Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom Chapter 2: Protecting the Homeland Download PDF

During his two terms of office, President Eisenhower struggled to formulate a long-term strategy to fight a two-front war—with the Soviets and with the Democrats.1 Any effort Ike made to hold back defense spending earned shrill cries from the loyal opposition, which was trying to earn political capital by claiming that the President was being soft on Communists. One of Eisenhower’s harshest critics was Paul H. Nitze. The antagonism between these two has much to tell us about the challenge of playing good defense in the long war.

Before 1952, Nitze had been a Republican, although he had served in a key staff position in the Truman Administration. Nitze had followed Kennan as the Director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department, and was one of the key authors of NSC-68. He felt that Kennan was simply naïve in his understanding of how much conventional military force was needed fight the Cold War. “Kennan believed that two high-quality Marine divisions would be sufficient to support the military requirements of U.S. containment policies,” Nitze fumed. “I disagreed.”2 Nitze argued that military spending needed to be more than triple what Truman had budgeted—and he crafted NSC-68 to make the case.

Nitze’s falling out with Eisenhower began during the 1952 presidential campaign. In fact, Nitze backed Ike’s campaign, until, as he later recalled, “I got mad at him.”3 Nitze switched parties. Shortly after the election he was ousted from the Eisenhower Administration, but remained active as one of the foremost commentators about defense affairs. Then Nitze received an unexpected to call to serve on the Gaither Commission—a blue ribbon commission assessing the need for a civil defense program.

After the Soviets exploded a nuclear device in 1949, Americans knew it was only a matter of time before they had to be afraid in their own beds. By Eisenhower’s second term, the threat of nuclear holocaust had become something more than fodder for science fiction movies with cheap special affects taken from stock footage of nuclear tests in New Mexico. Americans were afraid. Eisenhower tapped H. Rowan Gaither, chairman of the Ford Foundation and the Rand Cooperation, to form a committee of private citizens to study the need for civil defenses.

Nitze was pleased to be asked to act as a consultant for the committee. After World War II, he had served as director of the Air Force’s strategic bombing survey—which, among other tasks, had studied the nuclear strikes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The experience convinced him that the United States needed to prepare for nuclear attack—and that meant digging in. He tried to convince builder Robert Moses to construct bomb shelters in New York City. “Paul, you’re mad, absolutely mad,” Moses disparaged. “Nobody will pay attention to that.”4 The Gaither study not only gave Nitze another chance to make the case for civil defense, but also to renew the arguments for higher defense spending advanced in NSC-68.

History is often a cataloguing of coincidences. So it was with the Gaither Report. On October 1, 1957, shortly before the committee’s report was due to be presented to the President, a flicker of light reached into the sky above the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Aboard was 184 pounds of metal called “Sputnik.” The Soviets had managed to launch the world’s first satellite, although all it did was circle the globe and beep at the astonished world below. An American admiral belittled the achievement. It was, he declared, “a hunk of iron almost anybody could launch.” Americans knew otherwise. If the Soviets could throw a satellite into space, they feared, the Russians could drop a nuclear-tipped missile on a U.S. city.

Sputnik hysteria set the stage for equally hysterical warnings from the Gaither committee. Based on flawed intelligence, the report vastly overestimated Soviet capabilities, leading it to call for a $32 billion civil defense program as well as a huge expansion of offensive capabilities. Though the report itself was classified, news leaks whipped up a nervous public. Presidential candidates like John F. Kennedy decried a U.S. missile gap that threatened to give the Soviets an insurmountable lead in nuclear competition.5

Eisenhower proved skeptical of the report’s findings. He refused to endorse a national shelter-building program. Rejecting the significance of Sputnik and the dire predictions of the Gaither Report, Eisenhower decided not to change his fundamental strategic approach to the Cold War. When pressed to revamp his plans for space and missile development, Ike told his staff they would do just like they had done in World War II when the plan for defeating Germany was continually attacked by critics. “We never abandoned it,” he reminded them. “It was a good plan, a long-range plan that had been carefully worked out. We went on and won.”6 Good strategy required a steady hand.

Ike felt the same way about his hopes for the Cold War. Robert Bowie, who followed Nitze as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, agreed. Bowie was Nitze’s mirror image—a Democrat, working for conservative Republicans. Politics aside, Bowie concluded that, “To a large extent, his [Eisenhower’s] strategy established the guidelines for the long haul leading to the ultimate end of the cold war.”7

Yet, as Bowie pointed out, it was “a long haul,” and there were moments when America got lost along the way. After John F. Kennedy became President, U.S. intelligence confirmed there was a missile gap, but it was in the United States’ favor. Too late—the United States had already announced an expansion of its nuclear arsenal. Fearful of being left behind, the Soviets smuggled missiles into Cuba, sparking a showdown with the Kennedy Administration, increasing distrust between the superpowers, and precipitating an escalating (and seemingly uncontrollable) nuclear arms race.

As for the national civil defense program, it never became a central tenet of protecting the homeland, even though there were brief spurts of activity. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the national civil defense effort received renewed attention when the government initiated a nationwide nuclear fallout shelter system, but the program soon lapsed.

Nitze’s career, however, was far from over. Although Eisenhower retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Nitze went to work for successive Democratic administrations. Kissinger later tapped him to lead the crown jewel of détente, the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) with the Soviets. Thus, Nitze capped his career (again working for Republicans) trying the slow the arms race that he had helped to create.

Providing for the defense of American soil is no easy task because it is not about holding trench lines or parrying a cavalry charge; it is about protecting our children, our homes, and our neighbors. Ike understood the dilemma in a way that Nitze never appreciated.

