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34–797 PDF 2007

PROPOSALS TO DOWNSIZE THE FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE AND EFFECTS ON THE PROTECTION OF

FEDERAL BUILDINGS

(110–26)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 18, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi 

Comparison Chart for Current FPS Force and DHS Downsizing Plan, prepared by T&I Committee Majority Staff ............................................................ xiii 

TESTIMONY 

Brown, Inspector General Michael J., Federal Protective Service, Seattle, 

Washington ........................................................................................................... 13

Canterbury, Chuck, President, Fraternal Order of Police ................................... 50

Jackson, Hon. Michael P., Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security ......................................................................................................................... 33

Nowak, Corporal Stanley, Federal Protective Service, Kansas City, Missouri .. 13

Proctor, Jr., Inspector Sterling, Federal Protective Service, National Capital 

Region ................................................................................................................... 13

Ward, Officer Jim, Federal Protective Service, New York City, New York ........ 13

Wright, David, President, American Federation of Government Employees, 

Local 918 ............................................................................................................... 50

Wu, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon ......... 8

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 57

Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois .......................................................................... 58

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Canterbury, Chuck .................................................................................................. 61

Jackson, Michael P. ................................................................................................. 66

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Wright, David, President, American Federation of Government Employees, 

Local 918, Briefing on the Federal Protective Service: Transition to FY 

08 Budget, Prepared for FPS Regional Directors .............................................. 80

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(1)

HEARING ON DOWNSIZING THE FEDERAL 

PROTECTIVE SERVICE AND ITS EFFECT ON 

THE PROTECTION OF FEDERAL BUILDINGS 

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

Washington, DC. 

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

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eleanor 

Holmes Norton [chairwoman of the committee] presiding. 

Ms. NORTON. The Committee is about to begin with an offer of 

my gratitude and welcome to all of the witnesses who have agreed 

to appear before the Committee this morning. 

The Committee and our subcommittee are particularly interested 

in the status and condition of the Federal Protective Service, the 

police force that protects 2 million Federal employees and judges, 

and $500 billion of Federal office space in the post-9/11 period. 

Congress was quick to shore up its own security after 9/11, bulking up the Capitol Police by approximately 50 percent since then. 

The White House was the first to go on a super-vigilant virtual 

lock-out mode following the Oklahoma City attack with the shutdown of Pennsylvania Avenue, putting the White House nearly out 

of reach for visitors and terrorists alike. 

However, security experts report that when only some targets get 

concentrated attention, softer targets become harder and more vulnerable. Therefore, it is fair to ask what is being done to afford necessary protection and security for Federal employees nationwide located in every State and in most congressional districts, many of 

whom protect the homeland. 

The Federal Protective Service is the Federal police force on the 

front lines to protect millions of civil servants, judges, and visitors 

to Federal sites. 

After the Oklahoma City bombing, I supported the Department 

of Justice Building Vulnerability Report and particularly noted the 

report’s observations regarding the ability of the FPS to provide, 

and I am quoting, ‘‘security service for much of the Federal workforce.’’

In 2002, along with several members of this Committee, I also 

supported moving the FPS from the General Services Administration to the newly created Department of Homeland Security. We 

had high hopes that the theory of full integration of the FPS law 

enforcement expertise into the broader fabric of national security 

would come together to enhance overall security. 

2

However, only recently, as a member of the Homeland Security 

Committee, I felt obliged to offer an amendment to the bill which 

authorized the Department of Homeland Security. This amendment 

would have the effect of a cease and desist order on activities to 

downsize the FPS until the GAO issues its report on the status of 

FPS and its funding sources. This amendment was passed without 

opposition because of distressing concerns about huge structural 

changes in the FPS that could lead to new terrorist and law enforcement vulnerability in Federal facilities. 

As you are aware, the FPS mission continues to be grounded in 

force protection, but now includes new security duties at a time 

when, ironically, the number of police officers has been diminishing. In addition to traditional law enforcement duties plus, of 

course, answering questions, assisting citizens, and helping Federal 

employees, today’s FPS officer is the first line of defense against 

terrorists and other new criminal risks and incidents in Federal 

buildings, providing comprehensive intelligence gathering through 

its unparalleled network of State and local police, providing building vulnerability assessments, recommending appropriate security 

threat countermeasures and responding to bomb threats, vandalism, and mass demonstrations. 

It is of special interest to this Committee and should be of even 

greater interest to DHS that FPS has had a close and effective 

working relationship with FEMA, another agency under our Committee’s jurisdiction. FPS provides emergency police and special security services to support FEMA during natural disasters, as well 

as during terrorist and criminal actions. For example, on August 

29th, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, 29 FPS 

law enforcement personnel deployed into New Orleans to provide 

support to FEMA and ensure security and order in Federal facilities. Within 24 hours, one day after the major levee breaks, FPS 

had deployed 113 personnel into the affected region, and within 72 

hours 211 police officers and support personnel. In addition, three 

command vehicles were deployed in strategic locations by the next 

day which enabled FPS officers to maintain radio communications 

over the Gulf area. 

These personnel assets and command vehicles assisted the establishment of many operations that were of central importance. 

Moreover, because of the overwhelming effect Katrina had in the 

region and the total breakdown of social order in New Orleans 

proper, the mission of FPS expanded in directing police in the area 

as well as providing humanitarian assistance on an individual 

basis, in many instances personally handing out food and water. 

On another tragically historic day, September 11th, 2001, FPS 

officers assigned to the mobile units around the Federal courthouse 

in Lower Manhattan, immediately responded to the initial crash 

and other FPS officers ran the six blocks to the World Trade Center to assist in the evacuation efforts. By 6 p.m., officers from Region 1-New England were on site, including the chief of operations, 

two special agents, and several uniformed officers, to assist in the 

search. 

These examples of professionalism, of police peace officer professionalism, have been the norm for FPS officers throughout its history as the only uniformed law enforcement presence in DHS. All 

3

should be proud of the Federal Protective Services’ capabilities and 

record. 

The recent transformation initiative begins a major departure 

from the core FPS missions, however. Tellingly, last fall, ICE began 

the process of recruiting a new FPS director and posted two job announcements for the position, one requiring a law enforcement 

background and the other requiring managerial experience. I immediately questioned the wisdom of advertising for a law enforcement job without requiring law enforcement experience and credentials. After all, the lessons from the Katrina tragedy, which shook 

DHS to its core, had much to do with unprofessional staffing. 

It is therefore particularly surprising that the position descriptions for both announcements were virtually identical except for 

one vital skill. To qualify for the law enforcement announcement, 

the director would be required to develop plans to respond to criminal incidents and emergencies occurring on Federal property, as 

well as supervising senior law enforcement officers in activities 

such as investigating incidents, disseminating terrorism-related intelligence, and conducting joint terrorism task force operations. Despite the fact that an individual with all these skills and more was 

identified as ‘‘best qualified’’ for the job on the job announcement, 

ICE selected an individual who qualified third on the managerial 

analyst posting. It is as if a jurisdiction would advertise for a police 

chief who had no law enforcement expertise. 

The shift from a director with true law enforcement experience 

to one that requires general management skills is consistent with 

the change in ICE’s new vision of the role of FPS. In eliminating 

the 290 police officers, there will be no officers to meet this role as 

written ‘‘to interrogate suspects who display violence and irrational 

temperament, seek out and question witnesses and suspects, preserve the peace, prevent crimes, arrest offenders, and provide crime 

prevention guidance and police assistance during emergency situations.’’

Instead, the new mission of FPS relies on inspectors whose jobs 

include such duties as—and I am quoting—‘‘presents employee 

awareness programs, conducts crime prevention studies, conducts 

physical security surveys, and coordinates minor repairs of electronic security systems.’’

What, then, is to be done about ‘‘investigating criminal incidents, 

disseminating terrorism-related intelligence, and conducting postterrorism force operations,’’ the job description of the FPS officer? 

Who will perform these functions that are related to both traditional law enforcement and to the new terrorist responsibilities of 

the FPS in protecting Federal employees, visitors, and property? 

The Chairman has mentioned on occasion to me the drastic reduction in the number of uniformed officers in the transportation 

plan. In the absence of a Federal police presence, ICE expects local 

law enforcement agencies to become the primary protectors of Federal property and employees. ICE claims that it has Memorandums 

of Understanding—but we have been unable to obtain these memorandums—MOUs with 31 city and local agencies allow for reciprocal services; local law enforcement can assist FPS on Federal 

property and FPS can assist local law enforcement in areas adjacent to or near Federal property. Of course, once FPS eliminates 

4

its police officers, these MOUs will be worthless. They require reciprocity and FPS can’t reciprocate if it doesn’t have police officers. 

Moreover, anyone familiar with local law enforcement knows how 

unlikely these agencies are to take on the new Federal responsibilities left behind by vacating Federal police officers. On January 

24th, 2007, the National Council of Mayors reported ‘‘alarming 

growth,’’ their words, in violent crimes in their cities, which have 

to come first, obviously. 

At the same time, Federal funding for local law enforcement pro- grams has been slashed by more than $2 billion. To now ask these 

same local officers to assume additional Federal responsibilities for 

protecting Federal employees and property is adding insult to injury and, worse, unlikely to occur. Therefore, is adding risk and 

possible danger. 

Moreover, these extra responsibilities will be significant. In the 

past six months there have been more than 20,000 incidents involving FPS officers on Federal property. These included 1,363 accidents, 849 thefts, 33 aggravated assaults, 177 incidents involving 

weapons and explosives, 852 fine, and 1 criminal homicide. Most of 

these crimes were in cities high on the list for losing Federal Protective Service police protection. 

Who is prepared to trust the protection of millions of Federal employees, visitors, and property to local law enforcement, especially 

when the proposed plans leave FPS without peace officers sufficient 

to keep their part of the deal? 

We are eager, most eager, to hear what the witnesses may have 

to tell us in order to allow us, as a Committee, to review the plan 

in keeping with oversight responsibilities for FPS that we have not 

exercised, not once, since FPS was absorbed into DHS. This Committee has both the opportunity and the responsibility to require 

adjustments that may be necessary to ensure the safety and security of Federal agencies. 

I would like now to turn to the Ranking Member of the full Committee, Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. First of all, good morning, and I want to thank both 

Ms. Norton and Mr. Graves for holding this hearing on the Federal 

Protective Service, and thank our witnesses for being here today. 

As we have all been reminded by the tragic events of the last 24 

hours at Virginia Tech, our public facilities, whether they are educational or Federal buildings, have unfortunately been the sites of 

some horrific violence in the past, and it is very timely that we 

hold this hearing today. I have the greatest and deepest respect for 

our Federal Protective Service and the men and women who serve 

us in that capacity. It is an important responsibilities and, again, 

we are reminded of it by the events we have all unfortunately seen. 

Government-owned and occupied facilities have been attacked at 

home and abroad, with deadly results sometimes, and it is our responsibility in Congress to make certain that we remain vigilant. 

As such, it is entirely appropriate for the Committee to continue its 

oversight of the Federal Protective Service and also our plans for 

protecting our Federal buildings. Our Transportation Committee 

has had a long history of protecting Federal agencies through physical security measures and also with the men and women of the 

Federal Protective Service. We have provided literally billions of 

5

dollars to locate agencies out of harm’s way where possible, design 

buildings against progressive collapse, and install blast-proof windows. 

When it comes to the Federal Protective Service, we have always 

supported its law enforcement mission and it is important that we 

continue to do that. However, this is an interesting hearing, and 

I didn’t know too much about the background until I was briefed 

on some of the problems that have been created when the Federal 

Protective Service transferred from the GSA to DHS, the Department of Homeland Security. In the process, the Federal Protective 

Service lost a significant amount of its funding. 

According to a GAO report, GSA had previously subsidized the Federal Protective Service by at least $139 million a year. Now 

that the Federal Protective Service lost that subsidy, maintaining 

current operating levels is very difficult. The Federal Protective 

Service needs either additional appropriations or we need to find 

a way to honestly and transparently subsidize those operations in 

light of the current situation we find ourselves in with the threat 

of terrorism and against violence against public buildings. 

As I understand the Administration’s proposal, the Federal Protective Service is trying to close this budget gap by raising security 

fees and then also by making some cuts in personnel costs. Unfortunately, DHS was dealt not a very good hand here, and there have 

been some studies conducted and right now the current cost is 

right around 39 cents, I think staff told me—is that per square 

foot?—and they want to raise it to 57 cents to meet some of those 

costs. There is actually a Booz Allen study that was conducted and 

recommended an increase, I believe, in the force from 1200 to 2700, 

which would increase the costs from 57 cents, which is proposed by 

the Administration, to an actual cost of around $1.69. That would 

really cause some problems but, again, the purpose of this hearing 

is to find solutions. 

I think that there are a number of approaches that we can look 

at today as a result of this hearing. We have got to find a way to 

provide the services, maintain the personnel level, and, if necessary, even increase those. However, we do face some challenges 

right now in the way DHS inherited this because, again, a portion 

of the funds in the past used by GSA were used in sort of cooking 

the books and obscuring the true cost of protecting Federal facilities. So we have inherited a very difficult financial situation. We 

need to find some creative solutions for getting additional funding 

to the agency. I have talked with our Ranking Member, Mr. 

Graves, and he is committed and our side is committed to finding 

a way to help the Federal Protective Service retain its employees, 

increase them, if necessary, and find the funding to do that. So I 

hope the testimony of our witnesses today will help us find solutions to resolve this problem. 

I yield back. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Mica. 

I would like to ask Mr. Oberstar to offer some remarks at this 

time, if he would be willing. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your making a very comprehensive statement at the outset, really framing 

the issue, while I was navigating traffic for the last hour. 

6

In reflecting on this hearing, 12 years ago this week Timothy 

McVeigh parked a rental truck with explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. A massive explosion tore through the north face of that building, killing 168 people, 19 children. On the heels of that tragedy is another unfolding 

in Virginia, just near us, and one of the victims—not a shooting 

victim, but a victim of the trauma, a young student at Virginia 

Tech, was also engaged in Columbine in the classroom where her 

classmates eight years ago were killed. She was telling her story 

this morning on network news. 

It reminds us of the extraordinary role of the Federal Protective 

Service, which is not a fly-by-night agency. It was started in 1790 

by President George Washington, when the first Federal buildings 

were established, to provide protection. And our Chair has outlined 

the extraordinary reach of the Federal Protective Service to the 

330-plus million square feet of civilian office space the Federal Government is responsible for. 

The evolution since absorption of FPS into the Department of 

Homeland Security, the evolution away from Federal Protective officers to contract employees brings back to my mind the situation 

in aviation security prior to September 11th and the horror stories 

of Argenbright, Huntley, and others. I served on the Pan Am 103 

Commission. I wrote the first Aviation Security Act in this Committee room. I asked then for a Federal protective service as we 

have with the Transportation Security Administration. The Administration then wasn’t willing to do that and we didn’t have enough 

votes in the Congress to enforce it, but it sure happened with lightening speed after September 11th; a huge turnover in the contract 

forces engaged by the airlines foreign employees, not American citizens, not having English language capability. So the contractor 

guard system in FPS, with 15,000 contract guards, is something of 

great concern to me. 

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, under which 

FPS has been assumed, itself said, in an analysis of their plan, risk 

assumed by transformation, which I quote—this is the agency itself 

examining FPS and the plan to contract out more and make 

changes in the operation—‘‘There will be no proactive patrol to 

deter attack planning, to detect or deter suspicious criminal activity, only reactive response will be provided. There will be no response to calls for police service to protect Federal employees or 

visitors and investigate crimes at Federal facilities. There will be 

no night or weekend police response or service, no FPS presence in 

50 current cities,’’ meaning cities now served and protected by FPS. 

‘‘FPS explosive detection dog teams will be stationed only in the 18 

largest cities.’’ Ten cities will no longer have the capability. ‘‘The 

largest reductions will be in New York and Washington, DC due 

to proactive activity elimination.’’ I’ve never heard such bureaucratic garbage in my life. ‘‘States with largest percentage reductions also include Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.’’

I don’t think it would give great comfort to the folks in Oklahoma 

City to know that that is what is happening to the Federal Protective Service in the aftermath of a tragedy that occurred there, and 

we have our distinguished colleague from the State of Oklahoma 

7

who is very familiar with that. I think the tragedy occurred during 

the time when Ms. Fallin was Lieutenant Governor of the State. 

So I am just very distressed about the role of contract guards. 

It depends on company and State law, it depends on the terms of 

the contract, and I don’t think that visitors to or employees of Federal Government agencies, where there is a contract service, would 

be very comforted by the knowledge that if something occurs, if a 

gunman enters the building, that the contract service will be able 

to call 911. That is not the way we protect public facilities. 

I will withhold other comments because I want to get immediately to the testimony. I think we need to proceed. We have limited time because we have another hearing following shortly on the 

heels of this one. I thank members for their forbearance on opening 

statements, which will all be included in the record. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Oberstar. 

Going to the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman Oberstar’s institutional knowledge in this Committee 

is renowned, and his ability to recall history is incredible, but I 

didn’t know it goes all the way back to Washington. Did you help 

craft that too, Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, let me say I was not there, in fairness. I 

was not there, but there were three guards hired at the request of 

President Washington. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

And I want to thank all the witnesses that are here today for coming in to talk to us about the Federal Protective Service. In particular, I want to thank two of our witnesses who are here today, 

who traveled all the way from Missouri, from my home State and 

from Kansas City. The first one is going to be Mr. Stanley Nowak. 

