness of different response strategies that research coming out of New Zealand, like the studies he cited, was raising uncomfortable questions about our conventional notions of what it means to be prepared or to respond effectively. The New Zealand research suggested that the people of Canterbury and Christchurch who experienced a M7.1 earthquake on September 4, 2010, were not very prepared but had proven quite resilient.

This raises some obvious questions. For starters, what do we mean by “prepared.” And for that matter how did the researcher define resilience. The research to which the New Zealand news source remains as yet unpublished, but as I am familiar with the territory I think it’s worth taking a stab at answering these questions for the sake furthering our ongoing discussions about resilience and its application to homeland security threats.

As it turns out, the people in Christchurch were not much better prepared than those in most communities we might survey here in the United States, which is to say that the great majority of them had taken no concrete steps to prepare themselves, their households or their businesses for an earthquake or other major emergency. Few people had stockpiled supplies, and only a few more had given any thought to how they might communicate with others or what actions they might take in the moments after the event.

That said, they did pretty much what you might expected someone to do when the actual event occurred: They waited for the ground to stop moving, picked themselves up, looked around and started asking themselves just what the hell had happened. It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that there had been an earthquake, and quite a substantial one at that. As they surveyed their homes in the pre-dawn darkness and went outside they began interacting with their neighbors who were doing the same thing. Those in areas that experienced liquefaction, especially those in areas close to the coast, began questioning the wisdom of staying put and some started to head inland to higher and drier ground together.

Others who found themselves less convinced that further peril was imminent attempted to check on loved ones. Those who could get a cellphone signal usually couldn’t get through. So they tried texting. In most cases that worked fine, and they quickly established confidence that they could rely on others to help them and vice versa.

As dawn broke and the damage to commercial buildings and public facilities became evident, people started looking for opportunities to help out. Those who were already part of some organized group, like the university students association or the local rugby club for instance, relied on these social networks to assemble others and organize them to lend a hand in whatever way they could be most useful. In most cases, these working parties participated in activities completely unrelated to the organization’s customary function and, as such, had to invent some of the rules governing how they would work together as they went along.

From these descriptions we can discern a couple of things: First, preparedness is not about stuff or plans. It is a mindset. People were not surprised that an earthquake occurred. Although they were not materially prepared, they understood that the event was a call for them to do something, anything even, as long as it was reasonable and useful. This leads to the second observation: resilience is characterized in such situations by three elements:

1. Spontaneous, often unplanned and usually ad hoc efforts to employ available resources,
2. In ways that either attain or help maintain the stability of existing networks,
3. In a dynamic or hostile environment characterized by unusual levels of uncertainty, ambiguity or both.

The resulting responses encourage further adaptive efforts, often out of scale to their material effects on the situation, by mobilizing or encouraging complementary or cooperative efforts by others. The resulting shared experience yields benefits to participants and the society as a whole by forging new, often more efficient pathways for the allocation of resources and effort.

Why is it important to clarify these definitions? For starters, we still struggle mightily with questions about what steps we should be taking now to ensure resilience emerges at some point in the future. If the Canterbury experience is indicative, maybe we need do nothing or at least nothing peculiar or particular to homeland security and emergency management.

In the current fiscal climate we might do well to consider whether we can do anything more effective than simply staying out of the way. We may just discover all that’s required to improve community resilience is for us to do nothing that impedes or discourages people from doing what they will anyway. If we’re lucky a can-do culture just might emerge.

A couple of weeks ago, in a comment prompted by Arnold Bogis’ inaugural weekly post to this website, Phil Palin recounted a conversation with an unnamed colleague whom he quoted as having said, “With the best of intentions — but worst of results — our current emergency management mentality systematically breeds dependence. We are our own worst enemy.” All I can say is Pogo would be proud.

Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow probably would be as well. In his recent book, Be Very Afraid,Wuthnow critically examines the cultural roots of the American obsession with Armageddon and the always just impending threat of self-annihilation. It does not diminish his argument or its thoroughly scholarly presentation to say his summation is not so far from that of Phil’s friend. In short, Wuthnow concludes that our efforts to put people at ease are largely responsible for their inexorable anxiety about the future.

The threats we face are real enough. But the ways we try to reassure people, Wuthnow tells us, leave them wondering whether we really have matters in hand. After all, many of the threats we warn them about are of our own making.

It is fair enough to say that we are not personally responsible for creating the threats, but the governmental, technocratic tribe to which we belong does bear  responsibility both for the decisions and actions that render us vulnerable while simultaneously directing other members to find remedies for these unsavory yet entirely foreseeable situations. Schizophrenic does not even begin to describe the situation.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald so aptly noted, intelligent people may be able to hold two contradictory notions in mind at once, but surely both arguments must have some particular appeal to them for this to be the case without the anxiety becoming apparent to them if not downright unbearable. When we confront people with evidence of their mortality, make it clear that they cannot depend upon government alone to rescue them and then implore them to trust that we know what we are doing when it comes to managing the threats we face they rightly wonder whether we are the crazy ones.

Maybe we are. Focusing on pathological thinking leaves unanswered an important question: “What would it look like if we we were healthy, happy and safe? How would we know if we were in such a state?”

Phil’s post over the weekend cites a Wall Street Journal essay by University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt. His research focuses on the nexus between moral beliefs and political behavior. In Haidt’s most recent published book, The Happiness Hypothesis, he suggests that the virtues we practice not only reveal the values we hold but inform them as well. In other words, we are — at least in part — what we do, and these actions are usually motivated by our comfort if not our interests.

To the extent the things we are doing strike many citizens as inconsistent if not necessarily insane should come as no big surprise. The public’s behavior may be little more than an outward sign of the internal anxiety caused by watching what we are doing. If either their behavior or our reaction to them makes us uneasy too, then perhaps we should take Haidt’s WSJ diagnosis as a challenge. Are we willing to something about it?

I’ve watched for years as local public safety executives and unions have expressed their anger and frustration with the level of support they get locally (which is formidable by anyone else’s reckoning, dwarfing all but education, health and welfare spending it its magnitude) to demand federal interventions and funding support. The chiefs’ and unions’ obsessions with what they are not getting has all but overwhelmed their ability to appreciate what can be done with what they already have. As such, I wonder whether their apparent anger masks something deeper and darker: An insidious fear that people might not notice if the money was spent elsewhere or not at all.

