The Obama Administration, Taking Homeland Security Seriously

The Washington Post's Spencer Hsu reports something important--and encouraging--this morning. The headline sums it up:

Many Bush Officials Held Over at DHS/Obama Administration Makes the Unusual Move to Ensure Continuity

As Hsu explains,

Wary of being caught short-handed in case of a domestic crisis, the Obama administration has asked nearly two dozen Bush administration officials in the Department of Homeland Security to stay in their jobs until successors can be named.

The attempt at continuity is unusual in presidential transitions between parties, which typically lead to wholesale purging of politically appointed personnel. ...

By contrast, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has retained the department's second-ranking official, Deputy Secretary Paul A. Schneider, and its top border security official, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham, as well as its operations director and the assistant secretaries responsible for policy and private sector coordination. The heads of the Coast Guard and Secret Service, who are not political appointees, and DHS Undersecretary for Management Elaine C. Duke, whose tenure is set by law, also remain.

The point here is not that Schneider, Basham, Duke, et al. are irreplaceable--nobody, no matter how talented, is irreplaceable.

Instead, the bottom line is that Team Obama is determined to proceed in an orderly fashion, not making change in personnel just for the sake of change. They want to get their people into place first, and only then move out the previous team.

That's good government, at a time of presidential transition, at its best.

We've been warned--especially about RDD's, aka "dirty bombs."

The always sober and authoritative Global Security Newswire blared an ominous headline this morning: "CDC Warns of Program Cuts."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned Friday that funding cuts could force the agency, and its state and local counterparts, to reduce programs designed to prepare the nation to respond to terrorist WMD attacks (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2008).

The warning was issued in the first report from the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response, which reviewed progress made in fiscal 2007.

"Building a strong platform for public health preparedness and response is not an easy endeavor," TPER Director Richard Besser said in a press release. “Much work remains to be done to improve our internal and external response capabilities, and to reduce our vulnerabilities to all types of public health threats.”

The new report cited progress in establishing national drug and vaccine stockpiles, multiplying the number of laboratories capable of testing for potential bioterrorism materials, improving disease surveillance capabilities and creating information sharing systems.

This progress, however, is threatened by prospects of reduced funding, the report says.

The federal public health agency might "have to make difficult decisions about what the highest priority activities are and what must be postponed," the report says. "Public health departments at state and local levels may have to make similar choices"

The report, Public Health Preparedness: Strengthening CDC's Emergency Response, outlines CDC′s future preparedness priorities, including enhancing biosurveillance systems to support rapid detection of and response to emerging public health threats, increasing nationwide laboratory capacity to respond effectively after a radiological incident (such as a dirty bomb), and helping state and local health departments strengthen their emergency response capabilities.

Here's the link to the CDC report, which goes even further.

We all realize that many urgent priorities--and many non-urgent priorities--are going to have to be sacrificed in the current fiscal climate. But if I were an elected official, I would not want to vote to cut the muscle of homeland security after reading this report. And of course, ignorance of the report is no excuse, because others, including potential political opponents, will surely be reading it. 9-11 was a genuine surprise. The next attack, whatever it is, will not be.

We've been warned, yet again, by the GSN and CDC.

President Bush Leaves Office on a Positive Legal Note--Actually, Two Positive Legal Notes

Happily, George W. Bush has commuted the long prison sentences of two former--and hopefully future--Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. It would have been nice if Bush had done this two years ago, but “late” is better than “never.”

The two lawmen have been wrongly imprisoned since 2007 as a result of a murky case in which they were convicted of shooting and wounding a fugitive drug dealer fleeing arrest. Interestingly, the drug trafficker, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was given immunity for testifying against Compean and Ramos, has since been re-arrested and convicted on yet another drug-trafficking charge.

So prison is the right place for lawbreaker Davila, but the wrong place for law-enforcers Compean and Ramos.

Disturbingly, the prosecution of Compean and Ramos seems to have been part of a larger pattern of excessively zealous prosecutorial efforts by publicity-seeking US Attorneys, out to score headlines by harassing law enforcement officials. One unfortunate result has been repeated incidents in which Border Patrol agents have been reluctant to use force to protect themselves and the border, because they fear a Compean and Ramos-like fate.

Now President Barack Obama, and his choice for Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, have a chance to begin afresh on border security/homeland security issues. Do we want the border to be secure, or not? Do we want the homeland to be maximally protected, or not? And will we enforce our laws against illegal entry, or not? Obama has supported building a border fence, and as for Napolitano, back in 2005, when she was governor of Arizona, she declared a “state of emergency” over out-of-control illegal immigration, at a time when Washington was merely dithering.

Let’s hope that Obama and Napolitano find the right answers to border-security questions, but in the meantime, let’s celebrate the release of Compean and Ramos.

Needed: A Seamless Vision of National Security and Homeland Security--And Budgetary Clarity, Too.

I have never quite understood why Homeland Security is seen as such a different category than National Security. I mean, surely the first and foremost mission of the US Defense Department is the defense of the US, aka the Homeland.

Now as a practical matter, I won't argue that there's a value in creating different Departments, DOD to deal with mostly international concerns, and DHS to deal with exclusively domestic concerns.

But while it makes sense for DOD and DHS to be separate bureaucracies, it still makes sense to see them as performing overlapping functions. And so, further, it makes sense to directly compare their budgets. Especially in times of straitened fiscal circumstance, it's a good idea to analyze both DOD and DHS at the same time, to make sure that we are getting the maximum amount of security for each dollar invested.

These issues were raised by Elaine M. Grossman, writing for Global Security Newswire, a National Journal publication. Grossman's piece, "Nuclear Arms Experts Tee Up Spending Debate for Obama," exactly captured the critical importance of DOD/DHS comparisons.

For example, Grossman cited the work of Randall Larsen, a homeland security expert:

"Today, the [Environmental Protection Agency] spends less than $1 million a year on research for cleanup" in the event that a radiological "dirty bomb" detonates in a U.S. city, said Larsen, national security adviser to the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"We [also] need more funding in R&D and operations for medical and public health responses to an [improvised nuclear device]. Reduced spending on [national missile defense] will more than pay for other programs, such as these, that will have far better returns on investment."

To further underscore the relative ratios of spending, Grossman also quoted Micah Zenko, of the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs , as making some significant cross-departmental comparisons:

In an e-mail message yesterday, Zenko cited a CIA finding that a WMD attack against the United States is more likely to be delivered by "nonmissile" means -- such as container ships, automobiles or aircraft -- than by missiles.

"The U.S. spends almost twice as much per year on R&D of untested missile defenses as it does on efforts to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism," said Zenko, a former research associate at Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom. "More funding across the range of U.S. programs responsible for securing fissile material, nuclear weapons and weapons-related components would help."

In conclusion, it would seem that the USG is under-investing in homeland security.

And that's something to think about, especially on a day when the outgoing Bush administration, and the incoming Obama administration, cooperated on a homeland security exercise on Tuesday. R-TAC applauds such cooperative efforts, and we hope to see more of them, engaging experts and decisionmakers on a bipartisan basis. \

And if we do, R-TAC is confident that we will see better and wiser spending decisions.