For coming in, I do want to thank him. He is a corporal with the 

Federal Protective Service’s Region 6 in Kansas City and he has 

been with the FPS since 1976. I also want to thank David Wright 

for his testimony today. David is the President of the National Federal Protective Service Union and is an inspector with FPS Region 

6 in Kansas City, Missouri. He has been with FPS since 1986. 

These gentlemen are going to be providing testimony today based 

on their experiences, vast experience in the Federal Protective 

Service, and I thank them for being here. 

FPS is responsible not only for protecting our senior citizens from 

things like being robbed of their Social Security checks when leaving the Social Security Office, protecting us from something as simple as that to something as far-reaching and very important as 

being front line defense against any terrorism. 

The first attack on the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City 

bombing, the bombings of the Cobart Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 

1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 

have made it clear that Federal facilities are targets for domestic 

and foreign terrorism. We need to ensure that the security force responsible for protecting Federal facilities has the capability to handle all of these kinds of threats. 

This Committee has had a long history of trying to do just that. 

We have strongly shown our support for the inclusion of physical 

8

security measures in the construction of Federal buildings and 

courthouses across the Country. Additionally, over the past several 

Congresses, we have held hearings and marked up legislation to 

upgrade FPS and address the funding shortfall in its operating 

budget. 

Deputy Secretary Jackson testifies today on the Administration’s 

proposal to address the chronic budget shortfall. The proposal 

raises security fees from 39 cents per square foot to 57 cents per 

square foot. The proposal also reduces FPS personnel from roughly 

1200 to around 950 full-time employees. This proposed reduction of 

FPS personnel has raised a number of questions about the impact 

on Federal building security. As the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee that oversees Federal buildings, I am greatly interested 

in the security and the security of the Government workforce. 

Kansas City has 12 of the 35 Level 3 buildings and 15 of the 42 

Level 4 buildings located in FPS Region 6. I am concerned about 

how the proposal is going to impact the security of these Federal 

buildings and I am very concerned about how the reduction in personnel will impact the FPS personnel working in Kansas City. 

Those are things that concern me a great deal. 

This is an extraordinary situation and it requires extraordinary 

measures, not just a prohibition on what FPS can do. What we 

need is creative solutions to this problem, not something that is 

going to further complicate FPS’s operations. I hope our witnesses 

today can help clear some of this up and we can explore some of 

these creative solutions and, again, I thank the witnesses for being 

here and Chairman Oberstar for having this hearing. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Graves. 

It is our custom to go to members to see if they have statements. 

I am reluctant to do that in light of the hearing that is coming 

right after us, the press conference we have with the Chairman, 

and particularly the fact that our Deputy Secretary, Mr. Jackson, 

is on the second panel, not the first panel, but I know this is a 

Committee that always engages statements. Are there any statements? Because if there were only a few——

[No response.] 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much. We can then go straight to 

our first witness. I am very pleased to invite Congressman Wu, 

who is not here to offer a piece of legislation, but here as a witness 

who has had occasion to call upon the FPS, and we very much welcome David Wu as our first witness. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DAVID WU, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON 

Mr. WU. Madam Chair, honored members of the Committee, I 

am David Wu, 1st Congressional District of Oregon. I am here 

today to thank the Federal Protective Service, to express my appreciation for their long-time service, and to relay the particulars of 

one incident that occurred earlier this year. 

On most days, my staff, like yours, perform their duties without 

dramatic incident. We all aspire to have service-oriented offices and 

constituents are very much welcomed in our offices. However, on 

this past February 8th, 2007, a constituent armed with a large 

knife entered our district office, making threats to others and to 

9

himself. Fortunately, no constituents or staff were hurt. Most of my 

staff were out of the office attending meetings on my behalf. 

The three staff members who were present at the time, given the 

layout of the office, two out of the three were able to lock themselves in another portion of the office within just a few seconds and 

the third was able to slip out a back door and get into a neighboring tenant’s office. All three of the staff members almost instinctively dialed the dispatch center for the Federal Protective Service. 

Each quickly gave their location and the circumstances for the call. 

Within moments, FPS officers apprehended the knife-wielding man 

without significant incident. 

My district office is located in a former Federal courthouse in 

Downtown Portland, Oregon. The tenants are a mix of public and 

private entities, and we rely on the Federal Protective Service to 

provide security. The building houses a post office on the main floor 

and there are no particular security measures required to either 

enter the building itself, nor to access the elevators for the floor 

where my district office is located. The FPS is located within the 

building itself. 

My staff contacted the FPS immediately because they know that 

the FPS is onsite and the FPS has always been there for us. One 

thing that I know for certain is that without the FPS, my staff 

would have waited longer for help, being in the same suite of offices with a threatening person with a large knife. Two staff members dialed 911 and got a voice mail and were placed in a call 

queue. Eventually, 911 connected with them and they were told 

that FPS officers were already on their way. In fact, one of the response from 911 was that the FPS was already in the office and 

had the man under control. 

After this particular event, I discussed with my staff the possibility of moving to another Federal building with higher security 

and with metal detectors, but our staff concluded that, because 

such incidents are relatively rare and because FPS responded so 

well and so quickly, that the move was not necessary. 

Here on Capitol Hill we have the benefit of the Capitol Police. 

In our district offices, where we truly have folks on the front line, 

they also deserve a level of security to carry out their jobs as best 

they can, and it is my hope that our staff in the district office can 

continue to count on the professional help of the Federal Protective 

Service going forward into the future. 

I thank you for the opportunity to share my views, to relay this 

particular incident, and to thank the Federal Protective Service for 

its service over many years during my time in the United States 

Congress. Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Congressman Wu, for this 

firsthand account of an incident. You said you were in a Federal 

building that was still a courthouse or used to be a courthouse? 

Mr. WU. This is a former courthouse. It remains a Federal building and it has a post office on the ground floor and a mix of tenants, some of which are governmental and some of which are private sector tenants. 

Ms. NORTON. You said the Federal Protective Service is located 

there. Is that because they had an office there for the area or beVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:13 Oct 23, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34797 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
10

cause they were there because Federal employees such as yourself 

were there? 

Mr. WU. They have an office there. 

Ms. NORTON. That covers the entire area of Federal employees? 

Mr. WU. My understanding is that they also have some other offices in the Downtown Portland area. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, I am concerned that your staff called 911, because that is calling local police force, normally. Are there generally instructions to call an FPS officer who might be close at 

hand, particularly since FPS was located in the building, or was 

that just the instinct to call 911 because everybody calls 911? 

Mr. WU. Well, their first instinct was to call the FPS, and they 

made those calls and there were three staff members in the office 

at the time. There was a fourth in the building and between the 

four of them several calls were made, the first calls were to FPS, 

and there were follow-up calls or calls made by the fourth staffer 

to 911. 

Ms. NORTON. Does this FPS have a number like 911 or do you 

have to dial a number that is like an ordinary number in order to 

call FPS? 

Mr. WU. Madam Chair, I actually do not have the answer to that 

right now. 

Ms. NORTON. I will ask that of the officers. I would think that 

that is the kind of change we would want to have FPS make if we 

could. I would be concerned because it seems to me that local police 

are almost always inclined to give—and I recognize that most of 

the staff called the FPS and they knew what to do. All credit to 

you and your staff that they already knew what to do. But I would 

be concerned about calling 911 because many areas would simply 

assume that is for the Feds and I have got to keep dealing with 

crime here in my own jurisdiction. So that will be a question I reserve for the Federal police. 

I understand there was a demonstration of sorts going on at the 

time in front of the Federal building in which your office is located. 

Do you recall that? 

Mr. WU. I do not recall that there was a demonstration in front 

of the office at that time. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, was there any need, after this incident, to upgrade security in your office in your view and was it done? 

Mr. WU. We considered either moving to a higher security office 

and——

Ms. NORTON. Say a word about higher security office. The office 

in which you were located had what kind of security? You said you 

could get through the elevator and so forth. Was there no security 

at the door? 

Mr. WU. There is no security at the door. There are no metal detectors or other screening mechanisms. It is my understanding that 

there are regulations about how many Federal employees are at a 

particular site before there is security at the door or there are 

metal detectors. We have explored those possibilities and we have 

also explored the possibility of moving to another facility with more 

Federal employees, which comes with more security. But after assessing all the options and the fact that FPS is able to respond so 

quickly and the fact that this is an office which has served us well, 

11

the staff decision was to stay put with the FPS protection and 

where they are right now. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, that is understandable. I see nothing wrong 

with some Federal employees being in buildings where, shall we 

call them, civilian agencies are located, and the risk is based on 

whether or not there is a risk. And if there were a risk, then you 

wouldn’t be located there. People would think that the office of a 

member of Congress would not present such a risk, so I can understand and I think I would have made the same decision. My office 

is located in the National Press Office at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. I can assure you that there are not many Federal 

offices there. But it certainly wouldn’t make financial or economic 

sense for people like us to insist that we are in the most secure 

buildings for the most part. 

But the point, it seems to me, of the incident involving you, Congressman Wu, is that there were Federal police on hand. How 

would you assess the response of the Federal police to the incident? 

Mr. WU. Madam Chair, that is precisely the point, that the FPS 

were immediately at hand and were able to respond in a very quick 

manner. From the way the incident played out, they responded, I 

believe, much more quickly than local law enforcement could have 

because they have a focal point, or few focal points, for what they 

need to protect, which are the Federal buildings and the Federal 

facilities around. Not all district offices have the benefit of such 

close proximity, but in our particular instance, the access to and 

the proximity of the Federal Protective Service has been of great 

help, security, and reassurance for our staff. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Congressman Wu. 

I will now move to Mr. Graves to see if you have any questions. 

Are there members on your side? Congressman Graves, do you 

have any questions at this time for Congressman Wu? 

[No response.] 

Ms. NORTON. Are there any questions on our side for Congressman Wu? 

[No response.] 

Ms. NORTON. Let me thank you, Congressman Wu, for taking 

your time this morning to inform us firsthand of an experience that 

I think helps us to understand the role of FPS. 

Mr. WU. Thank you very much. 

Ms. NORTON. I would like now to call four members of the Federal Protective Service. They are Inspector Michael—I am sorry, I 

do not have their locations here, the locations from which they 

come. I will ask them when they give their testimony to tell us 

their location. 

Would the four witnesses from Federal Protective Service—Inspector Michael Brown, Corporal Stanley Nowak, Inspector Sterling Proctor, Jr., and Officer Jim Ward, all of the Federal Protective Service—come forward now and would you stand so that I may 

swear you in, as we swear in all witnesses? I would ask each of 

you to raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will be the truth, 

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 

Mr. BROWN. I do. 

12

Mr. NOWAK. I do. 

Mr. PROCTOR. I do. 

Mr. WARD. I do. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. Be seated. 

Gentlemen, you may offer testimony if you desire. You need not 

offer testimony. 

I need to say for the record that I felt compelled to write to the 

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security after I was 

made aware of a letter that was sent to these officers after they 

were subpoenaed by the Committee. The letter was a kind letter; 

it was not, in its language, intimidating, but it was an inappropriate letter. It asked that the officers submit their testimony to 

the Department before offering it to the Committee. Understand, 

these are line officers appearing in their personal capacity, and it 

is in that capacity that they were subpoenaed. This is police work 

and the Committee is interested in the day-to-day effect on police 

work. You can’t find that out by talking to somebody in Washington or somebody in charge of the FPS; you have got to talk to 

witnesses like Congressman Wu or like the witnesses before us 

now. 

The letter, which I will make a part of the record, signed by 

Dean S. Hunter, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement, said that they simply wanted to assure that nothing 

would be said of a sensitive nature that would undermine the FPS 

mission or endanger members of the public. Now, we are talking 

about police officers appearing before us, now. And also that any 

information that the officers would offer would not be, and I am 

quoting, ‘‘privileged or otherwise restricted from disclosure by law,’’ 

and, thus, they wanted the opportunity to discuss their testimony. 

Now, I am on another committee that has jurisdiction over Federal employees. I can think of nothing more intimidating on its 

face, however worded, than to receive a letter from someone called 

the acting assistant director requesting an opportunity to discuss 

your testimony. I might decide, if I were a Federal employee, 

maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. 

I indicated to staff that I wanted the officers to know that I was 

concerned, and I said to them that this Committee would do nothing to put these officers at risk because we had subpoenaed them. 

They are not being subpoenaed because of wrongdoing; they are 

being subpoenaed to offer information that we thought only they 

had. 

I then wrote a letter, which has not yet been answered, to Secretary Chertoff, indicating to them how concerned and even 

shocked I was that Federal employees, who were not a part of the 

Administration but were line employees, were being asked to submit their own testimony or to discuss it before coming to appear 

before a committee and indicating that, in my view, this kind of 

communication has a chilling effect and therefore could prevent the 

Committee from receiving the candor and necessary information we 

must have. 

We, of course, are interested in the day-to-day routine, particularly today, in FPS officers because, as I indicated in my opening 

statement, we have had no hearing, not one, involving the FPS 

since they were absorbed several years ago into DHS, so we are a 

13

blank slate. Even though I have been on this Committee 17 years, 

we are a blank slate when it comes to knowing what the effect has 

been of this vital service on their core mission, now enlarged, to 

protect Federal employees. 

I offered in the letter, since, however inconceivable it is that officers with this experience would offer testimony that would in fact 

be of a sensitive nature or somehow disclose matters that were not 

intended to the public or could harm the public or the Federal Protective Service, I indicated that, in any case, we would welcome the 

presence in the audience of a lawyer from the Department of 

Homeland Security who might have, if he heard anything of this 

sort, quickly alert us. But you have to understand that they must 

have been talking to us, because we are asking questions, so the 

assumption has to be, therefore, not only that we would disclose, 

but that we, members of Congress, would ask questions or would 

allow testimony that would endanger members of the public, or 

that would be sensitive information that could undermine the FPS, 

or that was either privileged or restricted from disclosure by law. 

So it seemed to me to be a reflection on Congress, perhaps as much 

as on the officers involved. 

I want to put this in the record because the first thing that occurred to me, because I have been a member of an administration 

and understand fully, and believe fully, that if you are testifying 

on behalf of an administration, that your testimony should go to 

the OMB and be cleared. I am fully familiar with OMB Circular 

A-19 and I am equally certain that that Circular from the Office 

of Management and Budget does not apply to civil servants in the 

ordinary course of business. 

So I had to say, therefore, in my letter to Secretary Chertoff, that 

this Committee will use all of its capability to ensure that there is 

no retaliatory action taken against these subpoenaed FPS officers. 

Ms. NORTON. So the first thing I am going to say to the officers 

is you do not have to offer testimony. You may offer testimony if 

you would like or you may simply open yourself to questions, as 

you see fit. What is your pleasure? Please do not feel that it is necessary to speak up before we ask questions. Would you prefer me 

to begin with questions? I would prefer it that way, but if you 

would prefer otherwise, then I would defer to you. 

Mr. NOWAK. Madam Chairwoman, I would prefer whatever you 

request. We will go ahead and go with that. 

TESTIMONY OF INSPECTOR GENERAL MICHAEL J. BROWN, 

FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON; 

INSPECTOR STERLING PROCTOR, JR., FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE, NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION; CORPORAL 

STANLEY NOWAK, FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE, KANSAS 

CITY, MISSOURI; AND OFFICER JIM WARD, FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK 

Ms. NORTON. In your case, officers, we subpoenaed you for information. I can’t believe that any of you have had to prepare testimony, particularly not knowing much about what we were interested in at some of the levels I discussed in my opening testimony. 

So if you do not feel offended, I would as soon begin with questions 

and ask, in these first questions, any of you to answer. 

14

Give me some examples of crimes, criminal acts, or events that 

you, as peace officers, typically investigate or are called to respond 

to. 

Mr. BROWN. Madam, Inspector Brown from Seattle, Washington. 

In our area, the most common call is someone attempting to bring 

a weapon into a Federal facility, be it a Social Security office where 

the guard checks bags on a random basis or someone who is detected trying to bring it through the magnetometer on the way to 

the Veterans Administration in the major Federal building. Followed by that would be disturbances at Federal offices, again, Social Security offices typically the largest generation of those complaints; followed by suspicious circumstances and activities. We 

have security guards at many of our facilities, and when they see 

something that is unusual, we try to get them to call us so that, 

as police officers, we can come and resolve the situation and determine whether it is suspicious activity, whether it is illegal, or 

whether it is just a citizen taking an art class, making sketches of 

a Federal building. 

Ms. NORTON. Do the other officers have any experience they 

would like to offer in answer to that question? 

Mr. WARD. We have the same in New York City. Another initiative we have in New York City is that we have initiated an operation we dubbed Operation Stinking Badges. Persons who enter the 

Federal buildings in Lower Manhattan go through a screening 

process by the security guards, and during that screening process 

we frequently detect, identify, arrest, and prosecute persons who 

are in possession and using fraudulent law enforcement credentials, badges, parking placards, law enforcement style uniforms and 

equipment. They use these items sometimes to unlawfully gain 

entry to the building posing as law enforcement officers or just 

carry these on their person and use it for other means. There is 

an investigation going on at this time for Operation Stinking 

Badges that continues and has been very successful in working 

with the NYPD, their Police Impersonation Unit and with our 

Threat Management Branch, in stopping these persons from unlawfully our Federal facilities. 