Police chiefs, fire chiefs and other public safety executives wield considerable influence over their organizations and in the community at-large. They occupy positions typically associated with power. Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer reminds us that those who hold positions of power are not always the most able, best loved or for that matter all that empathetic. Rather they are the ones most adept at playing the game. In his book, Power, Pfeffer notes without the least hint of cynicism that those in power accept three things others find it hard to swallow: 1) they accept that life is not just, 2) they relate to the world as it is (or as they perceive it to be) rather than as others wish it to be, and 3) they don’t base their definition of themselves or the best course of action in a given situation on how others see them.

We like to believe that others think the way we do. We want to believe that they want the same things we want. But that’s clearly not the case most if not all of the time. If it were, we would not find ourselves faced with the soaring levels of distrust in government and disagreement about priorities so obviously evident across our society.

If insanity can be defined as doing the same things over and over and expecting different results, what should we be doing differently? If local public safety officials are really committed to building stronger, safer communities what actions should they be taking instead of the ones we are seeing? What role, if any, should federal officials play in promoting ideals consistent with these actions? Do standards or mandates have a place in bringing this about?

“We will support the development of prepared, vigilant, and engaged communities and underscore that our citizens are the heart of a resilient country.”

–National Security Strategy, May 2010

In defense-oriented circles, “Goldwater-Nichols” is shorthand for activity that improves cooperation and integration through reorganization and other measures.  It refers to a law passed by Congress in the 1980s that reorganized the Department of Defense and promoted unity among the various services.  In essence, Goldwater-Nichols is synonymous with the concept of jointness.

What does this have to do with the public’s role in homeland security?  Isn’t it pretty straightforward—get a kit, make a plan, be informed?  In addition, if you see something, say something. Oh, and if someone in your community exhibits signs of becoming “radicalized,” inform the authorities.  And don’t forget to buy the appropriate insurance for the risks present in your area. Etc., etc., etc.

According to national strategies and cabinet secretaries, the citizen plays a central role in homeland security.  There is a lot asked of the public, and the focus areas of these activities are spread across different disciplines and departments.  So is it fair to ask whose job in government it is to wake up everyday and think “how can we better engage the public across the full range of homeland security activities?” “Are there synergies that can be exploited?”  Or, instead, is this an area where the fabled “silos of excellence” are important—due to their distinct natures, keeping the particular responsibilities closest to their related government agencies?

Whole-of-government approaches are sexy (as government goes), theoretically efficient, and bring the promise of relatively quick results.  Yet they are difficult to implement in practice as bureaucracies are not configured to encourage or facilitate this type of approach.  A traditional approach where each department or agency concentrates solely on the area of engagement that coincides with their mission intuitively sounds wasteful, and given the level of success to this point, likely to fail.  However, it could be that given increased priority within their mission sets would result in each distinct effort achieving far greater gains when worked in (practical) isolation.

Personally, I have not yet made up my mind on the possible merits of a comprehensive vs. narrow approach, but it is a discussion that should happen.

For an idea that is considered central to our concepts of homeland security and resilience and as an anointed partner of federal, state, local, and tribal authorities, there is comparatively little effort or resources put towards strengthening the public’s role.

Just for perspective, here is a short list of citizen activities:

Prevention

See something, say something perfectly describes the actions of the Times Square street vendors who noticed Faisal Shahzad’s parked SUV was out of place and alerted passing police.   This campaign is going nationwide as DHS and DOJ promote it in conjunction with a Suspicious Activity Reporting initiative that hypothetically will allow law enforcement personnel to translate the somethings being said into useful information without infringing on civil liberties.

For a supportive view, see a recent New York Times op-ed by John Farmer Jr., a former senior counsel for the 9/11 commission, “How to Spot a Terrorist.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/opinion/28farmer.html?ref=contributors

Preparedness

This aspect has been covered many times by contributors and others on this blog, so I will simply add that an invaluable source of information on public preparedness from a citizen’s point of view is John Solomon, author of the blog “In Case of Emergency, Read Blog” (http://incaseofemergencyblog.com/).  He covers the subject from multiple angles, from innovations in public engagement to interviews with top homeland security officials, and practices what he preaches as a CERT member in New York City.

Mitigation

As the waters receded from the terrible spring flooding in Tennessee, some thoughts turned to steps that residents could take to help mitigate the damage from the almost certain next catastrophic deluge:

http://theklaxon.com/as-tennessee-dries-residents-mitigate

Response

FEMA Director Craig Fugate not only uses the word “survivor” instead of “victim” when describing those impacted by disasters, he recognizes that it is the public that will be the true first responder during any large incident.  In that spirit, Gregg Lord of the George Washington University led a project on “community medical resiliency,” a part of which is the idea that citizens can (and during a catastrophe, will have to) rely upon themselves to provide some measure of basic medical care as officials will be overwhelmed. (Disclosure: I worked on this project so I might be biased concerning the validity of the concept):

http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/policy/commentary018_supplydemand.cfm

Recovery

It seems obvious that the public will be engaged in recovery activities following a disaster—they are personally involved.  What might not be so obvious is that there are steps that can be taken before an event that will help with recovery afterwards.  The theory behind this concept comes from Harvard Kennedy School professors Herman Leonard and Arnold Howitt, who have written that balancing resource allocation across leverage points (prevention, mitigation, preparedness, preparing to recover, response, and recovery) is vital for crisis management.  In their view, preparing to recover activities have been almost entirely neglected.

For the theory: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centers-programs/programs/crisis-leadership/Acting%20in%20Time%20Against%20Disaster.pdf

For information on real world application: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/crisisleadership/projects

Source: Cohort Zero at http://www.cohortzero.com/

I spent last weekend attending a course on mediation in the hopes of learning skills that might prove useful in crisis management and public engagement since these processes often become framed not just as failures but as conflicts as well. Although familiar with the field before taking the course, the two days of instruction and practical role play were a pleasant reminder that we always have alternatives to thinking and acting in the ways we usually do. At the same time, I was reminded that breaking old habits of mind is an acquired skill that requires lots of patience and practice.

