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THE SECRETARY’S SECOND-STAGE REVIEW:

RE-THINKING THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND

SECURITY’S ORGANIZATION AND POLICY DIRECTION

PART I AND II

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 14, 2005 AND JULY 25, 2005

Serial No. 109–32

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

CHRISTOPHER COX, California, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

PETER T. KING, New York 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

TOM DAVIS, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada 

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana 

DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington 

MICHAEL MCCAUL, Texas 

CHARLIE DENT, Pennsylvania 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

JANE HARMAN, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON-LEE, Texas 

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN , U.S. Virgin Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

(II) 
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page 

STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of California, and Chairman, Committee on Homeland Security .......... 1

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress From 

the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 3

The Honorable Donna M. Christensen, a Delegate From the U.S. Virgin 

Islands ................................................................................................................... 45

The Honorable Charlie Dent, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Pennsylvania .................................................................................................... 59

The Honorable Norman D. Dicks, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Washington ............................................................................................. 28

The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of North Carolina ................................................................................................. 57

The Honorable Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of California .......................................................................................................... 21

The Honorable Katherine Harris, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Florida ..................................................................................................... 43

The Honorable Bobby Jindal, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Louisiana .......................................................................................................... 55

The Honorable Peter T. King, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of New York .......................................................................................................... 20

The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Rhode Island ........................................................................................... 48

The Honorable Jackson-Lee, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Texas 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 39

Prepared Statement, July 25, 2005 .................................................................... 41 

The Honorable John Linder, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Georgia .............................................................................................................. 23

The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of California .......................................................................................................... 66

The Honorable Nita M. Lowey, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of New York .......................................................................................................... 32 

The Honorable Daniel E. Lungren, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of California ................................................................................................ 50

The Honorable Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Massachusetts ........................................................................................ 24

The Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Delegate in Congress From the 

District of Columbia ............................................................................................. 61

The Honorable Bill Pascrell, Jr., a Representative in Congress From the 

State of New Jersey ............................................................................................. 35

The Honorable Stevan Pearce, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of New Mexico ...................................................................................................... 37

The Honorable Mike Rogers, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Alabama ............................................................................................................ 47

The Honorable Christopher Shays, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Connecticut ............................................................................................. 27

The Honorable Rob Simmons, a Representative in Congress From the State 

of Connecticut ....................................................................................................... 66

The Honorable Mark E. Souder, a Representative in Congress From the 

State of Indiana .................................................................................................... 31
Page

IV

WITNESS

JULY 14, 2005 

The Honorable Michael Chertoff, Secretary, Department of Homeland 

Security: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 5

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 6

FOR THE RECORD

The Honorable Michael Chertoff’s Responses to Questions: 

Questions From Hon. Bob Etheridge .................................................................. 89

Questions From Hon. Bobby Jindal .................................................................... 82

Questions From Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee ......................................................... 86

Questions From Hon. James R. Langevin ......................................................... 93

Questions From Hon. Zoe Lofgren ...................................................................... 85

Questions From Hon. Kendrick B. Meek ........................................................... 107

Questions From Hon. Mike Rogers ..................................................................... 71

Questions From Hon. Rob Simmons ................................................................... 70
(1)

THE SECRETARY’S SECOND-STAGE 

REVIEW: RE-THINKING THE DEPARTMENT 

OF HOMELAND SECURITY’S ORGANIZATION 

AND POLICY DIRECTION 

Thursday, July 14, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in Room 2128, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Cox [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Cox, Weldon, Shays, King, Linder, 

Souder, Lungren, Gibbons, Rogers, Pearce, Harris, Jindal, Reichert, 

McCaul, Dent, Thompson, Markey, Dicks, Harman, DeFazio, 

Lowey, Norton, Lofgren, Jackson-Lee, Pascrell, Christensen, 

Etheridge, Langevin, and Meek. 

Chairman COX. The Committee on Homeland Security will come 

to order. 

The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the results 

of the internal Second-Stage Review of the Department of Homeland Security—its structure, policies, and programs—initiated by 

Secretary Michael Chertoff during his first 90 days at the Department. 

The Secretary having just arrived and taken his seat, I want to 

welcome you. 

The Honorable Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of 

Homeland Security, will be the Committee’s sole witness this morning. 

One week ago today, terrorists committed the barbaric bombings 

in the London Underground. That, and all of the terrorist acts that 

have stretched out from September 11 to today, provide the backdrop for this hearing. 

The changes that the Secretary is proposing in the organization 

and programs of the Department of Homeland Security all have as 

their focus achieving more effectively the overarching missions of 

the Department of Homeland Security: preventing terrorism, protecting against terrorism, and responding to acts of terrorism when 

they occur. 

There have been many different modalities of terrorist attack 

that we have witnessed. Sometimes schools have been attacked, 

sometimes nightclubs, restaurants, embassies, banks, subways, 

railroads in Madrid, and office buildings. The only constant has 

been the terrorists themselves. Preventing terrorism, therefore, re-
2

quires that we have a constant focus on the terrorists themselves. 

And this, as this Committee has emphasized so often, requires the 

preeminence of an intelligence function in the Department of 

Homeland Security. 

I want to congratulate you, Mr. Secretary, for initiating the Second-Stage Review of the structure, policies, and programs of the 

Department, and I want to applaud your leadership in bringing 

prevention and intelligence to the fore. These are essential elements in what you are going to be describing to this committee 

today. 

I also want to applaud your leadership in bringing a risk-based 

rigor to the Department of Homeland Security and to its management and operations. That has long been an objective of this Committee, and it is critical to driving integration of the Department’s 

22 legacy agencies. Risk-based management is also the key to ensuring that our efforts to enhance our national security do not, in 

the aggregate, result in trading away features of our constitutionally founded way of life. 

Mr. Secretary, you have recently stated that we don’t drive the 

mission and the outcome by the structure. We drive the structure 

and operation by the mission and the outcome. That is precisely 

correct. And your Second-Stage Review generated constructive proposals that will help eliminate the bureaucratic stovepipes in the 

Department and sharpen the Department’s focus on its core 

counterterrorism mission. 

Your focus on the most consequential kinds of terrorism that 

America might someday face and enhancing information sharing—

both within the Department, with State and local governments, 

and with other homeland security stakeholders—to prevent acts of 

terror is absolutely right. And your proposed management and organizational reforms will move the Department significantly in the 

right direction. 

I am pleased that many of your specific reform proposals are consistent with initiatives that this Committee has, on a bipartisan 

basis, advocated over more than 2 years. For example, this Committee has urgently stressed the importance of creating an Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity, as you propose. The Committee 

recognized the need for an overarching, coordinated intelligence capability for the Department. We urged a view of intelligence within 

the Department of Homeland Security that was much more than 

an adjunct to infrastructure protection. Your proposal properly separates intelligence from infrastructure protection and creates a 

Chief Intelligence Officer reporting directly to the Secretary. 

The Committee’s oversight and legislative efforts have focused on 

the need for the Department to improve operational coordination 

among its many legacy agencies performing similar or related functions. This will not only reduce waste and duplication, but will also 

avoid dangerous gaps that terrorists can and will exploit. You have 

taken this issue head on as well, of course. Making the Department’s choices about where to put homeland security technology 

and manpower, what to protect, and how to prepare for terrorist 

acts—making that all based on risk has been at the heart of what 

you have been saying and doing since you have become the Sec-
3

retary of Homeland Security. It has always been at the very core 

of this Committee’s persistent efforts. 

I applaud your focus on preparedness and on the specific preparedness priorities of surface transportation security, aviation security, port security, and border security. It is also important that, 

beyond preparedness, prevention remains the Department’s number one mission priority, and I am absolutely confident that under 

your leadership it will. 

I would urge consideration of one more innovation, consistent 

with each of the structural reforms that you have outlined. The Department’s budget request should be organized by mission focus 

from prevention through preparedness and response. That way we 

will be better able to determine whether resource allocation reflects 

the overriding terrorism prevention priority that must drive the 

Department’s programmatic decisions. 

I congratulate you, Mr. Secretary, on a job well begun and on 

completing this ambitious top-to-bottom, mission-based review of 

the Department’s structure, its programs and its activities. We 

wish you nothing but continued success. Now it is time to drive 

these, until now, paperbound reforms into operating reality in the 

weeks and months ahead. And we stand ready in this Committee 

to help you in any way that we can. 

Chairman COX. I now recognize the Ranking Minority Member of 

the Committee, the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson for 

his opening statements. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, welcome back. I believe the first and last time 

that you appeared before this Committee was April 13. I hope we 

can make it a little more than what we had. Seeing you here today 

gives me hope that you will appear before us often. 

I want to thank you on behalf of the Democratic members for 

coming up to brief us on Tuesday. One request that I have, though, 

next time you release a significant initiative, I hope you will ask 

Members for input more than 24 hours before it is released. We 

can’t really offer significant input to a document if it is already 

final. 

I have reviewed what you have released on your Second-Stage 

Review, including a draft legislation and 872 letter. Your view and 

proposed reorganization confirms what many of us on this Committee have known for a while: the Department is broken. Some of 

us have been waiting quite a long time for the repairmen to show 

up to fix the agency. 

The proposal you made yesterday does make some needed repairs, but it does not address the Department’s most serious defects. If the Department were a house, what you have done is the 

equivalent of patching the walls, putting the new walls and siding 

in, and painted the building. Unfortunately, the joints of the house 

were cracked and left untouched. The Administration must do better if we are to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil. 

This morning the Democratic members of this Committee are releasing a report on your proposed reorganization. I have a copy 

here, and I will include it in the record for this hearing, and we 

will share it with the Members after the hearing. 
4

We found that some of the changes you proposed are important. 

We support your efforts on these items and will do what we can 

to ensure that they become reality. Some of these excellent changes 

have been called on by some of our Members. For the last 2 years, 

Zoe Lofgren on this Committee has spear-headed the effort to create an Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity, which your proposal 

includes. I congratulate my colleague from the Silicon Valley for 

the dedication to securing our Nation’s critical networks and systems. 

The creation of a Chief Intelligence Officer is also a promising 

development. 

Earlier this week we held a hearing on bioterrorism. As we mentioned to you on Tuesday, it is appalling that DHS had completed 

only four out of six material threat assessments necessary to develop biological countermeasures. I hope the creation of this office 

will correct this unnecessarily slow process. 

There are other changes that I and other Democrats support, including adjustments to the US-VISIT program and the shortening 

of the Reagan 30-minute rule. That said, your plan is vague in a 

number of other areas, Mr. Secretary, making it difficult to determine whether we can support other items. 

For example, you have eliminated the Special Assistant to the 

Secretary for the Private Sector, creating in its place, an Assistant 

Secretary for Policy under a new policy directorate. The existing 

special assistant position was created by Congress to ensure that 

the private sector is a meaningful partner in our efforts to secure 

our homeland. If the Secretary is proposing a demotion for the official in charge of private sector outreach, that would be a serious 

step backward. 

There are also changes that should have been made that were 

not. These omissions concern me and make me wonder if in a few 

years we will be sitting here doing this again, waiting for another 

overdue plan. The Third Stage Review is probably what we will be 

calling it. 

Specifically, I am concerned about your plan’s failure to reorganize the Transportation Security Administration. The London 

bombing last week, coupled with the Madrid bombing last year, 

should be a wake-up call to us all that our trains and transit systems are an attractive target for terrorists. I have asked myself the 

question, will the Department’s proposed reorganization prevent 

what happened in London from happening here? Unfortunately, I 

concluded no. 

While TSA has focused on aviation, some would say with mixed 

results, rail security has became the forgotten stepchild. Indeed, 

the Department has spent less than 7 percent of the money it received this year to inspect and patrol rail lines. This is unacceptable. Rail security must be a priority even if TSA has to be reorganized to make it one. 

You have left Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol as separate entities, despite the call from 

many, including many on this panel, to merge the two agencies for 

efficiency’s sake. There are glaring omissions in this plan that I 

hope we will be able to touch upon. Again, I hope you review the 
5

Democratic report and that we will have continued dialogue on how 

to incorporate our ideas into your plan. 

It is essential that the Department be reorganized correctly 

today so that the Federal Government can assure the public that 

it is doing everything that it can to prevent,7 detect and respond 

to terrorism here at home. Thank you. 

Chairman COX. The Chair now welcomes and recognizes for his 

opening statement the Honorable Michael Chertoff, Secretary of 

the Department of Homeland Security. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL CHERTOFF, 

SECRETARY, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND 

SECURITY 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. 

Ranking Member for your generous comments. I have a longer 

statement which I would request be made part of the full record 

of the hearing. 

I do appreciate the fact that I had a chance to brief significant 

numbers of the Members here on both sides of the aisle on Tuesday 

about what we were proposing to do, and I do want to say that in 

the course of considering what approach we ought to take in our 

Second Stage Review, there were a series of sessions in which the 

people who were conducting the review did talk to stakeholders on 

Capitol Hill, and stakeholders outside Capitol Hill, including in 

State and local government and in the private sector to see that 

we got the benefit of their insights and their observations. 

I appreciate the cooperative spirit that you show with respect to 

implementing these reforms. We are eager to move forward with 

this, which is only really the first step in accomplishing some of the 

things we need to accomplish to continue to make our country 

stronger. 

In particular, I would like to underscore the importance of the 

endorsement of a risk-focused and risk-based approach to all of 

what we do, including funding. I think we owe the American people 

to put essential priorities on the table that will address those 

issues that are of greatest concern, particularly with respect to potential consequences, and, Mr. Chairman, in terms of your budgeting suggestion, I will certainly take that back, and, Congressman 

Thompson, I will certainly look forward to reading your review of 

our proposal a little bit later today. 

I am going to be very brief and leave, obviously, an opportunity 

for questions. Let me say that what we announced yesterday was, 

of course, only a very partial element of what the review showed. 

It wasn’t a complete agenda because the limits of time prevent me 

from going through everything. I think, generally speaking, though, 

we have identified some very critical priorities: preparedness; 

transportation; both strengthening and making more efficient our 

various screening processes for passengers and cargo; making sure 

that we get control of our borders so that we can ensure not only 

our security, but make sure we are respecting the rule of law, 

which I think requires that we prevent the kind of flagrant violation of our borders that we sometimes see; fused and more nimble 

information sharing; better management, which I think is what we 

owe the public as stewards of the public trust and the public fisc; 
6

and then, of course, this organization piece, which is designed to 

give us the tools to complete the job of integration as we go forward. 

I think a general comment I would make before I close is balance 

means sometimes that the balance goes down as well as up. We 

want to make sure that as we get better and more precise in the 

kinds of protections we can build in place, we are also able to relax 

some of the restrictions and burdens that we have put in place at 

an earlier time. 

And by way of making an example of this kind of philosophy, I 

announced yesterday our intent to eliminate the 30-minute rule 

with respect to people who are departing Reagan and entering 

Reagan airport. That got a lot of applause. As someone who has, 

from time to time, had to take account of that rule in making my 

own preflight accommodations, I understood where that applause 

came from. 

I think it is meant to make a larger point, though. We are not 

simply looking to layer additional levels of security on the country. 

We are looking to always keep a balance, and where we can make 

things lighter and less burdensome, we are going to be eager to do 

that. 

At the same time we have the 10 print rule, we have talked 

about taking a needed step that will enhance security by giving us 

an increased capacity to screen people coming in from overseas, but 

that will do it in a way that will not result in an undue inconvenience or undue burden. 

I again want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the rest of the 

members of the Committee for giving me the opportunity today to 

speak to you about this review. I look forward to working with you 

as we go forward on implementing not only the organizational 

changes, but as well the various specific policy proposals that we 

are going to be rolling out in the next weeks and months as we go 

forward, working together to make this country even safer and 

more secure than it is. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. Thank you, very much, Mr. Secretary. 

[The statement of Secretary Chertoff follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL CHERTOFF

THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2005

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Thompson, and Members of the Committee: 

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today, and for your ongoing support 

of the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to keep America secure and free. 

I am honored and pleased to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee today to discuss the outcomes and results of our Second Stage Review (2SR). 

Last time I appeared before the Committee in April, we were in the middle of the 

2SR process, and I was only able to briefly touch on some of our overarching goals—

such as risk management—that were guiding our work on this important initiative. 

Today, I am able to report more fully on the results of that process. 

As the Committee is well aware, I launched 2SR several months ago at the beginning of my tenure. 2SR is a systematic evaluation of the Department’s operations, 

policies and structures to ensure that our form and function are most effectively 

aligned to maximize our ability to achieve the security outcomes associated with our 

overriding mission of protecting the homeland. 

All Americans owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the patriots and pioneers 

who built this Department in record time. Because of their dedication, security at 

our ports, airports, critical infrastructure and borders has been significantly 

strengthened. Our nation has thwarted plots and captured terrorists. As a result, 
7

in the period since 9-11, the American people have begun to live under an umbrella 

of greater security, with greater peace of mind than we imagined on that terrible 

day. 

My job—and the job of the leadership team at the Department—is to provide the 

strategic direction, tools, and aggressive support needed by our colleagues to build 

upon that foundation and continue to advance the effectiveness, agility, and capacity 

of this Department every day.

2SR—Philosophy 

Our review was conducted with several core principles in mind. 

First, as I have said before, DHS must base its work on priorities driven by risk. 

Our goal is to maximize our security, but not security ‘‘at any price.’’ Our security 

strategy must promote Americans? freedom, prosperity, mobility, and individual privacy. 

Second, our Department must drive improvement with a sense of urgency. Our 

enemy constantly changes and adapts, so we as a Department must be nimble and 

decisive. 

Third, DHS must be an effective steward of public resources. Our stewardship will 

demand many attributes-the willingness to set priorities; disciplined execution of 

those priorities; sound financial management, and a commitment to measure performance and share results. Perhaps most of all, DHS must foster innovation. 

Finally, our work must be guided by the understanding that effective security is 

built upon a network of systems that span all levels of government and the private 

sector. DHS does not own or control all these systems. But we must set a clear national strategy, and design an architecture in which separate roles and responsibilities for security are fully integrated among public and private stakeholders. 

We must draw on the strength of our considerable network of assets, functioning 

as seamlessly as possible with state and local leadership, law enforcement, emergency management personnel, firefighters, the private sector, our international partners and certainly the general public. Building effective partnerships must be core 

to every mission of DHS.

SR Process 

From across the Department and elsewhere in the federal government, we pulled 

subject matter experts and talented individuals away from their day jobs to focus 

on how well we tackle our tough fundamental challenges: prevention, protection, 

and all-hazards response and recovery. 

This Second Stage Review utilized 18 action teams—involving more than 250 

DHS staff—to evaluate specific operational and policy issues. We asked each team 

to answer a couple of simple questions. First, freed from the constraints of existing 

policies and structures—writing on a clean slate—how would you solve a particular 

problem? And then, how would you take the best solutions and implement them aggressively? 

We actively sought opinions from hundreds of public and private partners at the 

federal, state, local, tribal and international levels. Finally, we examined the DHS 

organizational structure, to make sure that our organization is best aligned to support our mission. 

This work, along with the experience of the last two years in the Department’s 

existence, will now play a critical role in setting our agenda moving forward.

Six Imperatives 

In the weeks and months to come, the Department will launch specific policy initiatives in a number of key areas. Here, then, are six of the key imperatives that 

will drive the near-term agenda for DHS. We must: 

1. Increase preparedness, with particular focus on catastrophic events. 

2. Strengthen border security and interior enforcement and reform immigration 

processes. 

3. Harden transportation security without sacrificing mobility. 

4. Enhance information sharing with our partners, particularly with state, local 

and tribal governments and the private sector. 

5. Improve DHS stewardship, particularly with stronger financial, human resource, procurement and information technology management. 

6. Re-align the DHS organization to maximize mission performance. 

We will put more muscle on the bones of these six areas and others with additional actions and policy proposals in the weeks and months ahead. But, for now, 

let me give you a broad overview of our agenda for the future of the Department.

1. Preparedness 

First, preparedness. In the broadest sense, preparedness addresses the full range 

of our capabilities to prevent, protect against, and respond to acts of terror or other 
8

disasters. Preparedness is about securing America’s critical infrastructure, which is 

not a government asset; roughly 85 percent is privately owned or operated. 

At the outset, we must acknowledge that although we have substantial resources 

to provide security, these resources are not unlimited. Therefore, we as a nation 

must make tough choices about how to invest finite human and financial capital to 

attain the optimal state of preparedness. To do this we will focus preparedness on 

objective measures of risk and performance. 