Ms. NORTON. All of us, of course, when you speak particularly of 

weapons, are still, frankly, in shock about what has just happened 

in Virginia, just across the line. None of us take lightly the notion 

that people come in, even though obviously most of them may have 

forgotten. Who could assume that after what we have just experienced? False IDs, that is bothersome. That is very bothersome. 

Would you make us understand? I think the general public 

doesn’t understand the difference, often, between a ‘‘peace officer’’ 

and a contract officer in Federal buildings, because we have a mix 

of officers, and should have a mix of officers in Federal buildings. 

Gentlemen, are you not the full equivalent of a police officer, for 

example, for Federal facilities of the kind we would have in the 

District of Columbia, for example? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Yes. 

Mr. BROWN. Yes. 

Mr. NOWAK. Yes. 

Mr. WARD. Yes. 

15

Ms. NORTON. Now, what is the difference between you as a peace 

officer and other officers that also have duties, protective duties, in 

Federal buildings? 

Mr. BROWN. Madam, as inspectors, the first is our training. We 

attend the same police training course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center as do the members of the Secret Service Uniformed Division and the members of the Capitol Police. When we 

get back to our station, we have a field training officer program 

that lasts approximately eight more weeks, where we learn the 

trade craft of working with the people in our particular area, learn 

where our facilities are, and all the things we have to do. And we 

have the full authority to enforce Federal law, including misdemeanor building rule violations or conduct felony investigations 

and refer them to the U.S. attorney for prosecution. 

Contract security officers, on the other hand, have the same 

power as any citizen on the street in most States. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean the 

same ability that I have on the streets? 

Mr. BROWN. Yes, to make a citizen’s arrest. That is the only authority they would have. They can detain people at our request, 

and frequently do, but that is for a limited duration. 

Ms. NORTON. Do they have guns to do that? 

Mr. BROWN. They have guns and handcuffs and radios—depending on the terms of the contract and the facility, and their training 

is about one week given by the contractor and about 16 hours given 

by the Federal Protective Service, and then marksmanship training 

of another week. 

Ms. NORTON. So what I have been calling the other fashioned 

word ‘‘peace officers,’’ they are not. 

Mr. BROWN. No, madam. 

Ms. NORTON. Because while they have guns, they lack most of 

the authority of a Federal Protective Service officer. 

Mr. PROCTOR. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. They are not the functional equivalent of a police 

officer in a local jurisdiction. 

Mr. PROCTOR. No. 

Ms. NORTON. And they have one week’s worth of training, perhaps. 

Mr. WARD. They primarily observe and report. 

Ms. NORTON. Say that again? 

Mr. WARD. They primarily observe and report, and then an FPO 

would be the enforcement. 

Mr. PROCTOR. Right. They do no investigations of that sort, merely just access control. 

Ms. NORTON. I want to ask one more question before I go to Mr. 

Graves, because I am just simply trying to set up what we have 

here. 

We are told that there will be 50 cities—we don’t know what 

they are—that will no longer have any peace offices, that is to say, 

men and women like you, people who not only carry guns, but who 

have total police authority. In such a city, with nobody with full police authority, how do you contemplate that those officers will respond to crimes in local cities, in local jurisdictions? What would 

be the difference between the way whoever is left there operates 

16

now and the way you operate? I would like you to evaluate what 

the security and crime protection situation would look like in a city 

where there were Federal buildings where the Federal Protective 

Service once had jurisdiction but now find that there are no FPS 

officers. 

Mr. BROWN. One of the beats I had when I first started with the 

Federal Protective Service included a large area of four counties in 

Western Washington. We have a Federal building in Port Angeles, 

which is up on the tip of Puget Sound, about an hour and a half 

from Seattle, where I was based. And when incidents happened 

there, the contract security guard called our megacenter, who referred it to the Port Angeles Police, who responded. But we had a 

good working relationship with them and we helped them out when 

we could, and they were happy to respond for those calls. But calls 

of suspicious activity around the building, where it didn’t involve 

a criminal threat or an indication of a criminal threat, he called us, 

and sometimes it was that day, sometimes it was the next week before one of us was able to get out there. That, with a reduced presence, is going to happen in more cities. 

Ms. NORTON. Why did it take you that long to get out there? 

Mr. BROWN. It depended on what else we had going on, how 

many cases we had, how many people we had available and, again, 

the significance of the call. If it was recurring activity, where we 

had identification on the individual, we would go out there that 

night and stay until we finished it. If it was merely an indication 

of someone parked across the street or something like that, we 

would typically talk to the local detectives and then we would come 

out and follow up with them later. 

Ms. NORTON. So if you are not there at all, what happens in a 

situation like that? For any of you, actually. What happens now if 

even if you, who apparently didn’t have the manpower to come out 

for every call? If you are not there, there must be somebody there, 

and we will find out exactly who. Who do you think will be there? 

Mr. WARD. Local law enforcement. 

Mr. NOWAK. In Kansas City, for instance—I don’t know how the 

other cities are, but during the summertime the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department goes into what they call blackout. That is 

where all officers are already out on calls—these are local officers—

and if they have a call to a Federal facility, it will just have to be 

stacked up and wait for when an officer becomes free. That could 

be three, four hours, or the next day. And a lot of times, when I 

have been dispatched to distant facilities within our region, we always beat the local police in, even if they were 20 miles away. If 

our travel time was 20 miles, we generally always beat the local 

police into that facility, IRS office or Social Security office. We generally beat them in. 

Mr. WARD. I have a specific example from last week. Being from 

New York City, the largest police department in the Country, we 

responded to a call that came in through our megacenter of a disturbance in the Federal building at 26 Federal Plaza. Myself and 

my fellow officers responded to this call. It was a disturbance. It 

was actually two disturbances going on simultaneously. We were 

able to resolve both instances. It was an altercation between CIS 

clerk and a person seeking some services from that agency. 

17

Forty-five minutes later I was back out on my patrol, having left 

that call 45 minutes earlier, and I was approached by an NYPD 

sergeant, and he said I received a call at this location inside 26 

Federal Plaza of a disturbance, can you please go in the building 

and respond there and telephone me back at the desk at the local 

precinct house and let me know what the disposition is? So, once 

again, we responded. It was the same identical location. Spoke to 

the complainants at that location; they said, yes, they had placed 

a call simultaneously to the megacenter and to 911. So what happened was, when the call came to FPS, we responded immediately. 

When the call went to 911, NYPD, they responded up to an hour 

later. 

So here is the largest police department in America, and they 

can’t even get to the calls in a prompt, timely manner. That is one 

specific incident. It happens routinely at 26 Federal Plaza in the 

Lower Manhattan area. FPS gets there a long time before the 

locals get there. And the locals are just tied up, it is nothing with 

them. There are a lot of things that go on in the Lower Manhattan 

area that keeps the local NYPD pretty tied up with what they are 

doing, and they already know that we are there in these Federal 

buildings providing police services. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, in fairness, we don’t know that New York 

would be one of the areas. In fact, we don’t know what they would 

be. We do know this, that if a call comes from a neighborhood and 

it comes from a Federal building, it better stack up the Federal 

call, as opposed to not responding to the taxpayers in their own 

local community. 

Mr. Proctor, finally, you are in the National Capital Region. 

That, of course, is not just the District of Columbia. They probably 

will have police here. In fact, we have more police here because 

there are other kinds of Federal police here. But I tell you that half 

the Federal presence is located in the suburbs, in what might be 

called the counties or smaller communities. So, Mr. Proctor, would 

you answer that question for your jurisdiction? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Yes. I am located here in the National Capital Region, but I cover Prince George’s County, mainly the Suitland Federal Center, which is an exclusive jurisdiction. We get various calls, 

suspicious activity——

Ms. NORTON. Now, that is in Prince George’s County. What is the 

town? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Suitland. 

Ms. NORTON. The town is Suitland. 

Mr. PROCTOR. Suitland, Maryland. 

Ms. NORTON. And the police are Suitland police or Prince 

George’s police? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Well, on Suitland Federal Center it is exclusive jurisdiction, so the only police is FPS. 

Ms. NORTON. If in fact there were local law enforcement to rely 

upon——

Mr. PROCTOR. It would be Prince George’s County. Prime example, we got a call maybe about a month ago for suspicious activity—like Inspector Brown was saying, we get that quite a bit too—

where individuals are walking around the Suitland area because 

the Suitland Federal Center is going through a new makeover; we 

18

have a new census building out there. And this particular individual was stopped by Prince George’s County Police and they 

called FPS and we had to come over there and investigate the incident, and the guy was taking pictures of the Federal building, 

which is not really a crime, but it just raised our suspicion on to 

why an individual would like to take pictures of the Federal building. So what we try to do is make sure they are not taking pictures 

of any entry points or exit points of the Federal facility, and what 

we do is we look through the camera to make sure they don’t have 

any pictures of your entry points, where the guards are located, so 

that in case, if they are some type of terrorist activity, we can try 

to prevent it by confiscating the camera, if need be. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Proctor. 

Before I go to Mr. Graves, I do want to say I am a member of 

the Homeland Security Committee. What this officer said about 

suspicious activity is exactly what we are about. We don’t want the 

bomb to go off. We want to err on the side of seeing whether this 

citizen—and, remember, you have every right to have a camera—

seeing whether this citizen is a suspicious person or not. 

Now, I can tell you one thing. It reminds me reading the paper. 

Prince George’s has had a spurt in crime, and a terrible spurt in 

crime, and I can say, I think without fear of contradiction—Mr. 

Wynn is not on this Committee—that there is a very fat chance in 

you know where that any priority could possibly be given to the 

Suitland facility, a very important Federal facility. 

Mr. Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I am going to be a little parochial, if that is all right, and specifically talk about Kansas City, because that is obviously where I represent and very important to me, and I can kind of translate that 

into what is going to happen around the Country. So my question 

is to Mr. Nowak. 

Are we staffed adequately now, in the Kansas City area, to cover 

all the things that you have to cover? And what is going to happen, 

under this new proposal, to us in Kansas City if you get cut 15 

slots, which I think is the proposal right now, which will take you 

down to 43 individuals? 

Mr. NOWAK. Sir, we are not adequately staffed. We haven’t been 

for years. And if they remove the police officers, all you will have 

is the contract guards, and guards, on the most part, are pretty 

good, but there are problems with them: the employees don’t respect them; people coming in off the street for service and visitors 

don’t respect them, they know they are just guards; and if they are 

asked to do something, the only time the employees will listen to 

the guards is if they know we back them up, and without us there, 

there is no backup for them. And local police will not come into a 

Federal building to enact any or protect the employees there unless 

they are called in, but if we are there they won’t come over unless 

we are there. If we are moved after whatever date, they still are 

kind of hesitant to come into the Federal facility because of prior 

problems they had on Federal property years ago. 

Mr. GRAVES. Are you concerned for the safety of the folks working in those buildings? 

Mr. NOWAK. Very much so. 

19

Mr. GRAVES. And that will obviously just increase if this is implemented, that concern? 

Mr. NOWAK. Yes, very much so. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Graves. 

Mr. Bishop? 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for holding this hearing. 

I represent New York 1, which is the eastern half of Long Island, 

so first to Officer Ward. I understand that the proposed reduction 

in Federal Protective Service people for Federal Region 2, which includes New York, is 45 percent; for New England it is 50 percent; 

for Region 4—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky—it is only 15 

percent. As a professional law enforcement officer, can you tell me 

by what logic does a reasonable, well-intentioned person think that 

it is okay to cut law enforcement presence in a region like New 

York, which includes New York City, obviously, by 45 percent? 

Mr. WARD. I don’t understand the logic myself, so I am unable 

to explain it. But if you do that, then you are going to place these 

Federal buildings at serious risk and there is going to be some serious situation that is going to occur in the future because, as we all 

know, terrorists will attack again; there will be another attack. 

And if you peel away that layer of security that you currently have 

in place, and if you don’t increase that layer of security and add 

additional police officers, the risk is just going to be even greater. 

Mr. BISHOP. Congressman Graves just asked if the security presence in Kansas City was appropriate at this time. Would you consider the current staffing in New York to be appropriate or is it 

light? 

Mr. WARD. It is light. Another example is Plumb Island. We used 

to have——

Mr. BISHOP. I wanted to come to Plumb Island in a second. Let 

me do that. 

Mr. WARD. Okay. 

Mr. BISHOP. Plumb Island is just that, an island, and it has a 

very sensitive Federal facility on it, and my understanding is that 

there are now no Federal Protective Service personnel on the island, and that the Memorandum of Understanding that the Chairwoman referred to earlier in her statement, vests law enforcement 

authority on a local police officer which, best case, is a 45 minute 

boat ride away. So I would ask all of you, as professional law enforcement officers, do any of you consider that to be an appropriate 

arrangement for any kind of facility, but particularly one that studies very sensitive and very dangerous diseases? 

Mr. WARD. Absolutely not. There should be an FPS presence on 

that island 24/7. We had one police officer there and there is a contract security guard for us that does not have law enforcement authority, but we do need an FPS presence on Plumb Island 24/7 

given the sensitive nature and the sensitive diseases that are 

there. 

Mr. BISHOP. One last question. It is my understanding, and correct me if I am wrong, please, that the MOU with the local police 

force vests authority in that police force to execute arrests only if 

20

the police force has been deputized. Is that your understanding as 

well? 

Mr. WARD. I am not sure an MOU exists. I haven’t seen a copy 

of it, so——

Mr. BISHOP. One does exist. After great difficulty, we have obtained a copy. One does exist. 

Mr. WARD. If the island was exclusive jurisdiction, then somebody would have to be deputized with Federal law enforcement 

powers in order to execute any arrests on that island. 

Mr. BISHOP. And if that local law enforcement entity has not 

been deputized and there is no Federal Protective Service currently 

on the island, is it reasonable to assume that there is, therefore, 

no local or even Federal authority that has the authority to execute 

arrests? 

Mr. WARD. That is correct. And not to disparage that police department, but that is a very small police department. 

Mr. BISHOP. It’s a first rate police department, but you are right, 

very small. 

Mr. WARD. And they have their community they have to protect, 

and for them to get the extra burden of having to worry about 

Plumb Island, which should be the responsibility of the Federal 

Government, just places that additional burden on a small town police department that shouldn’t have to worry about that. 

Mr. BISHOP. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you very much for your 

testimony and thank you for what you do to protect our buildings. 

Thank you. 

Mr. WARD. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Bishop. 

Who else on this side? Mr. Reichert. 

Mr. REICHERT. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

First of all, thank you for your service. Mr. Brown, good to see 

you. I was the sheriff in Seattle before I came to Congress; have 

done 33 years of cop experience with the sheriff’s office, so I kind 

of miss the badge and the gun and the uniform. You guys look good 

and you do good work. How were you selected to be subpoenaed 

today? How did the four of you, out of 1200 and some employees, 

get subpoenaed? 

Mr. WARD. I don’t really know, sir. 

Mr. REICHERT. You just ended up with a subpoena in your mailbox? 

Mr. WARD. Yes. 

Mr. NOWAK. Kind of volunteered. 

Mr. REICHERT. Volunteered. Okay. Do you have any fear of retaliation testifying today, about your job? 

Mr. WARD. Do not. 

Mr. NOWAK. Well, there is always that thought in the back of 

your mind. 

Mr. REICHERT. Mr. Brown? 

Mr. BROWN. No problem, sir. I was subpoenaed because a Committee staffer called me. I think somebody had provided the Committee with some of my work on staff modeling. 

Mr. REICHERT. You know, let’s just get down to the bottom line 

and talk some cops talk. You have a job to do on that Federal property in those Federal buildings, and the relationship that you have 

21

with the Seattle Police Department in Mr. Brown’s case, with the 

King County Sheriff’s Office, I know personally is exemplary. Do 

you know anything different, Mr. Brown? 

Mr. BROWN. No. We work very closely with Seattle and King 

County, as well as the other surrounding police departments where 

there are Federal facilities. 

Mr. REICHERT. And the three of you all experience the same partnership with the local police departments? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Yes. 

Mr. REICHERT. How many positions in Seattle are we talking 

about losing? 

Mr. BROWN. They haven’t announced how many they are losing. 

We currently have 5 police officers and four inspectors, so with 9 

now, if the police officers are going, it would be 5 or 6. 

Mr. REICHERT. What is the contingent of the private security 

that you have talked about? You already have some contingent 

there that you are working with in all four areas, I assume. 

Mr. BROWN. Yes. In the Seattle area we have got—I am not sure 

of the number of guards because some are part-time and some fulltime, but we have over 60 guard posts, including 24-hour guard 

posts at the major Federal facilities and guard posts at Social Security and other service level offices. 

Mr. REICHERT. And is it the purpose of those positions to free you 

up to respond to criminal calls and calls for help? 

Mr. BROWN. It is for that and so that we can engage in proactive 

patrols. An example, a Federal facility that has U.S. Court of Appeals, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a child care center is next to Freeway Park in Seattle, and when the children come 

out we go up there and conduct patrols of the areas around the outside of the building. Last week, the officer that went up there 

found one individual who was smoking marijuana. Not a particularly big problem. He also happened to be a level 3 sex offender 

after we contacted and checked him. Two other individuals on the 

other side there climbed over a wall where the sign says you can’t 

climb over, climbed back. Unusual. The officer went over there, 

asked them to come up on him, one dropped a baggy; it had eventually eight balloons of heroin and some needles in it. So those are 

the kinds of things that we find outside facilities and we can stop 

from happening, be it terrorist or criminal. 