Most of the alternatives to conventional conflict adjudication and resolution don’t just seem messy, time consuming and inefficient, they really are! Talking with one another and taking the time to appreciate others’ positions is terribly difficult, especially when we know we are right to begin with. But the sometimes “irrational” solutions that arise from alternative dispute resolution process often lead to genuine reconciliation, which in the end begs the question whether the adversarial win-lose approaches typical of other proceedings is not only irrational but unjust as well.

Something surprising often happens when we engage in open, honest and ongoing dialog with the objective of finding something of benefit to all parties, especially those experiencing differences with one another. We learn that other people face many of the same difficulties we do. And their bad decisions and actions, like our own, sometimes result from the best intentions, distractions or plain old poor execution. In other words, we are not the only people who have trouble dealing with uncertainty, time pressure, ill-informed or poorly articulated expectations and competing objectives. And we are not the only ones who have trouble accepting the consequences of our actions, especially when they fall short of what we want.

An effective mediator recognizes the importance of remaining neutral and letting the parties find their own ways to solutions that might otherwise never surface. Often this involves validating their feelings, expressing empathy for their position, clarifying their issues and interests and summarizing what they said. Taking the time to do these equally with each party also helps model for the participants the behaviors that will lead them to find a satisfying resolution of their own making.

The instructor for my course — a middle-aged Israeli woman who was drafted at 18 years of age to serve as combat nurse in both the Golan Heights and West Bank just before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War– seems particularly well-equipped to appreciate both the subtleties of these techniques and the genuine importance of their application to conflicts among people, whether they involve individuals, institutions or cultures. For the past 20 years, she has mediated a bewildering array of disputes ranging from the petty to the preposterous to the truly ponderous. In the process, she has acquired a deeper understanding not only of conflicts among human beings, but also of the conflicts within herself and by extension in each one of us.

As we talked throughout the two days, it became clear that she still holds very strong views about the conflicts in the Middle East. But she also made it clear that she is far more aware of the ways others see them too. As such, she is not one to advocate for, much less favor, quick fixes. I could not help but wonder how useful her input and that of others like her might be if they were given the mantle of resolving the dispute between Arabs and Israelis rather than relying on leaders whose vested interests in maintaining the power of the state and their own power often leads them to narrow conceptions of what’s workable.

As I contemplated the questions posed by Phil Palin on Sunday and thoughtfully debated by several of us over the past couple of days, I wondered what our discussions could achieve and whether similar efforts if engaged by a wider audience could actually create a more peaceful world. The course helped answer this question as well.

Change, whether from a state of conflict or chaos, to something more stable, even comfortable, requires participants to engage their heads, hearts and hands. Every conflict involves substantive issues. Often the absence of procedural fairness inhibits resolution, and adds to the frustration or fear of future consequences that brings people to impasse. It may be possible to resolve the issues at the center of a conflict without addressing the interests underlying the participants’ positions. But avoiding the hard work of examining participants’ emotions, biases and the values that inform them often leaves everyone wondering whether anything really changed. We all need answers to the why, what and how questions before committing ourselves to which direction we will go.

Some people cannot or will not participate in mediation. People who lack self-awareness or a capacity for empathy cannot engage mediation in any meaningful way. Yet that does not mean we, as their adversaries, lack alternatives, it just makes finding them, negotiating them and implementing them that much more difficult as we carry water for both (or all) sides.

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama was widely criticized for suggesting we could and should engage those with whom we find ourselves in conflict. Those who struggled to accept his stance became all the more uncomfortable, if not incensed, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for little more than suggesting we might make the world a more just and peaceful place by doing so consistently. Very soon afterward, the President was ridiculed by the right for suggesting that empathy was an essential quality in a supreme court justice.

Mediation is an intensely practical pursuit, not some sort of intellectual fantasy or philosophical exercise. It accepts that getting something better for each and every party often means one or more party must accept something less than that to which they might otherwise consider themselves entitled. Getting better results for all often involves accepting something less for ourselves rather than extracting something more from others.

Whether we want to see peace in the Middle East, improved employment prospects at home, an end to Congressional gridlock or a more equitable, efficient and accessible health care system for ourselves and our fellow citizens, we may have no better option than ending our obsession with and insistence upon justice. As we consider alternatives to the conflicts preoccupying us today, we would do well to talk with one another about how we might live if we were simply fair.

Further reading:

Dworkin, Ronald (2008). Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate. Princeton University Press.

Habermas, Jurgen (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action (Volume 1): Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press.

Habermas, Jurgen (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action (Volume 2): Lifeworld and Systems: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Beacon Press.

Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press.

This week we learned that the longest recession since the end of the Second World War ended last December. I for one am glad somebody shared this fact, because it’s not so obvious from where I sit at the moment. Judging from the fiscal effects on the homeland security and emergency management employment markets, the housing market is not the only part of the economy underwater.

My personal employment situation is far from secure, as I have held a limited-term appointment for the last two years while a colleague served a three-year active duty assignment with the National Guard. With his separation from active service, he will resume his former position at the beginning of October, which leaves me about a month to find new employment while we work together on the transition.

As I have surveyed the homeland security and emergency management employment landscape, a couple of things have become all too readily apparent to me. First, the vast majority of positions on offer at any given time are with federal agencies or contractors. Second, most of these are located in the Washington, DC metro area or at least in the eastern half of the United States. And third, the pay afforded federal employees and many of their contractors is vastly superior to anything on offer at the state or local level, unless of course you work in a unionized police or fire department with tenure-based compensation.

Put simply, emergency management and emergency preparedness pays squat all and you will be hard-pressed to find employment in a federal agency without veterans preference credits, highly specialized skills, a top secret security clearance, a willingness to relocate and good connections. Professional homeland security and emergency management practitioners, especially those at the state and local level, are generally over-educated and under-compensated. Those without educational credentials are often far better paid than those with them, even when work experience is taken into consideration.

This is not the first time these observations have occurred to me. I married a city planner. We met while working for the same city back in the mid-1980s. She quickly made me aware of just how lucky I was to be working for the fire department, where my position afforded me a salary superior to hers despite no educational prerequisites and only comparable experience.