Eisenhower was always keen to remember the human dimension of war. This, too, is perhaps something he gained from his reading of the great Prussian military thinker, Clausewitz. One of Clausewitz’s most famous constructs is that a trinity (composed of the military, the nation’s leaders, and the people) governs war. The military provides the muscle; the leaders provide the cool, rational decisions that guide military effort; and the people provide the passion and will to prevail. Governments, Clausewitz argued, that lose the support of the people cannot sustain their forces in the field. Ike knew that he could never forget the passion of the people in fighting in the Cold War, but he also knew that it was a bad idea to make policy by whipping up fear or giving in to fear’s excesses.

Eisenhower understood that Americans were afraid and that their concerns had to be addressed, but he also realized that spending billions of dollars on bomb shelters and excessive missile arsenals would buy little real security. He knew when the furor over Sputnik died down that, upon sober reflection, most Americans would agree with him. Nitze’s answer amounted to little more than throwing money at the problem and encouraging people to take counsel of their fears.

The Face of Homeland Security

Putting the right face on homeland security is perhaps the greatest public policy challenge of our times. The Eisenhower approach is to build an enduring security system that is prepared for the long war and takes reasonable measures to protect Americans. The alternative is to do anything to create the illusion of progress—e.g., spend money haphazardly on state and local programs, turn U.S. ports into a twenty-first century Maginot line, profile Arab-Americans, seal our borders, ban immigration, or inspect every package coming into the United States—without any real sense of whether these measures will actually help stop terrorists or of the impact they might have on the U.S. economy or our liberties. There is more to homeland security than throwing money at the problem. Defending the homeland is a strategic problem—and at the strategic level, thought should always precede action.

How We Got Here from There

To the Bush Administration’s credit, after 9/11 the President quickly surveyed the instruments the United States possessed to provide homeland security and found them wanting. It would, however, be wrong to argue that nothing had been done to protect the United States from terrorist threats prior to the 9/11 attacks. The United States had a number of agencies involved in the task of safeguarding the homeland. The FBI looked for terrorists. The Coast Guard patrolled U.S. waters. The Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) watched people and goods.

Successive administrations also noted the gathering terrorist threat and tried to do something about it. Funding for activities related to homeland security rose in the mid-1990s, spurred by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Federal expenditures from 1995 to 2000 for domestic preparedness against weapons of mass destruction (WMD) accelerated from almost nothing to $1.5 billion.8 Presidential Decision Directive 39 (released on June 21, 1995) called for giving “the highest priority to developing effective capabilities to detect, prevent, defeat and manage the consequences of nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) materials or weapons used by terrorists.”9 In 1996 Congress passed the Nunn–Lugar–Domenici Domestic Preparedness Initiative, which enhanced the capabilities of first responders to deal with WMD. Reflecting a growing concern about terrorism and WMD, Congress held over 80 hearings on these and related issues between 1998 and 2000.10

Yet all this effort appeared more like the scattershot Truman approach to the emerging Cold War than a coherent approach to protecting America from terrorists. The first reactions to 9/11 were much the same—a patchwork of measures: a law creating the Transportation Security Administration to oversee passenger inspections at the air terminals; a bill to improve port and commercial shipping security; another bill on food safety; and the Patriot Act to provide more tools to law enforcement for fighting terrorism. What was lacking was the guiding lifeline of an idea.

The Bush Administration quickly recognized that the earnest efforts of legislators and bureaucrats were not enough. The nation was getting security without strategy, priorities, or a plan. Shortly after 9/11, the President established an Office of Homeland Security within the White House to craft an overall approach to protecting the homeland—although walking in the steps of Eisenhower would be no easy task.

Homeland security needed its George Kennan. One candidate for the historians to consider will be Richard Falkenrath. At 34, he had done well. A doctorate in war studies from King’s College in London and an assistant professorship in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government were notable accomplishments. He was a published author as well, coauthoring a 1998 book—America’s Achilles’ Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack—long before the subject of transnational terrorism was fashionable.

Falkenrath was no stranger to Washington. In his eight years at Harvard, he frequently served as a consultant to DoD, the intelligence community, and Rand (an influential government think tank). Falkenrath was also no stranger to the White House. He had served as a member of the Bush–Cheney Transition Team for the National Security Council and had begun working at the NSC, coordinating policy on weapons proliferation. Then the world turned upside down. By December of 2001 Falkenrath had joined the homeland security office. From 6:30 in the morning until well past dinner, he was at his desk as Senior Advisor and Deputy Assistant to the President, reviewing budgets, coordinating policies, and helping to draft the nation’s first strategy for homeland security. After six months of meetings, debates, arguments, and deliberation, the strategy was published.

Homeland Security as Strategy

The Office of Homeland Security released its national strategy in July 2002. Like any good strategy, it included the basics of ends, ways, and means. The ends (the goals of the strategy) were embedded in the definition of homeland security—“a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur.” The strategy’s ways (how the goals will be accomplished) could be described in a simple word or short phrase—“layered security”—a notion as concise as “containment” or “beat Germany first” and with as significant an import for providing a blueprint for action.

The strategy’s approach to homeland security rightly eschews the notion that there is a single, “silver bullet” solution to stopping terrorism at America’s doorstep. Rather, it argues for a multi-layered system that assumes no one security initiative will suffice. This strategy provides multiple opportunities to thwart or mitigate terrorist acts. Security is not provided by a single initiative, but by the cumulative effect of all the homeland security programs. For example, a terrorist might be discovered by an overseas intelligence operation while applying for a visa, during screening of an international flight manifest, during inspection at a port of entry, or during a domestic counterterrorism investigation. Likewise, if layers of defense failed to stop the terrorists, other initiatives would be undertaken to reduce vulnerabilities (such as beefing up security at nuclear power plants), making key targets less susceptible to attack or less likely to suffer. Finally, if these measures failed, the strategy wanted to make sure there were resources in place to adequately respond to various kinds of potential terrorist incidents. Thus, improving security requires ensuring that each layer of the system is sufficient to do its part of the job and that efforts are complementary.