Mr. REICHERT. So if we eliminate these commission positions, is 

it your understanding that there will be additional security guards 

hired, then, to fulfill some duties, or are you going to maintain the 

same security personnel and reduce your commission ranks? 

Mr. WARD. If they can’t afford police officers, how are they going 

to afford the security guards? If the whole purpose is to save money 

by eliminating positions, you are not going to be able to go back 

and have extra money to go out and buy security guards. In some 

cases security guards are more money than police officers. 

Mr. REICHERT. Yes. 

Mr. BROWN. I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that in 

the Seattle area——

Mr. REICHERT. So we are just going to have a reduction in security, as far as you know. 

22

Mr. BROWN. We are going to take the risk of not doing any 

proactive patrol between responses to calls. Instead of it being two 

or three people working out on proactive patrol, be it an inspector 

or police officer responding, but myself, as an inspector, I may be 

conducting a security review or an assessment of a facility or a security meeting with the committee that is in charge of security for 

that facility, and I am taking a call from that meeting to respond 

to an incident, as opposed to it being somebody on patrol and me 

moving as a backup officer. 

Mr. REICHERT. Well, I again just want to say thank you for your 

service to our communities and keep up the good work. I know how 

important it is to have you where you are and to have the numbers 

of people that you need to do your job correctly. The sheriff’s office 

was always understaffed too, and it is always a struggle for law enforcement to come up with the right numbers to do the job they 

need to do to protect the public, and I admire each and every one 

of you for what you do. Thank you. 

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. REICHERT. I yield back, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Arcuri? 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Gentlemen, thank you for being here and, more importantly, for 

the work that you do. I am also from New York, and until very recently I was a DA, so although a local prosecutor, I worked very, 

very closely with many Federal agencies, and I can tell you that 

the benefit that we received as a local agency from being able to 

work with Federal agencies, regardless of what it was, whether it 

was the FBI or one of the other agencies, was just dramatically 

helpful to us. 

My concern is this. I think one of the things that people fail to 

see is that crime is cyclical, and if today we are doing our job in 

terms of cutting back on crime and we don’t continue that effort, 

tomorrow crime is just going to be on the rise again, that it is a 

constant vigilant job that we have to do. Obviously, my concern is 

when we cut agencies, Federal agencies such as yours, the void is 

going to have to be filled somewhere, and crime is going to rise. 

And if that void is filled, obviously, by local law enforcement, it is 

going to hurt because that is going to be local police officers off the 

street. 

I think, more importantly, however, is the role that you play in 

terms of working with local law enforcement. If you could, could 

you tell me a little bit about some of the different interactions that 

you have had with local law enforcement agencies in your time? 

Have you had a great deal of cooperation with local agencies? 

Mr. NOWAK. When we approach suspicious people on our properties, we contact our megacenter and we have to make a direct 

call to the Kansas City Police Department, and we do a lot of warrant arrests, so we just take a ride over practically across the 

street, up the stairs to the jail, and we book them over there, either 

at the city jail, the county jail, or we take them to another county. 

So we do a lot of interaction with the local police department on 

their warrant arrests. 

Mr. ARCURI. Does your agency do any investigatory work on the 

inspectors? Inspector, do you do any investigatory work? 

23

Mr. BROWN. Yes. Typically, crimes against property, simple assaults and those kinds of things, and the initial investigation on almost anything. But one of our special agents would typically follow 

up and take over the investigation on the more serious ones, although sometimes we will do long-term ones. I participated on an 

identity theft case and that was a formal prosecution. 

Mr. ARCURI. And did you work with local prosecutors, local law 

enforcement during the prosecution of the case? 

Mr. BROWN. Yes. This case, the King County Sheriff’s Department had a case on the same individual. Two of the agencies on 

the east side of the lake did. She had shown us fraudulent ID when 

we arrested her for possession of marijuana at a Social Security Office, which is how we got involved, and ultimately, between the 

King County prosecutor and the U.S. attorney’s office, our case 

gave her a five year additive on what she pled to. 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you. 

Yes, Mr. Nowak? 

Mr. NOWAK. We have been involved also on two drug undercover 

operations with local police departments involving two different 

government agencies. We planted a young officer agent in there for 

a year or so and were able to bust employees within the agency 

that were selling or dealing in drugs. So we worked with the local 

police departments and other Federal agencies to take care of that 

problem. 

Mr. ARCURI. Officer Ward, do you know if the agency in New 

York works with the NYPD on intelligence—the intelligence group 

that they have in New York City? Are you a part of that? 

Mr. WARD. We work very closely with them. I mentioned Operation Stinking Badges earlier. They worked with the local prosecutors in probably all five burroughs on that effort. We also work 

with them on what we call the Fugitive Apprehensions Statistical 

Tracking Program, where we apprehend fugitives who enter into 

Federal buildings that are applying for benefits and are identified 

that they have an outstanding warrant in an outside jurisdiction. 

We will deal with those persons as well. And frequently, with 

NYPD, we are provided with training from their Counterterrorism 

Division, different courses that are available to us. We also provide 

training to them and with the United States Park Police, conduct 

training that helps us in our counterterrorism effort and protecting 

Federal facilities in New York City. 

Mr. ARCURI. And do all of you share intelligence with local law 

enforcement agencies as you develop it? 

Mr. WARD. We have daily bulletins that they provide to us, suspects, murders, stuff like that. We put BOLOs out; we contact 

them. 

Mr. BROWN. We participate in the local regional working groups. 

We have had our special agents—and still do in many locations 

throughout the Nation—that are on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task 

Forces with the local jurisdictions and there is a lot of cross-information back and forth at the intelligence level and then the common criminal intelligence level, who is doing what. We will arrest 

somebody that has been frequently arrested by another agency and 

we will typically let them know that we picked that person up and 

where we did. 

24

Mr. PROCTOR. In the National Capital Region, primarily our investigators are the ones that are working in the task forces and 

stuff like that. We rarely use a uniformed officer, such as they use 

out in Kansas City, to do plain clothes work of that sort. 

Mr. ARCURI. Inspector Proctor, do they do undercover work? Do 

your people do undercover work ever? 

Mr. PROCTOR. We have someone. I don’t know if we have any investigators on it now, but in the past I know on several task forces 

we have deployed investigators. 

Mr. ARCURI. I just want to say thank you again. I think it is so 

important that we not cut money to law enforcement, whether it 

is on the Federal or local level, because the job that you do obviously is critical to keeping all of us safe and, equally important, 

trickles down to local law enforcement as well. So I thank you very 

much for what you do. I appreciate it. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Arcuri. 

Congresswoman Fallin, I know you are from Oklahoma. Perhaps 

you have some questions? 

Ms. FALLIN. Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In fact, tomorrow will be our twelfth anniversary date of the Oklahoma City 

Murrah Building that was bombed, and I had been in office 101 

days, Mr. Chairman, when that occurred, and I still remember that 

day very vividly because the governor and I were brand new on the 

job, just a couple of months, and security whisked us away to a 

bomb shelter and our command control center with all of our State 

agencies, and we stayed there from 9 in the morning, when it happened, until 3 in the afternoon, approximately, until we could figure out who was attacking our Federal building in Oklahoma City. 

I must say that we learned many great lessons about security 

and about the need for law enforcement to work together and to 

communicate together and to have good emergency procedures in 

place to be prepared for any type of catastrophe that would happen 

like that, and sometimes you learn those lessons when they happen. So I think the Nation has made a great effort to secure our 

Federal buildings and make sure that we are just secured as a Nation. 

I am listening to this discussion and this is new to me. I am one 

of the new members, guys, so I am listening with interest. Of 

course, when Timothy McVeigh came up to our building, Mr. Chairman, he drove up in a U-Haul truck and just parked, never even 

came inside the building. I have seen the videotape when he drove 

up and some of the footage around that and, of course, some of the 

police reports, so he never even made it into the building for an officer to be able to see at that time. 

I had a couple of questions for you. Let me just say, first of all, 

thank you for what you do. I know it is a hard job, and we appreciate what you do to take care of our buildings and to make sure 

that they are secure, and our other structures. 

I was reading in this report about the FPS proposal to realign 

the law enforcement personnel from police officers to inspectors, 

and I know we have got a combination of both sitting here, and the 

differences and roles between a police officer and an inspector. So 

I don’t want to put anybody on the spot, per se, but in your professional opinion, is it satisfactory to mix the roles, to realign the law 

25

enforcement roles between the police officers and the inspectors? 

Will we still receive the same qualify of law enforcement? 

Mr. BROWN. What we do as inspectors is both the security side 

and the police officer side, so it is an integrated effort. We can look 

at a facility we are assigned to; we can see the security weakness 

or the opportunity that a criminal or a terrorist has to attack that, 

and as police officers we can actually resolve that in how we respond to crimes, and then it feeds back into the security development process. In most larger cities we have enough facilities and 

enough work for a policeman as well, whose job is primarily to patrol and respond, certainly for after-hours. I would think that with 

the proposed administration budget of 950 people, we would be 

hard pressed to have 24 hour coverage in a single city when that 

is implemented. I think we are down to 7 or 8 now. At one time 

it was as high as 15. Staffing studies have recommended between 

18 and 23 cities should have that round-the-clock coverage. 

So that is the difference between what we do. We all enforce the 

law, inspectors do a little bit more, and there is very definitely a 

role for our straight police officers as well. 

Ms. FALLIN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PROCTOR. Well, see, that is where the problem comes in. The 

problem comes in because the inspector, as well as patrolling, you 

have so many other duties: your BSCs, which is your building security committee meetings; your awareness programs, where you go 

out to the Federal facilities and you hold programs regarding thefts 

in the building, crime in the area, which we call our crime awareness; then some inspectors have been tasked as being the COTR, 

which is the contracting officers’ technical representative, for a particular contract, guard contract. So with the inspector wearing so 

many hats, as well as being assigned to patrol, that is why we need 

the O83 police officer, because we can’t do it all. So we need the 

O83 police officer. We need the ones that are primarily actively patrolling. 

Ms. FALLIN. So are you saying that you think the realignment 

may not be the best policy? 

Mr. PROCTOR. No. I truly think downsizing will cause a great terrorist risk. I believe that we need to build up. I have been a part 

of FPS since 1996. I was part of the hiring right after the Murrah 

bombing, and we have built our numbers up, but now the numbers 

have declined, and it is just mind-boggling. 

Ms. FALLIN. Can I ask you is there an issue with the concept of 

and the use of contract employees over the policy, or the policy, I 

should say, to reduce the FPS oversight and the duties? Do you feel 

like you work well with contract employees? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Well, the contract employees—not to diminish 

their role—they are our eyes and ears while we are out doing our 

other duties. I am not saying that there is no need for them, because I think there is a need for them, but they just don’t have the 

training that we get, and to cut us would be just terrible. 

Ms. FALLIN. And do you have good working relationships with 

local State and Federal agencies? Do you really try to marry that 

together to where you communicate between each other? 

Mr. PROCTOR. Yes. 

26

Ms. FALLIN. That is one of the lessons we learned in Oklahoma 

City, is that we have to have a good line of communication between 

all the different agencies. 

Mr. PROCTOR. As far as I know, we have a very good working relationship with the locals. 

Ms. FALLIN. Good. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Fallin. 

The Chairman may well have questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. 

I particularly appreciate and welcome the testimony, in her own 

words and her own experience, of Congresswoman Fallin, who, as 

lieutenant governor, lived through the experience with the Murrah 

Building, and it is just by coincidence that we are having the hearing on the same day. But her experience in this tragedy I think can 

be very instructive for us. She has already pointed out several valuable lessons, and we thank you very much for your contribution. 

Thank you very much for your willingness to testify. I know that 

under these circumstances you may do so with a little bit of trepidation and with some distress, but as I have learned in the oversight investigative work over the years, it is our responsibility to 

protect witnesses against any retribution, and we do not anticipate 

that there will be any. 

In 2005, the former director of the Federal Protective Service 

commissioned a workload survey to determine the appropriate 

staffing levels. What was the purpose of that activity? Were you engaged in that study? Whoever wishes to answer. 

Mr. BROWN. I was engaged in that study; I am the only one of 

the panel who was. It was a study with representatives from all 

11 regions and all the disciplines of the Federal Protective Service. 

It included two deputy region directors, several district commanders, several area commanders, the first-line of supervision, 

and three inspectors. We looked at what the FPS required to do its 

job, as our mission was delineated then, in terms of how many inspectors and how many police officers, and the team recommended 

a total of about 2,730, of which——

Mr. OBERSTAR. That was system-wide you were looking at. Did 

you do facility-by-facility assessment to determine appropriate 

staffing levels? 

Mr. BROWN. We allocated the staffing levels based on the four 

levels of the Department of Justice vulnerability study, so obviously considerably more for the Level 4, considerably less for the 

Level 1, about 9 percent of the Level 4 for the Level 1; and then 

we looked at where a facility was located and looked at about 70 

communities where we established they should have some type of 

daily proactive patrol based on the number of employees, the density of the facilities and the security level there, and 23 cities that 

should have 24 hour/7 day patrol. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. So you did a very thorough review; facility-by-facility, level of activity, level of security requirement, number of 

Federal employees in the facility. 

Mr. BROWN. Yes. We didn’t reach down to the individual facility. 

Our goal was to provide the field supervisors enough people to handle the average number of facilities in their area based on its nuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:13 Oct 23, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34797 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
27

merical security level and its location, and then they would have 

the flexibility, based on individual threat assessments and threat 

for their particular area, to move those people around. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Here we have a professionally undertaken, conducted and completed, review of staffing level needed. What resulted from the effort? To whom was your report submitted? 

Mr. BROWN. Our report was submitted to the deputy director of 

FPS at the time, Mr. Durette, and it was submitted as a draft. We 

started in——

Mr. OBERSTAR. And then where did it go from the deputy director? 

Mr. BROWN. I briefed Mr. Durette on it after he became the acting director and, as a result of that, I developed some other models 

with——

Mr. OBERSTAR. Did he send it on up to ICE? 

Mr. BROWN. I don’t know. The other model I developed I did brief 

the Assistant Secretary on. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You don’t know where it went from there, then. 

Mr. BROWN. I am not sure where this particular model went, no, 

sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And, in the end, did the Department of Homeland 

Security, in establishing staffing levels, take into account this 

study and did they make the adjustments that your study recommended? 

Mr. BROWN. Not as far as I know, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Did your study recommend the level of FPS personnel as well as any contract personnel? 

Mr. BROWN. We didn’t establish contract levels; we recommended 

1700 and some uniformed FPS inspectors and officers, and then the 

special agents, support people and supervision that would go with 

that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. At the outset of the hearing today, I quoted from 

the ICE report, which was a very chilling—to me, shocking—assessment—an honest assessment, it seems to me—of what would 

happen, and yet the Department has gone ahead with stopping levels and with changes and with increases in contract personnel 

without taking into account those cautionary statements. What will 

be the risk, in your judgment, to Federal facilities of 50 not having 

security at all, and others being downgraded or FPS substituted 

with contract persons? What will be the result? 

Mr. WARD. It will place those Federal facilities at great risk of 

terrorist attack, crimes, and other things that may occur. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. In Ms. Fallin’s comment and accurate observation 

which I made in my opening statement, the McVeigh vehicle was 

parked on the street; he did not enter the property. But the lesson 

we learned from Murrah, the lesson we learned from the aviation 

security is that you push the perimeter ever further out, whether 

that perimeter is intelligence gathering from foreign or domestic 

sources, or surveillance cameras further out to detect and deter 

suspicious activity. If you don’t nave enough personnel, you can’t 

push that perimeter out far enough, is that correct? 

Mr. BROWN. That is correct. 

Mr. PROCTOR. That is correct, sir. 

28

Mr. OBERSTAR. What is the turnover level in your FPS personnel? 

Mr. BROWN. From the summer of 2002 until last year, the force 

was fairly stable. We brought on new people and they stayed. Because we had had so many leave before, we were authorized a 10 

percent retention allowance. As they encouraged people to leave, 

starting last summer, so that they could get the numbers down to 

the budget, they eventually removed that and I think the turnover 

rate is going even higher. Everybody sitting at this table took between a——

Mr. OBERSTAR. Did you lose retention pay? 

Mr. BROWN. Yes, we did, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. My experience over 44 years of public service in 

the Congress in one capacity or another is that the Federal Protective Service has been a very stable guard force; that those who sign 

up for duty and are in the career force enjoy their work, are extremely loyal to it, they stay with it. But as we learned in aviation 

security, turnover was immense out at Dulles Airport. They had a 

400 percent turnover rate with Argenbright. They also hired nonEnglish speaking, or at least non-English fluent guards, others who 

had not had background security checks, and some who were not 

even American citizens. And I have concerns about turning over 

protection of our Federal facilities to contract authority and falling 

back into the failure of aviation security. 

What training requirements for the private security guards compared to yours? I know you have answered this for a previous colleague, but I want you to say it again. 

Mr. BROWN. The FPS standard requires 40 hours of basic training and 40 of firearms training if they are going to be an armed 

guard——

Mr. OBERSTAR. Probably half of the security personnel. 