My wife was laid off 15 months ago despite 25 years of experience and a graduate education. She has had one interview for a position since then. Prospects for her re-employment as a city planner are bleak to non-existant. And no one seems willing to look beyond her previous job titles or the duration of her unemployment to see the skills she offers in terms of strategic thinking, public engagement, business process development and project management.

In light of current economic conditions, I am, of course, concerned that I may soon join my wife among the ranks of the long-term unemployed. But I am also concerned that the situation, if indeed we are in some sort of a long, slow recovery, has not been accompanied by the sort of strategic realignment necessary to improve efficiencies and accountability for outcomes in the future that should have become evident to all as a result of the collapse that precipitated it. And this should be a very real concern to anyone committed to the homeland security enterprise for many reasons.

Chief among these is the evidence that our so-called recovery will exacerbate social and economic tensions that pit the haves against the have-nots. Income inequality remains at unprecedented levels and is increasing even as the ranks of those in poverty increase. This creates ideal conditions for radicalization, which is already far too apparent in our domestic political discourse as well as our international relations and security situation.

The second problem this poses is the tendency to centralize expertise and capability for generating and implementing solutions far away from the sources of the problems. Failing to engage and develop local capability remains a significant vulnerability, especially since so many of the investments made in recent years have gone to already “fat” agencies and the production of paper plans that largely sit on shelves collecting dust. Efforts to slim these agencies down as the fiscal crisis dragged on have led to cuts of brain and muscle leaving the fat largely intact.

The strong tendency to preserve the status quo ante leaves many pressing problems unaddressed. Not the least of these is the need to diversify the ranks of our public safety forces so they can more effectively engage the communities they serve. (Why is it such a large percentage of the adverse impact employment discrimination cases reaching the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years originated in fire service agencies?)

I interviewed with a fire department just last week that serves a community where the Hispanic/Latino population is approaching 20 percent. Of their 400 or so uniformed staff, four are women and only one is Hispanic. In the city where I live and work, the vast majority of rank and file public safety staff in the police and fire departments live far outside the city they protect despite making a median salary more than twice the median wage. In other words, we are exporting our wealth and importing skills required to supply essential services.

These signs suggest that homeland security and emergency management are in retreat rather than advancing. Police and fire service agencies and their unions are setting the agenda at state and local levels while the federal agenda remains focused inside the Beltway and on staying off of the front pages of the few remaining national newspapers.

If making our country safe is about the decisions we make today to produce a better future for ourselves and others, we should think very seriously about the strategies informing this situation. Judging by the investments we are making (or not) in local expertise, capabilities and evaluation we may well have things back-to-front.

People in the intelligence community deal in some of the most sensitive and cynical information about our government and its operations against our adversaries. It’s no wonder spies are not generally known for their senses of humor. That said, it’s a quality that really ought to be more highly prized. If the recent remarks of James Clapper, President Obama’s nominee to become the fourth director of national intelligence, are any indication, we might have a winner.

In last week’s Washington Post series on burgeoning intelligence community contracting, Clapper was quoted as having said to a reporter that the only entity in the universe with visibility into all special access programs is God. During his confirmation hearing, he was quoted as having observed in response to a question about the series, “One man’s duplication is another man’s competitive analysis.” Funny stuff, really. At least as far as I am concerned.

Characterizing the proliferation of overlapping jurisdictions and the growth in outsourcing of analysis and technical capabilities as competitive analysis is either euphemistic or optimistic. Either way its worth asking how we would know what this incredible investment of national wealth and talent is worth to our national security.

On one hand, we are regularly reassured that al Qa’ida and its affiliates have failed to launch a successful attack against the United States homeland since the 9/11 attacks. This argument asks us to accept facts not in evidence (at least publicly), as it depends on the presumption that our intelligence community operatives are routinely interdicting our adversaries before they can cause us harm.

Over the past two years, however, a new threat has emerged in the form of homegrown, lone wolf Muslim radicals. In each of the last three attacks — Ft. Hood, the Christmas Day underwear bomber, and the amateurish Times Square vehicle-borne improvised explosive device — the perpetrators gained training or encouragement from overseas operatives. That none of them succeeded on a scale comparable to previous attacks is not for lack of trying.

If we were to judge solely by the President’s reactions to these attacks, we should wonder what if anything we are getting for our increased investments in the intelligence community. The President himself has characterized these attacks as evidence of failure.

I understand the media interest in the intelligence community, but what really impresses me is how our fellow countrymen are responding since 9/11. People are far more aware of threats to our security and seem far more willing to become involved when they see something’s not right. In the absence of specific, direct investments in building the capacity of citizens to contribute to homeland defense and security and actively enlisting them in efforts to identify and assess threats, it seems safe to say that these actions on the part of the public have occurred in spite of, not because of, all the money we spent expanding intelligence community capabilities.

If we were to judge by results alone, the better investment is clearly an informed and engaged public. But that’s not currently on the table and no one is offering it despite evidence that the Washington Post series’ gravest potential impact is the further erosion of public trust and confidence in government administration and oversight of covert intelligence spending.

If General Clapper becomes the next director of national intelligence, which seems pretty certain at this point, we have little reason to believe that anything significant will change in our intelligence posture. This strikes me as a lost opportunity. The comparative advantages of engaging the public in the homeland security mission are much clearer than those associated with the competitive analysis of intelligence.

Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security released its “Bottom Up Review (BUR),” which is intended to “align the Department’s programmatic activities and organizational structure with the mission sets and goals identified in the” Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR).

The review, which began in November 2009, focuses on three questions, according the agency:

• How can we strengthen the Department’s performance in each of the five mission areas?
• How should we improve Departmental operations and management?
• How can we increase accountability for the resources entrusted to DHS?

The BUR is envisioned to be the second phase of a three-phase process, sandwiched between the QHSR and the Fiscal Year 2012 budget request and the DHS FY 2012-2016 Future Years Homeland Security Program to Congress, to be submitted next year.  DHS has made it clear that BUR is neither a strategic plan (which is probably good since there are too many plans gathering dust on the shelves of DHS) nor a budget request.