America’s homeland security strategy also makes a fundamental statement about the means and the resources that would be needed to get the job done. Homeland security, the strategy argued, had to be a shared responsibility. While the federal government focused on counterterrorism, states and local government were tasked with providing for public safety within their communities. The private sector, which controls over 85 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure (from the electrical power grid to telecommunications), also had significant responsibilities in protecting the nation from the threat of terrorism.11

Perhaps the most significant contribution of the strategy was its designation of the six principal tasks—the critical missions—comprising homeland security. These are:

• Intelligence and Early Warning;

• Border and Transportation Security;

• Domestic Counterterrorism;

• Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets;

• Defending Against Catastrophic Threats (i.e., research and development); and

• Emergency Preparedness and Response.

Establishing these critical missions was important because the strategy detailed the tasks that had to done to secure the nation from terrorism. Each task has a special role in turning the strategy into action.

Intelligence and Early Warning. This includes activities related to detecting terrorists and disseminating threat information and warning. It is about promoting intelligence sharing across the public and private sectors. Effective intelligence sharing is a prerequisite for exploiting the full potential of national capabilities to respond to potential terrorist threats.

Protecting Border and Transportation Systems. This task includes managing the hundreds of borders and ports of entry into the United States, ensuring aviation and maritime security, and developing guidelines and programs for protecting national transportation systems. Border and transportation security is about ensuring the adoption of a layered security system—a combination of effective, mutually supporting initiatives that simultaneously provide useful counterterrorism measures, protect civil liberties, and do not encumber the flow of travel and commerce.

Domestic Counterterrorism. This comprises law enforcement efforts, principally by the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (although it also includes other federal, state, and local agencies), to identify, thwart, and prosecute terrorists. This critical mission area is about adopting programs that expand the capacity to conduct counterterrorism operations without impinging on civil liberties or detracting from other law enforcement priorities.

Critical Infrastructure and Key Asset Protection. This task includes protecting agriculture and food, water, public health, emergency services, the defense industrial base, telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking and financing services, chemical industry and hazardous materials, and postal and shipping services. This critical mission also includes protecting key assets such as national monuments and icons, nuclear power plants, dams, government facilities, and selected commercial assets.12

Defending Against Catastrophic Threats. This calls for efforts to develop better sensors and procedures to detect smuggled nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons; improving decontamination and medical responses to such weapons; and harnessing scientific knowledge and tools for counterterrorism efforts. The goal of this effort is to focus funding on developing new means to prevent, respond to, and mitigate the unprecedented dangers posed by catastrophic threats.

Emergency Preparedness and Response. This task is about preparing for, responding to, and mitigating the effects of terrorist attacks. The strategy argues for concentrating federal resources on creating a true national preparedness system, not merely to supplement the needs of state and local governments.

The strategy not only defined the essential tasks of homeland security, it also provide a blueprint for assigning responsibilities and reorganizing the federal government. Four months later, on November 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 merged over 22 federal entities and 180,000 employees into a single department—the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, the strategy served as a blueprint for creating the four directorates of the Department of Homeland Security: Border and Transportation Security, Information Analysis and Critical Infrastructure Protection, Emergency Preparedness and Response, and Science and Technology.

Thinking About the Next 9/11

Within two years of the September 11 attacks, the foundations for homeland security were firmly established. The yeoman’s service had been done. More work, however, remained. It took a decade to turn the mandates of the National Security Act of 1947 into the right instruments for twentieth century national security. We should think before we change a course we have just begun, even if another attack soon follows.

Americans should carefully consider how the country might react to the next 9/11. A key first step is thinking through how we should respond to attacks beforehand. If and when the next attack occurs, there are four arguments we will undoubtedly hear. They are simple, clear-cut—and usually wrong. Here they are:

“Throw Money at the Problem.” If another terrorist attack occurs, we will hear shrill cries that it’s the government’s fault. We will be told that the billions being spent on homeland security wasn’t nearly enough.

Yet few problems can be solved by money alone. Spending too much, too fast on programs that aren’t well thought out would be wasteful and counterproductive.

We know, for example, that we need to do a better job spending the money we’ve already allocated to emergency responders. A study cited in Time magazine found that most grants to state and local governments have been distributed “with no regard for the threats, vulnerabilities and potential consequences faced by each region.”13 We need a system that will spend our money efficiently and effectively.

“Trade Safety for Civil Liberties.” Calls for new security measures that require temporary impositions on basic civil liberties will surely be heard. This argument is almost devoid of logic. During the Cold War, the United States managed for decades to endure a protracted struggle against a global superpower without trashing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is hard to see how a small band of religious extremists merit suspension of the liberties that generations fought to preserve.

On the other hand, Americans should beware of hysterical claims that every government action to fight terrorism is a slap at the Constitution. The USA Patriot Act is a case in point. Its detractors have yet to identify a single abuse or prove that its provisions are broadly unconstitutional. The debate over the balance between civil liberties and security warrants thoughtful debate, not knee-jerk histrionics.

“America Is at Fault.” If there’s another attack, one explanation will be that we deserved it. Critics might offer any number of reasons, but we generally should dismiss these assertions out of hand. No nation is perfect, but our country strives to be a force for good in the world. Some may not like American politics or policy, but nothing the United States has done justifies terrorist acts aimed against innocent people.