Our risk analysis is based on these three variables: (1) threat; (2) vulnerability; 

and (3) consequences. These variables are not equal—for example, some infrastructure is quite vulnerable, but the consequences of attack are relatively small; other 

infrastructure may be much less vulnerable, but the consequences of a successful 

attack are very high, even catastrophic. DHS will concentrate first and most relentlessly on addressing threats that pose catastrophic consequences. Some of the tools 

needed to prevent, respond and recover from such awful scenarios are already in 

place; but others need significant improvement. 

The first step in enhancing national preparedness is establishing a preparedness 

baseline that measures the effectiveness of our planning for preventing, protecting 

against, and responding to terrorist acts or disasters. A second stage review team 

has, therefore, constructed the model for an analytic matrix that will set that baseline. The matrix will allow us to analyze possible threats and will map the current 

state of prevention, protection and response planning with regard to each. This matrix will be a critical tool enabling us to identify and remedy current gaps in preparedness. 

Bringing greater planning discipline to each of these risk scenarios is another dimension of our preparedness mission. And simple common sense counsels that we 

begin by concentrating on events with the greatest potential consequences. That is 

why the Department’s National Preparedness Goal—and additional, risk-based planning—will form our standard in allocating future DHS grants to our state and local 

partners so that we build the right capabilities in the right places at the right level. 

Federal money should be distributed using the risk-based approach that we will 

apply to all preparedness activities. And DHS needs the discretion to award infrastructure protection grants in a more flexible manner, as provided by the Administration’s proposed Targeted Infrastructure Protection Plan. 

Of course, federal funds are not the only resources available to strengthen the 

protection of our valued infrastructure. Three years ago, Congress passed the SAFETY Act to enable our private sector partners to develop innovative technology to protect the homeland without the fear of unduly high transaction costs imposed by the 

possibility of frivolous lawsuits. There is more opportunity to take advantage of this 

important law, and we will do so. 

Finally, of all the catastrophic threats we face, a nuclear attack on our soil would 

be uniquely threatening to our society. The President’s budget asks Congress to establish and fund a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) to develop and deploy 

the next generation of systems that will allow us to dramatically improve our ability 

to detect and intercept a nuclear threat. We have begun to take the steps to make 

this office a reality. The DNDO will report directly to me under our new structure—

and I ask that Congress support this essential and critical resource.

2. Borders and Immigration 

Our second imperative is the need to strengthen border security and interior enforcement, as well as improve our immigration system. We cannot have one approach without the other. 

As to the first, we must gain full control of our borders to prevent illegal immigration and security breaches. Flagrant violation of our borders undercuts respect for 

the rule of law and undermines our security. It also poses a particular burden on 

our border communities. We are developing a new approach to controlling the border that includes an integrated mix of additional staffing, new technology and enhanced infrastructure investment. But control of the border will also require reducing the demand for illegal border migration by channeling migrants seeking work 

into regulated legal channels. I look forward to working with Congress this year to 

improve border security significantly through the President’s Temporary Worker 

Program (TWP). 

Immigration policy is about more than keeping illegal migrants out. Our heritage 

and our national character inspire us to create a more welcoming process for those 

who lawfully come to our shores to work, learn and visit. Secretary Rice and I will, 

in the near term, announce a detailed agenda of work and innovation that the Department of State and DHS have begun together to ease the path for those who 

wish to legitimately visit, study, and conduct business in this country, while at the 

same time ensuring that our national security interests are protected. 
9

Of course, most people come to our shores to seek a better life for themselves and 

their children. Ours is a nation of immigrants, but, for legal immigrants trying to 

become American citizens, the process can be confusing, frustrating, and seemingly 

endless. Part of the problem is that the current business model fosters a long delay 

between application and final adjudication of applicants for residence and citizenship, during which many applicants stay here as temporary residents. But this system puts some of the most important security screening at the end of a lengthy 

process rather than the beginning, and leads to an unnecessarily high rate of rejection late in the process. 

As a result, too often, this system leaves a negative first impression of our nation 

with our new fellow countrymen. Worse yet, it causes unnecessary security risks because people enjoy temporary residence while we are completing the screening process. Restructuring this process to enhance security and improve customer service 

will be an important part of our agenda.

3. Transportation Security 

Creating better systems to move people and goods more securely and efficiently 

was a core objective in founding DHS. It remains so today. 

(a) Enhancing Transit Safety. The tragic events in London last week served 

as a reminder of the terrorist threat against innocent civilians in our mass transit 

systems. Following last year’s Madrid train bombings, DHS took important action 

not only by increasing funding for rail security, but also by conducting over 2,600 

individual consequence assessments. Since 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration 

have worked extensively with the transit industry and first responders to strengthen the overall security capabilities of transit systems, with a special emphasis on 

the largest systems. Together, we have developed a significant tool-kit of protective 

measures, which include the coordination and training needed to recover from possible attacks. Multiple funding streams within DHS will be available to support 

such projects, including roughly $8.6 billion enacted and requested since 2003 for 

our State Homeland Security and Urban Area Security Initiative grant programs. 

We are also working to develop next-generation explosive detection equipment 

specifically for use in mass transit systems. We will continue to apply resources to 

this groundbreaking work. At the same time, we must also prepare for terror attacks of even greater consequence—attacking transit systems with biological, radiological or chemical agents. We plan to expand the deployment of the PROTECT 

chemical detection and emergency management system. This capability has been 

successfully prototyped in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area transit system 

and will provide a significant and important chemical detection capability for other 

transit systems across the Nation. 

We also now have a network of bio-sensors, but we will accelerate the development and deployment of next generation technologies that more quickly detect biological, radiological and chemical attacks.

(b) Strengthening Aviation Security. After 9–11, TSA was created to deny terrorists the opportunity to use aircraft as weapons and to defend our vital national 

infrastructure. Extraordinary progress has been made, but more remains to do. In 

aviation, our security and efficiency can be strengthened by better use of technology, 

both existing and next generation technologies. 

Congress intended TSA to be almost entirely supported by user fees, but it is not. 

The Administration has proposed a modest increase in user fees to fund the infrastructure needed for this job. I believe travelers are willing to pay a few dollars 

more per trip to improve aviation security and enhance efficiency. I look forward 

to working with both Congress and the aviation industry to find a formula that will 

work. By collecting user fees for aviation, we can free up precious DHS resources 

for other important security priorities. 

(c) Passenger Identity Screening. Too often, security screening for passengers 

at airports is frustrating. We are still dependent upon a pare–9/11 technology system to conduct the most elementary form of terrorist screening—matching names 

against watch lists. Our job is to identify people at airports whom we already know 

and believe to pose a risk to aviation. Our existing watch list does identify threatening people, but it is not fully automated for aviation screening and it yields an 

unacceptably high number of false positives, which drains our security resources. 

Getting this right is urgent. The short-term solution lies in enhancing our ability 

to screen individuals more precisely against named terror suspects, by utilizing 

more precise identifying information such as date of birth. That kind of system—

being developed through our Secure Flight program—will limit cases where low risk 

travelers are selected for additional screening. It will dramatically reduce the number of cases where travelers are delayed for questioning simply because they may 
10

have the same name as someone on the watch list. But even this approach may not 

be complete, because it remains focused on only identifying already known high risk 

travelers. 

Putting aside known risks, the more comprehensive and efficient passenger 

screening system that DHS must develop will give us the ability to automatically 

clear low-risk travelers. By clearing these low-risk travelers, TSA can reasonably 

focus on a smaller and more distinct pool of passengers that might pose a threat 

to aviation. The result: less frustration; faster service; better security. Better forms 

of screening will also promote privacy, because they will reduce the number of mistakes or unnecessary interventions that annoy travelers. 

TSA’s Registered Traveler and Secure Flight programs are keys to increasing the 

precision, reliability, and speed of identity screening for domestic air travelers. 

Equally important are improved protocols to screen inbound international airline 

passengers and expanded deployment of US–VISIT for overseas visitors. All these 

screening programs should be integrated so that screening is consistent and interoperable. 

(d) (Supply Chain) Security Management. After 9–11, this country put in 

place vital measures intended to protect the global movement of marine cargo that 

touches our shores as it moves from origin to destination. U.S. Customs and Border 

Protection is screening all inbound containers and inspecting those that merit further scrutiny. Increasingly, screening and inspection are taking place at the port of 

departure overseas—before cargo arrives here. 

But we should not rest where we stand. I believe that we can gather, fuse and 

assess more complete data from the global supply chain to develop a more accurate 

profile of the history of cargo in a given container. Data about what cargo is moving 

from the initial point of shipping to the final destination will allow us to target risk 

better. With more informed targeting, we can more efficiently conduct inspections 

of cargo that is either high risk or unverified. This ‘‘Secure Freight’’ initiative will 

allow us to expedite large portions of the inbound that sustains our nation’s economy, and focus with more precision on the unknown. 

That brings us to inspections. We must enhance and speed inspections that we 

need to perform, so that we minimize freight delays and increase total inspection 

capacity. To this end, we must complete our deployment of radiation portal detectors 

at ports, while advancing research on more sophisticated non-intrusive detection 

protocols and equipment.

4. Information Sharing 

The ability to share information with our international, state, and local partners, 

the private sector, law enforcement and first responders is absolutely critical to our 

success. Otherwise, we are effectively tying the hands of those who are on the 

ground and charged with the responsibility of protecting their community, their 

neighbors, and their families. 

We recognize the need for better and more inclusive information sharing. Information sharing is a two-way street. Therefore, we will work with the White House 

Homeland Security Council and our federal colleagues not only to help forge common federal tools for information sharing, but also work with state and local officials—and private sector infrastructure owners—to fuse and share a richer intelligence base. In short, we will promote greater situational awareness.

5. DHS Stewardship 

DHS must be a responsible steward of the public trust. Congress is justifiably 

making significant investments in homeland security, and that entails significant 

procurements at DHS. We must ensure that we carry out these procurements responsibly. 

One of my very first acts as the new Secretary was to contact the Department’s 

Inspector General and my Chief Procurement Officer and instruct them to evaluate 

DHS procurements and our contracting practices. I asked for suggestions regarding 

any needed changes—and I’ve received just that. We will rely on these recommendations to make procurement integrity and efficiency a management focus throughout 

the Department’s work. 

We will also emphasize improving financial controls and financial systems, seeking operating efficiencies, strengthening human capital policies, and delivering core 

information technology systems. Last week’s attack in London re-emphasized for me 

the need to act on another Second Stage Review recommendation: better integration 

and consolidation among the Department’s multiple crisis management centers. We 

will do that. 

DHS employees also deserve an organization that provides top-notch professional 

career training, an organization that actually enables individuals to broaden these 

experiences by working in other components of the Department without impeding 
11

their career paths. DHS should reward the strongest performers and team players. 

Our review has given us some specific recommendations for building this type of organization, and we will look forward to sharing more details with employees in the 

weeks and months to come.

6. DHS Structural Re–Alignment 

I have concluded that some structural changes are needed at DHS to improve mission performance. Modest but essential course corrections regarding organization 

will yield big dividends. Most can be accomplished administratively—a few require 

legislation. 

These organizational changes include four important areas of focus which include: 

(1) formation of a new, department-wide policy office; (2) significant improvements 

in how DHS manages its intelligence and information sharing responsibilities; (3) 

formation of a new operations coordination office and other measures to increase 

operational accountability; and (4) an important consolidation effort that integrates 

the Department’s preparedness mission.

(a) Policy. We propose the creation of a central policy office led by an Under Secretary for Policy. This office also will bring together our international affairs staff, 

a significant and new strategic planning capability, DHS-wide policy development 

assets, a senior policy advisor focused on refugee asylum policies, and enhanced private sector liaison resources. Collectively, the Policy Directorate will strengthen the 

Department’s ability to develop and plan vital policies. This office is not a new 

idea—it builds in part upon the foundational work of the Border and Transportation 

Security policy staff, which is to be folded into the new policy directorate. Creation 

of a DHS policy shop has been suggested by Members of Congress, Secretary Ridge, 

and numerous outside experts. Now is the time to make this a reality.

(b) Intelligence. Systematic intelligence analysis lies at the heart of everything 

we do. Understanding the enemy’s intent and capabilities affects how we operate 

at our borders; how we assess risk in protecting infrastructure; how we discern the 

kind of threats for which we must prepare to respond. 

More than 10 components or offices of the Department of Homeland Security are 

intelligence generators, and all of us in the Department are consumers and appliers 

of intelligence. We need to have a common picture—across the Department—of the 

intelligence that we generate and the intelligence we require. We need to fuse that 

information and combine it with information from other members of the intelligence 

community as well as information from our state, local, and international partners. 

DHS can also do a better job of sharing the intelligence we are gathering and the 

intelligence we are analyzing with our customers inside the Department, within the 

intelligence community, and with our frontline first responders at the state and 

local level. 

Therefore, we will designate the Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis as 

the Chief Intelligence Officer. The Chief Intelligence Officer will head a strengthened Information Analysis division that will report directly to me. This office will 

ensure that intelligence is coordinated, fused and analyzed within the Department 

so that we have a common operational picture. It will also provide a primary connection between DHS and others within the intelligence community—and a primary 

source of information for our state, local, and private sector partners.

(c) Operations. Intelligence and policy mean little if not translated into action. 

Under our plan, all seven primary operational components will have a direct line 

to the Secretary, but—to improve our ability to coordinate and carry out operations—we will establish a new Director of Operations Coordination. The Director 

of Operations Coordination will work with component leadership and other federal 

partners to translate intelligence and policy into actions—and to ensure that those 

actions are joint, well-coordinated and executed in a timely fashion. The Operations 

Coordination director will manage DHS’s hub for crisis management. 

This integrating office will not disrupt our operators in the field, nor will it interfere with component chains-of-command. We do not aim to fix what already works.

(d) Preparedness. Finally, let me turn to the critical area of preparedness. The 

Department of Homeland Security has primarily been viewed as a terrorist-fighting 

entity. But, in fact, we are an ‘‘all hazards’’ Department. Our responsibilities certainly include not only fighting the forces of terrorism, but also fighting the forces 

of natural disasters. 

To ensure that our preparedness efforts have focused direction, we intend to consolidate the Department’s existing preparedness efforts—including grants, exercises, 

and most training—into a single directorate led by an Under Secretary for Preparedness. Going forward, FEMA will be a direct report to the Secretary—but it will 
12

now focus on its historic and vital mission of response and recovery, the importance 

of which was illustrated powerfully as Hurricane Dennis made landfall this week. 

The Preparedness directorate will continue to rely on FEMA’s subject matter expertise and the expertise of our other components in promoting preparedness. It will 

also include our Infrastructure Protection division, as well as the U.S. Fire Administration, currently in FEMA, which will strengthen our linkages with the fire service. 

Further, as part of our consolidated preparedness team, a Chief Medical Officer 

will be appointed within the Preparedness directorate. This position will be filled 

by an outstanding physician who will be my principal advisor on medical preparedness and a high-level DHS representative to coordinate with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Agriculture and state 

governments. The Chief Medical Officer and his team will have primary responsibility for working with HHS and other Departments in completing comprehensive 

plans for executing our responsibilities to prevent and mitigate biologically based attacks on human health and on our food supply. 

We also appreciate both the efficiencies and the vulnerabilities of the modern 

technology on which so much of our society depends. To centralize the coordination 

of the efforts to protect technological infrastructure, we will create the new position 

of Assistant Secretary for Cyber and Telecommunications Security within the Preparedness directorate.

Constantly Improving Our Efforts 

The six areas of focus just described are all areas that will be priorities for the 

Department moving forward in the near term. They offer at least an initial roadmap 

of large categories of our activity for the months ahead. 

We look forward to working with this Committee, other Members of Congress, our 

colleagues in the Administration, and our partners to ensure that this agenda for 

DHS can be implemented. And we will continue to roll out new thinking and specific 

solutions to the issues that directly affect our security and daily lives. 

Of course we have not been idle while waiting for this moment. To the contrary, 

we have taken immediate steps to promote security in a commonsense and balanced 

way. Since my confirmation, for example, we have resolved a long-simmering dispute by supporting the placement of hazardous material warning placards on rail 

cars. We have also announced a plan to open Ronald Reagan National Airport to 

general aviation. And, we affirmed a strong and achievable implementation plan for 

the Visa Waiver Program that requires biometric technology standards for passports 

issued by program participant nations. 

What is notable about these decisions is that they did not simply pile on security 

restrictions. Instead, we have modified or even relaxed security measures that were 

no longer necessary, where risk analysis warranted. After all, a balanced approach 

means that the balance moves down as well as up. 

Moving forward, we will evaluate our decision making, strengthening security 

where needed, and eliminating unnecessary burden when possible. Yesterday, I announced two decisions that illustrate this approach. 

In the former category, after extensive consultation with the Department of State 

and the Department of Justice, DHS has decided to strengthen our US–VISIT program. In the future, first-time visitors to the United States will be enrolled in the 

program by submitting ten fingerprints. Subsequent entries will continue to require 

a 2 print scan for verification. This will dramatically improve our ability to detect 

and thwart terrorists trying to enter the United States, with no significant increase 

in inconvenience. 

In the latter category, TSA will suspend the post–9/11 requirement that commercial airline passengers using Reagan National Airport in Washington must remain 

seated for 30 minutes after departure and before arrival. This 30-minute seating 

rule was a sensible measure when first applied. Now, almost four years later, significantly enhanced layers of security ranging from hardened cockpit doors to air 

marshals make it reasonable to eliminate this requirement. 

Our work in protecting the homeland will always seek reasonable balance. Over 

time, as intelligence warrants and as progress allows, DHS will be open to change. 

We will be straightforward. If something goes wrong, we will not only acknowledge 

it, we will be the first to fix the error. But, we also will stand up and let people 

know when we’ve done things the right way or see a better way ahead.

Conclusion 

This is an exciting time for our organization. Change brings opportunity—and 

after an historic first two years—our young Department continues to hold one of the 

most important roles in government—the safety and security of our nation. 
13

We set these priorities for ourselves and make these adjustments to the Department in order to serve our mission, to protect our families, our fellow citizens, our 

visitors, and our homeland. 

So, moving forward together, let us answer this call by building upon that which 

has been honorably founded these past two years at DHS. We will proceed with 

unyielding focus and quiet determination. 

Once again, I thank this Committee for their constant support and valuable input, 

and I look forward to working with you as we move to put these changes into effect. 

Thank you.

Chairman COX. Let me begin by saying that with respect to so 

many of the changes that you are outlining, it is evident that you 

have been listening to the members of this Committee and have 

heeded very much the urgings of this Committee. The creation of 

a Chief Intelligence Officer and the emphasis on intelligence as a 

key driver of prevention has been a priority of this Committee 

through 2 years of our work as a select committee and all this year 

as a permanent standing committee. 

The emphasis on risk, likewise, has been a constant refrain of 

this Committee. It is at the center of what you are proposing today. 

The creation of an Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Telecommunications was formal legislation proposed by this Committee. That legislation is now unnecessary. The significant refinements that you have made to the threat warning system coordinate 

the views, I think, of this Committee very nicely. So I have no 

question that you have been listening carefully, and that the work 

we are doing here in this Congress has had a big impact and is reflected in what you are bringing to us today. 

I want to focus on one key piece of that, and that is the intelligence piece. We will now have a Chief Intelligence Officer reporting directly to you. That Chief Intelligence Officer is going to be responsible, among other things, for fusing the intelligence collection 

from elements of the Department of Homeland Security, at least 

that is my understanding. And I want to ask you that. Will that 

be one of the responsibilities of the new Chief Intelligence Officer? 

And how is he going to do that, by the way, since these operational 

elements of the Department have historically been separate? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, first of all, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to underscore the fact that we did, in building this set 

of proposals, pay a good deal of close attention to what this Committee and the Congress has already done in the reauthorization 

bill and the appropriations activity and hearings and testimony. I 

fully anticipated you would see a lot of the ideas generated by this 

committee in our work, and I am the last person to claim pride of 

authorship. We know a good idea when we hear it, and we are 

eager to implement it. 

The Chief Intelligence Officer will have the obligation to manage 

the collection and fusion of intelligence throughout the entire Department. We have over 10 offices now. Many of them focus on tactical intelligence. For example, Customs and Border Protection is 

obviously concerned about new trends in passport fraud and things 

of that sort, and that will continue to be the case. But we do generate an awful lot of strategic intelligence when we interact at the 

border. 