Mr. BROWN. It varies from State to State. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. From State to State? 

Mr. BROWN. For a private security guard not contracted by the 

Federal Protective Service. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. They don’t measure up to Federal standards? 

Mr. BROWN. There isn’t a Federal standard for licensing or certification of private security guards. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And they are protecting Federal property. 

Mr. BROWN. Those that protect Federal property that we hire 

through FPS, or I should say we contract through FPS, have a 

standard. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But some agencies have the authority to contract 

on their own. 

Mr. BROWN. That is correct, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And are their security guards subjected to FPS 

standards or to State standards? 

Mr. BROWN. They are subjected generally to State standards, not 

FPS standards. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And they are protecting Federal property and 

Federal personnel. 

Mr. BROWN. Yes, sir. So they don’t undergo the same rigorous 

background check that is part of our risk mitigation strategy with 

our——

29

Mr. OBERSTAR. And we have 15,000 of those in the protective 

service. 

Mr. BROWN. The 15,000 meet the standard. The 15,000 meet 

FPS’s standard; they receive the background check, they receive 

the training that is called for in our contract. But there are places 

where other agencies will hire or contract for guards, or will pay 

for them through the building owner, and those guards we don’t supervise and we don’t apply those measures to. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is there a situation where there is a Federal Government agency also contracts out and you have a mixed force 

within the building? 

Mr. BROWN. Twenty-four facilities on a delegation to the Passport Agency. The State Department, through the Passport Agency, 

hires their own security guard contractors and they don’t work for 

us, and they work inside the same building as we maintain——

Mr. OBERSTAR. So if an emergency occurs and a knife-wielding 

suspect, as Congressman Wu described earlier, gets into the facility, they would call FPS? 

Mr. BROWN. They would call FPS, and the terms of the delegation requires them to assist us. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Do they work 40 hours a week, the FPS-contracted personnel? 

Mr. BROWN. Some work more; some work less. That is up to the 

contractor and how he meets his requirements. We do generally 

prohibit the contract guard from working more than 12 hours in a 

row. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Twelve hours in a row. But in the non-FPS hired 

force, we have information that typically they do not work full 40 

hours, that their contracts do not include comparable benefits that 

you have in retirement and health, etc., in the Federal workforce. 

Mr. BROWN. I know that to be the case with two of my facilities 

where——

Mr. NOWAK. That is the same way it is in Kansas City, sir. 

Mr. PROCTOR. For the most part——

Mr. OBERSTAR. I didn’t mean for Inspector Brown to be answering everything, but all of you can respond to your own experience. 

Well, that sets up two standards, creates two standards of service to the public. I want to make it clear that the Federal Protective Service is there to protect not only the Federal employees, but 

those of the public who come to seek services of the Federal Government. They are also being protected. Keep that in mind. 

Do you have concerns that this contracting out is going to extend 

even further than it is today? Do you have inside information about 

what further plans are within the Department? 

Mr. WARD. No. And where would the money come from? If they 

are reducing paid Federal employees who are law enforcement officers to save money, they are not going to be able to spend more 

money on these contract personnel. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The argument that we have heard is, oh, well, 

there isn’t enough money to do this, but the OMB, the Office of 

Management and Budget, is the one that sets the level, and Federal Protective Service, I know from several years, has asked for 

an increase in the fee they charge the Government agencies, and 

OMB has not approved that fee increase. 

30

Mr. BROWN. We understand that to be correct, sir, and, again, 

that is increasing taxes on other agencies. Their money is to provide their services to the public. When we reach out and collect 

money back from them to pay for us, I think that is not what we 

wanted to do with the Department of Homeland Security being responsible for everything. The money should probably be appropriated to the Department, and we shouldn’t ask agencies to make 

decisions on spending their budget to support the public or to pay 

for security for their employees. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I appreciate your statement not only because it 

is a very thoughtful statement, but it is something I have long believed. We are just taking money out of one Government pocket to 

put it into another Government pocket, asking one Federal Government agency to support the activity of another Government agency 

which is supposedly rendering service, and now the agencies you 

serve are being called customers. I think that is wacky, frankly. 

They are not customers, you are in the business of public service. 

This is not the Post Office. They have gone to calling postal patrons 

customers. Well, if they want to do that, but the person coming to 

seek services from a Government agency is not a customer; it is a 

citizen of the United States and should be treated as a citizen, not 

as a customer who just blew in off the street. Excuse me. 

Mr. WARD. This was discussed on July 17th, 2002. In fact, before 

FPS moved into Homeland Security, the Senate Environment and 

Public Works Committee sent a letter to the Senate Government 

Affairs Committee and said that FPS should be funded directly and 

the money that is given to these other agencies should go directly 

to FPS through DHS or direct appropriations funding. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

Madam Chair, there are many other questions, some of which I 

think we will submit in writing to the panel. There are more factual affirmations that I would like to see, but I think we need to 

move on to the next panel. 

Ms. NORTON. Are there any more questions for these witnesses? 

I only have one more question, and I just want to apologize to 

Deputy Secretary Jackson, who has very kindly sat through this 

testimony. He and I work very closely together. We are going to get 

to him very shortly. There are things that we are simply trying to 

learn, frankly, about these activities and we are foregoing any 

number of these questions in order to try to get written answers. 

One thing I just have to understand because I want to be clear. 

There is something about making officers, both officers and inspectors is kind of neat. I am not a member who objects to efficiencies 

that do not have a negative impact on the underlying mission. 

If I could tell you where I am coming from, as someone who 

headed a Federal agency that was in deep trouble, one of the first 

things I did when I went to the EOC was to decide that we were 

going to settle cases. The great notion that you had to go through 

the Federal courts to do everything made didn’t make any sense. 

Lawyers understood that you settle cases, and the earlier you settled them the better. Because in my days as a student, I came out 

of the civil rights movement and knew all the civil rights leaders, 

they would say, look, Eleanor is going to settle cases right out from 

under us. Well, I found that at the EOC they weren’t getting any 

31

remedies because the cases got so old, and once we went into a 

very professional settlement mode, as opposed t simply haggling, 

the remedy rate went way up. 

So I am real open to greater efficiencies. I am even open to the 

notion that police officers can be inspectors, because I know good 

and well, here in the Capitol, the officers are doing security when 

yesterday, if you will forgive me, friends, they were cops. Today 

they are not only police officers, you know, we regard them as our 

security officers and a lot of what they are doing we are learning 

on the job. A lot of it doesn’t involve what you do or what the inspectors do, going around and, in fact, looking at various places to 

see what is happening, although, as you see them patrol, they 

clearly are doing precisely that. 

I need to know whether my impression is right that the inspectors will not be doing the kind of patrols that we learned might be 

necessary outside the building to keep the event from coming in or 

the kind of ordinary police responses that on the Homeland Security Committee we would regard as preventative of terrorism or 

preventative of crime. Will these inspectors, who obviously will be 

doing some form of double duty, continue to patrol the facility to 

keep it safe the way every staircase in the Capitol, every floor in 

the Capitol is patrolled by a Capitol Police officer? 

Mr. PROCTOR. No, ma’am. 

Mr. WARD. No. 

Ms. NORTON. Will there be any patrol? That is what I want to 

know. 

Mr. PROCTOR. Very little. Very little patrol, because of all the 

other duties that are required from the physical security side. 

Mr. WARD. In New York City we have the police officers, a large 

amount, patrolling around the Federal buildings basically in the 

Lower Manhattan area and the outer burroughs, and as a police 

officer conducting these patrols myself, I rarely, very rarely see an 

inspector on patrol. We have a very limited number of inspectors, 

we are understaffed in inspectors because we lost a few recently, 

and the workload is just every-increasing in our COTR responsibilities, as mentioned earlier, monitoring of the contract guards. All 

this places an additional burden on these inspectors, and they are 

only inspecting maybe 5 percent or less of their time conducting 

law enforcement patrol and response to calls. The burden is even 

on the canine officers who are doing the dual duty of inspector role. 

So here is a canine, an explosive detection dog that should be out 

patrolling the perimeter of our Federal facilities, sitting in an office 

while the canine inspector is conducting his administrative duties 

related to physical security of these buildings. 

Mr. BROWN. The goal, ma’am, of the inspector program is for the 

inspector to spend at least half of his time doing that. In Seattle, 

we have been fortunate enough to have enough people that we can 

spend half of our time doing law enforcement and patrol work and 

the other half with surveys and taking care of the security tasks. 

It is unusual, but that is because we have enough inspectors there. 

There should be more inspectors; there should be more police officers. 

Mr. NOWAK. In Kansas City, the inspectors aren’t even in uniform or police officer; they wear khaki pants and a polo shirt. 

32

Ms. NORTON. The inspectors are not peace officers, necessarily? 

Mr. NOWAK. They do not wear a uniform, they wear khaki pants 

and a polo shirt. 

Ms. NORTON. Why not at least let them wear a uniform? 

Mr. NOWAK. I don’t know. That is their uniform now. 

Mr. BROWN. That is not the case in our part of the Country. We 

are police officers and we wear a uniform. 

Mr. WARD. In New York City we only have two explosive detection dogs that are assigned to inspectors, and the only time I see 

those dogs around the perimeter is when it is—excuse the lack of 

a better term—time to walk the dog, and then go back up to the 

office and get their paperwork done. But other than that it is just 

when the dog needs a break is the only time the dog is outside any 

Federal facilities in New York. 

Mr. PROCTOR. The inspectors here in NCR wear uniforms and 

like Inspector Brown said——

Ms. NORTON. I don’t mind it if they are doing undercover work, 

but otherwise the uniform is a deterrent. That is all I am thinking 

about. To have fewer people, the more people they see look like 

cops, the more people respond as if they are not supposed to penetrate that. 

Gentlemen, I want to thank you for testimony of the kind we 

need in order to intelligently respond to what the agency is trying 

to do. 

Mr. Chairman, I am going to say something that apparently the 

Federal Government has never done that also came out of this 

hearing that I think we would like to perhaps just investigate with 

the agency, and that is that you can have security guards. And I, 

for one, understand why we have to have some people who are security guards and others who are peace officers, but apparently 

there are no standards, and it does seem to me, at least with respect to buildings that are either Federal buildings or buildings 

where there are Federal personnel, there would be some minimal 

standards. Now, those standards could be set by the local jurisdiction if they were high enough, but the notion that there would be 

no standards uniformly across the Federal workforce would put, it 

seems to me, this Committee at risk and has made it look like we 

didn’t care about our facilities and X, Y, or Z place who were operating with contract guards, perhaps, who were not up to the standard of some other place. That is something I want to look at separately. 

Above all, I want to thank each of you for coming here to Washington—Mr. Proctor, of course, was in the region—for offering us 

very important testimony. 

I ask that the next witness come forward and excuse these witnesses. 

Again, as he is coming forward, I want to apologize to Mr. Jackson. It is the way of hearings that there is no way to tell how long 

they will take and the Committee was particularly interested in 

hearing the perspective of the officer. Perhaps after hearing it, Mr. 

Jackson will be able to correct some of the impressions and help 

us better understand. 

Could I ask you, sir, if you would stand so that I can administer 

the oath, as we do to all witnesses? 

33

Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will be the truth, 

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 

Mr. JACKSON. I do. 

Ms. NORTON. Just briefly, Mr. Secretary, you and I have worked 

well together. We are working on very important project of this 

Committee together right now and have done so both in the last 

Congress and in this Congress very well. 

I don’t know if you were here when I expressed my concern about 

the fact that these officers had been asked to discuss their testimony ahead of time, even though they were not appearing in their 

professional capacity, and even though they were appearing under 

subpoena. The kind letter had no intimidating language in it from 

the agency; nevertheless, if you put yourself in the position of the 

line Federal employee, has to have an intimidating or at least 

chilling effect, and reflecting, it seems to me, on the Committee as 

well, since the notion was you wanted to make sure the security 

and information that should not be disclosed, as if members of Congress wouldn’t want to protect that as much as the agency. 

I don’t want to examine you about that; I have written to the secretary about that. I am only asking that in the future, particularly 

since the OMB Circular A-19 contemplates people who speak for 

the Administration, that if we are to ever call upon civil servants 

again, that they not receive such a letter. Let me assure you, because I am a longstanding member of a committee with jurisdiction 

over civil servants, normally we call the union. We didn’t think the 

union could tell us what we wanted to know here. We needed to 

know from somebody who, as it were, walked the beat. That is all 

we are after. 

Thank you very much, sir. I am ready to hear your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL P. JACKSON, 

DEPUTY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. JACKSON. Madam Chairwoman, thank you for having me 

here. I am grateful to be with Chairman Oberstar and Mr. Graves 

as well. I feel very much at home in this Committee. I have been 

welcomed here many times before and I am glad to be here to talk 

about this important topic. 

I would like to just start. I won’t try to take, Madam Chairman, 

the question that you ended with there into any great length, but 

I will tell you that I am extremely grateful and a tremendous admirer of the work done by FPS. Honestly, the men and women that 

do these jobs have a tremendously difficult challenge in many 

cases. They are dedicated. You don’t do these type of jobs for the 

money; you do it because you have a commitment and a passion 

to public service, and I respect and honor and am grateful for that 

commitment that I see in these gentlemen. 

I have to tell you, if there was a chill cast by any departmental 

action, I tried to throw a little heater on it this morning because 

I said to these guys before they came up, I said, thank you for 

being here, thank you for testifying; say whatever the heck is on 

your mind; tell them everything you know and whatever you think 

is the right thing to do; these people are here to help us make FPS 

a success, and I want you to be able to say that. 

34

So I will tell you that from the Department’s highest levels we 

are happy to have these people testifying. We are happy to do that 

again in the future with you. I get my testimony scrutinized by a 

bunch of lawyers too before I come here, and I think that is just 

the standard practice of the Department, and that is all we are trying to do, is make certain that we are disciplined in the way that 

we appear before you and provide truthful evidence for you. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Secretary, I appreciate that you spoke directly 

to the officers. Your last remarks made me think that you were 

simply working in the ordinary course of business. The ordinary 

course of business would not involve these officers submitting their 

testimony in any way because they are not subject to the Circular. 

Go ahead. 

Mr. JACKSON. Okay. I would like just to start in the vein of saying how important the people are to the success of this mission. 

Chairman Oberstar, to just say a quick word about the conversation you raised, perhaps I can shed a little light hopefully for you 

on the selection of our new director. Gary Shinkler is in the room 

with us today here. 

Gary, could you raise your hand for the Chairman to see? 

I want to tell you about the selection that we made for him. Gary 

is a veteran of the Marine Corps and has spent—I am going to look 

for it here—29 years in the Marine Corps. He also is a veteran of 

the Chicago Police force, and he came to us, Chairman Oberstar, 

from the TSA, where he was the deputy FSD at Chicago Midway 

Airport, which has a very substantial, as you know almost as well 

as anyone, law enforcement mission in those airports. He was not 

number three on the list. The list was, I am told, in alphabetical 

order. The review was a career SES review. He was the number 

one choice of that review of the career SES folks that looked for 

it and was the recommendation made to Julie Meyers, who is here 

with me today and who is responsible for ICE and FPS. I am the 

chairman of the Department’s committee that reviews all SES appointments, and when I got this one I stopped because it was such 

an important one. I went out and did a little bit of my own nosing 

around to ask about the guy, and everything that I found was extraordinarily complimentary of his military, his police, and his TSA 

experience. 

So I just want you to know that this is not an appointment that 

we made lightly, but it is the person who was most qualified for 

the job and is an excellent guy. You are going to like working with 

him, sir, I can guarantee you that. 

I think that the framing remarks for this, first of all, Madam 

Chairwoman, can I just thank you for this testimony? This needs 

light shone on FPS. You are absolutely right in your remarks about 

how important FPS is to the Country, to the Federal workforce, to 

those who visit our Federal buildings, and I welcome having this 

Committee as partners and us thinking through what is the future 

structure, the financial discipline, and the funding mechanisms 

necessary to make the workforce that we need to do the job that 

is at hand. 

I will tell you that Congressman Mica was absolutely spot-on, 

and I am grateful for him just pointing out that DHS has inherited 

a very complex stew of management, financial, and operational 

35

problems, and we are trying to sort these out. I am actually very, 

very impressed at the work that ICE has done to try to get us to 

a better place here. I won’t try to go through the financial disciplines and controls that have been put in place over the last two 

years, but I will just say that that report that GAO made where 

they suggested that there was a $139 million deficit in the amount 

of money that the fees paid for is, I believe, spot-on, and we see, 

even today, in looking at costs that were picked up by GSA initially 

in IT, in HR, in legal, and in building fees—GSA didn’t use to 

charge building fees for the space that these guys occupy. Now we 

have to pay it. We are a—sorry, Mr. Oberstar—customer of GSA 

and we are paying the bill. So this is about $59 million worth of 

expenses this year, in 2007, that were not part of the cost of doing 

business when this was moved, prior to it being moved into DHS. 

So I want to just say that this financial and operational discipline and the work that we are trying to do to make sure that 

we are spending the taxpayers’ money wisely is responsive to a 

slew of GAO and IG reports before this group came to DHS and 

after, and we are systematically working through it. I know one 

story from my reviews of this, where we had contracting authority 

spread out all around the Country so people could make commitments for a contract workforce and not tell, in a disciplined way, 

what was there. We couldn’t even obligate the appropriate amount 

of money if we didn’t know a contract had been let. In one case, 

one of Julie Meyers’ inspectors went out and found a pile of these 

contracts that had not been sent up through the contracting process, and they became known only when the bills started piling up 

and asking for payment. So the work that has been done in the last 

two years is something that I want to just say off to the side here 

is worth your coming to understand better and digging into more. 