Still, no one should be surprised if the blame for attacks on Americans is pinned on Americans. The “enemy is us” argument was a refrain heard more than once after 9/11. That is to be expected. Reflection, criticism, and reassessment are part of democracy. They are part of what makes for a strong and vibrant civil society—but we should not let them become an excuse for inaction, retrenchment, and retreat.

“We Are on the Wrong Course.” In all wars we witness advances and setbacks, victories and casualties. Every incident is not a call for change. The United States succeeded during the Cold War because it held firm, stuck to a long-term strategy that invested in security, protected civil liberties, and promoted economic growth. After 9/11, the nation established a homeland security strategy that is attempting to follow a similar path: We should stick to it.

We can be sure more terrorist attacks on the United States are on their way. They may come quickly or occur years in the future. After all, we know it took some five years to perpetrate the September 11 attacks. The terrorists may be travelers from abroad or people who have been living here for years—perhaps even American citizens. But attacks will come.

No administration can guarantee it will stop every attack, everywhere. However, if we take the offensive, we can steal the initiative away from the terrorists, lessen their chances of success, mitigate the damage they cause—and one day live in a world in which terrorists are left in the pages of history. All that is required of us is courage and a constant heart. Admittedly, this is no simple task.

Washington’s Greatest Industry

Eisenhower shrugged off the distractions of the Gaither Report and steered a steady course. We should do the same. There is, however, no room for complacency. When the National Security Act of 1947 consolidated the servicesinto a single department, the new organization—a product of debate and compromise—left much to be desired. It was called the National Military Establishment, a title that pleased no one because its initials were the NME. Embarrassed department representatives would go into meetings confessing that they were representing the “en-em-ee.” The department’s name, however, was the least of its problems. In order to prop up the power of the services, the department secretary was given almost no authority and, as an institution, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) had virtually no responsibility.

Two years later, a subsequent law was required to fix the most grievous errors in the Pentagon’s organization, but serious flaws in the department remained. However, once the wiring diagram was set, budgets divided, and congressional committees established, Washington’s greatest industry—momentum—took over. After that, fixing flaws was soon crushed by the momentum of entrenched interests and parochial jurisdictions. Change became almost impossible. The Office of the Secretary of Defense remained weak until the 1960s. The JCS stood impotent until the Goldwater–Nichols Act in 1986. We can learn lessons from this history.

We live in crucial times; times in which strategy must be turned into reality, the hard slug of years in which prudent improvements have to made—all without being pulled off course. It will not be easy. Eisenhower had his Nitze. New Nitzes will appear in the years ahead.

Completing the task of turning strategy into a national homeland security requires important but difficult steps, easily as difficult as putting the Pentagon in order. There are four areas in which more work needs to be done: undertaking congressional reform, reorganizing the Homeland Security Department, balancing federal responsibilities with those of state and local governments, and building a true national security system.

Congress, Reform Thyself

When President George W. Bush proposed the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security on June 6, 2002, Congress joined the debate with vigor, arguing about every aspect of the issue, except how they would manage oversight of the new agency. That is a big problem. Congress’s homeland security and terrorism responsibilities transcended all aspects of its traditional committee authority.

The day the President proposed the Homeland Security Act to Congress, it was referred to 12 standing committees in the House alone. Indeed, the White House identified 88 committees and subcommittees that might be considered to exercise authority over homeland security policy. In the House, for example, at least 14 full committees and 25 separate subcommittees claim jurisdiction over some aspect of homeland security. When the bill was proposed, 10 of the 13 appropriations subcommittees laid claim to a portion of homeland security expenditures. Moreover, in some cases committee jurisdictions overlapped.

A Disjointed Committee System

The congressional debate about legislation to establish the department illustrated the cost of the disjointed committee system. The House recognized that its standing rules would dramatically slow passage of any legislation to establish the new department. It created a temporary Select Committee on Homeland Security to process the legislation and gave this committee sole authority for debating and amending the bill, which the full House would then vote on.

The House leadership allowed all other committees to hold hearings and amend the initial draft, but this process was only to advise the Select Committee prior to its deliberations. When the Select Committee met for markup, it reviewed the President’s proposed legislation—not the opinions of the other committees. Adopting this process allowed the House to focus on homeland security issues that directly affect the proposed department and to move quickly to pass legislation acceptable to the President. It did so on June 26, 2002.

The Senate, on the other hand, relied on its existing committee system—with disastrous results. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee was assigned responsibility for reviewing and amending the bill prior to floor debate. The committee did not finish this process until after the House had already passed its legislation. After two months of debate in the full Senate, the bill stalled.

Additionally, instead of focusing on the many issues directly related to homeland security or the operation of the new department, the Senate allowed the debate to become hijacked by union special interests and a protracted and unproductive debate about the civil service provisions in the act. In effect, while terrorists plotted against us, the Senate debated the importance of merit pay raises. After these issues were resolved, the law finally passed. The Department of Homeland Security was created. Concern about the dysfunctional oversight of Congress passed, but the problems this lack of oversight engendered did not.

Inconsistent Oversight

Every day another uneventful morning passes without a major terrorist incident on U.S. soil. That is cold comfort. We do not know what threats are now in the works and when they may come to fruition. We need homeland security that will serve for the long term, protecting Americans on holidays and unremarkable days for years to come.

No one understood the frustration of preparing for the future better than Chris Cox (R–CA). This veteran congressman knew how Washington worked. He had been on both sides, first as a staffer in the Reagan White House, then as representative from California. Cox had always had a strong interest in national security issues. On the morning of September 11, 2001, he was having breakfast at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Minutes after the news that the World Trade Center had been attacked, Cox was on his way back to Capitol Hill. Then word came that the Pentagon had been struck. Cox joined other members standing on the steps of the Capitol building.