What we have already begun to do, and what I will expect the 

Chief Intelligence Officer to do, is to work with the components to 
14

put reports officers into parts of the components’ operational elements so that we can spot information that has strategic intelligence value, make sure that it gets written up in a form that is 

compatible across the board so that we don’t have different formats 

or different understandings of the kind of information that we 

need, and then make sure that it gets channeled up; and then once 

it gets to our analytical section, to make sure that we are fusing 

that. 

Now, that will obviously sometimes require working with the analysts in the components, and we already do that to a large extent, 

but we do it now manually instead of in an institutional manner. 

This is going to institutionalize a practice that we have been putting in place even in the last few months. So the collection piece 

will not be the only function of a Chief Intelligence Officer, but it 

will be an important function. 

Chairman COX. And will the Chief Intelligence Officer carry the 

chief responsibility or some responsibility or no responsibility for 

moving the intelligence out from the Federal Government to State 

and local stakeholders? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Again, that person will have the principal 

responsibility for managing that process. Now, in terms of the mechanics of it, in terms of the Intelligence Community, the Chief Intelligence Officer and the Coast Guard intelligence officers do sit as 

part of the Intelligence Community formula. 

Chairman COX. I would like to make my question a bit more specific. Will the—what is now the Information Analysis Office of the 

Department of Homeland Security, which will now be a stand-alone 

intelligence operation in the Department, and which will be run by 

the Chief Intelligence Officer—will it contain the manpower that is 

necessary within DHS to conduct liaisons with State and local 

stakeholders and private sector stakeholders when it comes to the 

sharing of intelligence? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, it will. I want to emphasize that some 

of that, however, will take place in conjunction with our preparedness people, because a lot of—often the intelligence is not necessarily transient threat information, but it involves analytical 

pieces that drive with the way we, for example, protect our infrastructure or deal with grant issues. So they will have the manpower, and they will have the principal liaison, but they will also 

be working, particularly on the more strategic analyses, with some 

of our other components. 

Chairman COX. My time has expired. The gentleman from Mississippi is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, again, I look forward to working with you on the 

reorganization and discussing the Democratic response to it. 

As you are aware, the 9/11 Act required submission of a national 

transportation security plan by April 1. When the Department 

missed that deadline, I sent a letter to you, and that was responded to by your deputy, Mr. Jackson, indicating that it would 

be 2 to 3 months we would have that transportation security plan. 

In light of what London is facing and what we are facing here 

in this country, what are your plans to produce that plan for the 

Department? 
15

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, first of all, we should make it clear 

that a big part of this review was a process of stepping back and 

looking at our current planning on transportation. 

The President has nominated a very skilled and experienced individual in the area of transportation to be the next Administrator 

of TSA. We are very hopeful we can get him confirmed. Obviously, 

we would want to be able to have his input in this planning process, but we are doing a lot of work on that as we speak. 

Another issue we are going to look at very carefully is the lessons 

learned from London. There is an investigation going on now. I 

think we will have greater insight in the coming days into what we 

can take away that is of value. We will be prompt in giving Congress a plan, but we do want to make sure it is well thought out, 

and that means addressing all the components of transportation 

and not merely responding with respect to one. 

In particular, we are focused on TSA and where we need to make 

adjustments in the manner that TSA operates. It is important to 

make sure that TSA is focused on all of its transportation missions, 

and, although I think that has been the case up to now, the new 

Administrator, I know, is very interested in making sure that we 

are adequately addressing land and rail transportation, as well as, 

of course, aviation transportation. 

Mr. THOMPSON. And I appreciate your comments, but I think you 

can understand our anxiety in not having a plan at all, and waiting 

for another event to happen to take best learned practices from it 

is probably not the way to go. We could probably just put an addendum to an existing plan and go forward. But we do need a plan, 

Mr. Secretary, and I would encourage you to do that. 

With respect to the Special Assistant Secretary for the Private 

Sector that you know was congressionally mandated, you have now 

moved that position out of your proposed reorganization. How do 

you see the private sector having standing in your Department 

given the fact that you have now done away with that position? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, actually, Congressman, we have actually elevated that position. The current structure, the Special Assistant really essentially has that person with a small office attached to the Office of the Secretary, but not really being integrated with the planning process. When we took a lot of the advice 

of Congress in terms of setting up a policy directorate, which I 

think this Committee endorsed, we said, how do we make sure that 

in our policymaking and in our planning the private sector is thoroughly integrated? And rather than having the Special Assistant 

continue to be an adjunct of the Secretary’s office, it seemed we 

needed to give that person the stature and the authority within the 

entire range of our policy and planning to make sure the private 

sector is adequately and fully represented. So I do raise a step up 

actually in terms of the breadth of operating authority and the 

breadth of responsibility of the current incumbent. 

I would also point out that on an ongoing basis on our infrastructure protection components, we regularly work with the private 

sector. We will continue to do that, as we will in the whole area 

of preparedness, where many of the assets in question are in the 

hands of private parties. 
16

Mr. THOMPSON. So in other words, the Assistant Secretary of the 

Policy for the Private Sector, it is still there with the same function? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Actually an enhanced function. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Enhanced function. Thank you. 

The other thing is this is a present chart of your Department. 

There are 13 vacancies of senior positions. I would hope that under 

the reorganization we can get some real, live, permanent bodies 

there to move forward with the Department. One of the complaints 

we hear all the time is it has been musical chairs there, and we 

never talk to the same person twice. And hopefully, with your reorganization in place, we can move toward some permanence in the 

senior leadership in the Department.
17
18
19
20

Secretary CHERTOFF. I share that desire strongly. I think we announced yesterday a couple of people that have been selected to fill 

some new positions. I think we may have a further announcement 

today, and, of course, we are working very hard with the Senate 

to move people through the process of confirmation as quickly as 

possible. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you. 

Chairman COX. The Gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Gentleman from New York, Mr. King, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me welcome Secretary Chertoff. I thank you for the terrific 

job you have done so far. I especially want to commend you for focusing on risk-based funding. That is one of the most important 

things the Department can do. I want to thank you for that. 

I would like to follow up on the Chairman’s question regarding 

the Chief Intelligence Officer. There are really two parts to it. One, 

if you could walk us through exactly how you will interact with 

Ambassador Negroponte and the DNI, how that will work. 

And also, as far as the question of sharing intelligence, one thing 

we have heard from local police and officials around the country is, 

not so much with Homeland Security, but certainly with the FBI, 

that there has been a lack of intelligence sharing. What can you 

do to assure us that your Department will do all kinds of work 

with local police, fire, and emergency responders? Thank you. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, as you know, under the Intelligence 

Reform Act, and then under the President’s announcement recently 

concerning his adoption of virtually all the recommendations of the 

Silverman-Robb Commission, the DNI has the responsibility to coordinate intelligence across the board. We work very closely with 

him. I speak to Ambassador Negroponte or see him at least once 

a week, unless we are traveling, or his deputy. We speak regularly 

on the telephone. We have members of our Information Analysis 

component bolted together with the NCTC—the National 

Counterterrorism Center—which is the central focal point for accumulating the intelligence. 

And my vision of the Chief Intelligence Officer is that that person will have an enhanced ability to deliver to the whole Intelligence Community all of the information that we collect inside the 

Department. We do that a lot manually now. I am in regular discussion with Director Mueller and with Director Goss and with 

Ambassador Negroponte. But again, we want to institutionalize 

this. It shouldn’t be about my personal discussions with people or 

someone’s personal discussions. It should be more embedded. 

With respect to the issue of sharing, we have been working very 

hard on the issue of sharing—both with respect to threat information and with respect to more sustained strategic information—lessons learned, things of that sort. And we have been emphasizing, 

in particular, doing that. 

One set of conversations I have had with a number of the Governors and homeland security advisors is their desire to set up intelligence fusion centers where they have a single point of contact 

in terms of intelligence collection and also consuming intelligence. 
21

As I announced yesterday, we are talking to the States to set up 

a meeting, basically a summit meeting, where the homeland security advisors will come in, and we want to talk with them about 

networking all of our fusion centers. In fact, we are going to be 

using some of our money to encourage that to happen. I think that 

is an additional way to connect up. I think we have been doing a 

better job. I am very mindful about it. It is a two-way street. And 

I think this is going to be another step forward in that direction. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Chairman COX. The Gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Gentlelady from California is recognized for 5 minutes, Ms. 

Harman. 

Ms. HARMAN. Thank you. 

Welcome, Secretary Chertoff. My thanks to you for bringing a 

systems approach, enormous dedication to your job, and for visiting 

recently the part of southern California that the Chairman and I 

represent in seeing our ports and our airport, and actually one of 

our elementary schools, which is a bit challenged in trying its best 

to prepare for a terrorist attack should it come. 

I am impressed with what you are doing. I think that the riskfocused and the risk-based approach are absolutely critical, and 

that changes need to be made. However, I think that your primary 

audience is not government junkies or graduate students, but an 

anxious public, and that is why I said to you a couple of days ago 

that I thought you need to talk about capability more than moving 

boxes around. 

I still see a couple of things that I would love for you to talk 

about very soon, and let me just list them and get some of your 

responses. There is a vote on, so I think we are all going to run 

out of here in a few minutes. But the three things missing from 

yesterday, at least as I heard it, were, one, steps that you will take 

to fix a threat warning system that I believe is broken. You did a 

good job with it last week, explaining a targeted and measured response to the London bombings, but I think the color-coded system 

does not work. So that was one thing missing. 

The second thing is some news, long overdue news, on when we 

will see one national integrated threat and vulnerability assessment, which was the basic idea in the first place. We don’t want 

to rearrange the deck chairs, we want one deck. And that assessment, at least as it was described by your predecessor some months 

back, needed a lot of work. 

Finally, I didn’t hear anything, and I think this is a critical piece 

of the preparedness piece, about interoperable communications. 

They did not exist in New York on 9/11, and they did not exist at 

the Pentagon either. And although Los Angeles County and other 

places have done some good things, putting together bridge technologies, I would argue, we still don’t have a system, one national 

integrated system, in the event of multiple terrorist attacks. And 

God forbid this reload idea that you have described where not only 

do we get one attack in some place, but it is repetitive. 

So those are three areas we would like to hear more about, and 

I know I am representing this anxious public that I have mentioned. Thank you. 
22

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, Representative Harman, first of all, I 

appreciate the opportunity that we have had over the last few 

months to talk at greater depth about those issues, and I look forward to continuing to do that. 

I think obviously there is a lot to work on here, and of course, 

a single speech and the capacity of my voice to talk endlessly is 

limited. So we can only do so much. But let me touch on these 

briefly. 

As I said, we are looking, as we speak, at the threat warning system, and part of that process is we are consulting with not only 

other departments of Government which have a stake in this, but 

with our State and local counterparts and with members of the private sector as well. So we are actually considering right now what 

we need to do this. It is a complicated issue, but it is being very 

vigorously attended to. 

With respect to the integrated national threat and vulnerability 

assessment, we have a comparatively new Assistant Secretary put 

in charge of the Infrastructure Protection component. One thing 

that we are trying to take advantage of in building this out to be 

more than merely a collection of infrastructure, a long list of golf 

courses and things of that sort, is to take advantage of some of the 

capacities that we have in our national laboratories to do very sophisticated computer modeling. I have already seen some of the 

product of this process. 

For example, in dealing with the issue of port grants, we have 

put together, I think, a much better analytic product in terms of 

our distribution of those grants that is risk-based than was the 

case a year ago. So I can’t see this as a process that is going to 

be done in a couple of weeks, but I can say that it is a process that 

is well under way, and that the people that are executing it have 

a very firm understanding that this needs to be something that is 

disciplined and not merely an opportunity for everybody to chip in 

their individual pet projects. 

Third, I think interoperable communications again, there are 

some pieces of this we own, some that we don’t. I know there is 

a pending proposal to get a dedicated piece of a band for purposes 

of communication. I think that is something that we do want to 

move forward on. And we also need to move forward technologically 

in terms of equipment that will bridge existing systems. We don’t 

want to throw out what we have, but I think we need to look at 

the issue of setting down some standards for new equipment. 

And finally, there have been cultural issues and processes that 

have to be worked out. 

Ms. HARMAN. My time is expired, but that bill to dedicate a band 

for emergency communications has been offered by me and Congress Curt Weldon, and I am pleased to hear that you are supportive of it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time has expired, and so too, 

has the time of almost all the Members here to vote on the floor. 

There is very little time left in the currently pending floor vote. It 

is the expiration of a 15-minute vote followed by two 5-minute 

votes. That should permit us to take a very brief recess and recon-
23

vene this hearing no later than 11:00. That would be the Chair’s 

intention. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman COX. The hearing is reconvened, and the Chair recognizes next the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Linder, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. Nice to see 

you again. 

What do you think the TSA is going to look like 5 years from 

now? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think and I hope that TSA will be an 

agency that uses a next generation of technology—one that allows 

us to more efficiently leverage our resources, both in terms of airport and also in terms of other forms of transportation—that includes screening devices at the airport that will allow us to focus 

more on the things we worry about and less on the things we worry 

about less. 

I hope and envision that some of the burdensome restrictions in 

terms of what you can carry on board will be lifted because of additional measures to protect people. I am hopeful that secondary 

screenings will be reduced because we will have a more interoperable and more sophisticated screening system that doesn’t rely only 

on names, but allows us to do some work with additional identifying things, like date of birth, and even some analytical tools that 

would let us be more focused. 

With respect to rail and other forms of land transportation, I see 

it, again, involved with better technologically infused systems that 

will give us protection particularly against the catastrophic things 

that we are worried about, but also using modern technology in 

terms of video cameras and sensors and things of that sort. 

Mr. LINDER. Why should a person go through the difficulty of 

background checks and the fingerprinting to be a Registered Traveler if all that means is they get to go through a quicker line, but 

they still take their shoes off, take their coat off, take their computer out of the case? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, ultimately what these Registered 

Traveler programs should do is give you the benefit of checking, 

and essentially acceptance of reliability throughout a whole menu 

of things, whether it involves getting on an airplane or getting into 

a Federal building. I mean, my vision of where we should go is 

Members of Congress obviously are checked and vetted and get security clearances. At the end of the day, your card that contains 

that information ought to be able to get you into a Registered Traveler status getting into the country, getting onto airplanes, things 

of that sort. I don’t mean to restrict it to Members of Congress, but 

what I am trying to suggest is the degree of interoperability and 

coordination. That means once you get checked once, that becomes 

a way to easier entry into a whole lot of things. 

Mr. LINDER. We had a hearing yesterday on biologic threats, and 

I worry that the money we spent, $20 billion so far, has just been 

wasted because it is so easy to genetically alter the threat. We 

have 10,000 people dealing with recombinant DNA. We have synthesized smallpox. We can make some smallpox more virulent and 

resistant than it is currently. We have announced to everyone how 
24

much we have in the stockpile to respond to an anthrax attack, and 

so, modest engineered anthrax won’t be able to be treated by it. 

We spend very little money—I think it is less than 2 percent of 

your budget—on intelligence. And it strikes me that you have said 

before this Committee before that the most important things to you 

to worry about are catastrophic things like nuclear and biological 

threats. The only way to prevent those, it strikes me, is by having 

a robust intelligence section that can anticipate where something 

might come from and prevent it. Prevention ought to be the number one thing in your Department. Do you disagree with that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I fully agree that prevention is a critical 

element in preventing an attack. I have to say though, I lived, as 

many people here did, through the anthrax attacks in Washington 

of 2001. I think our general philosophy of taking a layered approach is not to put all our eggs in one basket, but to have vigorous 

intelligence and vigorous prevention, as well as to be prepared to 

have a process in place and a response in place if there is an attack—and it could even come from a single individual, it doesn’t 

need to come through a terrorist group. So I think we need to do 

the full menu of approaches. 

And one element of intelligence, by the way, is a very scientifically founded intelligence that looks to see what we know about 

the way people are now working to manufacture potentially biological threats. There are different signatures, and I think knowing 

that helps us do some of our response planning. 

Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Chairman COX. Does the gentleman yield back? The gentleman’s 

time is expired. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, as you know, over and over again the demands of 

industry have been allowed to trump public safety, the chemical industry, the cargo industry, the nuclear industry, they have all 

steamrolled the Bush administration for the last 4 years in terms 

of public safety. So we get a chance here to start all over again. 

So I have taken, Mr. Secretary, your kind of formula, threat, vulnerability, consequences. The threat in each instance, Mr. Secretary, is al-Qa’ida. That is clear. The vulnerability; chemical 

plants that have no mandatory requirement to shift over to safer 

chemicals. Nuclear plants; there has been no realistic upgrade of 

the permanent standard against terrorist attack. Public transit; 

hundreds of thousands of deaths, hundreds to thousands of deaths 

could occur. The American Public Transit Association says that we 

should spend $6 billion to upgrade, the Bush administration has 

said no. 

LNG, and the Bush administration is now overriding States and 

local communities with a new law going through which says they 

can plant these LNG facilities in urban areas. 

Al-Qa’ida, also, wants to go after HAZMAT shipments. And 

there, the Bush administration is opposed, where possible, to rerouting into less densely populated areas. And in aviation, Mr. Secretary, the Bush administration, again kowtowing to the cargo industry and the airline industry, has refused to mandate 100 per-
25

cent total physical screening of cargo which goes onto passenger 

planes. 

So that is the formula, threat, vulnerability, consequences. And 

what I am going to talk about today, Mr. Secretary, is solutions. 

Mr. Secretary, number one. In aviation, would you support going 

to a 100 percent physical inspection of all cargo on passenger 

planes, yes or no? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. No, and let me explain why. And I will tell 

you, if you want to—it is not going to surprise you that I am going 

to disagree with your characterization of the policy being that industry trumps public safety. But I also think, in fairness, you 

ought to let me explain that when I talk about risk, I also talk 

about balance— 

Mr. MARKEY. I have to go through the six questions. That is all 

I get is 5 minutes. 

Now let’s go to chemical security. Yes or no, will you require 

chemical companies to switch to safer chemicals, whenever possible, to reduce security vulnerability? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have to say, Congressman, I don’t think 

anyone has yet established that the appropriate way to deal with 

chemical security is to get into the process of making people switch 

chemicals. 

Mr. MARKEY. Transit security; yes or no, Mr. Secretary, will you 

commit to fully implementing the recommendations of the American Public Transportation Association, which has called for an extensive security upgrade to prevent a London-style attack in our 

country? Yes or no. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I will commit to you a balanced approach 

that evaluates the specific risks with respect to transit, and balances them with respect to the other priorities that we have to deal 

with in dealing with our homeland security. 

Mr. MARKEY. All right. Now let’s go to transportation of extremely hazardous materials. Will you require rerouting of shipments of the most deadly chemicals around densely populated 

areas if there is a safer route available? Yes or no. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am, and we are currently, working to look 

at the entire issue of transportation of hazardous materials in 

order to make sure we are assuring the safety of the public that 

could potentially be affected by using a whole menu of security 

measures—again focused upon risk management. 

Mr. MARKEY. Now, again, Mr. Secretary, for LNG—I still haven’t 

heard a yes. Now, Mr. Secretary, for LNG, do you agree that LNG 

terminals, which are tempting terrorist targets, should be located 

offshore or away from population centers? Yes or no. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have to say, Congressman, I think that is 

an overly simplistic view of the situation. I think it is a much more 

complicated situation. 

Mr. MARKEY. Putting LNG facilities, new facilities, in densely 

populated areas as opposed to offshore or the most sparsely populated, that is not oversimplified, that is just a simple yes or no. Do 

you want to put highly desirable terrorist targets, new ones, in the 

middle of densely populated areas? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think the choice you have presented is an 

oversimplified choice. 
26

Mr. MARKEY. Okay. Fine. I will take that as a no. 

Biological vulnerabilities. Now, Mr. Secretary, yes or no, will you 

commit to completing the remaining material threat assessments 

within the next 60 days? Only four are completed thus far. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think our original target was to get those 

done by the beginning of next year, and we are on target to do that. 

Mr. MARKEY. The problem is, again, we are 4 years after 9/11, 

only four of the 60 materials—

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Mr. Chairman, if I could just complete the 

answer that I was originally trying to give, because I think it is an 

important point. When I talk about risk management, I also talk 

about balance. And let me just take the first example that Congressman Markey raised as an example of what I think we 

shouldn’t be doing in security. 