It is very substantial and I think very good. 

Let me just talk about the task that we face. I am grateful for 

your forbearance. I won’t talk long and then we can just talk questions. 

The task that we face is to live within a funding structure and 

mechanism that Congress established. It is a fee-based business. 

Then we had this gap between the type of costs that were not covered by the fees but which GSA absorbed that was the old business 

model. So now we have that gap that we have to deal with. During 

the course of fiscal year 2003, essentially, in the beginning of fiscal 

year 2004, this gap was not evident at DHS because there were 

some unobligated balances that carried into DHS that obscured the 

actual loss of or the gap between the fees collected and the expense 

of running the organization. 

In 2004, some of that gap was itself disguised by Katrina, because what happened is we detailed people in calendar year 2004, 

we detailed people in effect to the FEMA, FEMA fully reimbursed 

all those costs through the Stafford Act funds, and, therefore, in 

some cases, for a while, more than 200 people were not doing FPS 

police work or investigatory work or inspector work, they were 

doing the Lord’s work for us at FEMA and being reimbursed for 

that. 

So last year was when the crisis became absolutely unmanageable for us. We took almost $30 million from other parts of DHS 

36

to be able to make sure we did not go anti-deficient in FPS. We 

have made a proposal for what is a very, very substantial increase 

in the fee structure. I would just note, for example, that Judge 

Julia Gibbons, who chairs the judicial conference’s budget committee, testified in the other chamber to the appropriators recently 

that this increase that we have proposed is very, very burdensome 

on the judiciary and was saying that we are asking too much 

money for our work here. So some of our—I am going to call them 

partners rather than customers because I am getting my vocabulary right—are not quite pleased at the big increase that we are 

asking for to accommodate our current level of operations. 

So let me just make a final set of points and then stop. 

It is about what we are doing. First of all, Chairman Oberstar, 

the report that you had, I would like to give you better figures. It 

was a preliminary work, it was not the final decision of what we 

are going to use to guide Gary’s new work; and he is going to finally validate the course of action. I will give you just one example. 

In our current thinking, we actually propose to increase the number of FPS officials in 21 cities, the number of people we have on 

the ground, and in 19 cities to reduce it. That is just fundamentally 

different than the early calculations that you saw from a report 

that had not gone through the full process. 

The size of this force has grown from, prior to Oklahoma City, 

of about 2300 total people on the outsource, the private contractor, 

to, after 9/11, now 15,000. So what we have seen is a growth that 

was about 7,000, 6,000 to 7,000 outsourced people prior to 9/11. 

There has been a very, very substantial growth. We are trying to 

bring discipline to how those people are used. 

I just want to answer, Madam Chairman, a question you had at 

the very end. We actually do impose a standard discipline for the 

training. There is a curricula that is established for the guards by 

ICE, by FPS. It involves 72 hours of contractor training and 8 

hours of FPS training. These are for the FPS approved and managed contractors. There are other contractors. For example, at my 

former department, at Transportation, they have had a delegation 

from GSA to be able to do their own hiring of this, and it is precisely one of those questions that we are trying to address in the 

transformation plan that FPS and Julie are working on to make 

certain that we have given greater clarity and guidance and standards. 

I have been through that with you, sir, on the TSA front. I see 

this problem, our team does; we are working that. But that is a 

considerable amount of training. They have annual firearm certification; they have a background suitability examination; and, additionally, on an annual basis they have first aid and CPR training 

and periodic refresher courses. So there is an established and mandatory set of training and background investigation that is required for our management of these contracts. 

I will just say that there has been a lot of discussion here this 

morning about the differences between three types of law enforcement officers: police officers, investigators, and our inspectors. So 

what I want to say to you is I agree with my colleagues back here, 

some of them who are inspectors, that we have not adequately 

sized and supported the inspector workforce that we need. ThereVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:13 Oct 23, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34797 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
37

fore, ICE’s proposal in this re-calibration is to increase by a considerable number that workforce of inspectors. So what we will do is 

we will say—I think you understand that they have the same police training and police skills that a straight police officer has. They 

are police plus. They should wear uniforms, I think. I don’t know 

about the khaki deal; I will go look at that. But we expect them 

to show both presences of doing those two roles. 

Our investigators also have substantial law enforcement capabilities and 1811 certification so they can do the work that they do. 

Right now we have about 1131 people actually working on FPS 

work on the payroll. We have about 48 that are assigned to other 

tasks on a fully reimbursable basis. This is a non-crisis level reimbursable basis job. One of them is to help stand up chemical security evaluations and the other one is to do some work in OPR, our 

professional responsibilities for managing the workforce across ICE 

altogether. So what we are going to do is grow the inspector workforce and focus on standards for building, focus on holding people 

accountable, getting greater discipline around what will actually 

work and how to manage our roles there. We are unable to take 

the money that we have in front of us and make it cover the additional proactive police monitoring work outside these buildings, so 

we have taken the assets that we have and we have put them in 

the most coherent form that we think we can give to you with the 

money that we believe is available to do this job. 

So I will just stop there and answer any questions for you and 

be happy to unpack a little bit of this to the best of my ability. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Jackson. It was important testimony I think you did clear up a number of matters. What 

are the cities that will no longer be served by Federal Protective 

Service officers? 

Mr. JACKSON. We have not made a final determination about 

this. The number that I mentioned to you is and estimate, and I 

would like honestly not to just publish that in the open hearing 

here today. I can talk to you about that process working, but what 

we are trying to do is let Gary take each of his regional directors. 

We are not laying off anybody in this process; we are using natural 

attrition, and that natural attrition is uneven. There may be more 

in one city that decide to retire or to move to ICE. We are taking 

some of these positions and we are very aggressively trying to offer 

individuals who are in the FPS job opportunities in the law enforcement responsibilities that ICE has. So we have not made some 

final Solomaic determination of exactly where——

Ms. NORTON. I appreciate that it does not involve layoffs from a 

workforce that apparently already has been thinned enormously, 

but let me ask you this. We understand there are 50 cities, 50 jurisdictions where you expect that Federal Protective Service officers 

will not be necessary. Is that true? 

Mr. JACKSON. There are 51 cities right now that have 10 or fewer 

police officers. This would be the——

Ms. NORTON. Ten or fewer of FPS? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, ma’am, police officers. This would be the universe of places where I think the likelihood would be that we would 

end up with no officers if there is a city that ends up with no police 

officer. 

38

I will tell you I looked at the list this morning, and there are a 

considerable number of mid-sized cities in the Country that have 

one officer, one police officer in that city. That is not a 24/7 cover, 

it is only 8 hours cover, and it is not what I would call a substantial enhancement to the law enforcement capabilities if we only can 

marshal one person for that city. So what we are doing is we are 

taking a risk-based approach, we are saying cities like New York, 

Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, places where there is a large 

Federal concentration and a larger risk is where we will move the 

resources that we have. 

Ms. NORTON. At some point, of course, it is going to be common 

knowledge where the FPS cities are or are not, so we would ask 

you to submit that for the record as soon as those cities have been 

determined. 

Mr. Secretary, I want you to know I don’t have any bias in terms 

of location of personnel. The real question is coverage and prevention. Obviously, we also have very different threats in different 

parts of the Country, and I am the first, sitting here in the District 

of Columbia, to understand that. In fact, your agency has been 

criticized not for what you did, but for what Congress did in kind 

of depositing people and resources all over the Country without regard to risk and consequences. So it is the risk assessment that the 

Committee will want to see when entire jurisdictions are reduced 

to no FPS officers. 

How, then, are these MOUs to work? If I am sitting in a local 

jurisdiction where you have carefully negotiated an MOU saying 

the local police agree to come, do they know that there are not 

going to be any peace officers there? 

Mr. JACKSON. No, ma’am. This is not an easy task and a simple 

turnkey thing where a bunch of people like me are going to sit in 

Washington and say do it this way and, you know, hope it works. 

These will require leveraging the very substantial relationships 

that we have with the local law enforcement community to say—

let’s look at two categories. If we are eliminating presence of a police patrol capability in a given location and we have an MOU 

there, what we will have to do is revisit that MOU and say can you 

backstop with local police support some of the activity that we were 

previously——

Ms. NORTON. Why should they do that? This is an unfunded 

mandate. You are saying we don’t have any now. We have got to 

ask you to amend this MOU because there are no peace officers 

here. Why should a local jurisdiction agree, once you want to 

change the terms of the MOU? 

Mr. JACKSON. Well, there are approximately 780,000 State and 

local law enforcement officers in this Country. We have a couple of 

hundred FPS police officers. So what we think is that in those locations where we need to that we can ask the cooperation of 

these——

Ms. NORTON. No, no, my question is why should they. In my 

opening statement, I said that the crime spurt throughout the 

United States now, and we have had $2 billion cut in funding for 

local police like the cops. Why should a local police officer agree to 

this and if so, why should he give reports from Federal facilities 

any priority, given his own responsibilities in the local area? 

39

Mr. JACKSON. Because if I am a chief of police, if I can borrow 

what Congressman Oberstar said, these are my citizens. These are 

my people that I am protecting. I am the chief of police and this 

is my city and I am going to try to make certain that all the facilities——

Ms. NORTON. This may or may not be the people who you are 

protecting. It is in a Federal facility. 

Mr. JACKSON. But they live in those communities, they work in 

those communities, the people visiting there. It is the same enforcement. Look, I understand that we are making tough choices here. 

But I can’t——

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Secretary, it is not that you are making tough 

choices. You are making choices for the local jurisdiction which the 

Committee cannot guarantee will protect the visitors and the employees in that jurisdiction. And very frankly, as somebody who 

knows something about local law enforcement, I think a police chief 

would be crazy to accept those terms. It is an unfunded mandate. 

You don’t want the expense on the big kahuna’s budget, and you 

want to shift it to local jurisdictions and they ought to take it with 

a smile? How do you think they are going to do that? Because we 

have to probe that kind of change and wonder if there is greater 

risk, both terrorism and to criminal incidents. 

I am not one of those who say you have to have Federal police 

presence of the kind the FPS, round the clock Saturday and Sunday. Look, I am 24/7 here because I represent the District of Columbia. If you come down Independence to our entrances, you will 

see one entrance manned on the weekends. That is the South Capitol—sorry, that is the New Jersey, the main entrance. Go to D 

Street, you won’t see any of those manned. If you come to South 

Capitol—have I complained? The reason I have not complained is 

because I do believe in risk assessments. I don’t think about Al 

Qaeda, and say, wow, nobody is in the building, this is a great time 

to bomb the Capitol. Of course, we are at the Capitol, our folks are 

at the Capitol 24/7. I think that this was long before DHS was set 

up, over here the Capitol Police, who have the most to lose, decided 

on a risk basis that it was a waste of their personnel to put people 

all along D Street, to put people all along Independence Avenue, 

the way they are most of the time, but to have someone at the 

main entrance. 

I know there will be people on my Committee who disagree with 

me. Well, I disagree with them. We can’t take the position in the 

Department of Homeland Security that funds ought to be done 

based on a risk analysis throughout the Country. Hey, but when 

it comes to us, or for that matter, Federal employees, we want to 

be covered with security. 

But what we need to see if your risk analysis. Again, you see, 

I am on both committees, we will be very, very leery of invidious 

comparisons between the kind of security we want for people like 

us and the kind of security we want for two million fellow employees, for visitors who walk into a Social Security building, or for 

after-hours. So you need to be on notice that we are going to insist 

upon being briefed on the risk analysis when in fact we find whole 

jurisdictions with no peace officer dependent upon the local police 

chief to give our facility, with all we have invested in it, and our 

40

employees and our visitors all the attention they deserve. Because 

after all, we are all one big, happy family. You ask a police chief 

who his family is when it comes to his regular duties. 

I want to go on to Mr. Graves, then to the Chairman. 

Mr. GRAVES. I don’t have any questions, Madam Chairman. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, Madam Chair, I think you described the situation here at the Capitol very well. We are not securing the perimeter here on weekends very effectively. That is not Secretary 

Jackson’s concern, but it is a good lesson for the other Government 

agencies that we are dealing with. 

In your description of, first of all, your entire statement, which 

I read in detail last night and again this morning, will appear in 

full in the record, of course, and any supplements that you wish to 

make thereto will be included as well. It is always a pleasure to 

have you here before the Committee. There was a time when you 

spent a good deal of your life here in this Committee room when 

we were doing TSA. 

Now, let’s go to the funding issue, because I think that is at the 

core of much of what is happening. It is true that the Office of 

Management and Budget sets the fee scale, is it not? 

Mr. JACKSON. The Administration does, and——

Mr. OBERSTAR. OMB makes that decision. 

Mr. JACKSON. The Administration does, and OMB is part of the 

Administration, yes, sir. I am not going to run away from the Administration in that, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Specifically, it is done, I know, I have been dealing with the green eyeshade folks for 40 years. But the fee is not 

OMB’s origination. They didn’t create it. It was just there. It 

evolved over time, probably as an adjunct to the Federal Public 

Buildings Fund, in which agencies contribute to the fund and from 

which future structures are built or leased. 

Is this shuffle an appropriate way to fund this security function? 

Have you given that some thought about whether, now, in aviation, 

there is the security fee that passengers pay. And it covers nearly 

all of the TSA operational function. 

Mr. JACKSON. Well, maybe not all of it. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. A good portion. I said nearly. There is a big gap, 

yes, a gap that we need to fill. But it fills what it was intended 

to do largely in the beginning. But that is a different mission from 

this one. And from a budget standpoint, you have done a great deal 

with budgets, does it make a difference, does it have a budgetary 

effect whether the funding comes directly from an appropriation 

and a funding request from the Administration to FPS, or through 

the shuffle from the several constituent agencies? 

Mr. JACKSON. As you know, sir, that is an excellent question. It 

goes to the heart of what we are struggling with in terms of the 

financial stream. Let me try to answer it as honestly as I can and 

with the intellect that I can bring to the topic. I am going to tell 

you that there are pros and cons to this on both sides. Let me just 

try to eliminate some of that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But my question is, is there a budgetary effect, 

pro or con? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, there is. 

41

Mr. OBERSTAR. Answer the question. 

Mr. JACKSON. So on that score, for example, there are many 

places in DHS where we are fee-funded, as you have already indicated, through TSA. Our citizenship and immigration services is 

virtually entirely fee-funded. That is a legitimate way to do business and it works. And Congress in its wisdom over the years has 

continued this method of funding FPS. 

There is one downside, for example, since you have to anticipate 

changes in the services that we need to provide in the growth and 

you have to model those fees in advance of the time that you collect 

them. So there can be changed in the environment, changes in the 

threat, and some lag there as we collect them. There are always 

unknowns with respect to some margin of the fee that we would 

ultimately collect that have to do with new buildings opening and 

closing and delegations that might authorize a particular agency 

not to operate within this structure of the same type of fee collection. 

Most of the agencies, for example, to whom we have delegated 

the responsibility for doing their own guard service, for example, 

are paying the basic fee that is our basic service charge, which covers the perimeter outside, not the work that is done inside the 

building. So I think that you could, in principle, imagine paying for 

this both from direct appropriation and from a fee. The fee works, 

it just requires a little bit of skill. It also honestly, when it is at 

the bottom of the line, when it has hit DHS now, it is no longer 

part of the big rent payment that you make to GSA and all of the 

IT office space, HR, lawyer expenses that were bundled at GSA 

into serving the FPS needs are gone now. We are having to pay for 

those out of this fee. 

So it does put a big spotlight for our Federal partners on that 

fee. It creates some discontent, as I mentioned to you earlier, from 

the Judiciary testimony earlier. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes. The budgetary effect is that this cost does 

not appear on the books of the Department of Homeland Security, 

it appears on the books of the several constituent agencies housed 

in the respective Federal buildings, correct? 

Mr. JACKSON. That is correct. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. From a budgetary standpoint, if it is $100 million, just to pick a number out of the air, it has no relationship to 

anything, if it costs $100 million in fees from the several Government agencies who are paying it out of their appropriated funds, 

or if it is $100 million appropriated to and allocated to the FPS. 

The budgetary effect is nil. 

Mr. JACKSON. I think that is right, sir. I am not a total budget 

geek here. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I am not asking you to certify this. It will not be 

covered under your oath. 

Mr. JACKSON. Tell me when that time period stops, sir. You are 

getting straight answers all the time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But from the standpoint of the public and from 

this view of the Congress, there is greater transparency in the latter. 

Mr. JACKSON. I would argue there is substantial transparency in 

this one. Because we know how much money comes and hits the 

42

bottom line as revenue. Instead of showing it as a budget item all 

placed in one location, you are still seeing that same total dollar 

figure, and you are getting something additional of value, which is 

to say, you have a greater degree of transparency into where those 

services are actually coming from, who we are helping, how we are 

doing it, in what proportion and where those priorities and risks 

are. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Now, we have, is it correct to say that fully load- ed cost for an FPS officer grade 8 is roughly $100,000? 

Mr. JACKSON. It is $121,000, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And a fully loaded cost for a contract guard is in the range of $83,0000? 