With a reputation as a diplomatic, tactful negotiator, he was an obvious choice to head up the Select Homeland Security Committee, a fractious gathering of 27 Republicans and 23 Democrats. It was a job Cox wanted. After all, he pointed out to a reporter, protecting the American people was “the primary responsibility of the federal government.”14

Much like Eisenhower, Cox soon found himself fighting a two-front war—one with the terrorists and one with his fellow legislators. Although Cox and his Democratic counterpart, Representative Jim Turner (D–TX) made a good faith effort to craft bipartisan legislation, virtually none of their work reached the floor of the House. Cox’s committee included the chairmen of other committees that had jurisdiction over homeland security–related issues and it seemed they spent more time undercutting the Homeland Security Committee than they did helping to push new legislation forward. After a year of hard work, Cox had little to show for his effort.

After eighteen months, Cox and Turner, whose committee had extremely limited legislative authority, had authored and dropped one significant bill to redirect federal first-responder grants to the highest threat areas. (The bill was later incorporated into H.R. 10, the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Implementation Bill, but dropped in conference.) On oversight, they had succeeded in forcing the department to increase its investment in analysis, to accelerate the development of a National Plan for Critical Infrastructure Protection, and to make the Homeland Security Advisory System more sensitive to regions and sectors.

The Select Committee’s major achievement, however was in demonstrating that, without real jurisdiction, it could not achieve its principal goal—the first-ever DHS authorization bill. Cox and Turner drafted a bill, again with impressive bipartisan cooperation, but the standing committee chairmen would simply not cooperate. Most of them failed to show up for a markup on the modest first effort. The Select Committee subsequently, on September 30, 2004, submitted its recommendation to the Rules Committee, with a large majority of Republicans and Democrats signing on, that a permanent standing committee with strong jurisdiction be established. On November 14, Speaker Dennis Hastert announced that he intended to make the committee permanent in the 109th Congress.

The fact that congressional politics have derailed efforts to provide effective oversight is more than a subject of gossip on the Hill. It is a matter of national security. There is no question that Congress still has a major role to play in establishing an effective homeland security regime. Although the Homeland Security Act of 2002 created a lead federal agency for many domestic security activities, this was only the first step. Building an effective department requires sound supporting policies, solid programs, personnel reforms, and integration of information technologies. Congressional oversight—led by committees and professional staffs with the experience and expertise to address difficult, complex issues—plays an important role in achieving these ends. To this point, the Congress has failed to provide sufficient leadership.

Both chambers have established subcommittees to handle appropriations for the new department, but supervision of the department’s operations is still fragmented and incoherent. In the Senate, the Government Affairs Committee provides nominal oversight, while Cox’s temporary select committee tries to focus efforts in the House. Nevertheless, jurisdiction over department activities remains split among dozens of committees and subcommittees in both houses. The result has been oversight overload. From January to June of 2004, department representatives testified at a staggering 126 hearings. That’s an average of one-and-a-half testimonies for every day of the legislative session.

In addition, a typical day for the department includes at least a dozen meetings or briefings to legislators and staff. The amount of time spent preparing, participating, and responding to queries from the Hill is not the only issue. Beyond having to testify before multiple committees, department representatives must accept oversight from these committees. After all, many of the department’s initiatives cut across the roles and missions of the federal government, and strong congressional input and feedback is necessary. Yet multiple committees, with multiple interests and multiple (and sometimes conflicting) priorities exacerbate the challenge of building a comprehensive, focused national security regime.

Congress needs to move from scattershot supervision of homeland security to responsible oversight. This will include establishing permanent committees in both chambers with full jurisdiction over the department, as well as a role in the oversight of all critical national homeland security programs. Until that is done, Congress will have failed in its constitutional responsibilities to provide proper checks and balances to the executive branch.

Reforming the Department

Perhaps the most difficult next step in the process of building better homeland security will be rethinking the organization that Congress has just created. It would be unrealistic to believe that Congress could create a perfect agency. Major merger and acquisitions in the private sector offer innumerable examples of the difficulties of building new organizations from old ones. Sometimes you just have to get something up and running to identify and work out the flaws. The problem can be waiting too long to fix them. Problems have a way of becoming the traditional and routine way of doing things and then they become very difficult to change.

There is a sweet spot on the curve of experience when an organization has been up and running long enough to separate the good from the bad; this is when it is worth changing things before they get any further along. The Department of Homeland Security is rapidly reaching that point. The department’s operations, roles and responsibilities, resources, and organization deserve a thorough, nonpartisan review. Of the many areas that might be prime for rethinking, one might be the trouble with visas; another might be the challenge of sharing information.

On Terrorism’s Front Line: The Trouble with Visas

In the global war waged by terrorists, visas can be deadly weapons. One ready means available to enemies wishing to enter the United States is the nonimmigrant visa, which can be obtained from any of the 211 American consulates around the world.15 Travelers holding nonimmigrant visas represent the overwhelming majority of individuals entering the U.S. Nonimmigrant visas are ideal for supporting attacks that require brief or repeated trips to the United States. In fact, all of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States in this manner. These 19 terrorists received a total of 23 visas from five different consular posts over a four-year period.16

Terrorists can also enter the United States through the permanent immigration system, obtaining a “green card” to live in the country or become a naturalized citizen. One study of 28 known terrorists found that 17 of them were in the country legally, either as permanent residents or as naturalized citizens.17 The prevalent use of identity theft and false travel documents makes the current system particularly vulnerable to abuse. In 2001, officials at border crossing points seized over 100,000 falsified documents. Over 50 percent of these documents were border crossing cards, alien registration cards, and fraudulent visas and passports.18

Terrorists have used such materials. For example, one of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing entered the country with a doctored passport.19 Thus, intelligence is critical, not only to keep suspected terrorists from legitimately obtaining and using passports, but also to prevent them from easily using falsified documents to travel into the United States.