I could guarantee that there is 100 percent security, for example—I could guarantee that there is not going to be any threat to 

cargo entering this country or getting on airplanes. I simply 

wouldn’t allow any to get on, that would destroy our economy. 

Mr. MARKEY. Cargo on passenger planes. We are talking about 

passenger planes, Mr. Secretary. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We have to be very careful, when we talk 

about security levels, not to burn the village down in order to— 

Mr. MARKEY. The technology exists, Mr. Secretary, to screen all 

cargo on passenger planes. Why don’t we do it? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We have to be very careful to use technology and to use systems in a way that will not— 

Mr. MARKEY. That exists. 

Chairman COX. The witness will suspend. 

The gentleman is one minute and 15 seconds over his 5 minutes. 

He should at least permit the Secretary the courtesy to answer 

some of the several questions that he has put over the last 6-1/2 

minutes. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We have to be very careful when we decide what system of protection to use, that we deploy a system that works in a way that 

allows us to continue to let the economy operate, to continue that 

cargo to be shipped. A hundred percent physical manual inspection 

of anything will often destroy the very system you are trying to 

save. 

So again, when we do risk management—and a key element of 

that is balance—it is optimizing things. That applies to the transit 

system—it is optimizing things. That applies to the transit system, 

it applies all the way across the board. What I am committed to 

doing is a disciplined approach to risk management that considers 

what is the optimal amount of security, but does it in a way that 

does not destroy our way of life. 

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Secretary, for 4 years the Bush administration 

has been protecting powerful industries and not protecting the public safety. That is going to be your challenge, to change that formula. The Bush administration thus far has sided with industry, 

not providing security. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
27

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. SHAYS. I love my colleague from Massachusetts, but when 

you basically give such long comments and then ask six questions, 

it is clear you are not really interested in what the witness wants 

to say. And I think if you had just taken one of those issues, you 

could have probably had a very good dialogue back and forth. 

I do want to say to you, Mr. Chertoff, that I think you are doing 

an outstanding job. I think you are digging yourself out of a huge 

hole. We created a department, we did the best we could, we put 

180,000 people in it, we took it from 20 plus different parts of the 

Government. And frankly, you don’t yet have a culture that I know 

that you particularly want. 

I would want to just say, though, I do agree with Mr. Markey, 

particularly as he talks about passenger travel. We first checked 

people’s luggage when they went on a plane; then we made sure 

we checked what suitcases went in the belly of the aircraft. But I 

find it outrageous that 22 percent of what is on a passenger plane 

is cargo. And I think Mr. Markey is dead right in saying that if 

it is on a plane that carries passengers, it should be checked. And 

I would think that that is a reasonable request that we have a 

timetable to know when it will be done. 

And furthermore, I think it is reasonable to say that if it is not 

going to be checked, the public has the right to know that on that 

plane is cargo that has not been checked. And I am interested if 

you would be willing to consider, one, a timetable, and two, warning people that cargo on a plane has not been checked. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I am happy to talk about this because 

clearly we do want to make sure that we have verified what is 

going into the cargo hold of a plane, whether it be what passengers 

bring with them or what gets shipped. But here again, we want to 

use a balanced approach, and that means we want to use intelligence screening and we want to check the cargo that we do not 

have a high degree of confidence in, but we also want to try to 

build systems which allow us to focus on a smaller and smaller 

amount of the cargo so we can do more efficient screening. 

There exists now, for example, various air express industries. 

Federal Express, DHL, UPS, are very sophisticated about tracking 

their packages. And there are ways of having them verify—

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Secretary, the problem with that is you are kind 

of going the route of the known carrier. And why would it make 

sense to check all the luggage in the belly of an aircraft brought 

on by a passenger, but it doesn’t make sense to check all the cargo 

in the belly of the aircraft? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Because where we have an ability to build 

a system that gives us confidence in the shipper and the cargo, so 

that we know what the cargo is and we can track it from the point 

of its entering into the supply chain to the end; we know what is 

inside; and we know we can target what we are worried about and 

what is a higher risk. When passengers present themselves to the 

airport, it is impossible to conceive of a system that would give us 

that degree of confidence. Now obviously, as we get technologies 

that are more and more—that operate more quickly and that are 
28

more precise, it is possible to actually inspect in a nonintrusive 

way a greater percentage of cargo. 

But here is what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to sit here without having that technology and say, we are going to make it—by 

manually checking every piece of cargo, we are going to make it impossible to put the cargo on that airplane. 

Mr. SHAYS. I hear your position. I will just say to you that I 

think it is really outrageous that we just don’t warn passengers 

that the cargo on a passenger plane has not been checked. I will 

tell you I fly less because my knowledge of the system is better 

than the general public. And I think we endanger the general public by not checking the cargo in the belly of an aircraft. 

I would like to ask you about the failure of the Department to 

have gotten its report done on a strategy for protecting buses and 

trains and subways. The Department said 2 to 3 months. If it was 

2 months, it would have been the 1st of June, and 3 months the 

end of June. We still don’t have it. It seems to me, since we were 

expecting April 1st, that we have a right—as Congress—to know 

when you will provide that information. And the reason I say that 

is we have money that is not being used. There is $150 million that 

is not being fed out to local governments to protect and harden 

their sites where they can. 

So I am assuming you are waiting and will not give out the 

money until we have a strategy. And when are we going to have 

a strategy? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, as the deputy wrote—and I don’t 

know what the date of the letter is—we did, obviously, not make 

the April 1 deadline. In the course of this process of review, one 

of the things we wanted to look at was the way we are handling 

rail and land transportation strategy. In fact, we are doing things 

now, we are doing programs now with respect to rail, including rail 

here in the Washington, D.C. area, that look at a whole menu of 

approaches. 

As far as the money is concerned, I believe a lot of the rail money 

has been moved out or is moving out; but again, what we want to 

do is not just push money out to have willy-nilly expenditures on 

systems. We want to make sure it is being done in a disciplined 

way. And there is no question that, you know, in the last few 

months we have taken a deep breath, we have looked at a lot of 

the ways we allocate grants, and we have tightened up that process. We have done it to avoid the kinds of things that we often got 

criticized for going back a year or two, which is people would say, 

oh, Homeland Security, they used the money to build a gymnasium, or they used the money and it is not really an effective use 

of the money. 

So we do owe you a plan, but we owe you a disciplined plan, and 

we owe you a plan that is intelligent. I want to make sure we get 

it right. We will get it promptly, but I want to make sure that we 

get it right. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time is expired. The gentleman 

from Washington, Mr. Dicks, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Secretary, we welcome you and thank you for 

meeting with some of us yesterday. 
29

Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the Secretary be given an opportunity to more fully reply in the record to Mr. Markey’s questions, 

all of which I think are legitimate questions, but I do believe the 

Secretary did not have an adequate time to respond, and I think 

that would be only fair. 

Chairman COX. And I will not take any of the gentleman’s time 

to make the following announcement: Because by pre-arrangement 

the Secretary has to attend a Cabinet meeting, we would like to 

have the Secretary or the Deputy Assistant Secretary back here to 

continue this hearing as well. We will work with the Department 

to see if we can do that. In addition, every member will have the 

opportunity to submit written questions for the record, and the Secretary and the Department, of course, will have the opportunity to 

respond fully. And that, I think, will give the Secretary ample opportunity to respond in full to the questions put by the gentleman 

from Massachusetts. 

The time, again, belongs to the gentleman from Washington. 

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Markey would like to— 

Mr. MARKEY. I would like to say, Mr. Secretary, that I know the 

President has called you down to the White House, and I know you 

are not going to be able to ask the questions of 80 percent of this 

committee, so I guess every member’s questions in writing will 

have to be answered, unless you do come back. And I think everyone should understand that who is watching this hearing, that it 

is about to end even though only six or seven members will have 

been able to ask you questions. 

Thank you. 

Chairman COX. Well, I don’t want to take any more of the gentleman from Washington’s time, but I think in fairness to the Secretary, we also have to observe that he has been sitting here at a 

table with empty chairs here during the scheduled time of this 

hearing while we have been on the floor voting. That is nobody’s 

fault, but that is why we find ourselves in this predicament. 

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Secretary, I wanted to reiterate the concern I 

have over the fact that the Department has been very slow on 

these material threat assessments, material threat determinations. 

The reason that is so important is we have appropriated $5.6 billion that cannot be utilized unless these things are done. And as 

Mr. Markey pointed out, only four of 60 have been done. And they 

cover some very important items, where the country needs to at 

least examine the possibility of having some way of dealing with 

it. 

The other thing I wanted to mention, I think, as you can tell, 

there is a great deal of anxiety on the Hill and in the country about 

how well the Department of Homeland Security is doing. And I 

think the biggest challenge for you is to try to restore confidence. 

And not getting reports up here on time, having the Department 

being very slow to react on these material threat assessments, determinations, using a two-fingerprint system in US-VISIT instead 

of 10, when all of the experts, NIST, everyone else says 10 is better, there are a whole host of these issues. The cargo issue in passenger planes. A number of these things need to be dealt with. I 

mean, you have got to show the country that there is a leader now 

in charge of Homeland Security, and someone who is not going to 
30

let these things drift on and who is going to honestly tell the country and the Congress and the American people about what the 

money—you know, if there is some areas where we can’t spend 

money, then let’s not waste money. 

We have got to deal with the major threats, the ones that will 

have the greatest possible impact, the use of a nuclear device, for 

example. And one of the threat assessments it has—or determinations it has not got over to HHS is what to do about dealing with 

a nuclear weapon. We know for a fact that we will lose a million 

people potentially, in New York, Washington or wherever it is if it 

is detonated. Not to have that issue worked out between your Department and HHS is just negligence. You have got to take that 

responsibility. You have got to get in there and get on the phone 

and get that cleared up. And you have got to do it. 

We expect you now to lead this Department, and it is time for 

action, it is time to get this thing moving in the right direction. 

And we are confident that you can do it, but we need to see action. 

Thank you. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me try to deal with several of the 

points you made. And let me begin by saying, although I talked 

yesterday about improvements that we need to make and I have 

talked to the Chair about improvements we need to make—and I 

will continue to talk about improvements—I wouldn’t want to leave 

the public with the impression that nothing has been done. Quite 

the contrary is true. We are, in fact, considerably safer than we 

were—certainly before 9/11, and frankly, safer than we were last 

year—and that is because of a whole host of things we have done 

a lot better. 

I share with you the view that the issue of biological threats is 

at the top of the list—with a few other things—of threats, and one 

of the reasons we have talked about a chief medical officer and consolidating preparedness is precisely to create accountability and a 

system-wide approach to this issue. 

On the other hand, I am pleased to say that we do have, for example, under our BioWatch program, biosensors in 32 cities around 

the country. And where there is a next generation of sensors that 

we are going to accelerate bringing forward, they do a good job. In 

fact, they don’t yield many false positives. So that is something we 

already have in place that we are going to make better. 

Likewise, I share with you the importance of doing 10 prints, and 

that is why I announced yesterday we are going to do that. And 

again, we want to make sure we need to actually roll out the infrastructure, but I think at the end of the day we will take what is 

a good program, US-VISIT, and make it even better. 

Likewise, on the issue of nuclear detection, I think that is exactly 

why the President’s budget envisioned having a domestic nuclear 

detection office—to give us essentially kind of a mini Manhattan 

Project on developing not only the technology for nuclear detection, 

but also the whole system and architecture for nuclear detection, 

and to make sure that what we are doing here at home is fully integrated with what we are doing overseas in terms of trying to locate loose nukes and use our intelligence to go out and focus on 

proliferation. 
31

So I think the three issues you raised are things that we are very 

much tuned into. They are built into the budget. They are built 

into our structural plan. I think the public should understand we 

have made a lot of progress, but they should also understand that, 

as I said, we are going to be candid about where we need to improve, and we are going to move very quickly to do that. 

Mr. DICKS. Thank you. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Secretary, I wanted to raise two somewhat different issues, one related to border. I know from meeting yesterday 

with the President that you are working on, and hopefully will be 

unveiling in the near future, some border initiatives. I want to 

make sure they call direct attention to something that many of us 

are working on here and are very concerned about. That is the lack 

of attention to the criminal smuggling organizations themselves; 

whether it be civil forfeiture laws that the GAO has pointed out 

that we need, whether it is the fact that ICE agents are only 

spending about 7 percent of their time on these smuggling organizations, the lack of a coordinated strategy, even pass off of data 

from CBP to ICE, as far as—because you probably have the data 

on who these people are. And also, an OTM strategy—Other Than 

Mexicans. Right now, Mexicans are at least deported back into 

Mexico, while the others are released on their own recognizance, 

including if they don’t have any terrorist record—if they are from 

one of the watch countries, they are released and lost to the system. And those are a number of the more pressing things. I hope 

that you have a clear understanding that it isn’t just about biological and chemical and so on, but ultimately the borders are our key 

point of entry, whether it is airports, ports, or land borders. 

The second question, if you will respond, I would appreciate that, 

is that I chair the Narcotics Committee, I cochair the Speaker’s 

Drug Policy Committee. It is very disturbing in as long a statement 

as you have that you didn’t make any reference to counternarcotics, 

and yet you have legacy border patrol, legacy customs, air and marine, the Coast Guard—you have the bulk of the people who do 

counternarcotics enforcement. 20 to 30,000 people die every year. 

Just because they don’t die on the same day at the same place does 

not mean they aren’t dead. 

In fact, if there isn’t a coordinated effort in your Department to 

make sure that this doesn’t get lost, more are going to die. There 

wouldn’t be any meth problem in the United States if 

pseudoephedrine wasn’t pouring across the border; there wouldn’t 

be any cocaine problem if cocaine wasn’t pouring across the borders; there wouldn’t be any heroin problem if heroin wasn’t pouring 

across the border; there wouldn’t be any BC bud problem if it 

wasn’t coming across the borders. We can’t tackle the narcotics 

problem without your agency. 

I have a letter that went to Secretary Ridge that has been held 

up. As you do your reorganization I wish you would look at it. It 

is particularly related to laws that we passed unanimously in the 

House and the Senate. One says that every officer has to have 

counternarcotics enforcement in their job performance measure-
32

ment. And I would like your response—if not today because I know 

you are at the initial stages of this—to this request that we have 

put into your Department, as well as several others, about how 

your new reorganization is going to address the counternarcotics 

and border questions. 

Thank you very much. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, as I think I indicated in my remarks 

yesterday, border is a very critical element, and that also involves 

counternarcotics, and our principle focus in counternarcotics is at 

the border. 

And you are completely right, we need to have a systems-based 

approach that looks not only at the border itself, but what do we 

do about, for example, detention and removal of Other Than Mexicans. 

I have spoken to a number of Members of Congress about this. 

We are very focused on this, and we do have a strategy that we 

are going to be rolling out on this. 

Likewise, a piece of this is focusing on the smuggling organizations smuggling all kinds of things, drugs, and people. And we are, 

in fact, working cases with this. 

There is a structural change we are going to make which is going 

to help this, and this is the Operations Integration element. And 

what this is going to give is us the ability to look at 

operationalizing a policy like this across the board with Customs 

and Border Protection, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with Coast Guard, to make sure that when we make a strategic move at one part of the border, for example, or one part of 

the problem, everybody else is also taking account of that in adjusting and synching their resources. This kind of what the military 

does when they do a joint operation. I think that is the kind of 

mechanism that is going to make us more efficient in dealing with 

the concerns that you have. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

The gentlelady from New York, Mrs. Lowey, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mrs. LOWEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the 

Secretary again for meeting with us, and I hope that we can continue this communication on a regular basis. And I hope you understand from my colleagues the sense of urgency and anxiety that 

we feel. As a New Yorker, I went to too many funerals. We can’t 

afford a 9/11, we can’t afford what happened in London. And you 

know that all the threats primarily have been on the transit system. So if you sense an anger, if you sense that we are anxious, 

I think we are entitled to feel that way. And I understand that you 

are coming here and that you put a plan in place, but we don’t 

have the luxury not to consider what just happened as a wake-up 

call and to act now, in addition to putting the plan in place. 

So if April 1 is a deadline for a comprehensive transit plan, this 

is July, Mr. Secretary. For you to tell me as a New Yorker that we 

don’t get this until the beginning of the year, this is of real concern. 

I also want to mention two items. I have been trying to get from 

TSA, from everyone we could, from local airports, a comprehensive 

understanding of how many people at airports are going through 

with badges which they might have gotten 3, 4 years ago and going 
33

into secure areas, be they maintenance workers, be they caterers, 

and not have to go through detectors. I can’t even get a number. 

I finally got something from the Port Authority. They said, well, we 

think it is about 7,000 at La Guardia. That is unacceptable, frankly. If Heathrow can do it, if other airports are working on it, everybody can. If I have to go through a metal detector, every worker 

should go through a metal detector. So I would appreciate a response at some point, not today, on this issue. 

Secondly, you must be aware that El Al has the technology to 

check all the baggage in the hold before any passenger goes on a 

plane—before any passenger goes on a plane, when all the cargo 

is on the plane. They increase, decrease the pressure, which from 

my understanding would detonate the bomb if there was a nuclear 

device in the hold. In addition to scanning and having human evaluation of each of the bags that are there, they open many of them, 

they use scanners on others, but they also do this to ensure that 

if there is a bomb on board it would explode before the people get 

on that. And I would appreciate a response to that at some time. 

Mr. Markey, all my colleagues and I share this sense of urgency. 

I feel a real responsibility to my constituents when I go to the New 

Rochelle train station, and I understand that Metro North trains—

and this is the same in San Francisco, Washington, Boston, all 

these suburban trains feed into a central city transit system, and 

we have done almost nothing to harden these suburban stations. 

And I would really appreciate—perhaps you can answer that if I 

have a few minutes left now. Are we focusing on the centralized 

targets in the transit rail system? What are we doing to ensure 

that we are securing the back doors into these targets, the suburban stations? Could you perhaps answer that? What are we doing 

now? We know that these people, many of whom came from Leeds, 

took these trains in. Some of them might have come by car. What 

are we doing to harden and protect our suburban stations? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am happy to address that, and obviously 

the other questions I will get you answers shortly. But I wouldn’t 

want people to walk away with the impression that the fact that 

we haven’t submitted a formal plan means that we are not planning on doing things at transit stations and train stations. And one 

thing I also want to make clear is this is not a Federal issue exclusively, we are working with State and local transit authorities. 

The general level of security in trains has increased since before 

9/11 and since before Madrid. One of the things we did, in fact, 

after Madrid is we did quite a comprehensive analysis that we 

shared with our State and local transit agencies about lessons 

learned and things that could be done to enhance security, and 

that includes everything from what I described earlier, which is our 

BioWatch sensors with respect to biological things. It involves some 

use of cameras. We have got a system now we are deploying in 

Boston, New York and Washington to detect chemical attacks in 

train stations. It is an integrated system which uses video as well 

as sensing devices that would allow us to react quickly to a chemical attack. So there are a lot of things being done, there is more 

to be done. 

Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Secretary, could you tell me, or respond to me 

when you can, how much funding is directly to suburban transit 
34

systems? As I understand, there isn’t funding for those devices. 

Could you discuss that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I will, but let me say this. I guess I feel an 

obligation to come back to this risk point. I understand everybody’s 

station worries them personally, and when I lived in the suburbs 

of New York, if I got on a train, I had a station that would concern 

me. But we still have to drive our priorities ultimately by looking 

at consequence, vulnerability and risk. 

The New York subways—I rode the subways, I am sure you do, 

too. There are dozens and dozens of stations. We have to be very 

careful as we go about a process of managing security we don’t 

break the system we are trying to save. We could never run the 

New York City subway station like we run an airport. We couldn’t 

have people walking through magnetometers, it is not possible. 

Mrs. LOWEY. Could we have dogs up and down with the police? 

I haven’t seen them at suburban stations at all. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We can do things with dogs, but again—

and here I have to say, I rely an awful lot on the people who manage the individual systems. 

Mrs. LOWEY. But then they have to get the funding, and we 

shouldn’t be making the false choices between chemical, nuclear, 

airplane. We don’t have the funding for the transit system—

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do have to say respectfully, and I don’t 

want to get into a debate. In the end, again, it is about balancing 

choice. We still have to continue to look at those things which have 

the greatest consequence with the greatest vulnerabilities. And it 

is very easy to isolate and pick out a particular type of infrastructure, and we all understand how important that is, but at the end 

of the day we have to make sure that what we do looks across the 

whole range of things. And that is, I guess, part of my responsibility in this. 

