Insecurity Begins at Home

Homeland Security Chaos. American insecurity begins at home. To say that the Department of Homeland Security, originally opposed by President Bush, has gotten off to a slow start would be kind. As Michael Crowley reported in depth in The New Republic, DHS is struggling with its transition, its technology, and even its mandate.

First, there is “charter conflict” over the central role in coordinating and sharing intelligence data across the panoply of federal, state and local agencies responsible for homeland defense. Analysts at DHS’ directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) were to be on point to synthesize and analyze intelligence from the CIA, FBI and other sources. Inexplicably, President Bush created the quasi-independent Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which reports directly to CIA head George Tenet and is housed in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The TTIC, and not DHS, is to be the clearinghouse of anti-terror intelligence. The result, as the Markle Foundation report overseen by former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and former Aetna executive Zoe Baird described, is that “TTIC's creation has caused confusion among state and local entities, and within the federal government itself, about the respective roles of the TTIC and DHS.”

The challenge over the department’s mission is exacerbated weak leadership, understaffing, and interagency squabbling over the transition process. As Crowley reports, 15 people turned down the opportunity to run IAIP, seeing the impact roles instead at FBI, CIA and other agencies. The former head of IAIP, Paul Redmond, testified to Congress last June that he had filled only one-quarter of his analyst slots, “because we do not have the [office] space for them.” The new Border and Transportation Security agency (BTS), combining the Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), has been slowed by the integration of processes, computers systems, and even weapons.

DHS hasn’t even been able to get the basics right. The coordination of a single, computerized terrorist watch list, seen as a key lesson of the 9/11 disaster, is months behind schedule and nowhere near the 6-12 estimate of the independent Markle task force. Last April, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge told a Senate committee that the database integration was proceeding smoothly, “I think we're fairly close to finalizing the consolidation itself.” Almost a year later, the lists are still not merged, and the task has been transferred from DHS to the FBI.

Given the central role of DHS in protecting Americans here at home, Crowley’s conclusion seems quite justified:

No one says merging 170,000 employees from 22 different agencies should have been easy. But, even allowing for inevitable transition problems, DHS has been a disaster: underfunded, undermanned, disorganized, and unforgivably slow-moving.

The Progressive Policy Institute concurred, giving President Bush a “D” in its detailed assessment last year, America at Risk: A Homeland Security Report Card.

Budget Cuts for First Responders. President Bush has spoken with pride about the progress of DHS and his commitment to enhanced preparedness at the state and local level.

If only it were true. President Bush’s FY 2005 budget trims substantial sums of money from terrorism first responders, crippling state and local governments already swimming in red ink. While the overall DHS budget grew roughly 10% to $40.2 billion, the Homeland Security grant program to states and municipalities was incomprehensibly slashed by $1 billion to only $700 million. Funds for SafeComm, a project to provide interoperable communication systems for first responders, were also gutted. Over $100 million in bioterrorism funds were also cut. It’s no wonder that even Republican Susan Collins, the Senate Governmental affairs committee chairwoman, called the DHS cuts “shortsighted” and regrettable.

At the state and local level, the response has been negative and loud. New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey sent a letter on February 27th to President Bush highlighting the decisive impact of the cuts. The United States Conference of Mayors added to the alarm, noting that funds the administration had promised for 2003 had not been delivered to 90% of 168 cities it surveyed in January 2004. Even firefighters, whose images the Bush/Cheney campaign tried to co-opt for its television ads, are big losers in the new DHS budget.

1. Security and Myopia
2. Insecurity Begins at Home
3. Not Fighting the Good Fight
4. Losing the Battle for Hearts and Minds