Given that the issuance and monitoring of visas is so important to homeland security, you would think the President of the United States would be able to turn to one person in the federal government and say, “Don’t screw this up!” Unfortunately, he can’t. Although the Homeland Security Act of 2002 gave the Secretary of the Homeland Security Department exclusive authority to issue regulations and administer the visa program, consular officers remained a part of the Department of State. This was a mistake. Today, when legitimate travelers or terrorists walk into a U.S. embassy to apply for a visa or submit to an interview, we have no guarantee that those overseeing the issuance of these precious documents, which open the gates to America, will act with one voice.

Nor is the concern about visa issuance and monitoring simply a question of doing a better job of catching terrorists. It is all about maintaining America’s lifeline to the world. The decline in the number of students and travelers visiting the United States is at historic levels. In Poland—a U.S. ally in Iraq and a member of NATO, but not a participant in the visa-waiver program—it requires, on average, one month’s salary to apply for a visa. It takes one day of waiting in a long line for an interview. After this, however, there is no guarantee that at the end of the grueling process that a visa will appear—and if the visa application is unsuccessful, there is no refund. Many are frustrated. They deserve better, and so do we. We need a government that not only stops terrorists, but also serves our citizens and our friends.

For the Department of Homeland Security to fulfill its responsibilities in the visa process—and because of the national security aspect of visa approvals—the Bureau of Consular Affairs Office of Visa Services should be placed under the Homeland Security Department. Moving the visa office to Homeland Security would enable the department to focus on tightening, improving, and more broadly utilizing the visa function to meet the exigencies of homeland security.20

Information Sharing: Who’s in Charge?

One of the mantras for further homeland security reform has been the call to improve information sharing between the intelligence and law enforcement communities. To its credit, in the years immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration has undertaken several major initiatives for improving the current system. The first is the establishment of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (TTIC) on May 1, 2003. The TTIC was designed to be a central location in which all terrorist-related intelligence, both foreign and domestic, is gathered, coordinated, and assessed. It is composed of elements of the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and other intelligence agencies. According to the Administration, the TTIC would:

• Optimize the use of terrorist threat-related information, expertise, and capabilities to conduct threat analysis and inform collection strategies;

• Create a structure that ensures information sharing across agency lines;

• Integrate terrorist-related information collected domestically and abroad in order to form the most comprehensive threat picture possible; and

• Provide terrorist threat assessments for the national leadership.21

At the urging of the 9/11 Commission, the President created a National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) under the DCI. This center has taken over the management of the TTIC.

The second initiative was creation of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) under the FBI to consolidate all terrorist watch lists into a single function and give around-the-clock access to local, state, and federal authorities. The TSC will bring together databases that include the State Department’s TIPOFF (a declassified file of likely terrorist information)22, the FBI’s Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File, and DHS’s many transportation security lists. The TSC will make it easier for consular officers to determine whether a visa applicant is a potential terrorist. The main source of TSC’s information is TTIC. As part of these new initiatives, TIPOFF’s database portion has been moved into TTIC, while the support functions for consular offices will move to TSC. TTIC will forward all terrorist-related information from the intelligence community to TSC.

Also noteworthy is the establishment of the intelligence arm of the Department of Homeland Security—the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) directorate. This directorate includes the Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC). Nestled on the second floor of a nondescript building at the department’s headquarters on Nebraska Avenue, the center is responsible for consolidating information and putting out warnings. This consolidation has been long overdue and contributes to the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to see the “big picture,” as does HSOC’s Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). Creating the HSIN was also welcome news. HSIN links states, territories, and major urban areas to the HSOC. Collaborative tools like HSIN are essential for establishing the interactive communications necessary to effectively share information. With these tools today, the HSOC can monitor the Brooklyn Bridge, talk to a governor, alert a police department, and connect dots that could never before be connected.

Despite all the energy that went into creating these new (and necessary) organizations, their very creation sows the seeds of a problem. The Homeland Security Department was created to be the main center for data sharing and analysis for homeland security, but it has not been given the tools to exploit U.S. intelligence and law enforcement resources. TTIC and TSC stand outside of the department and in competition with IAIP. The result is an unintended war of alphabet organizations that have opened more gaps in our ability to share information. In the end, the current arrangement makes DHS little more than just another intelligence end-user, competing with other members of the national security community to ensure that its priority requirements are met.

Directors of both the FBI and CIA pledged to provide any support that the new agency requires. Yet such assurances, although well-intentioned, fail to address how agencies with competing demands and priorities will allocate scarce resources—particularly during periods of national crisis when the United States is engaged in active operations overseas and faces a significant terrorist threat at home. Placing TTIC and TSC outside DHS only exacerbates this problem.

The right answer is to group the entire alphabet (TTIC, TSC, and IAIP) under one boss—the Department of Homeland Security—so that the President can depend upon one person to get the right information to the right person at the right time.

Capping the Bottomless Barrel

In determining the right role of the Department of Homeland Security, no problem has become more contentious than how the federal government will assist state and local communities in establishing a national homeland security system. There is a danger, however, that the system set up after 9/11 (modeled on the way we distribute money to build bridges and schools) will turn a national security system into a national giveaway.

The amount of federal grants available for state and local government homeland security programs will never be enough to meet all of their needs. Some would address the shortfalls in state and local capacity by throwing money at the problem. That is exactly the wrong approach. Spending a little bit of money on a lot of things does not achieve much of anything. The United States needs a strategic spending strategy that focuses on two goals that will make all Americans safer—creating a truly national preparedness and response system and expanding national capacity to respond to catastrophic terrorist attacks.