So we will get you the answer on the suburban station, but I did 

want to make it clear that the people shouldn’t think that the 

delay in presenting a formal plan suggests there hasn’t been an 

awful lot of planning and working. And as we speak, our level of 

security is significantly greater than it was, and it is going to get 

better. 

Mrs. LOWEY. Let me just say—may I just conclude—

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time expired 2 minutes ago. 

Mrs. LOWEY. If I could conclude and thank the Secretary. I have 

great confidence in you. But the issue of balancing is what concerns 

much of us, because let’s recall we are up to upwards of 250 billion 

for Iraq, for Afghanistan. We need to protect our homeland here, 

and we shouldn’t be making what I think are false choices between 

the transit system, between the airport system, between our container system and our evaluations. 

So I appreciate your work, I know it is a huge undertaking. 

Thank you for appearing before us, and we look forward to having 

further dialogue. 

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time has expired, and it is now 

past the time that the Committee has agreed the Secretary would 

be excused to attend the concurrently scheduled Cabinet meeting 

at the White House. At this point therefore I am constrained to 
35

thank you, Secretary Chertoff, for your valuable testimony, and 

thank the members for your questions. 

The members of the Committee, both those who have had the opportunity to ask questions and those who have not yet had the opportunity to ask questions will have additional questions in writing. I ask that you respond to these in writing. The hearing record 

will be held open for 10 days for that purpose. 

In addition, we look forward to continuing the Committee’s inquiry on this topic with you and the Deputy Assistant Secretary in 

subsequent hearings, and it will be the chairman’s suggestion that 

when that occurs that we pick up the questioning at the same place 

that we left off. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to correct one 

misimpression. It is actually not a meeting at the White House, it 

is a meeting with Cabinet members, but it is going to take place 

at HUD. So I didn’t want to have any misunderstanding on the 

record. 

Chairman COX. I appreciate that. The witness is excused. I will 

hold the hearing open for an inquiry from the gentleman from New 

Jersey. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the Secretary—

and we thank him for being here today—could be back before the 

August break. 

Chairman COX. I don’t know when that might be, but it is the 

intent of the chairman and ranking member to move with all acuity on this topic and to have either the Secretary or Deputy Secretary up at the earliest possible opportunity. 

Mr. PASCRELL. That may mean September or October. 

Chairman COX. Well, I don’t think so, I hope not. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Well, I mean, most of us have not asked questions. I think at least if we can agree that within the next 2 weeks 

we will have the Secretary back, if that meets with his schedule, 

I think that is something that we are owed. 

Chairman COX. All I can tell you is that that is the Committee’s 

intention, and we will do the best we can, working with the Department, to make that happen. 

Again, I want to thank the members of the Committee, and our 

witness, now departed. Without objection, the Committee stands 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(37)

THE SECRETARY’S SECOND-STAGE REVIEW: 

RE-THINKING THE DEPARTMENT OF 

HOMELAND SECURITY’S ORGANIZATION 

AND POLICY DIRECTION 

PART II 

Monday, July 25, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 4:08 p.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Cox [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Cox, Smith, Lungren, Simmons, Rogers, 

Pearce, Harris, Jindal, Dent, Thompson, Dicks, Norton, Lofgren, 

Jackson-Lee, Pascrell, Christensen, Etheridge and Langevin. 

Chairman COX. Welcome, again, Mr. Secretary. 

The Committee on Homeland Security will come to order. The 

committee is meeting today to continue hearing testimony from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the 

results of his internal Second-Stage Review of the Department’s 

structure policies, and programs. 

The Ranking Member and I, under our rules, have already given 

our opening statements. This is a continuation of the full committee hearing. In keeping with an agreement reached with the 

Ranking Member, Mr. Thompson, and with you. 

Mr. Secretary, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee proceed immediately to questioning of the witness by those members 

who did not have an opportunity to do so during the first day of 

this hearing on July 14th in the order in which they would have 

been recognized based on their appearance last week. Members 

who were not present at last week’s hearing will be recognized 

after all other members have been recognized in order of their seniority or, if they arrived after the gavel today, in order of their appearance. 

Members who had an opportunity to ask questions at the last 

hearing will not be permitted to ask additional questions today. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

I thank the Secretary for accommodating the Committee with 

this return appearance and look forward to his continued testimony. 

Chairman COX. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Pearce from New 

Mexico for 5 minutes. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here today. 
38

As we last visited with you, there were, I think, very direct questions about where you stand on the transit plan. What are the Britons and the Spanish doing? They are the ones who have seen this 

problem up close. Are they developing a comprehensive plan? Do 

they have metal detectors in their subways, in their public transportation and rail? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think that, obviously, in looking at 

a transit plan, we have to consider the individual architecture of 

the particular system. It is hard for me to envision a circumstance 

in which you can efficiently have the kind of arrangement we have 

at the airport, for example, with magnetometers. There are different ways of trying to detect explosives or other dangerous devices. Obviously, chemical and biological devices, we do have sensors that work in terms of the ambient air mass, and of course, we 

are always looking at technology that might be useful in terms of 

detecting explosives, traces that might be found in the ambient air 

mass. 

And finally, of course, there are dogs, which are kind of a tried 

and true and very reliable low-tech method of detecting explosives. 

I think different systems use different menus and different arrays 

of these kinds of technologies. 

Mr. PEARCE. And also, there is the allegation that the Bush Administration was trying to protect the industry. There, in my mind, 

is a very fine line between protecting the industry and protecting 

jobs. Can you tell me what other nations are doing with regard to 

changing the chemicals that they make? You have heard the question last time you were here. What are the nations doing, and how 

does that put us at a competitive disadvantage to keep from 

outsourcing our jobs? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Congressman, I may not be conversant in 

what every country is doing; I am not aware that every country, 

as a matter of homeland security, is undertaking some kind of systematic requirement of altering the chemicals. 

Our philosophy here is obviously not to protect industry; our philosophy here is not to break systems that we are trying protect. I 

think we have a precise and important mission here. That mission 

is to raise our homeland security level to the optimal level without 

destroying the rest of our way of life. And to do that, we want to 

work with industry because industry, as with other elements of the 

economy, has to be able to function if we are to continue to be a 

prosperous nation as well as a secure nation. 

Mr. PEARCE. I think terrorists would like nothing better than for 

us to shut down our own industry, if they can’t get it done, they 

would enjoy us doing it for them. 

More to the point of the border in New Mexico, the Customs and 

Border Patrol and the ICE organizations a year and a half, 2 years 

ago told me that they were going to be able to interoperate, yet we 

don’t see that yet. And sometimes, you have got a backlog in one 

organization, while the guy is sitting next to him at a different 

function, different agency, can’t help. What are we doing to break 

down that wall, and do you see it being broken down completely? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, as I think I said, perhaps in my original testimony here, one of the critical elements in the agenda moving forward is to have the capability to look at Immigration and 
39

Border Patrol as a single system and, in designing a strategy, to 

avoid what you have identified, which is the tendency to scale up 

one part of the system without making appropriate adjustments in 

the rest of the system so you get a bottleneck. And what we are 

proposing to do is look at the entirety of the system from the time 

you first apprehend someone who is illegal through the time you 

detain them and remove them to make sure that we are appropriately adjusting our resources so that we don’t have a mismatch 

in terms of the various stages of this process. And that is part of 

what we are anticipating achieving both in terms of our development of a border strategy and, more comprehensively, through a 

policy component which will have a planning capability that will let 

us look strategically at the entirety of the system as opposed to little pieces of it. 

Mr. PEARCE. On page 4 of your testimony here, you talk about 

a preparedness baseline to analyze the possible threats. How do 

you analyze the possible threats into remote areas like the Second 

District where I think we are going to see the terrorists come 

through our district before any other district, and yet there doesn’t 

seem to be much stimulation to take a look at those specific 

threats. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Part of what we do to do a baseline preparedness is to consider the various types of targets, potential targets, the various types of threats and to make sure that we have 

taken steps to deal with prevention, protection and response where 

target and threat intersect. 

The second thing we want to do as is it relates to the border is 

map—and we have, in fact, done this already—map the topography, the different landscapes that we face in different parts of 

the border—some parts being urban, some parts being rural, some 

parts being really desert—and ultimately deploy a mix of technology, infrastructure and personnel that fits the particular landscape you are talking about. 

In the urban areas, for example, we need to be quite close to the 

border. And in some areas like San Diego we have put in double 

fencing and infrastructure that really is a barrier right at the border because we want to prevent people from running across and 

getting to bus stations or to transportation on our side. 

As you get into the desert, by contrast, you want to have more 

of a response in depth. You don’t necessarily want to put people 

right up at the border, you want to be in a position so when people 

commit themselves, you can then deploy your resources effectively. 

And that is actually a more efficient way to do it than to have people right up against the border. 

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The time has elapsed. 

I appreciate your service. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. I might ask 

the Secretary, because down at the wings of the hearing room, apparently, we are having trouble with the speaker system, if you can 

draw the microphone a little bit closer to you, then all the members 

will be able to hear your answers. 

The Chair next recognizes for 5 minutes of questioning the 

gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson-Lee. 

Ms. JACKSON-LEE. I thank the Chairman very much. 
40

And I certainly thank the ranking member. 

And Mr. Secretary, I thank you for accepting the invitation of 

Mr. Thompson for a meeting that we were able to have some weeks 

ago. I think it was very productive and certainly useful in our mutual commitment to homeland security. 

I believe that with homeland security we come to the table as a 

nation, but there are also regional concerns and regional differences. And you may have been in the region, but I would encourage and would like to extend an invitation to the Southwest region 

and particularly those States along the border that many of us 

might be able to join you there and highlight some of those unique 

and specific concerns. And I am going to try and run through a series of issues and some questions, and maybe the bionic 5 minutes 

that we have, you can bionically speed along. 

I do want to applaud you for, I think, understandable alerts 

around the train tragedies and terrorist acts in London. I think, 

even in Texas, we were able to understand orange alert, what it 

meant. 

I do want you just to comment on how the inertia has been on 

train security, and the answer I get all the time is money, money, 

money. But let me, if you would and let me just raise some others. 

I wrote a letter to the Department regarding our own Houston 

Office of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement. They suspected 

there were terrorist ties to some individuals, but they had a difficult time getting the FBI to respond. I consider both these entities 

good friends of ours, and again, this goes to the 9/11 citation of lack 

of intelligence sharing, and if you can talk about that as well. 

In our region, we have something called OTMs, other-than Mexicans. And you have heard the story that these individuals are 

not—we don’t have sufficient detention facilities. And we may be 

allowing terrorists to enter our country because we have no system 

to deal with non-Mexicans who are coming into the country. And 

I would appreciate your response to that as well. 

The U.S. VISIT program I have seen in operation in a number 

of places around the country, and the question is, do we have 

enough money? What can Congress do to help you fully implement 

that program? We talk about it, but does it really work? 

And lastly, something that I want to dwell on a little bit more, 

and that is this question of volunteers, Minute Men. Those of us 

who study our history know that the high calling of the Minute 

Men in the early revolutionary days lends this name to a lot of 

celebration. I have heard the President suggest that this is not the 

way to go. I think we need real immigration reform. We need to 

take up the responsibility of immigration. 

Mr. Secretary, you have the Minute Men alleging that they will 

be in the City of Houston. The last time I looked, we were many, 

many miles away from the border. You have my religious community up in arms and many people up in arms. These are individuals 

who have their rights, I acknowledge that. What is the Department 

doing about monitoring the potential violence of the border, monitoring the growth of the Minute Men movement and answering 

their concerns, which is dealing with comprehensive immigration 

reform and security at the borders? 

And I thank you for your presence here today.
41

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE

JULY 25, 2005

Thank you Chairman Cox and Ranking Member Thompson for holding today’s 

critical hearing. I also appreciate the time that Secretary Chertoff has taken out of 

his schedule to meet with us not only in this forum but in the briefing of Members 

given previously. Analysis of the Secretary’s ‘‘Second Stage Review’’ is essential to 

the oversight functions of this body, and I hope that we receive frank and expeditious response to our inquiries. Because neither this body—nor Congress will have 

an opportunity to give final oversight prior to self-implementing organizational 

changes, it is enormously important for Members to cover as many deficiencies in 

the current organizational and functional aspects of the Department as possible in 

order to make the Secretary aware of their importance to the respective congressional districts of America. 

One of the big questions I will have for the Secretary relates to a letter that I 

sent to the Department dated June 5, 2005, as to a recent conflict whereby the 

Houston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in connection with 

an ongoing investigation of an individual in Houston suspected of terrorist ties, 

claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wrongfully impeded the 

grant of a request for a wiretap authorization. This issue raised serious and pressing questions as to the authority, jurisdiction, and competence of both the Department of Homeland Security as well as the Department of Justice as to the nature 

of their interaction under the US Code. We need to receive an answer as to whether 

the Department has or plans to propose a plan to distinguish its jurisdiction from 

that of the Department of Justice. 

Of equal importance, the Minuteman Project has announced that it will bring its 

volunteer border patrol efforts to Houston sometime in October this year. I reiterate 

my position that the issue of volunteer militias such as the Minuteman Project generates a number of potential legal and social problems. On July 9, 2005, I held a 

meeting in my Houston office with members of the Federal, State, and Local law 

enforcement agencies that included County Constables, the Houston Fire Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation-Houston Division, and the Houston Police 

Department to discuss the possible adverse impact on the City’s communities and 

ways in which local law enforcement can prevent violent incidents. I will look to the 

Secretary for a response to the question of whether the Department will establish 

a plan to address any violence that my come about as a result of the Project’s pseudo-immigration law enforcement activities. 

In addition, the 9-11 Commission Report determined that ‘‘[i]t is elemental to border security to know who is coming into the country’’ and be able to monitor (unauthorized) entrances of aliens between ports of entry on American borders. Further 

it found the, ‘‘challenge for national security in an age of terrorism is to prevent 

the. . .people who may pose overwhelming risks from entering. . . the U.S. undetected.’’ The 9-11 Commission report on Terrorist Travel found that there ‘‘is evidence that terrorists used human smugglers to sneak across borders.’’

Border Patrol data last year demonstrates that from October 2003 to June 2004, 

44,614 non-Mexican aliens were apprehended trying to cross the northern or southern borders. Of those, significant numbers came from countries designated as state 

sponsors of terrorism or have significant present-day or historical problems with terrorism. 

In 1990 the Border Patrol created ‘‘Operation Hold the Line’’ in El Paso and 

placed agents directly on the border. The program dramatically reduced illegal 

crossings and the operation was reproduced in the San Diego sector of the border 

with similar results. However, these programs cannot be expanded to other locations 

given the small number of Border Patrol agents and the length of the land borders 

of the United States. Professor Bean of the University of Texas found that approximately 16,000 Border Patrol agents would have to stationed at the border to reproduce the effects of ‘‘Operation Hold the Line’’ along the southwestern border. Additional agents would be needed to patrol the northern border. Currently, there are 

only 11,000 Border Patrol agents. In New Mexico alone, there are 425 agents to patrol 14,000 square miles. Much of the border lacks border markers. The Southwest 

New Mexico Border Security Task Force, a group of New Mexico and federal law 

enforcement agencies, issued a report in 2003, stating it did not have the resources 

to prevent illegal crossings of drug dealers, illegal immigrants, and weapons of mass 

destruction. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 authorized the funding of 10,000 more Border Patrol agents over five years. The absence 

of this funding in the President’s budget proposal is troubling. 
42

The 9-11 Commission staff also found that the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws in the interior facilitated terrorism: ‘‘abuse of the immigration system 

and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together 

to support terrorist activity. . . the first problem encountered by those concerned 

about terrorists was an almost complete lack of enforcement resources. [No one] 

ever provided the support needed for INS enforcement agents to find detain, and 

remove illegal aliens, including those with terrorist associations.’’ The Government 

Accountability Office found that approximately 40% of the illegal immigrant population originally came to the United States with visas. Controlling the borders alone 

will not be enough to combat terrorism within our borders. The Commission staff 

found that ‘‘the budget for interior enforcement remained static in the face of an 

overwhelming number of immigrants outside the legal framework.’’ 

Currently, there are only 2000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators and approximately 400,000 alien ‘‘absconders’’ (those formally ordered 

removed or deported by a court). Eighty thousand of those absconders have criminal 

records. The San Diego ICE office ranks at the top of numbers of apprehensions for 

2003; yet, at its highly productive rate, it would take ICE 37 years to apprehend 

the absconders nation-wide, assuming the rate of absconders apprehended does not 

increase. Statistics released by Customs and Border Patrol show an increase in apprehensions of illegal aliens, indicating the possibility of larger numbers of illegal 

aliens crossing the border. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 

of 2004 authorizes an increase of 800 ICE investigators each year for the next five 

years. Again, the absence of this funding in the President’s budget proposal is troubling. I hope to engage Secretary Chertoff for the Department’s response to this 

ever-growing problem. 

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you and the Ranking Member for your hard work, 

and I yield back my time.

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am going to try to address all of these, I 

think. I have taken some notes. 

As it relates to train security, we are and have been actually for 

some time very focused on train security. And that obviously was 

something that occurred in the wake of 9/11. We have gotten 

stronger and more robust in our response since 9/11. Since Madrid, 

I think that we have had over $8 billion in money that has been 

made available in homeland grants and urban security grants that 

have been available for rail security. 

Among the things we are particularly focused on is the need to 

apply new technology, including sensing devices that would allow 

us to pick up the possibility of chemical and biological agents, 

which I think is something we are all concerned about. 

Turning to the question about relations between ICE and the 

FBI, I can tell you from my experience we do have a very good relationship. I have seen a number of instances in which we have 

worked very closely with the FBI in pursuing cases. My own experience tells me, occasionally, somebody drops a stitch, and it is kind 

of human nature, but we do—I think there is very strong direction 

from the top, both from myself and Director Mueller, to make sure 

that everybody understands we have a common mission here, and 

we have to work together to accomplish it. 

As it works to OTMs or other-than-Mexicans, I completely agree 

with you, this is a very serious issue for us. There is a shortage 

of beds. The appropriation measures that I think have now been 

passed by the House and the Senate do provide for additional beds. 

But I want to go further and say we are looking very hard at the 

entire system because part of dealing with this issue is not merely 

having additional beds, but it is moving people more quickly back 

to their home countries. If, for example, it takes 40 days now to 

clear a bed in the sense of getting somebody back to their home 

country and if we can cut that time to 20 days, it is essentially dou-
43

bling the number of beds. That means we are going to have to look 

again at the whole system, including asking our overseas allies to 

accept back their own nationals in a prompt fashion, using such 

technologies as video conferencing so that we don’t have to wait for 

consular officials to come up and interview people. And I think, by 

doing this, we really are focused on getting this catch-and-release 

program ended so we can pick up OTMs at the border and then return them promptly to their native countries. 

Our U.S. VISIT is working well. I have heard, frankly, unsolicited praise from our overseas allies about how well it is working. 

I want to encourage Congress to appropriate the money requested 

in the President’s budget for 2006, which is what I think we need 

to continue building upon the work that we have already done in 

U.S. VISIT and to let the system be fully deployed as I think was 

originally envisioned. 

Finally, as it relates to the Minute Men, I guess what I can say 

is this: Obviously, this is a free country. People can demonstrate 

and express their views. On the other hand, I do believe that the 

enforcement of the law is the job for professionals. As you pointed 

out, the border is a dangerous place. Several weeks ago, I spoke to 

a couple of Border Patrol agents who were seriously wounded when 

they were ambushed at the border in a type of ambush that I 

would describe as almost military in its precision. And I do not 

think the border is a place for people to operate in an untrained 

fashion. And I do think the Border Patrol ought to be allowed to 

focus its resources on what its principle mission is, which is policing the border and making sure we have border security. 

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Harris, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. HARRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Mr. Secretary, it is nice to have you back. 