In a press roundtable this morning, Assistant Secretary of Policy David Heyman and Deputy Assistant Secretary Alan Cohn answered questions and spoke of how the BUR plays into efforts to improve the Department’s  performance.   They noted that this is the first time the Department has done such an exercise and, looking to the future, they hope to sharpen the process and focus for conducting such reviews so that the steps more fluidly provide for improving the Department’s missions and priorities.

The BUR was described as one that addresses themes, that is, the goals and objectives of what the agency should focus on to build a strong homeland security enterprise. Assistant Secretary Heyman noted that there was “not a lot of descriptions of strategic realignments” in the BUR, though there was “some discussion of managing portfolios” better.  He suggested that the report was not intended to  suggest that areas are “ripe for realignment,” but rather that there is a need for reviewing different elements distributed across the Department to determine where areas of better coordination are needed.  (Translation:  The Department, even if it is pondering realignment, cannot say so now as it has not been vetted through the Office of Management and Budget process or with Congress).

If the QHSR was designed to provide a strategic framework for the Department’s missions and goals, the BUR is intended to help provide us a roadmap on where the agency will focus its efforts going into the next fiscal year.  In short, the review is intended to tell us how the Department plans to button down and focus its many disparate efforts.  In answering the three questions above, the BUR emphasized three areas:

1. The Department needs to grow up and get stronger so it can run itself and account for all of its programs and resources.
2. Homeland security is not just about DHS or the federal government so the agency needs to really focus on strengthening its partner capacity and capability.
3. It is not just about the U.S. – DHS needs to do better on the international front if it is going to succeed in its efforts.

A 70 page document, the BUR provides a number of specific areas in which the Department is/intends to focus its efforts. Here are a few that stand out:

• Coordinator for Counterterrorism.   Expect this recently-created position to gain more stature and resources in FY2012.  The position was created to give someone the ability to coordinate all counterterrorism efforts across the Department, its directorates, components, and offices.  During the roundtable, Assistant Secretary Heyman specifically mentioned the report’s “notion of strengthening counterterrorism” across the Department as an example of how to better management portfolio.  The BUR itself discusses the evolving nature of this coordination and the need to consult with Congress on the effort.  This suggests some potential future request for realignment and resources (?) to make sure all the parts of DHS are on the same page on this effort. The big question, however, is what is meant by counterterrorism?  How will that term be defined?  Also, how will any mission re-focus or realignment (if any happens) affect those areas where an all-hazards approach is being promoted?

• Create an integrated Departmental information sharing architecture. The description provided in the BUR is rather self-explanatory:

DHS will create an information sharing architecture to consolidate and streamline access to intelligence, law enforcement, screening, and other information across the Department. That architecture will include the capability for automated recurrent screening and vetting for individuals to whom DHS has provided a license, privilege, or status (including immigration status) so that, as new information becomes available, DHS can assess whether the individual is no longer eligible for the benefit or presents a threat. It will also include the capability to conduct scenario-based automated targeting of individuals and other entities using intelligence-driven criteria.

• Focus on the security and resilience of global trade and travel systems. In the past, DHS has come under criticism for not paying attention to ICE’s non-detention missions.  Interestingly, the pendulum appears to have swung away from that approach, with the BUR stating that DHS will prioritize on the security of global trade and travel systems, including developing an investigative portfolio that includes “human smuggling and trafficking, child sex tourism, counter proliferation, financial, intellectual property, weapons trafficking, and narcotics investigations.”  In addition, the report says that DHS will continue to invest in “trusted traveler and trusted shipper” programs.

• Comprehensive Immigration Reform. DHS continues to promote its efforts on comprehensive immigration reform, though the three-legged stool (enforcement, future flow, and pathway to citizenship) appears to have been expanded into a five-legged stool that now includes:  (1) border security and interior enforcement; (2) mandated employment verification program; (3) clearing up family and employment visa backlogs; (4) recast legal migration provisions to meet the needs of the twenty-first century for both high-skill and low-skill workers; and (5) pathway to citizenship that is tough but fair in which those here illegally will register, record biometrics, pass a criminal background check, pay back taxes, pay a fine,  and learn English.

• Increase the focus and integration of DHS’s operational cybersecurity and infrastructure resilience activities. The BUR makes clear that DHS sees it responsibilities in this area broadly and that it has the lead on Federal civilian and private sector networks and plans to continue to lead in that area.  Interestingly enough, DHS excludes “civilian national security systems” as being within its jurisdiction in several places in the report.  In light of the reports that the NSA is potentially classifying the smart grid and critical infrastructure systems as national security systems,  see Cybercitizen?, we will have to see which agency’s definition of “civilian national security systems” prevails, assuming that they are different.  Also, how does this effect the efforts of the National Communications System, located within DHS and coupled with its cybersecurity efforts, which traditionally has taken on the mission of assuring communications support to critical Government functions during emergencies, especially relating to national security efforts?

• Explore opportunities with the private sector to “design-in” greater resilience for critical infrastructure. The BUR refocuses the DHS’s efforts on setting infrastructure design standards for critical infrastructure resilience, in an expansion of the authorities given to it under the 9/11 Recommendations Act of 2007. In addition, there is some reference of building these standards into programs like the Safety Act.   The BUR also implies that we haven’t seen the last of an expansion of standards, similar to what is in place for the chemical industry, to other critical infrastructures.  It does not explicitly state this, of course, but does say it will “examine the need to set security requirements at high-risk assets and in high-risk areas as appropriate, and to set standards for security practices in critical infrastructure sectors as necessary.”  Such effort would require a lot of cooperation from Congress. 
  

• Seek restoration of the Secretary’s reorganization authority for DHS headquarters. DHS wants to be able to reorganize without Congress looking over its shoulder.  This ability was given to the Department under Section 872 of the Homeland Security Act but has been chipped away over time so that the Secretary has little authority to undertake any reorganization efforts.  The BUR states that that the Department will ask for this trend to be reversed.   In addition, DHS wants to look at how to realign its component regional configurations into a single DHS regional structure and strengthen cross-Departmental management functions by creating a Headquarters Services Division within the Management Directorate.  DHS will continue to focus on the seven initiatives that make up the core of its “One DHS” efforts, including:
  1. Enterprise Governance
  2. Balanced Workforce Strategy
  3. Transformation and Systems Consolidation
  4. St Elizabeth’s/Headquarters Consolidation
  5. Human Resources Information Technology
  6. Data Center Migration
  7. HSPD 12 Implementation

The Department will also continue to try to elevate the Assistant Secretary of Policy position to an Undersecretary position, despite significant opposition from key lawmakers on the Hill.