Anyone who wants to understand the scope of the challenge should ask Warren Rudman, a former senator from New Hampshire. Most Americans do not remember Rudman for his years in Congress or his efforts to rein in the federal budget. Instead, he is often remembered for a brief comment in the blue-ribbon Hart–Rudman Commission report. “A direct attack against American citizens on American soil,” the commission concluded, “is likely over the next quarter century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization that could undermine U.S. global leadership.” The report came out in February 2001: Eight months later the Twin Towers collapsed.23

Just being right was never enough for Rudman, who led a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations to examine the requirements for improving U.S. security. One of its efforts, The 2003 Independent Task Force Report, Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared, earned national headlines and garnered Rudman a grilling by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press.”24 The task force had concluded that nationwide, emergency responders needed over an additional $98 billion to be adequately prepared to respond to terrorist threats.25

Rudman, with a well-earned reputation as a fiscal conservative, had not thrown out that number lightly. He had not intended, however, to be the war on terrorism’s Paul Nitze. Improving national preparedness did not mean that the federal government had to shell out $98 billion. What that number meant was that the United States faced a serious public policy issue that demanded a serious response and a serious strategy to make America safer.

Dollars and Sense

Admittedly, the process used to provide money to states and local governments in the first three years after 9/11 was not consistent with the national homeland security strategy. It was, however, consistent with typical congressional “pork-barrel” legislation. The formulas that drive the grant process are turning homeland security initiatives into state entitlement programs. Current funding formulas guarantee each state 0.75 percent of the funds available. As a result, 40 percent of funds are immediately tied up, leaving only 60 percent for discretionary allocations. In this manner, California, clearly a “target-rich environment” received only 7.95 percent of general grant monies—even though the state accounts for 12 percent of the nation’s population. Wyoming, receiving 0.85 percent, accounts for only 0.17 percent of the population. This translates to $5.03 per capita in California and $37.94 per capita in Wyoming. Spending on U.S. territories is equally incongruous. In the 2003 round of grants, the U.S. Virgin Islands received $104.87 per capita; the North Mariana Islands $53.68 per capita; and American Samoa $37.32 per capita.

Within states, low density and rural areas often receive a disproportionate amount of money as well. For instance, in Iowa, the capital city of Des Moines (population 199,000) received $250,000. The less populous Sioux County (population of 31,600) received $299,000.

Other spending is curious, too. Reportedly, California distributes its federal grants in base amounts of $5,000 to each county—an amount so small that it is difficult to imagine how it could be used productively.

Even the Urban Area Security Initiative grants (monies targeted at major population areas that are also considered potential targets) produce some strange results. The three criteria used are population density (50 percent of the weight); presence of critical infrastructure (one-third of the weight); and finally, credible threats (about one-sixth of the weighting formula). Using this formula, San Francisco (with a population of 800,000) and Los Angeles (with a population of 4 million) get roughly the same amount of money. The inequities of the current distribution mechanism demonstrate its serious flaws. Washington’s formula-based system needs to be replaced by strategy-directed spending.

Smart Spending

Much to the Bush Administration’s credit, it significantly increased funding for homeland security to the point at which we are now spending more than two-and-a-half times as much as we were before 9/11—over $50 billion. In fact, it is not clear at present that more spending could be efficiently used, particularly in the area of improving emergency response. We are rapidly approaching the point of throwing money at the problem. Indeed, state and local governments are having difficulty absorbing and efficiently using the federal funds that are already available.26

The first and highest priority for federal spending must be investments that assist in creating a true national preparedness system, not merely supplementing the needs of state and local governments. Dollars that might be needed to equip every state and U.S. territory with sufficient resources to conduct each critical homeland security task could run into the hundreds of billions. Although the federal government has a responsibility to assist states and cities in providing for homeland security, it cannot service every one of their needs.

Federal funding should focus on programs that will make all Americans safer. That includes providing state and local governments with the capability to integrate their counterterrorism, preparedness, and response efforts into a national system. They should also be able to expand their capacity to coordinate support, share resources, and exchange and exploit information.

Performance-Based Budgeting

The U.S. needs broad national standards for emergency response, coupled with a method for evaluating risks and vulnerabilities. Without real standards, there is no way to determine the nation’s most important unfunded needs. Standards are also essential for determining levels of readiness and are the only viable measure of how much spending is enough.

With a strategy and with real performance standards, the Bush Administration can move to performance-based budgeting for homeland security. This form of budgeting would set the performance goals that must be achieved without specifying exactly how to accomplish the mission, thus giving states and local governments maximum flexibility in determining how best to meet their unique security needs. It would also provide a basis for measuring what kind of emergency response capacity the federal government is buying and would allow Congress to focus on its proper role—overseeing how effectively the programs are meeting the nation’s needs.

Performance and threat-based funding will direct most federal grants to where they are most needed, satisfying the greatest national priorities. At the same time, the effectiveness of state funding—monies to assist in establishing and maintaining emergency management centers, conducting planning and training, and participating in exercises—can be fairly evaluated to determine if we are getting appropriate value from these programs.

To the Bush Administration’s credit, in December 2003, the President ssued a directive requiring federal agencies to put a performance-based system into place. What is required now is for Congress and the states to work together in support of this initiative and for all of us to have the patience to let the system work—and resist the urge to turn national security in an entitlement for state and local governments.

System of Systems

Anyone who wonders whether it is worth it to try and do more than just throw money at the challenge of homeland security ought to talk to James Gilmore. Along with leaders like Falkenrath, Rudman, and other people who have helped shape the Administration’s response to terrorism, few have more expertise and knowledge about what to do next.