I wanted to ask you a couple of questions today. In your previous 

testimony, you had stated that the United States must improve its 

immigration system through bolstering our border security. And a 

couple of weeks ago, I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations 

Committee on my bill, the North American Cooperative Security 

Act. It seeks to improve the security and the safety of the United 

States, Canada and Mexico through the better coordination and 

management of our shared international borders. And specifically, 

this legislation engages Mexico as a law enforcement partner 

through a number of security programs, like biometrics or apprehension of gang members prior to their arrival at our border or 

strengthening their southern border where they have had so many 

problems or utilizing their joint or their agency task force, which 

is calling for more cooperation in law enforcement and intelligence 

efforts among these three nations. So I wanted to have your comments if I may on this type of integrative strategy. And what kind 

of role do you think it can play in achieving the Second-Stage Review’s imperative in terms of strengthening our borders? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I haven’t had an opportunity to see 

the specific bill, and I look forward to reviewing it and working 

with you on it. But I will say that I agree with the approach that 

we need to be integrated in our dealing with the border, and we 
44

need to work cooperatively with Canada and Mexico. In fact, the 

President in March had a summit meeting with the Prime Minister 

of Canada and the President of Mexico in Texas, and at that summit, the leaders of the three countries agreed on a security and 

prosperity partnership, a significant element of which was joint cooperation in terms of border security for all three countries, and 

that includes border security for Mexico in terms of its own southern border and working cooperatively with Canada and Mexico in 

terms of our common interest in North America in making sure 

that we are keeping dangerous people out. 

So we have a shared interest in all of our security, and I think 

that security is an important condition of our mutual prosperity. So 

things which promote that kind of joint activity are helpful in raising all of our level of security in all three countries. 

Ms. HARRIS. No question, in homeland security, part of the most 

important strategy is strengthening their prosperity. Any time you 

have that kind of poverty in other countries, it can be the seedbed 

of terrorism. 

I want to shift degrees a bit. And we talk about disaster preparedness and the hazards that homeland security has to address, 

and terrorism immediately comes to mind. But there are a number 

of other hazards, like natural disasters, that the Department must 

also be responsive to. And coming from my State in a region that 

was recently devastated by four hurricanes, I would like to know 

what your restructuring is going to do. Every time we hear a 

weather report, every time we see these things coming on, we have 

great concerns. And I am sure you are aware that, while Florida 

experienced a great deal of help initially, long term, it was real 

problematic in terms of the inconsistency and the lack of accountability dealing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

They all received—administrators from different counties received 

different levels of explanation of what could be compensated and 

what could not, and that changed with every new person that came 

in. And it caused a lot of confusion. And actually small, economically-impaired counties have had to go and borrow funds just to be 

able to make up these differences that FEMA said would be forthcoming in just a matter of weeks. 

How do you perceive the proposed organizational shifts within 

the Department, including the creation of the Undersecretary for 

Preparedness, how do you see that will improve some of these circumstances that have plagued the agency? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, last year, as we all know, was an unusually harsh year for hurricanes. And of course, we hope that is 

not repeated again, but one thing that we can’t do is prevent hurricanes. 

Clearly, FEMA has to be an all-hazards agency. And traditionally it has been the lead actor and the core mission of making sure 

we are capable of responding to all hazards, including, obviously, 

hurricanes. 

What the restructuring proposes to do is to take out of FEMA a 

couple of elements that were really not related to its core mission, 

that were more generally focused on the issue of preparedness in 

a way that I think was frankly more of a distraction for FEMA 

than an enhancement to FEMA. Obviously, FEMA’s expertise as a 
45

response and recovery agency and as an operational agency is very 

important to our preparedness effort as is the expertise of a number of our components, like Secret Service or Coast Guard, which 

are also going to be obviously working very closely with our preparedness component. But we wanted to make sure that FEMA 

was, as an operational agency, capable of focusing on its core mission, that it was a direct report to the Secretary so it gets the direct attention that it needs. And we wanted to make sure the leadership of FEMA was not torn between its need to focus on the 

FEMA role and these additional rather more strategic preparedness functions to which I think we are now seeking to unify and 

put together in a coordinated fashion. 

Ms. HARRIS. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, Dr. Christensen. 

Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These are short 

5 minutes. 

Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for coming back to the committee 

again today. You know that I have some concerns about your emphasis on risk, given that I come from a high vulnerability area. 

And in your outline, you speak of a preparedness baseline. Is it 

your intention that we would provide the funding, training and 

support to every jurisdiction in the country to bring them up to 

that baseline that you set? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I don’t know that I can give a blanket 

statement like that. But I think what we need to do is look at the 

issue of risk, consequence, vulnerability and threat across the 

whole country. What I don’t think we want to do is duplicate the 

effort in every single jurisdiction, I think we need to analyze the 

precarious circumstances of the jurisdiction against this template 

of risk and then make decisions about the kind of help we offer 

based on that analysis. Sometimes, it will be guidance and instruction. Sometimes, it will be training. Sometimes, it will be grant 

funding. 

I understand having been to the Virgin Islands, as an island 

with a whole set of unusual circumstances in that it is not like 

have you adjoining jurisdictions that can give you mutual aid, and 

that is obviously a factor to be taken into account. But again, this 

is, at the end of the day, a national set of issues, and one in which 

we have to apply—although the standards will apply in the individual circumstances, it has to be a common standard. 

Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you. 

You also said one of the times you were here and also in your 

statement that we must gain control of our borders. Can I rest 

comfortably that you mean all of the borders, including my 200 or 

so miles of unprotected border? And also, what is your commitment 

to the third border, the Caribbean? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, again, our borders are our borders. 

And I think we have to be committed to controlling them all. And 

again, we want to do it in a way that doesn’t interfere with a kind 

of legitimate cross border activity that we want to promote, whether it be the southern border, the northern border or islands. In 
46

each case, we want to encourage people to travel. We want to have 

visitors and tourism and trade, so we want to build a system of 

border security that encourages that, but that gives us confidence 

that the people who are coming in are coming in for appropriate 

legal reasons and not illegally. 

Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. We had several hearings recently on Bioshield or Bioshield-related issues, and we heard first from Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. We 

heard from scientists. We heard from the private sector. And those 

hearings left us kind of rather uncomfortable about our readiness 

for bioterrorism or a radiologic event. And the slowness of the 

progress is part of it, but also a sense of, there is a lack of expertise 

and experience in both Departments above the level of CDC, of 

course, and a lack vision and openness to new ideas and looking 

in new directions to solve the problems, especially in a situation 

where we are dealing with a rapidly advancing, changing type of 

agent that could possibly come at us. And how will your new chief 

medical officer, that position, address this? And would that person 

be in place—if we were to have—if we were to have a bioterrorism 

attack next week, who would be in charge? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think I have made it very clear in 

the last few months in which I have spoken about this, that I think 

there is probably nothing that is more important than dealing with 

the issue of a bioterror threat either to our human health or our 

animal health or food system, and it is certainly in the front line 

of things we need to be concerned about. I don’t want to suggest 

that there hasn’t been a lot of work; there has been a lot of work. 

But, clearly, we need to go further with Bioshield. 

Now, we are reviewing a whole host of potential biological 

threats now in cueing up or lining up so to speak the next set of 

biological threats to be eligible for Bioshield protection. I envision 

that, early next year, we will have prioritized a number to then put 

through the process of a threat assessment and a threat determination. 

More broadly, the expertise in the area of human health is really 

held by HHS, but the architecture and the responsibility of our system for dealing with a disaster and making sure everything is integrated is part of DHS. I have spoken several times with Secretary 

Leavitt, and most recently we had lunch after my prior appearance 

here. And we are both very strongly committed to moving forward 

on building a system of plans that will deal with any of these 

threats. Some of them are further advanced than others. We have 

had some unfortunate experience with Anthrax, and we have 

learned some things from that. We still have more to do. And what 

the Chief Medical Officer will do is unite within my Department 

somebody who can be the principal point of contact and coordination with the other Departments who work on this issue, including 

those in State and local government. And I envision, actually—I 

am hoping in the next few weeks to get down with Secretary 

Leavitt to do some visiting at the CDC and some other locations 

to make sure that we further moving this along. 

Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 
47

The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Rogers, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here. 

I would like to preface my questions by acknowledging that what 

I am referencing didn’t happen on your watch, and it is not your 

fault, but ensuring that it doesn’t happen again is your responsibility. 

All of us on this Committee are keenly aware that the alleged 

and demonstrated wastes of money at Homeland Security over the 

first few years of its development have been a problem. They have 

been well noted in U.S. News and World Report, CBS’, 60 minutes 

and, most recently, in a two and a half page layout in the Washington Post—pretty wild abuses of expenses. And, while I don’t attach any malfeasance to most of these problems but more attribute 

it to the immense mission that was hoisted upon the organization, 

what in particular are you doing to make sure that the procurement abuses and other wastes in spending do not continue to happen on your watch? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I appreciate the question, Congressman, because I read the stories, too. I saw some of the things on 

television. And I would first hasten to say that not all of those stories are correct or necessarily fair in their description of what happened. I think it is fair to say, of course, that whenever you feel 

enormous pressure to roll out a program of security in the wake of, 

obviously, the extraordinary circumstances of 9/11 and when you do 

it in a very accelerated fashion, you are going to run the risk of 

something less than a precise expenditure. 

I will tell you what we have done in the last few months to try 

to address this issue. One of the first things that I did when I came 

on board was to call the Inspector General, then the acting Inspector General, and say, Look, I would like you to tell me what you 

think are things we need to do to assure the efficiency and integrity of our procurement program. And he did that. And that was 

part of our Second-Stage Review, and we are now working to implement that. 

One of the other things we did was we looked at the grant process, and, in fact, we slowed it down a little bit and got a little criticized for doing it precisely because we wanted to start to put in 

place that the kinds of standards that would allow us to make sure 

we are not getting grants out for leather jackets under the rubric 

of Homeland Security. And we now have a set of national preparedness goals which is moving us in a direction of a precise set of 

standards through which we can be held accountable. One of the 

things we did, for example, with respect to ports was we trimmed 

down the number of ports that were eligible for port security 

grants, which I think was originally 360 or so, to, I think, approximately 66 or 67. And yet all of these are movements in the direction of greater discipline in financing and procurement and in making sure the money that we are expending is being focused on risks 

and priorities and not just on any national thing which someone 

can put under the label of Homeland Security. 

Mr. ROGERS. I would ask you to ask your staff to visit a May 

27th letter I sent you inquiring about some documents relating to 

the ISIS program. I still haven’t received a response to that, and 
48

I would like to have that so I can go forward with a subcommittee 

hearing next month on it—rather in September. 

But ISIS was the poster child in my view of procurement abuse 

and problems. As we look forward to the America’s Shield Initiative, I think we need to take ISIS as a lesson-learned pilot program 

and make corrections. 

As you look forward to the America’s Shield Initiative, tell me 

about your vision for that, because, as I understand, it is a $2.5 billion program over 5 years? Tell me, do you still see those costs as 

accurate? And, what is your vision for that program? When will it 

be implemented? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think one of the things we did in the Second-Stage Review was to stand back and look at whether that program ought to be reconfigured or redesigned to be a somewhat different strategy that doesn’t merely apply more of the existing technology to the problem at the border but rather a program that 

looks to the next generation of technology and considers maybe a 

broader range of options and puts together in particular a program 

to acquire technology, not just in a vacuum, not just a lot of new 

gadgets, but in a way that fits with how we are going to deploy our 

additional Border Patrol resources, our agents and our infrastructure. 

And I think our vision is to—and we are in the process of doing 

this—to select and identify a program manager who will build a 

comprehensive and strategic program to acquire technology and infrastructure in coordination with some additional Border Patrol 

agents. So I think that there may very well be some significant 

changes in the way that program rolls out, precisely because we 

want to avoid what may be putting a lot of money into something 

which is current generation as opposed to something that is going 

to make the service better. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, sir, I yield back. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin, 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Secretary, I want to thank you for coming back so soon, 

especially since we have been able to get this hearing in before the 

August break. These are very pressing questions that many of us 

want to get to. 

I want to start my questions in the line of information sharing 

and how your Department particularly is going to work with the 

NCTC. I had the opportunity to do a site visit out to NCTC last 

week, and I am very impressed with the operation they are standing out there. Obviously, there is a lot of work yet to do to see how 

well it is going to function, but I was very sure of what I found. 

One thing that I was concerned about, though, is that DHS really doesn’t have a presence out there with respect to the intelligence 

branch of DHS. And I asked the question, why? And they said, 

Well, originally DHS didn’t want to be a major player with NCTC 

but has since changed and that they are looking to now have a 

presence there. Space is a problem, from what I am told, but the 

question is, will you clarify for me and for the committee, will DHS 

have a presence out at NCTC? And how will the roles function? 
49

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I most definitely anticipate and want 

to have DHS play a role in NCTC. I have told the DNI, Ambassador Negroponte. I think he agrees with that, I think his principal 

deputy, General Hayden, agreed with that. I think now it is just 

a question of finding the space and handling the logistics, but we 

are committed to doing this and is one of the things I anticipate 

our new chief intelligence officer will be taking responsibility and 

making sure that happens. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Well, on that issue of the creation of a new chief 

intelligence officer, while I think this is certainly a promising development and I applaud you for moving in that direction, many 

questions remain about the role and the responsibility of this new 

Department officer. And my question is, will the new intelligence 

officer have direct line authority over intelligence officers in other 

agencies such as TSA and CBP so that he or she can drive a common intelligence mission? 

And additionally to that, what will his or her role be vis-a-vis the 

new director of national intelligence and the rest of the intelligence 

community in particular? This committee has often struggled to 

understand where the intelligence component of DHS fits in with 

the rest of the community. And the question is, have you thought 

about this issue as part of your review, and what conclusions did 

you reach? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, we have thought about it. And the 

Chief Intelligence Officer of course will be the component head of 

information analysis. The individual component heads for the intelligence entities inside our various components will continue to 

function within their components, but their activities and particularly their requirements will be coordinated by the chief intelligence officer. And the chief intelligence officer will be one of the 

two intelligence officials at DHS who is part of the intelligence 

community. There will be the chief ambassador to the intelligence 

community as well as to the State and local officials with whom 

they work. So they will really have the authority and the visibility 

to look across the Department in terms of all of our intelligence activities, in terms of setting requirements for collection, in terms of 

fusing the analyses and pushing that analysis out. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. My last line of questioning shifts over 

to the potential biothreat that we face in this country and a potential bioattack. Can you walk me through how you would expect to 

learn, how quickly you would know that this country is experiencing a bioattack? What resources are you relying on, and how 

quickly are you going to know? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Broadly speaking, we have three ways of 

determining that some things are going on: One is classic intelligence, obviously. If we were to, either through signals, intelligence or human intelligence become aware of someone who is 

planning an attack or carrying out an attack, that would be one vehicle. The second is our surveillance through various detection devices. Our Biowatch program has deployed technology in over 30 

cities now that enables us to sample the air and determine with 

a very high degree of precision whether there is something in the 

air that is a biological agent. 
50

Thirdly, of course, we rely on the network of public health, which 

is really operated by HHS, in which people who report in become 

a source of information. This is a typical way in which public 

health officials identify an epidemic or a pandemic, and something 

like this would apply as well with respect to a biological attack. So 

we have these three avenues. 

What we are working very hard to do is to advance on all three 

fronts, obviously getting better intelligence about what is being 

planned and carried out operationally. Secondly, we are working to 

accelerate our Biowatch program to get to the next level of detection equipment that will be cheaper and quicker, and we can deploy it more readily and get quicker responses. And third, and this 

is principally operated by HHS, working to educate and give public 

health and hospitals in the field greater knowledge of what they 

have to look for and greater ability to communicate in real time. 

These three approaches I think are the way in which we will be 

best situated to detect a biological event. And of course, we broke 

into the postal system biological detection capabilities. Now, we 

want to continue to do that in a lot of other areas, particularly 

those where we might have an avenue of transmission of a biological agent. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. And you said just a little while ago, you are going 

to be going out to the CDC soon, and I encourage you to do that. 

I am glad to hear you will be there. I had the opportunity to do 

a site visit to CDC a few weeks ago. And one of the questions I 

asked is, how robust is our system for early warning reporting from 

public health facilities? And we need some work to do there. And 

I am sure you can discuss that, and I would encourage you to ask 

that question. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Lungren, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, once again, Mr. Secretary, I appreciate it. 

I want to join others in thanking you for your plan to raise the 

visibility and strength of the position of the Assistant Secretary for 

Cyber and Telecom. I think that is something that you find tremendous support for in this committee and something that needs to be 

done. 

Secondly, you have repeatedly talked about the necessity for us 

to be involved in risk-based assessment to drive our strategy and 

to drive our funding. I agree with you. I know you took this position because you believe that we have a unique responsibility to respond to the terrorist threat that is out there, evidenced so strongly 

by 9/11, but it existed before that. We didn’t take it seriously 

enough. You indicated we can’t have business as usual. I think I 

agree with that as strongly as I possibly can, and yet there does 

seem to be an effort to do business as usual on this Hill in some 

respects. And I guess my question is, really, how strongly you are 

going to fight for risk-based assessment analysis. 

This committee passed out a bill that basically guarantees .25 

percent to every State except for the border States, .45 for those. 

And now we have the other body coming up with a new—an alter-
51

native—that goes to .55 percent to all the States. That obviously 

moves away from true risk-based assessment. That obviously goes 

in the direction we have been in before. That obviously, as far as 

I am concerned, is business as usual. 

And my question to you is, how strongly are you going to fight 

for the risk-based assessment strategy as opposed to business as 

usual, which some people seem to think makes sense even in the 

aftermath of 9/11 and two bombings in London? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think, as I repeatedly stated and I 

think I said most recently in a letter that I sent in connection with 

the Senate’s consideration of the appropriations, I think we have 

to, to the extent possible, have a risk-based approach to what we 

do in terms of how we deploy all of our resources. That includes 

grants. It includes what we do as operators of various components 

of the Federal Government. And of course, when I looked at the 

question of risk-based analysis, I don’t see jurisdictional lines between States or between cities. I look at people. I look at places. 

I look at targets. I look at infrastructure. I look at transportation 

centers. I can’t tell you which States are winners and losers in that 

formula because I don’t think that it is political jurisdiction which 

drives it. I think what drives it is looking at where the impact on 

population would be significant, where the impact on infrastructure 

would be significant, where the impact on our transportation or our 

economy would be significant. Those are the kinds of factors which 

I think ultimately drive a risk-based analysis. And I think it is one 

that, to the extent we can accomplish that, we will be doing I think 

what the public expects in terms of our responsible use of limited 

resources in an environment in which we face some very, very serious threats. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Would you agree that a formula that guarantees 

.55 of a percent as opposed to .25 of a percent moves away from 

which you just articulated? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I would think that a system that does as 

much as possible to give the Department the ability to do a riskbased factor not focused on, Mr. Secretary, jurisdiction, but focused 

upon things, people and targets. I think that is where we want to 

head. And I think the closer we move to that goal, the better off 

we are. 

Mr. LUNGREN. I appreciate your response, and I appreciate the 

delicacy of your position, the delicate nature of your position. It is 

difficult for us to be able to articulate to the general public when 

we are talking about a different formula. And I hope that people 

will begin to understand that one formula moves us in the direction 

of business as usual. The other one at least moves us a little closer 

to a rational risk-based assessment strategy and funding, which I 

hope is where most people understand it. 

The problem is, we use the language of numbers and formulas, 

and it is difficult for people to understand that, so I appreciate 

your response. 

With respect to CDP and ICE, I don’t know anybody who has articulated an analysis that having those two separate makes good 

sense, and yet through your plan of reorganization, you have removed the secretariat—I guess is what we call it—above that to 

which they would report, as well as TSA, so that CBP and ICE 
52

would report directly to you. I don’t have a problem with that at 

all. It might mean you might have to testify here more often; I 

hope not, for your sake. Could you give us some of the thinking of 

why CBP and ICE should remain divergent? It seems from an 

analysis from a law enforcement standpoint, if no other, that separation is artificial and destructive. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, we actually took a very close look at 

this, and I know the Inspector General was asked by the Senate 

Homeland Security Committee to consider the issue, and so I was 

at least privy to some of the factual findings that the Inspector 

General made when he considered this. 

Let me tell you what our thinking was. First of all, part of our 

proposed restructuring involves having a common Department-wide 

policy and planning shop and operation shop which gives us not 

only the ability to unify operations between CBP and ICE but 

across the department, including, for example, Coast Guard, which 

often intersects with them as we get into maritime areas and, 

therefore, should be part of the same coordination function. So I 

don’t think our proposed elimination of BTS is a reduction in the 

degree of coordination. I think it is actually an expansion that 

gives us a greater sense of comprehensiveness across the Department. 