• Congressional Oversight.  We haven’t heard a lot on this front for awhile, but the BUR notes the need to still streamline Congressional oversight.  The report notes that DHS has testified 200 times and provided more than 5,227 briefings in the 111th Congress.  The good news in these numbers – it seems like that DHS will have testified less this Congress than in the 110th, in which its officials appeared 370 times.  The bad news – Congress still needs to streamline its Congressional oversight efforts, both to hold the Department accountable and to help it mature further.

Again, this is just a snapshot into the BUR and the Department’s priorities. The real meat of both the QHSR and BUR that will separate this three-part effort from past strategic plans, outlines of priorities, and mission statements will come in the new year with the FY2012 budget request and the DHS FY 2012-2016 Future Years Homeland Security Program to Congress.

On the eve of Independence Day — on one of the most beautiful afternoons of the year so far — long-time contributor William R. Cumming has raised an intriguing issue regarding an instruction released by President Obama. 

The issue was a particular concern of the Founders and deserves our continued vigilence.  I happen to disagree with Bill’s interpretation, but I cannot claim the President’s language or intent is altogether clear.  So we begin with the President’s words and then continue to Bill’s and my own. 

The White House

 June 30, 2010

Memorandum from the President on the Long-Term Gulf Coast Restoration Support Plan

SUBJECT: Long-Term Gulf Coast Restoration Support Plan

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. The oil spill represents just the latest blow to an area that has already suffered significant hardship. In addition to fighting the spill, conducting environmental cleanup, and ensuring such a crisis does not happen again, we must help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy. A long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region is therefore necessary.

As I announced on June 15, 2010, and pursuant to the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I assign to the Secretary of the Navy (Secretary) the responsibility to lead the effort to create a plan of Federal support for the long-term economic and environmental restoration of the Gulf Coast region, in coordination with States, local communities, tribes, people whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf, businesses, conservationists, scientists, and other entities and persons as he deems necessary. In addition to working with these stakeholders, the Secretary shall coordinate, as appropriate, with the heads of executive departments and agencies, as well as offices within the Executive Office of the President (collectively, executive branch components).

Specifically, I direct the following:

Section 1. As soon as possible, the Secretary shall develop a Gulf Coast Restoration Support Plan (Plan), based on the following principles:

(a) The Plan shall provide a comprehensive assessment of post-spill needs, as well as a proposal for Federal assistance in the overall recovery of the region.

(b) The purpose of the Plan shall be to develop an approach that will ensure economic recovery, community planning, science-based restoration of the ecosystem and environment, public health and safety efforts, and support of individuals and businesses who suffered losses due to the spill.

(c) The Plan shall take into account resources already available to respond to the oil spill, and complement the on-going oil spill response efforts. The Secretary will also coordinate, as needed, with the State, Federal, and tribal trustees who have responsibility for directing the natural resource damage planning process under the Oil Pollution Act and other applicable law.

(d) The Plan shall identify long- and short-term objectives and, where applicable, how the achievement of these objectives will be measured.

Sec. 2. (a) This assignment is prescribed as an additional responsibility of the Secretary in accordance with section 5013 of title 10, United States Code. This additional responsibility may not be delegated under section 5013(f) of title 10, United States Code. (b) To assist in accomplishing the directive in section 1 of this memorandum, executive branch components shall make available information and other resources, including personnel, deemed by the Secretary to be necessary for development of the Plan.

Sec. 3. (a) Executive branch components shall carry out the provisions of this memorandum to the extent permitted by law, subject to the availability of appropriations, and consistent with their statutory and regulatory authorities and their enforcement mechanisms.

 (b) Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(c) This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. Nothing in this memorandum shall relieve or otherwise affect the obligations of any responsible party under the Oil Pollution Act or other applicable law.

Sec. 4. The Secretary is hereby authorized to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

Signed/ BARACK OBAMA

–+–

Commenting on a prior post Mr. Cumming wrote:

Yes and the oldest and richest democracy (Republic) has now celebrated July 4th by putting the US Navy in charge of long term recovery in the Gulf of Mexico. The militarization of US domestic policy continues apace just as in foreign policy and relations. Salute that flag!

To which I replied:

Bill, Where did you see the US Navy assignment? I know about Secretary Mabus’ assignment. But I have perceived that as separate from his SecNav role — and much more connected to his background as a former Governor of Mississippi. If that’s wrong, want to know more.

Mr. Cumming responded:

Presidential proclamation published in Tuesday’s Federal Register. Sent it to you and will send again. John Paul Jones to the rescue!

To which I responded:

Bill, thanks for resending the reference. For the benefit of other readers a web version is available at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/memorandum-president-long-term-gulf-coast-restoration-support-plan

As you know, I share your concern regarding militarization of government operations. As such, it is certainly appropriate to raise the concern in this case.

I would offer, however, that based on the (little) I know and my own reading of the President’s memorandum, I understand that Secretary Mabus is, essentially, being seconded from his current role as SecNav to a leadership position for both the National Security Staff and Domestic Policy Staff.

This is my reading of the intent of the following:

In addition to working with these stakeholders, the Secretary shall coordinate, as appropriate, with the heads of executive departments and agencies, as well as offices within the Executive Office of the President(collectively,executive branch components).

The reference to Executive Office of the President includes both NSS and DPS, especially a well-established recovery working group spanning the two EOP functions.

I agree the situation is ambiguous. I bet there will be some SecNav staff involved. And this is another example of an increasing tendency for us to turn to military resources (active or retired) for commmand and operational competence. It is a worrisome trend.

Mr. Cumming respectfully disagreed:

Having read thousands of these memos it looks like a formal delegation of authority to me. See 3 USC Section 301. By passes SECDEF and others. But hey Phil you could be right and only a designation.

As always I could be wrong but a designation names a person while a delegation names a postion. Basic black letter ADMINISTRATIVE LAW.