Mr. JACKSON. It is $83,720 is our estimate. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Are we getting value for value? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, we are getting value from both. But they are 

very different. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What are the values? 

Mr. JACKSON. They are different functions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. They are different missions. 

Mr. JACKSON. Different missions, yes, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And different training levels? 

Mr. JACKSON. Exactly. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Skills? 

Mr. JACKSON. Exactly. They are not law enforcement officials. 

They don’t have arrest authority, they don’t have the same set of 

responsibilities, training and skills that the law enforcement officers have. But as I have explained in the training curricula that 

we are trying to impose in a disciplined and systematic way, there 

is a substantial requirement. In our days of talking about the preTSA screeners, you could basically become a screener in a morning. 

And here what we are talking about is substantial training, 80 

hours of training, basically. 

So that is not an inconsequential requirement when you add also 

the annual qualifications and the certifications that are ongoing. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, but there is recertification, 40 hours every 

two years for a contract officer and every year for——

Mr. JACKSON. Exactly, appropriately so. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Are there circumstances, other circumstances in 

which an individual Federal office building among the several 

agencies, where one of them opts out to contract with private security guards and they operate in the same structure with FPS officers? 

Mr. JACKSON. I am not sure I understand the question. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What I am getting at is whether, and I ask the 

question blind, which in a hearing like this I don’t like to do, because you are never sure of the answer you are going to get. What 

I am getting at is whether there are situations in which there are 

multiplicity of services. 

Mr. JACKSON. There are a variety of services that do sometimes 

overlap in the same buildings. So for example, if we have one tenant, think of the first one, which is built into our basic services 

agreement. It covers the work that my colleagues were speaking 

about, of the police officers who provide perimeter security and patrol. And also our people who do the evaluations of how to strucVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:13 Oct 23, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34797 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
43

ture the security for a given building, the inspectors. That is paid 

by the basic fee. 

Inside the building, there is a building-specific fee. So for example, the building that Congressman Wu talked about early in his 

testimony did not have a guard force at the front door. It would 

have to be paid by an assessment for that specific building, by the 

occupants of that building. That building has both Federal and private sector tenants and they have a security committee that works 

with our FPS officers to determine what is the best set of security 

tools and can they afford it and will they pay for it. 

So that is something of a negotiation that we have to do with 

each of the buildings in which we operate to say what level of security do we recommend. And remember, that is exactly where we 

are trying to beef up our team, to be standard setters, to look 

across and see best practices, to make certain that we are giving 

good counsel about risk-based investments to these buildings. But 

the individual tenants ended up having to pony up and pay. 

So sometimes we could be in a building where FPS is providing 

private contract type of assets, cameras or the like, to a portion of 

the tenants and another contractor is doing so directly for another 

Federal agency. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, I asked the question earlier of the officers 

who were testifying about the effect of a survey that was done for 

appropriate staffing levels. And I want to ask you if you have completed review of that issue. I refer to the report, the internal report 

on the Federal Protective Service transition to fiscal year 2008 

budget. And you said that was an interim report. Do you have it 

completed? 

Mr. JACKSON. We do have a more complete and more contemporary version of that. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. When would we get a copy of that? 

Mr. JACKSON. I have to ask when it would be available. Within 

a month or so. What we are trying to do is let our new director, 

these reports were built bottom up from each of the 11 regions. We 

have given advice to the director——

Mr. OBERSTAR. Have you determined whether ICE is the final location for FPS and why, and when you are answering that, why 

can’t it stand on its own? Why does it have to be subsumed into 

another agency? 

Mr. JACKSON. I do believe that ICE is the right home. One of the 

reasons I believe that ICE is the right home is that this organization is in a considerable need of the financial discipline, the management supervision, the financial controls, the IT systems, and 

the support that comes from having a big brother that makes you 

part of his family. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, well, we saw FEMA having big brother oversight, and it just went to hell in a handbasket, Mr. Secretary. 

Mr. JACKSON. Well, we just gave FEMA a lot more plates to say 

grace over. And I think in this case, honestly, Mr. Chairman, ICE 

has made this a very significant priority. I personally in our second 

stage review looked and talked to other operating component heads 

in the Department about whether there was a better place for it. 

We had those types of conversations with virtually every component in the Department. I came to the conclusion, and Mike 

44

Chertoff came to the conclusion that this was the best home for 

this organization, inside the Department. 

By being part of just a slightly larger organization, and ICE is 

a large organization, the largest law enforcement organization in 

the Department, they have a natural nexus to the law enforcement 

mission in support for this. But they also have these management 

controls and financial controls and procurement assets that are inherently part of ICE that are being used to support the mission of 

FPS. I think that is a very valuable thing at this stage in FPS’ evolution. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, in your, in your testimony, you present the 

work of the Department of Homeland Security as taking over a 

problem-ridden Federal Protective Service and correcting it. Instead, what has happened is, the number of contract guards has 

gone up, the number of professional officers has gone down. There 

are more facilities that are unprotected by FPS officers than previously. And it does not appear that security is improved; rather, 

it appears to be dis-served. 

Mr. JACKSON. I think we are improving security, and I think we 

are clearly improving the management, discipline and financial accountability for the taxpayers’ investment that is taking place within FPS. Are we at the perfect stage? No, absolutely not. But we are 

repairing fundamental ruptures in how the organization was supported. 

The last thing I want is to say, I am not going to have enough 

people to do this mission. But it is also equally irresponsible for us 

to say, we are not going to train them, we are not going to let them 

travel, we are not going to let them have the skills, the tools, the 

support they need to do their job. We are here cutting our losses 

and focusing on the things that really matter most, which is this 

somewhat new vision of where FPS’ core capabilities should be focused. 

And that is why I welcome this dialogue with the Committee, 

who needs to own this with us, to think through this with us and 

to understand it in the same way we do. But we are trying to beef 

up this capacity to look at a building, see its vulnerabilities and insist upon the work force that is contracted out to meet standards 

that we will define, to go in and audit them and to watch them and 

to work with them to make certain that they are doing the job 

right. 

So that is the skill set we are bumping up. That is why we are 

adding a very considerable number of people to the work force for 

the inspectors. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You cited earlier sort of evaluating facilities into 

various size, large size and mid-size and smaller size. Is Oklahoma 

City a mid-size city? 

Mr. JACKSON. I would say so, yes, sir. It is a larger city, it is not 

the small size I was talking about. I will give you just an example. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Will it have a force? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, it will have a force. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. All right. FPS is historically, as we have discussed, a fee for service operation. ICE is not. 

Mr. JACKSON. That is correct. 

45

Mr. OBERSTAR. How do you mesh those two cultures within the 

same entity? 

Mr. JACKSON. Where your money comes from, to be honest, 

doesn’t have anything to do with the culture and the ability to operate it. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That partially answers the question I asked you 

earlier. 

Mr. JACKSON. It is a Government convenience that has been established for us. We are going to make either way that the revenue 

stream arrives on the table work. But in this case, there is a 

strong, I think, affinity because of the law enforcement mission of 

ICE and their capacity to work on investigations and operational 

details with our guys. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is the culture of FPS likely to be shifted, modified 

from community policing, from crime prevention, like a traditional 

uniformed police department to be molded into the service of ICE? 

Are you going to maintain the separate culture and identity and 

mission of FPS within ICE? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, sir, absolutely. We are trying to, I know it 

seems peculiar and even to some of my colleagues in FPS, but what 

we are trying to do is preserve their capacity to excel at their 

unique mission and to give them the focus and the mission clarity 

and the tools necessary to be successful. We are not trying to make 

one big mush and say it is all ICE. What we are saying is, ICE 

is the administrative home for a very important and unique asset, 

FPS, and we want to burnish and support FPS within that framework. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, it is an infrastructure protection service, 

that of FPS. We want to make sure that continues, and we don’t 

want to leave Achilles heels, for want of a better term, around the 

Country. Had the Murrah Building been the result of an Al Qaeda 

operative, it would have turned the Country into a tailspin. It is 

bad enough that they hit New York City. But to strike in the hinterland of the United States, in the heartland of the Country, to 

have something like that go off in Duluth or in Billings, Montana, 

as a result of a terrorist assault would be destructive. 

So be careful, be careful. We are looking very carefully at the beginning of this process at those facilities that have been left vulnerable, if you will. 

Mr. JACKSON. Mr. Oberstar, there is really almost no one in Congress that I admire more for his capacity to focus with passion on 

these issues, that is why I enjoyed working with you so much, even 

when we disagree on the particulars. We are in a constant balancing game that 9/11 has magnified to a whole new level. It is trying to decide how to balance security and safety with mobility and 

affordability in some appropriate balance. We are looking all the 

time at the risks from all sorts of sources from the tragic type of 

events that we saw in Blacksburg earlier this week to the Murrah 

Building itself. 

So I cannot guarantee that we will always find that balance with 

some perfection. Because after an attack or after an incident, it will 

look clear that oh, gee, we should have put more at it. We are trying to work with you here and to find where that right balance 

point is, how to support this important team, how to take the men 

46

and women who put that gun on every day successful and to protect them and to defend them and support them. 

So I think we are finding a relatively reasonable and affordable 

balance point right now. It could be tweaked, and we will be happy 

to talk to you about tweaks. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We will do more than tweaking. We will do some 

very serious in-depth discussions, starting with the manner in 

which FPS is funded. It has not been revisited in a very long time, 

should have been. We need to rethink that process from a budget 

standpoint and from an individual agency service standpoint. The 

respective roles of security guards and FPS officers, the right-sizing 

of facilities, you know, we go through that periodically at FAA and 

right-sizing towers and centers and TRACONs. You know that from 

your work at the Department. That is a matter that we look forward to working in a very intensive, cooperative fashion, and we 

should not be waiting four months for an answer to a letter we sent 

in December. 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, sir. If there is a letter that has been four 

months outstanding, I don’t know about it and I will get you an 

answer if I can. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We have to vacate this room, because we have 

another hearing coming. 

Ms. NORTON. I would like to give Mr. Bishop the opportunity, 

and of course, we have another panel, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I want to focus on a facility that is in my district. But before I 

do, what I hear you saying is that the decision to cut the number 

of Federal Protective Service staff by 25 percent is a decision that 

at least in part is driven by the inability to identify offsetting revenue. Is that essentially what you are saying? 

Mr. JACKSON. I am saying that the revenue issue is a real and 

meaningful thing that we are trying to find the balance. 

Mr. BISHOP. All right. We are saying the same thing. I am not 

going to ask you to comment on this, but I am forced to observe 

that the very same Administration that thinks that this is a good 

idea is the Administration that is presiding over the expenditure 

of $19 million an hour on a war of choice, is presiding over the subject of the hearing we are going to have in this room in about an 

hour, in which we have squandered tens of millions of dollars on 

bolts that no longer can be used because of design flaws. This is 

one of the reasons why I think people have lost faith in the way 

in which we make decisions here in Washington. But I will leave 

that aside. 

I have a facility in my district called the Plum Island Animal 

Disease Laboratory. In September of 2003, the Government Accountability Office issued a report on the inadequacy of the security 

at that facility and cited several specific ways in which the security 

was inadequate. The response of the Department of Homeland Security at that time was to place two Federal Protective Service people on the island. Those people have now been withdrawn and 

there has been, as I understand it, a memorandum of understanding entered into with the Southold town police force, which is 

a first-rate force, but very small. They, as I understand it, are expected to be the first responders for any incident that takes placed 

47

on the island. They are very good, but they are separated from the 

island by a 45 minute boat ride. 

So my question to you, in response to a question that was put 

to you by Chairman Oberstar, you said that you believed that the 

net effect here was that we were improving security. How do you 

square that statement with what specifically is happening on this 

facility in my district? 

Mr. JACKSON. I would like to be able to get back to you on the 

details of what is going on on Plum Island. I am exquisitely aware 

of that facility and the importance of that facility to the Nation. It 

is not a GSA-controlled facility, so it doesn’t flow under the normal 

revenue stream and controls that——

Mr. BISHOP. But it is a DHS-controlled facility. 

Mr. JACKSON. It is a DHS facility, yes, sir. Therefore, and it is 

a very important DHS facility that deserves our protection. My understanding of where that is is that our new Under Secretary for 

Science and Technology has worked on this issue to be able to 

make certain that we are providing appropriate security. I would 

like to be able to consult with him. 

Mr. BISHOP. In fairness, he has responded to a letter that I sent 

to him. But the response is that we have this MOU with the 

Southold town police force. So that is a response that——

Mr. JACKSON. I understand your point. 

Mr. BISHOP. It looks good on paper, yes, we are dealing with it. 

But in the real world, to have the response mechanism be separated by 45 minutes worth of a boat ride, I think you would agree 

fall short of what we ought to be striving for. 

The other thing I would say, my current understanding is that 

in order for the Southold town police force to have arrest authority 

on Plum Island, they must be first deputized. My current understanding is that they are not yet deputized. So following from that, 

if an incident were to take place today on Plum Island, what law 

enforcement body would have authority to execute an arrest? 

Mr. JACKSON. I will get back to you with that answer. It is a very 

fair and appropriate question. Let me just get you the facts. 

Mr. BISHOP. Okay. Let me just go one further thing. This was a 

question that I asked before with the panel of officers. New York 

is taking a 45 percent hit on the allocation of officers, according to 

the chart that I believe is part of your presentation. We are going 

from 99 officers in Federal Region II to 56, which is a reduction of 

43. I am just doing it in my head, it is roughly a 45 percent reduction. 

Mr. JACKSON. I think that is the same problem that I spoke to 

Chairman Oberstar about, which is the version of the paper that 

I think the Committee has gotten possession of is not the version 

that the ICE folks and the FPS folks are working on. 

Mr. BISHOP. So you are saying that when we get the same 

version that you have I will be looking at different numbers for 

New York that will be somewhat less distressing than these? 

Mr. JACKSON. I think so, yes, sir. 

Mr. BISHOP. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Secretary has committed to submitting a 

complete accounting for all of this to the Committee in the next 

month or so. 

48

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much. I want to thank you, Mr. 

Secretary. Just a further question. I had wondered whether or not 

there was a functional equivalent to 9-1-1 in the Federal Police 

Service so that a Federal employee can dial it. Is there? 

Mr. JACKSON. A 9-1-1 for FPS? 

Ms. NORTON. You dial 9-1-1, you are dialing into a backup. For 

FPS, is there a number like 9-1-1 that Federal employees have access to? 

Mr. JACKSON. Is there a single number? I think so. 

Ms. NORTON. What is it? 

Mr. JACKSON. One eight seven seven for FPS, 4-1-1. 

Ms. NORTON. That is outrageous. Why do you think 9-1-1 was invented? 

Could I ask you, sir, to go back and at least do this rudimentary 

thing, for the FPS, I am very concerned whether or not there is an 

FPS presence or not that is not some shorthand way to—I don’t 

know these folks in Congressman Wu’s office knew where to call. 

I bet they were not carrying that around in their head. 

Mr. JACKSON. They were not. We provide the numbers for local 

response to our occupants in our facilities, so that they know ho 

immediately to get access to the security services in their building. 

Ms. NORTON. I am asking for the functional equivalent of 9-1-1. 

If it is an FPS, you heard testimony for example from New York, 

they were still waiting to come an hour later and FPS has been 

right there. We don’t need to hear that about New York. If there 

is a number, it could differ place to place, I don’t know why it 

shouldn’t be a nationwide number, I don’t know, 8-1-1. I don’t know 

what it is. But could I ask you to report back to us in 30 days 

whether or not that is feasible to do? 

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, certainly. 

Ms. NORTON. I am going to let you go. Let me just say to you 

on two points, if you want us to add anything on the, some agencies are dazzled by brass. So if someone says they have been in the 

military, that is the functional equivalent of everything we need, 

I don’t have any way to judge whom you chose. You indicated that 

you chose somebody from the Marine Corps. My first notion would 

be, was he in the Marine Corps police, would have some police experience in Chicago some years back. The best qualified person, as 

I understood, was a deputy director who had that experience and 

the managerial experience. We looked at who is chosen in the Department of Homeland Security, particularly after Katrina and 

being dismayed at what it took to become a high level official in 

the agency then. So I want you to know that it is hard for me to 

understand, except for some overlay of military credentials, why 

being in the Marine Corps, unless you were in the Marine Corps 

police. If you had Federal experience, there may be other reasons. 

But apparently this was deemed by the credentials best qualified. 

I want you to know on inspectors versus patrol, you heard me 

say perhaps to the officers that I kind of like efficiencies. Those of 

who believe in government ought to take the lead on efficiencies. 

It is hard for us to reconcile double duty and efficiencies. It is hard 

for us to reconcile double duty and cutting the work force as efficient. I want you to know that our concern is rooted in fact. In 

2007, the ICE FPS budget showed 1,543 officers would be needed 

49

to do the FPS job. Now apparently 915 and going down every day. 

This in spite of the fact that everybody else over here has gulped 

up, because we are adding duties. So everywhere where there are 

high level Federal officials, like in the Congress or in the White 

House, you stumble over a cop. Here we reduce it, and yet tell 

them you are supposed to be an inspector, you are supposed to look 

at everything. 