I spoke to a lot of folks about this merger, I spoke to people in 

the field. I spoke to representatives of labor organizations. And I 

spoke to people inside and outside the Department. And I wasn’t 

convinced that the cure would really address the disease. It seems 

to me that you are dealing with functionally different issues when 

you are dealing with CPB, which deals principally with inspection 

and with Border Patrol agents, and on the other hand, you have 

your detention and removal folks and your investigators at ICE. 

And those are different functions. And from my own experience in 

law enforcement—and I know you have a similar experience—even 

if you put them in a single department, they would still be functionally separated within that particular component. 

So given the upside of a merger and considering the possible 

downside, including the huge cost that is involved any time you do 

a massive reorganization, I think it was our judgment that the case 

had not been made that a merger would cure the issues that have 

to be addressed. There is no question there are issues of coordination and finance that have to be addressed. And we are addressing 

them, but I think, at this point, I am confident that what we are 

doing will remedy the existing problems. And I think it is important finally to give people in these components a sense that their 

fate has been settled, that they can count on being in their positions going toward and that we can now go about the business of 

working together to achieve a common mission. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pascrell, is recognized for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, first of all, I think we all join—this, I think, is 

going to be our last full meeting. Mr. Cox is going to go on to other 
53

things. He has done a good job in keeping us together, and we wish 

him well. 

Good luck to you. 

Chairman COX. Thank you very much. 

Mr. PASCRELL. I have two questions, one in the area of transit 

security and the other in the area of emergency preparedness. We 

know in the last 3 years, Mr. Secretary, there has been a tremendous gap between what we have expended on airline security, 

about $255 billion, and what we have expended—$12 billion, rather—and what we have expended in transit security, about $256 

million. And dollars don’t tell the whole story; I realize that. But 

our transit systems are vulnerable, if you listen to those folks who 

run them day and in day out. 

Now you said that there is $8.6 billion available for transit operations under the State Homeland Security and under the Urban 

Area Security Initiative Grant programs. Now while this money 

can be used for transit security, it is really intended for first responders if you look at how that dollar figure was arrived at and 

where it is supposed to be spent. Using these grants for rail security would mean first responders are shortchanged. What other 

funds will transit operators have to improve their security? And 

this is a question that existed before London and now after London, 

and we do not have a concise answer in this committee, Mr. Secretary. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me try to give you a concise answer. 

As I said earlier, if you go back to the funding since 9/11, we 

have had a total of $8.6 billion in State Homeland Security Grants 

and Urban Security Initiative Grants. And there is no question 

that anyone envisioned that all of that would be spent on rail security. I think every jurisdiction that gets money has to perform the 

same analysis we do. They have to set their priorities and their 

risks, and they have to build the use of the money around the particular architecture in their part of the country. In Seattle, for example, ferries are very important part to their mass transit, and 

to the extent that they want to use some of that money for ferries 

within the guidelines of the grant, they are free to do that. In the 

northeast, rail is very important. In other parts of the country, 

buses may be. So clearly, what we want to do is, again, we want 

to be risk-based, but we want to also tailor the particular circumstances to the particular part of the country. So I do think it 

is important to recognize that there has been a lot of money available for transit. 

I would also like to point out— 

Mr. PASCRELL. Excuse me. There has been what? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. A lot of money available for transit. 

Mr. PASCRELL. You do believe that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do believe that. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Even with the great disparity between what we 

have spent in the last 3 years on airline security, that is like 11 

to 1—11 dollars to 1 penny? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have seen that comparison, I have to 

say— 

Mr. PASCRELL. I think it is legitimate. 
54

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have to say I think it is a little bit of an 

apples and oranges comparison for the following reason: Most of 

the money we do—almost all of the money we do in aviation comes 

from the fact that we are the only boots on the ground in the system of aviation. The screeners in TSA are all Federal employees at 

this point. Obviously, the transit police, who are the boots on the 

ground in the various transit systems, are not Federal workers. 

They are State employees, or they are local employees. And I 

haven’t yet encountered anybody who suggested that they wanted 

the Federal Government to take over the New Jersey transit authority or the New York City Police Department. So one difference 

is, of course, we are comparing a salary-based system with a system in which the salaries are paid by local authorities. 

But again, I want to come back to the fact that, although the targeted grants for rail have been $250 million or so, the pool of 

money that is available to jurisdictions that feel a need and think 

it is appropriate and can make the case for rail security is much 

broader. And it is that larger pot that I think includes the State 

Homeland Security Grants and the UIC grants. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Secretary, I think that establishes a false 

competition. I would like you to really take a look at this. And I 

know words have been misrepresented, and I have total faith in 

you in this, and so let me go to the second point. 

I’m very concerned about this area. There is no representation on 

the policy level that I am aware of from the fire service within the 

office that administers Homeland Security Grant Funds, very concerned about that. The preparedness directorate may ensure that 

the United States is able to better prepare for a terrorist attack, 

but the structure you have advocated thus far may create harmful 

competition between the infrastructure protection, cyber security 

and first responder needs. I am very concerned about that, Mr. Secretary. For example, putting the assistant secretary for infrastructure protection in the same directorate as the U.S. Fire Academy 

may force firefighter needs to compete for attention with infrastructure risk assessments. There is no seat at the table, the policy 

table. And I am very concerned, and I hope you are going to respond to that. We are talking about policy making. Would you respond to that, please. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Sure. When we went through this process 

of Second-Stage Review, one of the things we did do was talk to 

the first responder community. And actually, my perception was 

that, under the currently existing system, where the Fire Administration is in what is essentially FEMA and the Office of Domestic 

Preparedness for grant making is in a completely separate directorate, that actually led to some of the issues you are concerned 

about, the sense of the fire community that they were not adequately being considered in terms of the grant making. What our 

preparedness directorate will do is it will bring to the table all of 

these very critical functions which are part of preparedness effort, 

prevention, protection, and response and recovery. And I envision 

that first responder community will play a very important role both 

in populating the senior leadership of this directorate and also in 

setting policy. 
55

What I want to do is make sure that when we do preparedness 

policy making, everybody is at the table. I don’t want to have a 

stepchild. I don’t want the first responders to be a stepchild. I don’t 

want the police to be a stepchild. I don’t want the healthcare folks 

to be a stepchild. This is too important for us to let one group play 

off against the other. And I am confident that by bringing everybody together in one place, we can finally make sure that 

everybody’s voice is heard when we cover the whole gambit of 

things from prevention to training to exercise and to giving money 

out. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Jindal, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. JINDAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the Secretary for coming back as well. 

I submitted in writing questions on four different topics. I would 

like, for the sake of brevity, just to go through with you those four 

topics very quickly and get your response at least to the first couple 

of them. Certainly, I understand you may not have a chance to respond to each of these. 

The first regards the Regions Initiative. You yourself have indicated that the majority of the Department’s employees are located 

outside of Washington. I am very interested in your thoughts on 

how best to coordinate and work with those employees. I personally 

am very interested in the Regions Initiative. I had the chance to 

visit a State Fusion Center over one of our breaks and was very 

impressed with having our coordination out at the local level. 

The second area I would like to bring your attention: I again 

want to commend you for the priority and the attention you are 

bringing to port security. Again, I had the chance to go and visit 

Port Fourchon, which is located in Louisiana, where 50 million tons 

of cargo are moved a year. It handles about 16 to 18 percent of our 

country’s oil supply. And yet it hasn’t made the list of our 66 highest-risk ports. I would be curious about what steps you all are taking to revise the assessment strategy. I know it is not near a population center, but certainly it is my thinking it is a very critical 

part of our Nation’s infrastructure. 

Third, with the appointment of the chief medical officer, I would 

be curious how you view the structural changes, what impact that 

will have on first responders’ ability to perform their duties after 

a catastrophic event. 

And finally, with the changes in FEMA, now specifically the 

changes between the preparedness and the response recovery functions, I would be curious on how you would ensure close coordination between those functions. Obviously, in my home State of Louisiana with hurricane season, we are very heavily impacted by natural disasters, and we are very, very dependent on the work of 

FEMA. 

Mr. JINDAL. Again, I put a lot of issues on the table. I especially 

appreciate your comments on the region’s initiative and port security. And thank you again for being here. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I am going to try to cover as many of those 

as I can. Of course if I can’t, we will respond in writing. 
56

With respect to regions, of course, we currently have among a 

number of the components a regional structure; and those regional 

structures, not surprisingly, vary a great deal depending on the 

mission of the component. For example, the Coast Guard really 

hasn’t a need for very large regions in the interior of the country. 

FEMA regions tend to reflect some of the hazards that are peculiar 

to the geography of the country. And, of course, Customs and Border Protection really needs to be very focused along the border 

areas. 

It seemed to us when we looked at this issue that the idea of 

having a single set of DHS regions didn’t make a lot of sense because the components quite naturally tailor their regions to their 

particular missions. But that is not to say that we don’t need closer 

coordination with State and local officials. I have invited the Homeland Security advisers to come meet with me this coming month in 

August to talk about how we might network our fusion centers together. 

Part of the preparedness function is going to be figuring out how 

do we best link up our preparedness efforts with those of the individual jurisdictions that we have to deal with. Now, there are a 

number of different ways we may do that. We may have small regional offices, or officials, a few officials in some of the existing regional centers. We may have a system in which we have a 

predesignated principal Federal officer under our national response 

plan who is available in every State who works with the preparedness authorities. So what we are envisioning is a nimble and smallscale approach to this kind of coordination that focuses on network 

rather than a large kind of bureaucratic layer that will be between 

the individual State officials and the top management in Washington. 

As it relates to ports, I can’t tell you that off the top of my head 

I know why a particular port was in the list or not. I can tell you 

that I sat down with the people applying the analytical approach 

to this, and they looked at a whole lot of things involving the flowthrough of cargo, the nature of the cargo, the location relative to 

a particular center. And I recognize the fact that 60 or 70 ports are 

on the list means probably 300 are not on the list. And I think I 

have to be blunt in saying that is one of the consequences of a riskapproached theory. If we dribble out the money in little packets to 

360 ports, it is going to be useless. We have got to focus the money 

in the first instance on those ports where, again, consequence, vulnerability, and threat lead us to be the most worried. It doesn’t 

mean we don’t work with partners across the board. It doesn’t 

mean that other funds aren’t available. 

I mean, part of what the President’s budget envisioned in the 

targeted infrastructure protection program were additional funds 

that might be used, might be tailored to particular needs and particular jurisdictions. But at the end of the day, as in many areas 

of government including many areas of national defense, we have 

to make some tough choices, and those have to be driven by a 

transparent and analytically sound system. 

Maybe I could just touch briefly on the chief medical officer. The 

idea with the chief medical officer is precisely to give us somebody 

who owns the entirety of this system of response with respect to 
57

health issues. That would be prevention, protection, and response 

and recovery. Because in many cases, particularly dealing with biological threats, response and recovery is a very, very important element of our defense strategy. Give that ownership to one person or 

one set of people. And the particular individual who I think the 

President has announced his intent to nominate is someone who 

actually has a background as an emergency room physician. So he 

is going to be someone who is acutely aware of the interface between first responders and the health recovery system in an emergency type of environment. And I think that reflects the kind of vision we have for this chief medical officer. It is someone who is 

going to apply the science of medicine and other scientific disciplines to the reality of dealing with a threat or a hazard in an 

emergency type of situation. 

Mr. JINDAL. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And I will follow up with 

your staff on some of those other questions. Thank you. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Etheridge, for 5 

minutes of questions. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, welcome. Thank you. Sorry I was a few minutes 

late. The airlines weren’t working on schedule today, but the FSA 

was doing their job. Weather kept us delayed. 

Mr. Secretary, your predecessor came before this committee and 

I raised the issue with him about school safety and safety in 

schools across this country, public schools, K–12, et cetera. And the 

response was, that is a local issue. We have seen since then, what 

happened in Russia, that someone can use that as leverage and we 

wind up with a horrible situation. 

In your review, did you look at that as a policy issue, and do you 

want to—I hope you will comment on school safety and security 

today, because I think this is a big issue, and we have seen in the 

last few weeks soft targets tend to be those targets of choice now 

for terrorists. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I agree that schools are part of the 

general issue with soft targets. And what we do is we work with, 

again, our State and local partners by providing them with the 

kind of intelligence—and I don’t just mean threats that come 

across on a day-by-day basis, but more comprehensive looks at the 

kinds of threats that are out there, types of weapons, types of techniques, lessons we have learned from past experiences, including 

from incidents like Beslan; the idea being to prepare State and 

local officials for the kind of challenges that they might face, and 

to give them some advice and counsel with respect to how they 

ought to take steps to protect schools. We have done that, in fact, 

in the private sector as well with respect to institutions that represent private institutions. 

I think it is part of a more general challenge. We don’t own most 

of the infrastructure, we don’t own the shopping centers and the 

stores. We have got to work with the people who do and give them 

the tools they need to take care of their responsibilities. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. So your answer is, yes, you are going to work 

with them; and, yes, you will provide information; and, yes, this is 
58

a soft target that we need to pay attention to it at the Federal 

level? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Absolutely. We will work with them, we 

will provide information. We do pay attention to them at the Federal level. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, sir. Let me ask on a related issue 

to that very same one. The Department had made an attempt to 

educate the public in the case of disasters through a program 

called the Ready Campaign and Citizen Corps. These programs, as 

you well know, contain pertinent information that citizens of our 

country need to be able to make effective decisions to prepare for 

response to terrorist attacks, whether they be man-made or, for 

that matter, it could be a natural disaster, the same thing. In your 

review of the Department, you made no mention of the efforts to 

prepare the public; it was more of a structural piece. My question 

is, did the Department analyze the effectiveness of the programs 

such as the Ready Campaign and Citizens Corps, and what is the 

comment on that? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We did look at that. In fact, part of the impetus for creating a preparedness directorate was again to create 

accountability in a single component for the whole range of preparedness things and preparedness challenges. And one of the 

things I said when I was out, I think in California a few weeks ago, 

I was visiting in Los Angeles, was that when September comes, we 

have National Preparedness Month; we are going to be really pushing on the issue of preparedness precisely because this is where 

every individual has to be engaged in the process of taking reasonable and prudent steps to prepare for, as you say, either a natural 

disaster or even a terrorist attack. 

And I think the issue here is twofold. First of all, we have to give 

people good information. But we also have to motivate people. And 

one of the challenges we face and something that I have spoken 

about publicly, and I expect I will speak about more in September 

is, how do we enlist our communities and our civic agencies to get 

out there and get people motivated to do what they have to do in 

order to do the kind of reasonable planning and preparedness that 

people who live in a hurricane area do or people who live in a tornado area do? Because all of us, I think, owe it to ourselves and 

our families to take those reasonable steps. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Secretary, let me encourage you, because as 

you look at these things, I think the schools—because that is an 

area that I think would grab the country in a hurry. And throughout our history we have used helping educate through a number of 

disaster drills; after World War II with the nuclear issue, we went 

through that. You are in a unique position to help provide information so the States and localities can deal with—because everyone’s 

budget is strapped, especially those. At a time when we are funding at the Federal level, we really ought to use that opportunity. 

It would be a great educational tool, I think, if you would meet, 

work with the Health Department, Department of Education, and 

filter that down to the local units. I think we would get a real bang 

for our buck and do a tremendous job across this country. So I 

would encourage you to take a look at that. 
59

Secretary CHERTOFF. I agree with you. And when I was in California, I went with Congresswoman Harman to a local elementary 

school, and we talked about how schools can be a very powerful engine for motivating people to do things. I know as a parent, children are little engines of information. And when they get the idea 

they want to have their parents do something, they are persuasive 

and they are relentless. So we want to harness some of that energy. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I yield back. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The next 5 

minutes go to Mr. Dent, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. DENT. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary. To follow up on one of the questions of Mr. Jindal, when the Department was created a few years 

ago, as you know, $40 billion, 180,000 employee, 22,000 legacy components. When the Department was created, though, there were 

plans, as I recall, to colocate as many of these component parts as 

possible to increase efficiency. What is the status of the Department’s colocation efforts to put its employees, as many, in one 

place? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I can tell you we are not colocated. 

Obviously there are many components outside of Washington, 

which one would not envision would ever be colocated. But even in 

Washington, we are in various buildings and campuses. There is no 

question that at least a medium-term, if not a long-term challenge, 

is for us to settle on a final location for the Department. Where we 

are now is constrained by space, even though with some additional—as the Navy moves out of our current facility, we will have 

some additional spaces. 

We are looking at what a longer-term strategy is ultimately for 

moving the entire Department someplace. It has to be a campus 

that is sufficiently large to accommodate what our Washington 

needs are. And I think there is a strong argument that it ought not 

to be located in downtown Washington because of the desire to 

have some distance between ourselves and some other buildings. So 

it is an issue that we are examining, but it is not one which I can 

envision is going to wind up resulting in colocation within the next 

couple of years. 

Mr. DENT. Understood. In the short term, though, how would the 

second-stage review structural changes affect the locations of your 

entities now if you are not going to colocate? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, one thing we did is we had a group 

that looked at the question of operation centers. And we discovered 

we had some number of operation centers in various buildings in 

Washington which to some extent were duplicative and probably 

didn’t have themselves organized in the way that is optimal. So one 

of the proposals that has come out that we are studying is, as space 

gets freed up in the central campus up in the Nebraska Avenue 

complex, is to bring together in one place and reduce the number 

of operation centers so that we can have a number of the components use a common operational center to deal with all of our 

emergency operations. That would not only, I think, save money in 

duplication, but it would have the real virtue of bringing together 
60

all of the leadership of the Department in one place during a crisis. 

Which I can tell you from even my own experience in the last 5 

months would be a very positive development. 

So we are looking forward to taking that as a short-term step as 

part of the process of integrating ourselves physically. 

Mr. DENT. And with respect to TSA, under your proposal, TSA 

will be reporting directly to you, as I understand it. How will your 

proposal strengthen TSA? If you could just answer that question. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think that the proposal to strengthen TSA has several dimensions. First of all, by having a common 

policy and operations function across the Department, we will have 

a greater ability to make sure that what TSA does is integrated 

with what CBP does, Customs and Border Protection, what ICE 

does. In many ways, TSA, Coast Guard, and the other components 

all have hands in the same set of issues. And when you have multiple hands in the same set of issues, you want to make sure every 

hand knows what the other hand is doing. So one of the principal 

strengths of our proposal is that it gives us a mechanism to monitor and guide all of these different components when they operate 

in a common area. 

I think second, though, we are looking for some perhaps out-ofthe-box thinking in term of how we deal with TSA. We have a new 

administrator who was just confirmed last week whose background 

lies in the area of some modern business practices with supplychain activity both in the railroads and I think in other areas as 

well. 

The idea is to make sure that TSA is not focused mainly on aviation, although aviation is important, but to make sure that we are 

also applying attention to rail transportation, land transportation, 

other kinds of transit activities, to get some of the strategic thinking in those areas that may not have put in. 

So I think by raising the visibility, by flattening the organization, 

by increasing the coordination, and by putting good leadership in, 

we are going to be able to make TSA a much more effective Transportation Security Agency. 

Mr. DENT. So I guess you have answered my next question which 

I was going to ask you about air passenger screening, and if you 

intended to make that—or continue to keep that as the primary activity of TSA. But it sounds to me, based on your answer, that that 

will not be the case. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, passenger screening is clearly going 

to be an important activity. The question is, how do we configure 

that for the next few years? And I think there are two elements 

to that. One is in terms of equipment. We want to work to deploy 

and bring on line next-generation equipment as quickly as possible, 

something that is going to do the job more efficiently and is going 

to enable us to therefore do a better job of screening than we can 

do with existing technology. 

Second, we have to screen for names. And currently our system 

is maybe the most primitive system possible. We get a name, we 

match it up against a name in the watch list. And as I think any 

air traveler knows, we get a lot of false positives. Again, what we 

need to do is move to the next generation, finding additional types 

of information that we could rely upon to narrow the number of 
61

false positives. That would actually promote passenger privacy by 

reducing the number of times a person is questioned; things we 

might do in terms of biometrics and trusted traveler programs that 

would allow people to bypass certainly kinds of screening. I think 

these are all efforts to reduce the inconvenience of screening and 

make it more precise and make it therefore more secure. 

And part of my vision for TSA is to move all of these functions 

into the next generation, if you will. 

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The 

gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. Holmes Norton, is 

recognized for 5 minute. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. 

Secretary, for the thought that has gone into your plan. 