I guess this WH knows the difference and did what they wanted to do (accomplish)! Even though Roy Mabus is former governor in a Gulf Coast state I could name perhaps a 100 others better qualified to save the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and TEXAS. In fact why not George W. Bush, tan, rested and ready? Give him a chance to redeem his Katrina castrophic efforts! This is not a joke. At least he is not eligible for re-election [but of course Jeb is also tan, rested and waiting his turn)! Hey this is a bipartisan or non-partisan response effort correct?

To which I offered a sort of rebuttal:

I will further note that Title 10 USC, section 5013 (f) as referenced in the President’s memorandum reads:

The Secretary of the Navy may assign such of his functions, powers, and duties as he considers appropriate to the Under Secretary of the Navy and to the Assistant Secretaries of the Navy. Officers of the Navy and the Marine Corps shall, as directed by the Secretary, report on any matter to the Secretary, the Under Secretary, or any Assistant Secretary.

The President’s memorandum explicitly excludes delegation under paragraph 5013 (f), which — at least in my reading — is the White House effort to give the former Governor, who happens to be SecNav, an additional duty, but to avoid militarizing the additional duty.

I wonder if there might not have been a less ambiguous way of accomplishing the same thing, but there seems to me a pretty clear and appropriate effort to focus this additional role outside the Department of the Navy.

–+–

Before retirement Bill Cumming was a long-time lawyer with the US government.  I am neither a lawyer nor an experienced government official. If you have further insights — or suggestions — please add your comments.

Secretary Napolitano gave a speech on Friday.   According to Lolita Baldor with the Associated Press,

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

“The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet,” Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

The organization hosting the speech provides access to an audio and video recording of the Secretary’s remarks.  Thank you.

I have been unable to find a transcript of the speech.  April 19 is the last time a speech by the Secretary was uploaded to the DHS “speeches and statements” screen.    The most recent post to the Blog@DHS is ten days old.  There has not been a general press release since June 15.   

As some of you have complained, I hate to complain.  I suppose many staff have been redeployed to support public communications in the Gulf.  But unlike that wonderful Washington figure Chance “I like to watch” Gardner, I much prefer to read. It takes less time and allows for more detailed consideration of what is offered.

Friday, on another topic, I argued for the importance of listening.  When the Secretary of Homeland Security speaks on the topic of balancing security and liberty both she and we should exercise particular care.  I could be more careful in listening if I could read what she said.

In 2005, Stewart Baker joined the Department of Homeland Security as Assistant Secretary of Policy for the entire Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff. The position, which evolved from the Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy and Planning position, has the following responsibilities, according to the DHS website:

• Leads coordination of Department-wide policies, programs, and planning, which will ensure consistency and integration of missions throughout the entire Department.

• Provides a central office to develop and communicate policies across multiple components of the homeland security network and strengthens the Department’s ability to maintain policy and operational readiness needed to protect the homeland.

• Provides the foundation and direction for Department-wide strategic planning and budget priorities.

• Bridges multiple headquarters’ components and operating agencies to improve communication among departmental entities, eliminate duplication of effort, and translate policies into timely action.

• Creates a single point of contact for internal and external stakeholders that will allow for streamlined policy management across the Department.

Baker would hold the position for the next four years, tackling a variety of issues from border and travel to cybersecurity and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to bioterrorism.  In his upcoming book, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, Baker offers an intriguing view of our homeland security posture that ties back to the central theme that technology is both our savior and our enemy as it empowers not only us but our foes.  Coming from Baker, who has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the most techno-literate lawyers around,” the analysis of homeland security technology from a policy/legal prism is refreshing.  This is not a Luddite’s view of why technology harms, but an expert’s finely woven story of “how the technologies we love eventually find new ways to kill us, and how to stop them from doing that.”

A subtheme throughout the book is that information sharing, or lack thereof, has hindered our nation’s efforts to fight terrorism, especially when “privacy” has played a role.  In setting up a discussion of what led to his time at DHS, Baker recounts some of the failures leading up to 9/11, including the information sharing wall put up at the Department of Justice between intelligence and law enforcement elements of the agency, as well as challenges at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. His view is of someone who has spent time in the intelligence world as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency and as General Counsel of the Robb-Silberman Commission investigating intelligence failures before the Iraq War. The account dives into the intricacies of Justice and its overseers, as well as how bureaucracy and personalities can so easily define our government’s most sensitive policies.

The book then looks at his days at DHS and attempts to strengthen border and travel programs and policies for acronym-named programs, including Passenger Name Records (PNR), the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), Electronic System of Travel Authorization (ESTA), Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), and Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System II (CAPPS II),  among others.  If you have ever doubted Washington’s love of acronyms and initialisms, this read will certainly change your mind.

In evaluating efforts in the aviation space, Baker is critical of a number of groups that he deems to have stood in the way of the Department’s mission during his tenure, including the private sector, European governing bodies, bureaucrats, Congress, and privacy/civil liberties groups, all of whom he argues are all about the status quo and not open to change.  Some of his criticisms are valid while others seem to simplify the views of the various actors.  For example, in dismissing some of the tourism industry’s concerns related to travel policies, he argues that the industry did not want innovation in government security on the border. Having been in the trenches at the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee during many of these debates, I would argue that the balancing of the numerous parties’ interests and concerns was not always that simple or easy to discern, especially when assessing the right security path forward.  Some programs mentioned in the book, such as WHTI, succeeded, in part, because they were implemented once necessary infrastructure had been deployed.

His strongest concerns are reserved for privacy and civil rights advocates and the government policies they either tout or hate.  There is a great deal of skepticism for “hypothetical civil liberties” and “hypothetical privacy concerns,” without evidence of demonstrated abuses by the government. He cites numerous incidents, some of which certainly demonstrate the tension between privacy and security co-existing.  A few of the examples he uses have even been explored here at HLSWatch, including complaints about whole body imaging machines in airports.  See, e.g. The Right to Be Left Alone (October 27, 2009) and “Where are all the white guys?” (November 10, 2009). Reading the book, privacy and civil liberties supporters may find it hard to balance Baker’s call for imagination when tackling homeland security policy and decisionmaking without calling for a similar level of creative thinking when addressing how those policies and decisions will affect privacy and civil liberties.