The former Republican governor of Virginia was appointed by President Bill Clinton to chair the Congressional Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction. After producing an authoritative series of reports on both the threat of terrorism and how to respond to it, the commission was prepared to issue its last report—in September 2001. Gilmore’s commission met its deadline, but at the cost of one of its own. Ray Downey, the Deputy Fire Chief of New York City, died trying to save lives in the Twin Towers.

What became popularly known as the Gilmore Commission was extended by Congress and the President to look at the nation’s response to 9/11. The commission issued two more reports. Many of their findings foreshadowed the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission.

The Gilmore Commission, however, included one critical finding that the 9/11 Commission missed. The Gilmore Commission concluded that the goal should be to provide “an enterprise-wide capacity to plan, equip, train, and exercise against measurable standards.” Emphasis should be on efforts that enhance interoperable communications and information sharing, joint planning and exercises, leader and staff training, and mutual-support programs.27 This recommendation was far bolder than proposals made by the 9/11 Commission—or by the Administration or Congress. Gilmore argued, and rightly so, that all individual efforts were going to need to be drawn together into one coherent program. Much like Eisenhower had argued that the Pentagon needed to be reformed—not to just get the services to talk to each other, but to fuse their efforts into a single military instrument—Gilmore argued that the nation needed a “national” homeland security system, not just a patchwork of federal, state, and local programs.

The genius of Gilmore’s recommendation was that it respected the Constitution of the United States. The structure of American governance plays a significant role in determining the manner in which the United States addresses homeland security missions. Under the U.S. federalist system, power is shared between federal and state governments. This division of responsibilities is largely defined by the U.S. Constitution. In turn, these divisions prescribe and proscribe duties for protecting the homeland. The federal government, for example, is charged by the Constitution with “providing for the common defense.” Thus, keeping terrorists outside the United States from getting here and hurting us is Washington’s job. In contrast, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reserves to the states and the people all power not specifically delegated to the federal government. As a result, responsibilities for homeland security, which include a broad range of activities undertaken by federal and state governments, local municipalities, the private sector (such as businesses and NGOs), and individual citizens, are shared.

Gilmore recognized that state governors had a key role to play in homeland security. They were responsible for state public safety programs that protected local communities. Thus, he rightly argued, governors should direct statewide programs and the funding of those programs.

Likewise, every mayor, county executive, and tribal leader had a role to play as well. After all, most of the first responders (fire, police, and emergency medical technicians) work for them, and in the event of a disaster the local community leader on the scene would be in charge.

The solution, Gilmore recognized, was not rethinking the Constitution, but using training, planning, and—above all—technology to make sure all levels of government could work together. This is sometimes called building a “system of systems.” The scientific explanation of a system-of-systems approach sounds something like this. Network-centric operations generate increased operational effectiveness by networking activities, decision makers, and field officers to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, greater efficiency, increased security, and a degree of self-synchronization. In essence, it means linking knowledgeable entities in an effort to coordinate a comprehensive national security plan. Such a system might produce significant efficiencies in terms of sharing skills, knowledge, and scarce high-value assets; building capacity and redundancy in the national security system; gaining the synergy of providing a common operating picture to all involved; and being able to readily share information.

Translating scientific jargon into English would render it thus: Building a system of systems means linking everything you have together so that you can get the right asset or information to the right person, at the right time, to do the right thing—or even more simply, knowing what the system knows.

What are the kinds of things a system of systems might do? For starters, it might take all the information available to federal, state, and local agencies and put it at the disposal of a first responder standing at the scene of a terrorist attack. It might provide:

• means to identify threat and critical infrastructure data that needed to be disseminated, where such information should go, and how the information should be delivered so that it is still at the required security classification;

• detection capabilities that can alert responders to suspicious objects and secondary devices, determine the location of agents after an attack, and recognize any downwind hazards;

• ability to know where other responders are in three dimensions and to be able to monitor the responders’ physical and psychological status;

• standoff means to analyze biological, chemical, and radiological threats and to disseminate information about those threats; and

• capability to determine threats inside buildings and in underground infrastructure, including the ability to discriminate between responders, victims, and threats.

The issue before us should not be if we need a system of systems, but who should design it and pay for it. Those hard questions have already been answered. As part of the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush Administration created a Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate. Currently, the directorate is focused on the here and now, getting commercial off-the-shelf equipment (that is already available) for use now. That is probably the right priority. Yet it is also time to think about what kind of homeland security system we want five, ten, or twenty years from now and to start building it. The S&T Directorate should be charged to work on this problem.

The issue of who should pay for it has also been answered by the strategy. All of us should pay. The federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector, should each do its part. We have a constitutional framework that lays out fairly well who should do what. Sharing the burden is not the right answer; it is the only answer. First, that is what the Constitution says. Second, it is the only answer that is sustainable. A flood of federal dollars might offer some quick fixes, but it will not do for the long term. States and local governments need to build sustainable programs that are affordable within their means, while the federal government provides them the “plugs” to engage with a national system that can provide appropriate additional resources as needed.

Bracing for a Very Long War

Overall, the strategy of layering security and sharing responsibilities makes so much sense it is hard to imagine doing anything else. No one measure will be adequate to defeat every terrorist threat and we need more tools that provide more options. More important, though, than insisting that every program is airtight and unbeatable—or demanding that Jackson Hole, Wyoming, have the same security as New York’s giant Kennedy Airport—is ensuring that we have complementary layers of security implemented by people who cooperate and share information with one another.

It would be a mistake to abandon the course have set. We would be equally remiss if we avoided the difficult tasks of making what have better. Congressional reform, rethinking the organization of the Homeland Security Department, sensible aid to state and local governments, and building the systems we need to face the future are the right steps. We should, as the Long Telegram prompts, take these steps with “courage and confidence.”