Two questions. One, in light of that plan on the Federal Protective Service, along with the Ranking Member of Transportation 

Committee, I wrote you on June 14 concerning the placement of the 

Federal Protective Service and ICE in particular. Some of us have 

spent a great deal of time upgrading the FPS and improving it and 

reforming it. And I supported its transfer to your Department. The 

problem is we can centralize ourselves into less security if we don’t 

watch out. 

The Federal Protective Service, for no fault of yours or theirs, 

does not fit into the major functions of your Department: immigration, customs, transportation. You know, its purpose is to protect 

almost 2 million Federal workers, highly vulnerable people, across 

the United States. And unless there have been changes, you wisely 

kept the regional offices and the command structure. It would appear, however, that its alignment in ICE is apples, oranges, and 

maybe some other fruit. 

I am wondering whether it wouldn’t make better sense for Federal Protective Service to be under the Deputy Secretary, similar 

to the Office of Security, so they could provide the public and Federal employees with the ability to be deployed nationally as needed, 

period, and is, after all, a police force. 

Secondly, I have got to ask you more about transportation, public 

transportation. Mr. Secretary, in your plan there are six imperatives. The third imperative says the Department will launch specific policy initiatives. And the third one is to harden transportation security without sacrificing mobility. You know, it didn’t say 

to allow the States to do that. It didn’t say to allow you to do it 

in the States if you choose to do it. 

Let me tell you why many of us think that the Department and 

the administration have been particularly almost offended by the 

stepchild status of public transportation where there are 9 billion—

90 billion passenger trips annually. No plan; yet the plan was due 

April 5. After London, no plan. After Madrid, no plan. 

Maybe no money, but no plan is a bit much. Your comments here 

about $8.6 billion is enough to send jurisdictions up the wall, because you are referring to, of course, first responder funding, not 

to dedicated funding. 

And that is what my question goes to. You spoke about 30 versus 

3,000—I know you will not make that kind of statement again—

riders of metro, the New York transportation system. Understand, 
62

you are talking to the committee, unlike the Senate committee, 

which embraces and agrees wholeheartedly with your threat vulnerability consequences. 

My question is this: Particularly given, you know, imperative No. 

3, is it not appropriate after London to look closely to see whether, 

given threat vulnerability and consequences, whether it is appropriate to have zero dedicated funding for public transportation, 

what the President’s budget in fact recommended? Whether under 

that standard there are not circumstances where targeted funding 

would be appropriate? And whether, for example, it was appropriate for the Senate to cut $50 million from the lousy $150 million 

that the House put in in dedicated funding? I would like to have 

your answers to both of those questions. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me deal with the Federal Protective 

Service first. Obviously, they perform a very important function. 

Among other things, they protect me and others in my Department. 

They protect government workers all over. We actually looked at 

this question, and again as with a number of the issues we dealt 

with, sometimes it is a close call. We considered whether there was 

another component with which FPS might fit more neatly. I think 

part of the consideration of putting FPS in ICE was that FPS does 

have a law enforcement or police function, and ICE is a law enforcement organization, really, the only—it and CBP are the only 

two law enforcement organizations. Coast Guard obviously has law 

enforcement authorities, but it—

Ms. NORTON. We don’t want them to get mixed up with who they 

are supposed to protect, Mr. Secretary. So at the borders, it is protect 2 million people who work in Federal agencies. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. So the question was, given the absence of 

another component that was more likely, should we make it a direct report? And there I have to say, frankly, you know, there is 

a limited number of direct reports I think you can fairly have as 

an organization. Congress has mandated a number of direct reports 

which, of course, we have honored and gone forward with our plan, 

so that I guess it was our judgment that particularly because we 

were going to move FAMS out of ICE and back into TSA, that 

would enable the leadership of ICE to focus a little bit more on 

FPS, which I have to say I think is working quite well and is doing 

a very good job. 

And, again, I guess the burden of proof always being on those 

who suggest a change, my view at the end of the day was that no 

one had carried that burden. That particularly with the movement 

of FAMs, FPS was probably best situated where it is now. And, 

again, I understand the concern, but I think a direct report would 

probably not have been helpful. 

Let me turn to the issue of public transportation. And I appreciate, again, the opportunity to address what was an unhappy 

misquotation or partial quotation of what I said to a newspaper. I 

have been very consistent about this position. We have a responsibility for transportation, for infrastructure across the board. It is 

a responsibility we exercise in partnership with State and local 

government and sometimes with the private sector. It is a responsibility that we exercise with due regard to the nature of the architecture of the system with which we are dealing. We want to work 
63

with the system, we don’t want to break the system that we are 

trying to protect. So when we deal with the issue of transit, we 

deal with an open system, one which, as I have said, has the boots 

on the ground, are essentially really local boots or State boots. We 

have our transit police who are local employees, and, more importantly, have the kind of local tailored knowledge about what measures are appropriate in the subway that we can’t have as the Federal Government. 

And I have ridden a lot of subways in my time, and the New 

York subway is different than the Washington Metro, and they are 

both different than the London— 

Ms. NORTON. We are talking about dedicated funding, we are not 

asking you to fund the transit police. We are talking about whether 

this function of the American people deserves any dedicated function from the United States of America or whether it should be left 

entirely to local jurisdictions to rip off some of their first responder 

money. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t think it should be left to local jurisdictions, but I do think that, first of all, if you look at the President’s budget which called for $600 million in targeted infrastructure protection money, that would have included rail and ports and 

some other infrastructure protection, and was an increase of almost 

$250 million over that number of programs from the prior year. So 

the budget had a substantial amount of money which was available 

for rail among other infrastructure. 

But the fundamental problem with targeting is this: There was 

a bombing in a hotel in Egypt that had a very dramatic loss of life. 

Should we target that? If there is a target, if there is a bombing 

in a ferry, should we target that? At the end of the day, to have 

a series of programs in which we target very specific amounts of 

money for pieces of infrastructure is to engage in a kind of backand-forth with the terrorists that we cannot possibly win, because 

they are going to change their tactics and we are going to constantly be reacting to the last attack. 

What we need to do is to stand back and in fact create more ability to use informed and disciplined discretion to apply our resources in a way that anticipates not only the past attack but the 

next attack. It doesn’t mean we are not responsible for this. It 

means that we have to work with our partners, and we have to 

work with all of them, not just the transit partners, but the people 

who deal with the hotels and the shopping centers and the buses 

and the ferries and everything else which has been attacked in the 

past or which might be attacked in the future. 

And even within these systems, I think in fairness we ought to 

note we spend a lot of money, for example, on detection equipment 

for chemical and biological agents. We put a lot of that in the subway systems. We do it because we know that a chemical or biological attack in a subway would have a profound effect, a terrible effect on not only on the people who would directly suffer the attack 

but the viability of the entire system. I mean, a bioattack on a system could put it out of action for weeks and months, not just for 

a matter of hours. 

So I think that although I deeply understand the impulse to 

react to the attacks and I have ridden a lot of subways in my time 
64

and I have a lot of friends and families who ride subways, I think 

it is important that we create a funding system that is nimble 

enough to respond not only to what the terrorist did yesterday or 

2 weeks ago, or in Egypt with hotels, but to what they might be 

planning to do in the future. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Simmons, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SIMMONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Mr. 

Secretary, for taking on what I believe is probably one of the hardest jobs in government today, which is not just trying to secure the 

homeland from an infinite number of potential threats, but organizing a new agency to accomplish that task. And I would say that 

your willingness to serve in this capacity is a good deed. And I 

would also say that no good deed goes unpunished, which is my 

philosophy of public life. So I thank you, and I wish you all the 

best. 

I would say that the members of this committee also have a hard 

job. Our responsibility is to oversee and authorize the activities of 

this new agency which has an awesome responsibility. When we 

are successful, it is business as usual. When we fail, then we have 

to stand in front of the microphones, as they are in Great Britain 

this past few weeks, and explain what went wrong. 

I have been honored to serve as the Chairman of the Intelligence 

and Information Sharing Subcommittee; and with a background in 

military intelligence, and a period of time with the Central Intelligence Agency, I would say that information sharing goes completely against the culture of the intelligence community. I go out 

and get myself a nice juicy secret, I am not about to share it with 

you or anybody else; I want to run it up the flag pole to my boss 

and get a kudo. So the whole idea of information sharing involves 

a cultural change in our intelligence community and a challenge to 

your chief intelligence officer, your new CIO, who, according to the 

line and block chart, is an assistant secretary. 

And my first question to you is, do you feel that a CIO at an assistant secretary level is going to have the juice, have the power, 

to get the sharing that we need from the intelligence community? 

Sharing from DHS down and around, I don’t consider that much 

of a problem. But getting access to the really good stuff in the first 

place is where I think the problem lies, because each component of 

the intelligence community that is protecting sensitive sources and 

methods is concerned about what they share with your people, especially if your people are going to pass it on to State, local, and 

tribal entities. So does this CIO have the juice to do the job? 

And then, secondly, your new nominee for assistant secretary, 

Mr. Baker, has been very involved in the classified side and in 

doing recommendations for reform of the intelligence community. 

And I believe he was involved in the weapons of mass destruction 

report of the Robb report, which recommended an open source 

agency located at CIA. Why is the open source agency, the open 

source intelligence agency at CIA? Why isn’t it at DHS? Doesn’t 

DHS lend itself to the open source acquisition and analysis? 

Doesn’t this reduce our fears that somehow your agency is going 

to be invading the privacy and violating the civil liberties of our 
65

people, and you can simply say, look, we are getting 90 percent of 

our stuff from open sources? Why isn’t it a natural for your organization? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me see if I can address all those questions. I am, I guess, acutely aware of the cultural problems that are 

involved in information sharing, and in my prior life when I was 

head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice, I saw 

it from that angle as well. 

I guess I begin by saying I think that the culture is not completely changed but it is changing. And I think every time there 

is an event like what happened in London or in Egypt, it reminds 

everybody that no one wants to be answering questions about why 

they didn’t connect dots because they didn’t share the dots with 

other people. I think the creation of the DNI and the appointment 

of Ambassador Negroponte is a very significant step forward in 

building that community-wide sense of sharing. 

From our sharepoint, our chief intelligence officer I think is going 

to have a couple of powerful tools in dealing with the rest of the 

community. First of all, that person will be able to speak for all of 

the intelligence components within DHS. And, second, that person 

is going to be able to bring to the table something that I don’t think 

we have fully brought to the table, which is our own intelligence 

collection capability. There is a tremendous amount of information 

that we encounter at the border or on airplanes or in the course 

of our human trafficking investigations by ICE, which is of great 

not only tactical value but of strategic value. And we have really 

begun this process and we have been doing it for the last 3 months. 

As we pull this up and we fuse it in a strategic way, and we go 

to the other members of the intelligence community and we say, 

look, here is what we bring to the table, that is the kind of contribution that in my experience gets a very positive result. 

And I can tell you from my own observations, even in the absence of a formally designated CIO, we have been working very 

hard and we have seen some positive results in terms of our collaborative work with other members of the community based on 

what we bring to the table, not coming as a charity case begging 

for information, but coming as a major contributor with a tremendous amount of positive intelligence information that we contribute 

to the mix. 

So I think that gives me a lot of hope that as we institutionalize 

this going forward, it is going to get better. 

With respect to the recommendation about open source information, we do, of course, rely on a lot of open source information. As 

a matter of fact, I think everybody does. The current structure of 

the community, of course, has been set not only by the Homeland 

Security Act, but by the subsequent Intelligence Reform Act, and 

of course the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission added 

some additional suggestions. 

I guess I would say that to the extent that intelligence covers 

even things that are more than Homeland Security, that involve 

classic defense like weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and 

things of that sort, it is a very broad set of issues. 

And I can’t quarrel with the suggestion that the open source — 

that an open source component be placed in the CIA. I think what 
66

is critically important is the sharing function. And I am convinced 

that Ambassador Negroponte and Director Goss and Director 

Mueller and everybody else involved in this process has understood 

the President’s very clear marching orders that this is to be an integrated and unified effort, and one in which we are exchanging information and not hoarding it. 

Mr. SIMMONS. I thank you. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman’s time has 

expired. 

The Chair would thank all Members for their patience and demonstrated interest, no one more so than the gentlelady from California, Ms. Lofgren. 

I simply want to take the opportunity just now since, under our 

UC Ms. Lofgren will be the last questioner, to thank Members, 

some of whom under the UC were unable to ask questions at all 

at this second session because they asked their questions at the 

first session. I think the demonstrated interest of Members, Mr. 

Secretary, in your testimony is evident. These are very, very important topics, and, again, we are very pleased that you could be here 

twice. 

Having said that, the gentlelady from California, who has waited 

patiently throughout both the first and second sessions, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Mr. Secretary, for returning. It is really quite 

wonderful that you have, and to give us an opportunity to be a 

partner with you in the reforming of this Department. 

I have a lot of questions, and there is no time to ask them all. 

But I would like to focus in on the immigration function. I noticed 

in your testimony a proposal—and I agree with it—to do the security screening first because it makes a lot of sense. You won’t necessarily have to screen everybody, do all the extra work if you do 

the screening at the front. 

But I am wondering what your thoughts are in terms of 

rationalizing the entire system. I mean, for example, they do digital 

fingerprints for applicants for a permanent visa that expire. And 

I don’t quarrel with the need to run the prints through the FBI 

data sheet on a frequent basis, but they are digital for a reason, 

so you can keep them. And they are not stored. 

And, I mean, that is just one of many examples where they create work, and then people call in and it gets—I will bet you a third 

of their time is spent just dealing with inquiries that could be handled if they actually had a system that made sense. 

What is your plan to actually make that—to use technology and 

to streamline procedures so that that works in an efficient manner? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think you are exactly correct. We have to 

always look at these things as system issues. And I don’t want to 

underestimate the challenge here, because you are dealing with an 

agency which has significantly reduced what was an enormous 

backlog, which has millions and millions of people that it has to 

deal with. And I sometimes used the analogy in the past about the 

Department—by building an airplane while you are flying it—in 

many ways, on maybe a somewhat smaller scale, of a challenge 

here. 
67

I do think that we ought to look at issues like why do we not 

save things that we ought to save that would reduce work, particularly because digital information can be stored? I think at a broader level and a higher level, we need to look at how do we reconfigure the system so that we compress the time between application and adjudication and give people the incentive up front to collect their paperwork and get the screening done up front as opposed to when people are here temporarily waiting for adjudication. 

So I think this is all of the piece with refashioning USCIS and 

making it into a 21st century organization. I think, frankly, it is 

going to be expensive, it will require making sure that our information technology system is capable of bearing the burden we will 

place on it. I think ultimately, if we make this transformation, we 

will have a system that will be much more efficient and much less 

expensive, but we need to think through how we make that transition. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Let me in a related question — you have mentioned in your statements, and I agree, that we need to secure our 

borders and be able to have integrity to that system. And not just 

our land borders, but people coming in at other points of entry. 

And I think we all agree on that. But that also we need to make 

sure that those people who we want to get in, in fact do get in. And 

there was discussion when the Department was formed of putting 

the consular function within the Department of Homeland Security. Ultimately that did not occur. And there was a plan to have 

the immigration function out-stationed at these offices. I don’t 

think that has actually occurred. 

And there is a problem. We know this. I mean, there are scientists who can’t get into international conferences. We have had 

a dramatic drop-off on really the top science students in the world 

who are now going to Australia and Britain instead of MIT and 

Stanford. And we also have a real problem with getting people back 

and forth from multinational companies. In fact, I had a fellow tell 

me that they had to close their California office and move it to 

Vancouver because they couldn’t get their engineers from other 

countries into the United States. So we need to solve that. 

What is your strategy for getting the consular function on board 

and integrated technologically in terms of information and decisionmaking so that the scientists and engineers and multinational folks 

and students can actually come and enrich our society? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have been talking to Secretary Rice about 

a number of initiatives in this area, recognizing we have a whole 

host of problems. Some of them have to do with the advisory opinion system which relates to certain types of people who want to 

come in, which I think in many cases is a legacy of a preexisting 

year and which needs to be substantially retooled. Some of it involves, again, networking and making sure that our technology is 

linked up in a way that is compatible so that when someone is 

cleared in one system they are cleared in another system. Another 

may involve lengthening visas or lengthening the time period in 

which people can come back and forth. And part of it I think is also 

sending the message out that we really are welcoming, that we are 

not a society that is seeking to deter visitors and people who want 
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to come to be productive or to study, but that is seeking to in fact 

welcome them to do that. 

I am hopeful in the next couple of months as we are working on 

these issues, we are going to have a series of initiatives that we 

can present that will take some substantial steps forward in helping us attract the kinds of people that make us a stronger country 

and also go back and become goodwill emissaries for our own country abroad. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Well, I see my time has expired. I look forward to 

working on those initiatives with you, Mr. Secretary. And thank 

you once again for revisiting us. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I do, too. And, Mr. Chairman, if I may just 

say, if all goes well with you, I anticipate this may be my last appearance before you as a witness. So I wish you the best of luck. 

It has been an enormous pleasure testifying before you, and I look 

forward to working with you in your future capacity. 

Chairman COX. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Your testimony today was exceptionally valuable. Your kind words are especially welcomed. You and I have been friends for a long time. I look 

forward to continuing to work with you. 

As I mentioned at the end of last week’s hearing, the Members 

of the Committee may have some additional questions, and I will 

ask that you respond to these in writing. The hearing record will 

be held open for 10 days. 

The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for 30 seconds. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Chairman and Mr. Secretary, a note of caution. 

I have a great deal of respect for my friend, the gentleman from 

North Carolina, probably one of the foremost educators that ever 

has served in this Congress. But I must say there is a tremendous 

amount of research on, quote-unquote, preparing kids. We had better be very careful about traumatizing our children in preparing 

them, in getting them in over their heads. I am very concerned 

about this. 

So how we do that and still prepare the country in defending our 

children and our grandchildren is not easy, it is not an easy task. 

But we don’t want to traumatize those kids. They are being hit 

through the mass media tremendously, and we don’t know what is 

affecting—we don’t know, really, what effect it is having on them. 

And to throw them into the mix here as if, you know—and I am 

not—using this as a criticism—but to prepare them as we would 

prepare adults are two different things. So a note of caution, sir. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I agree with you. I understand this is something to proceed with caution, and I think it is something that we 

would only do in consultation with people who really know the 

kids, the people who educate them. I think that is very important, 

to make sure that we don’t—again, we don’t compromise our way 

of life as we go about making ourselves more secure. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair recognizes the Ranking Member for a concluding comment. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And as 

has already been said, this perhaps is your last meeting of the full 

committee. And I would like to just say, on behalf of the Democrats 

on the committee, you have been a very positive force for the com-
69

mittee. You have shared your leadership in a manner that I wish 

a number of other committees could benefit from. 

Your new post, I am certain the President made a very wise 

choice in you. The committee’s loss, obviously, is your next gain as 

far as we are concerned. So on behalf of all of us here, we wish you 

well. 

Chairman COX. Thank you very much. I very much appreciate 

the opportunity to work with you. We may have an opportunity for 

a brief business meeting on Friday, so you may regret that you 

have taken— 

Mr. THOMPSON. I take it all back. 

Chairman COX. But if that does not happen, if we don’t have that 

opportunity, let me say at this juncture how much I have appreciated the opportunity not just this year, but over 3 years, to work 

on homeland security matters with so many of you, because there 

is a great deal of carryover from the Select Committee on this Committee and with the new members this year. 

Mr. Secretary, as you know, because this is also a new undertaking for you, there is no more vital and important discipline for 

our country. Homeland Security is new. It knits together a lot of 

established disciplines. But, really, there have been no homeland 

security experts per se, experts in all of these things ranging from 

immigration to nonproliferation to chemical, biological, nuclear 

weapons, to all of the terrorist finance questions that we have had 

to think of, all of the knitting together of FBI and law enforcement, 

State and local, with intelligence and so on. The only true generalists, the only true generalists in Homeland Security are Tom Ridge, 

Michael Chertoff, and the rest of us who have been working on this 

for just the last few years. 

So it is with great regret, having learned so much of it, that I 

now perhaps turn to other things. But I have had an extraordinary 

opportunity to work with each of you. I am glad that this Committee is bipartisan and has been that for 3 years, and I know that 

under the leadership of a new chairman it will remain that. It is 

vital that it remain bipartisan, because it is about the security of 

our country. As my colleague from California, Ms. Harman, is so 

fond of saying, the terrorists do not care if we are Democrats or Republicans. And we need to work together to stop them. 

So thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. And I 

look forward to continuing to work with each of you. Without objection, the Committee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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