The book goes on to describe how the Department and Administration tackled (or failed to tackle) cybersecurity and biosecurity and the differences between the approaches. In both sections, privacy and information sharing are undercurrents, though we also see some interesting discussions of such topics as patent protections, self-regulation, and the evolution of security in each of these areas.  The discussions are intriguing and provide both a history and analysis of why we are where we are on those issues.   The cybersecurity and related CFIUS discussion brought back some memories to this self-proclaimed cybergeek, including some of my first interactions with Baker when he was in private practice and I was at the Justice Department.

One last observation: while the focus on the book is obviously on the time that Baker served at the Department under Secretary Chertoff, it leaves much to the imagination of what work Secretary Ridge and his team- from their early days in the White House after 9/11 until the changing of the guard to Secretary Chertoff – undertook and how that may have contributed to some of Secretary Chertoff’s and Baker’s successes, challenges, and mindset.  In addition, despite the focus on privacy and civil liberties, there is little mention of the other DHS offices, including the Privacy, Civil Liberties, and General Counsel’s offices, who may have been engaged in many of the battles noted by Baker. The book is not lacking in detail or intrigue because of these exclusions, though I wonder how they affected the decisions of Baker and his policy team. Perhaps these items are the subject of another book for another time.

Stewart Baker provides insight into a D.C. perspective of homeland security and the struggle of a Department to tackle technology, privacy, and information sharing. The book provides some valuable lessons for those who are on the frontlines of homeland security policy as they attempt to tackle future threats. For an observer of homeland security development, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism is a must-read. The book will be released on June 15th and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.  In the meanwhile, excerpts from the book and other missives from Baker can be found at a blog with the same name, http://www.skatingonstilts.com/.

Late last week Secretary Napolitano was in the Boston area.  She announced a new grant for Logan airport, visited with the Boston police commissioner and Cambridge firefighters, officiated at the swearing-in of new citizens,  gave a speech at Harvard, and had a round-table discussion with nine college presidents.  (Do you occasionally worry our cabinet secretaries have been remade into little more than mouthpieces, kept busy doing testimony, media interviews, speeches, and announcements?)

In a read-out of the closed door session with higher education leaders DHS tells us, “During the meeting, Secretary Napolitano highlighted the Department’s strong partnerships with universities including support for training, coursework in homeland security-related fields and industries, and for research and development in science and technology, such as the DHS Centers of Excellence, which bring together multidisciplinary homeland security research and education assets of more than 200 institutions across the country.”

The Boston Globe reports, “she was in Cambridge meeting with college and university presidents to discuss new courses and majors aimed at preparing graduates to enter the field of cybersecurity.”  In remarks at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government the Secretary noted, “Combating the cyber threat is going to require a partnership among government, academia, and the private sector as ambitious and sustained as any our nation has seen before. And I should say to the bright students here that DHS wants the best minds coming out of our universities to come join us in this effort.”

I have a second-hand report (good enough for a blog?) that the session with university presidents was mostly about science and technology research grants, not about homeland security education or professional development.  This is not a surprise and says much more about the role of modern universities and their presidents, than about homeland security or the Secretary. (And suggests homeland security officials are not the only ones with a serious grants habit, see Dan O’Connor’s Tuesday post.)

On the same day the Secretary of Homeland Security was meeting with higher education leaders in Boston, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was in Atlanta.  According to Georgia Public Broadcasting, “Duncan paid a visit telling students that America has to educate itself to a better economy by improving science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM subjects.”

The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) released in February emphasizes, “Maturing and strengthening the homeland security enterprise includes enhancing shared awareness of risks and threats, building capable communities, fostering unity of effort, and fostering innovative approaches and solutions through leading-edge science and technology.”

Am I working too hard to connect some dots (smudges?) or might there be a pattern here?

Science and technology – like mom and apple pie – attract widespread  support.  Investments in research and development for these hard-subjects (“hard” as in practical and difficult) are measurable and meaningful… for me too.

But read the QHSR’s paragraph again. What is the role of science and technology in shared awareness of risk and threats?  We have lots of technology to gather, sort and display information on risks and threats.  What we don’t have is a shared understanding of what is meaningful to gather, what is helpful to sort, and how to interpret the results.  That’s a judgment call.

How about building capable communities?  Science and technology certainly have a role in infrastructure development.  But given the QHSR’s attention to psychological and community resilience, I perceive its definition of “capable” goes well beyond the boundaries of science and technology.  How do we build a capable community?  It depends on the context of the particular community, doesn’t it?  It depends on the purposes we seek to advance, doesn’t it?  Capable of what?  It’s a judgment call.

Scan the QHSR table of contents and there are plenty of opportunities for science and technology to support good judgment.  But mostly we are given complex, constantly changing contexts beyond the capacity of precise prediction.

Once upon a time, we presumed to teach good judgment.  This was always a dicey business.  Since the 1960s - after what many saw as a series of profoundly bad judgments - the notion of good judgment has been widely discredited as self-serving fiction.

In this we have neglected to understand how and why well-intentioned men (mostly) made tragically flawed judgments.  We are increasingly inclined to ex post facto assessments of every judgment.  If we like the results, the judgment is good.  If the result is not satisfactory, there can now be a compulsion to uncover deceit and deception.  And in any case, the culture insists that threat, vulnerability and consequence should be predictable.

In this confidence regarding predictability we are, I perceive, indulging the fatal flaw at the heart of the worst kind of  judgment.  In those ancient days when we earnestly endeavored to teach good judgment, we learned that hubris – trying to control what is beyond our control – is the tripwire for tragedy.  Toward the end of his life Robert McNamara wrote, “…it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend.  Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate.”  This is the beginning of wisdom.   McGeorge Bundy, another of the Sixties best and brightest, tells us, “There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.”  Two of the tragedy’s main characters seemed to learned its lesson.  But those of us in the audience?

How do we choose well when we cannot – when no one can – be sure of the outcome?  How do we choose well when the risks of failure are real?  How do we choose well when threats are unpredictable, vulnerabilities are inherent to our liberty, and the consequences could be catastrophic?  It’s a judgment call.

Is it too late to retrieve – or create anew - the teaching and learning of good judgment?

For further consideration:

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Aristotle’s Ethics by Richard Kraut (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)