My concern, patrols. We are not here to simply say, respond 

when the blow the place up. You understand full well as a high 

level official in Homeland Security, the point is prevention. We fail 

to understand how lack of patrols assures the safety of Federal employees, visitors, judges, and the like. We are very concerned about 

the six month figures, 1,300, I mean, 850 thefts, 33 aggravated assaults. These are nation figures. One hundred seventy-seven incidents involving weapons and explosives. We are living here in the 

shadow of Virginia Tech. It is disturbing. 

We have heard your testimony. I wanted you to leave with my 

concerns about the disparity between increased duties and a decreasing work force and my lack of confidence that this kind of disparity promotes efficiency. And you are talking to a member who 

likes the notion of efficiency and who does not see a problem with 

contractors, risk based, does not see a problem with people being 

inspectors and peace officers. But when I learned that nobody is 

patrolling to prevent incidents of terrorism and crime, then you get 

my attention. 

Sir, if you have anything to say before you leave the panel, I 

would be glad to hear it. 

Mr. JACKSON. No, ma’am. Thank you for the focus you are bringing to this issue. We look forward to working with you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. We will be seeing you on the new headquarters shortly. 

Mr. JACKSON. Good. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for all your 

patience and for your very informative and graciously given testimony. 

Mr. JACKSON. Thank you, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. The last panel, David Wright, President of the 

American Federal of Government Employees, Local 918; and Chuck 

Canterbury, President of the Fraternal Order of Police. 

Gentlemen, we apologize to you. I think you understand why we 

had to proceed in some detail with those witnesses, and we did not 

mean to give you short shrift. 

I wish you would each raise your right hand and respond. Do you 

solemnly swear the testimony you will give before the Committee 

on Transportation and Infrastructure will be the truth, the whole 

truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God? 

[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.] 

Ms. NORTON. Please be seated. 

Which of you would like to proceed first? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Madam Chair, I will proceed first. I have a verbal 

statement I would like to open with. 

50

TESTIMONY OF DAVID WRIGHT, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 918; CHUCK 

CANTERBURY, PRESIDENT, FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE 

Mr. WRIGHT. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the Committee. 

On behalf of the FPS police officers, inspectors, special agents 

and other key personnel at the Federal Protective Service, represented by AFGE, I am David Wright, President of Local 918, the 

National Federal Protective Service Union. I am also a veteran 

FPS police officer-inspector of 21 years. 

Madam Chair, it appears that we are at one of the lowest points 

in this agency’s history and at a critical decision point for its future. I find it disturbing that I am testifying before you and the 

Committee on the eve of the 12th anniversary of the destruction of 

the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 

19th, 1995, defending the notion that Federal law enforcement officers on 100 percent proactive patrol are the most viable front line 

protection against terrorism and crime at Federal facilities. 

The Federal Protective Service is the only Federal agency 

charged with a specific mission of protecting and securing virtually 

all GSA-controlled facilities across the U.S., some 8,800 in total. 

These buildings often house sensitive and high level Government 

offices, Federal court buildings, numerous agency headquarters and 

public access facilities, such as Social Security and Immigration offices. I need not remind anyone in this room, particularly officials 

at the Department, that the most infamous terrorist attacks on 

U.S. soil occurred either at Federal buildings or in buildings which 

house Federal agencies. For example, the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995, and at the World Trade Center on 

February 26th, 1993 and September 11th, 2001. 

As an FPS officer, it is extremely difficult for me to imagine a 

more likely strategic or symbolic target for terrorists than a building that houses U.S. Government operations. Despite an obvious 

need to invest in or rebuild this critical Homeland Security Agency 

responsible for protection of Federal facilities, the Department proposal will result in the elimination of most direct law enforcement 

services by FPS. 

Two hundred forty-nine Federal Protective police officer positions 

directly responsible for law enforcement patrol and response to 

Federal properties are to be eliminated. Most FPS special agent positions responsible for prosecution of Federal crimes, intelligence 

gathering and dissemination will be cut. 

The Administration’s budget submission offers this description of 

its plan for FPS in fiscal year 2008. In 2008, the Federal Protective 

Service will set security standards and enforce the compliance of 

those standards to protect Federal facilities. Those few words in 

the budget submission belie a proposal that is both dangerous and 

in our opinion, foolhardy, in the post-9/11 world in which we live. 

If anyone in this room doubts me on this, let me quote directly 

from a document prepared by U.S. ICE and FPS officials for the 

FPS regional directors, dated December 20th, 2006, where the 

agency describes the impact of the proposal: 

‘‘No proactive patrol to deter attack planing and detect or deter 

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ice to protect Federal employees and visitors, or to investigate 

crimes at Federal facilities in areas where FPS will no longer have 

a presence; no FPS presence in approximately 50 current cities; 

participation in FBI joint terrorism task forces reduced to 12 special agents from 24; special agents available to investigate serious 

crime reduced to 14 from 58; no night or weekend police response 

or service anywhere; largest reductions in New York and Washington, D.C. due to proactive activity elimination.’’

And the list goes on, Madam Chair. We have attached a copy of 

this document for the record. 

The agency has since issued statements to employees and the 

media denying the official nature of the document and describe a 

plan which leaves out the above particular highlights. Nonetheless, 

these are the facts as detailed by the agency and they are, in our 

view, shocking. 

Madam Chair, members of this Committee, I urge you to reject 

this ill-conceived initiative proposed because of a financial deficit 

due to problems that the Department has neglected to remedy. Before we decide to eliminate this core FPS responsibility, let us 

pause and take a close look at whether this is the direction we 

really want to go. Do we really want to reduce this agency to an 

essentially regulatory body with no real law enforcement responsibilities? Do we really want to rely on a few hundred inspectors 

to oversee and ensure compliance with security guidelines for a 

vast work force of 15,000 private security guards? And finally, do 

we really want to reduce one facet of our Nation’s essential homeland security protection just six years after September 11th? I don’t 

think so, and pray that you don’t, either. 

Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Wright. We will go to 

Mr. Canterbury. 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Madam Chairperson, thank you for the ability 

to be here. I think I probably bring a very unique view to the panels that you have had today in that I represent State and local police officers. I am a retired deputy chief of about a 250 man police 

department in South Carolina, and I am President of the National 

Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police labor organization in 

the Country. 

I have heard quite a bit today about police response from State 

and local, MOUs, cooperation. I think the most important thing 

that I have heard here today was when Mr. Oberstar talked about 

human life versus capital. The new HR term in the Country is 

human capital. Well, where I live, that is people. 

One of the things that as a State and local police officer I want 

to let you know is that we are going to respond to calls for service 

when called by citizens in our States. But I will tell you that the 

added responsibility of responding to Federal buildings will just 

add to the over-burden that local law enforcement has today. We 

talked about the 750,000 State and local officers that are out there. 

That is a reduction over what there was five years ago in the 

United States. Our funding has been cut over $2 billion, as Ms. 

Norton, as you relayed on several occasions today. On top of that, 

more responsibilities with these cuts. 

52

We talked about the honesty of ICE in this report. I think it was 

refreshing to see that they talked about being a reactive rather 

than a proactive force. One of the things that I have testified before 

Congress before is that we would much rather be a preventive force 

than have to send red, shiny fire trucks to clean up a problem. 

When we are here talking about appropriations and homeland, 

we believe that prevention would be much better than having to 

react. We bring that to this Committee again today and say that 

our brothers and sisters in the Federal Protective Service, I will let 

you know that if I respond to a Federal building in my jurisdiction, 

I do not want to be met at the door by a contract security guard 

that slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night. I want to be met 

by a professional law enforcement officer who has attended 

FLETSI, who has received the same training level that I have received, and that I could interact in an emergency situation, having 

full faith and confidence that as a police officer I would enter that 

building with equal or even better skills than the State and locals. 

That is not to disparage contract security officers. They have a 

job to do. But they do not have the same training, capabilities, 

knowledge, skills and abilities of the police officers that are protecting these Federal buildings today. So we urge you to look at 

those issues. 

But the most important thing that I have heard out of this is, 

I don’t believe that DHS or ICE have any real goal to reduce force 

for efficiency. It is a budgetary issue. I sit here today and ask that 

this Committee relay to the powers that be in this matter that 

whether it is fee-based or appropriations-based, FPS needs to be 

funded to a level to protect the citizens of the United States. That 

is the most important thing I heard here today. I would like to 

relay on behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police that we support 

this Committee’s efforts to look at that and protect human capital, 

which is the most important thing that we as police professionals 

do. 

Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Canterbury. 

Mr. Graves, do you have any questions? 

Mr. GRAVES. No, thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Let me just ask you quickly, you have heard us 

question the line officers, you have heard us question top management. As you might imagine, many of our questions have already 

been answered. I do want to say that the training level bothers me 

a great deal. In this time of budgetary constraints, I think all agencies, yes, even security agencies, have to be prepared to accept less 

than they would desire. 

But for that reason, it seems to me the training level, you would 

expect better training levels, precisely if you believe you must have 

fewer officers. That is one problem I have. 

Another problem I have, it makes me wonder about the theory 

of law enforcement. For example, and I have to ask this question 

of you two experienced law enforcement officers, one of the reductions is in explosive detection dog teams. Only in 18 of the largest 

cities, 10 cities will no longer have the capability. Teams will be 

reduced from 60 to 29. 

53

Now, as a law enforcement matter, I am trying to think through, 

how do I reduce personnel consistent with a risk analysis? One of 

the things that would occur to me, and here I am speaking absolutely as a layman, leave aside patrol and the other areas, one 

thing that would occur to me as one of the things we most fear, 

some kind of bomb or explosion, it seems to me that I would say, 

well, canine it seems to me is one of the things I would like to, if 

anything, increase, where I am going to have less people. Because 

these dogs, at least the best of them, are extremely efficient, better 

than machines. I have a large problem with the reduction in personnel and the reduction in canines, sitting up here in the most secure facility on the planet, and saying to Federal employees, you 

all will get by. 

Now, enlighten me on the canine, the role of canine and whether 

or not if anything they might help if they feel they must reduce or 

whether it makes some sense in your view, in light of what you 

know about risk, to reduce canine patrols as well. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Madam Chair, the canine explosives detection program came about as a result of September 11th, 2001. FPS went 

to the finest training facility in the world for canine explosives detection, Auburn University. We trained 60 canine officers and we 

have expended untold amounts of funds getting these teams up and 

running. To have even the suggestion of a proposal to cut these 

critical detection teams is——

Ms. NORTON. Wait a minute. I know how difficult it is to train 

them, to get the very best. Are you saying when they go they will, 

where are they going to go to after we have invested in the training? What are we going to do with them? 

Mr. WRIGHT. My understanding is that it would be a complete 

elimination of approximately 29 teams. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, one of the things we are going to have to find 

out for the record, I will say to staff is, given how extraordinarily 

valuable canine dogs are and people who are trained in handling 

them, we need to know what they intend to do with canine that 

they are reducing. I certainly hope they will be somewhere in the 

Federal sector, so we can retrieve them at some point. That would 

bother me a great deal. 

Mr. WRIGHT. I could only assume that they would be offered to 

local agencies or other Federal agencies. 

Ms. NORTON. Let me ask Mr. Canterbury, where in South Carolina, sir? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Myrtle Beach. 

Ms. NORTON. What would be, you are the Myrtle Beach Police 

Department? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Actually the county police, Horry County. But 

it is in the area that Myrtle Beach——

Ms. NORTON. What is the county? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Horry County. 

Ms. NORTON. Give me your assessment of an MOU with Horry 

County that would say, now, you all pick up the slack here when 

we can’t get there. How would you as a police chief respond to 

that? Would you sign such an MOU? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Without an agency to have the MOU with, 

there wouldn’t be any need. We would be charged with making that 

54

response. There wouldn’t be a need for an MOU in a county that 

FPS is gone. We would respond, but it would be on a priority basis 

with all the other calls in that jurisdiction. So most local politicians, regardless, are going to charge the local police department 

with making that response. 

But in my particular area, we are a tourist area, we don’t have 

an FPS unit. But I am very close to Charleston, which does. And 

I know, for instance, where I worked, our canines for explosives 

came from 100 miles, when I was still employed. 

Ms. NORTON. Came from what, I’m sorry? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Came from 100 miles away. We did not have 

canine. We had a 250 man police department. 

Ms. NORTON. That’s it, around the Myrtle Beach area? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. There is now one explosive canine in the county, and that is a city jurisdiction. 

Ms. NORTON. But there are no Federal facilities? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Not there that is protected. But around the 

Country, I have traveled all over the United States as President of 

the Fraternal Order of Police, and I have dealt with them in all 

these jurisdictions. But when they cut the, especially the explosive 

teams, a lot of those cities are not going to be cities that have their 

own canine explosive units. So even if you do sign an MOU, you 

are not going to get an MOU that will leave that standard there. 

We talk about tactics and standards, Timothy McVeigh used a 

truck on the building in Oklahoma City. Al Qaeda learned from 

that and used airplanes in New York. They will adjust their tactics, 

and they have shown that in Iraq and they have shown that in the 

United States. Terrorism is terrorism, whether it is domestic or foreign. Those tactics will adjust. Professional police officers are better 

qualified to deal with that than contract security guards. 

Ms. NORTON. So in your professional judgment, will these MOUs 

be observed, such that they would respond quickly and adequately 

to protect Federal employees and visitors from your experience 

with local police officers, right? 

Mr. CANTERBURY. Not to a satisfactory standard. They will be adhered to, because they are still going to respond to a call for service. That is what we as police officers do, regardless. But that we 

prioritize calls. What we would think would be a priority as a local 

police officer may be totally different when you are inside a Federal 

facility and you don’t know what is in that facility, you don’t know 

what they are guarding in that facility. No, the response would not 

be the same. They would get a response, but it would not be the 

same. 

Ms. NORTON. I have lived in a number of jurisdictions. A constant complaint of residents is, they didn’t come as quick as I wanted them to come. I understand that pressure. I understand the 

pressure on local law enforcement. I am not sure I want to put any 

more pressure on local law enforcement on an unfunded mandate. 

That takes colossal gall——

Mr. WRIGHT. We agree. 

Ms. NORTON.—to save money in the Federal sector, at the expense of local law enforcement. And I don’t know what we can do 

about it. They are operating within an OMB budget. We do have 

a new Congress, and we are certainly going to look to see what we 

55

can do about it. We are not opposed to efficiencies. I believe that 

everybody is going to have to find greater efficiencies. 

You heard me say that I am not even opposed to the notion of 

an inspector, these inspectors will, I think for the most part, be 

peace officers. It is an interesting idea. I know one thing, the job 

description about people, employee awareness and the rest, and 

that kind of duty, is not intended to prevent day to day terrorist 

and criminal activity. It is a long range and good approach to making sure that you are shored up. 

The average visitor, the average citizen wants to know is there 

somebody out there who has made sure that the bad guys can’t get 

in. 

Mr. Wright, did you have a final comment on that? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, ma’am. On the inspector versus FPS police officer position, I would like to clarify. All inspectors are peace officers. And we do our share of patrol. The real difference here is in 

my duties as an inspector, I am sitting in an office preparing substantial reports. I am out in the field measuring properties, conducting security assessments. All that time takes away from me 

being out there patrolling the streets. Whereas police officers are 

out there 100 percent of their time, patrolling and surveilling. 

Inspectors, we do our share of patrol and response, but it is really the police officers that carry the load in that aspect. 

Ms. NORTON. Again, understand I am speaking from the point of 

view of somebody who has heard a lot of testimony, done a lot of 

work on risk consequences, when it comes to homeland security. If 

anything, I have seen from day one responses when we were all 

truly amateurs, I could only call over-response, before the whole 

notion of how you do a risk-based analysis and do your personnel 

accordingly. I think Americans are something else if they expect 

somehow to be treated as if we have individual protection. So I step 

back from this, having gone through the ritual with DHS of a riskbased analysis. I understand that if you live in somewhere, forgive 

me, the hinterland and not in D.C., you deserve some protection. 

But we require them to do a risk-based analysis so they can protect 

the big targets, like New York and D.C., without leaving people totally uncovered. We wasted billions of dollars, as has been shown 

in testimony after testimony, of people who just used the money 

that we threw out there for whatever they could find to use it on. 

So I understand how difficult it is where you have more than 400 

districts who want their share of the money. When it comes, however, to protection of this kind, if ever a risk-based analysis was 

going to be required, it certain is with respect to how do you prevent, let me just use that word again, prevent an event in a Federal building. I know you all will come if something bad happens. 

The point of spending any money is to keep something bad from 

happening. We have a tough job, because we can’t say, hey, we who 

believe that there ought to be pledged to a pay-go, we are not going 

to enlarge the deficit. We have been very critical of the other side 

in enlarging the deficit willy-nilly. 

So we recognize that even as we say this can’t possibly be, we 

are going to have to look for ways to in fat enhance the funding, 

enhance the resources and make sure that the FPS does not dwinVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:13 Oct 23, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\34797 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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dle into an essentially bureaucratic body and no one that uses the 

very expensive training we pour into them and not into others. 

I want to once again thank the officers who came and offered us 

first-hand experience. I particularly want to thank you, Mr. 

Wright, and you ,Mr. Canterbury, because you have bene most patient of all in sitting through our endless questions. 

Mr. WRIGHT. You are welcome. 

Ms. NORTON. I have unanimous consent on testimony to be entered into the record from Congressman Barney Frank. 

The record will remain open for five days for entry into the 

record of any other relevant materials. 

I thank you all for coming and the hearing is now closed. 

[Whereupon, at 1:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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