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S. Hrg. 109–976

HOMELAND SECURITY: THE NEXT 5 YEARS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

Available via http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

ALLISON J. BOYD, Counsel 

MELVIN D. ALBRITTON, Counsel 

JENNIFER A. HEMINGWAY, Professional Staff Member 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Minority Staff Director 

HOLLY A. IDELSON, Minority Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 1

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 3

Senator Domenici ............................................................................................. 5

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 6

Senator Coleman .............................................................................................. 7

Senator Dayton ................................................................................................. 8

Senator Warner ................................................................................................ 9

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 10

Senator Bennett ................................................................................................ 12

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 13

Senator Lautenberg .......................................................................................... 33

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

Hon. Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ...... 14

Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff, Los Angeles County, California ...................................... 40

Richard A. Falkenrath, Ph.D., Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism, 

New York City Police Department ..................................................................... 44

Steven N. Simon, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, 

Council on Foreign Relations .............................................................................. 48

Daniel B. Prieto, Senior Fellow and Director, Homeland Security Center, 

Reform Institute ................................................................................................... 52

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Baca, Leroy D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 40

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 69

Chertoff, Hon. Michael: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59

Falkenrath, Richard A., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 44

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 74

Prieto, Daniel B.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 52

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 113

Simon, Steven N.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 48

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 106

APPENDIX 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from: 

Mr. Chertoff ...................................................................................................... 130

Mr. Baca ............................................................................................................ 202

Dr. Falkenrath .................................................................................................. 208

Mr. Simon .......................................................................................................... 212

Mr. Prieto .......................................................................................................... 216

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HOMELAND SECURITY: THE NEXT 5 YEARS 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Collins, Voinovich, Coleman, Bennett, Domenici, Warner, Lieberman, Levin, Carper, Dayton, Lautenberg, and 

Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. Good morning. We have a very full agenda 

today with many distinguished witnesses, so I am going to ask all 

of us to abbreviate our opening statements because we have a noon 

vote. 

As the Nation remembers the shock and loss of the attacks on 

our country 5 years ago, the Committee this morning will look 

ahead to assess the homeland security challenges the next 5 years 

will bring. Our expert witnesses, from the very top of the Department of Homeland Security to the front lines, will provide valuable 

insight into these challenges. 

The morning of September 11, 2001, was one of uncommon brilliance here in the United States. In the blink of an eye, it was 

transformed into one of unthinkable horror. Two thousand nine 

hundred ninety-six innocent men, women, and children perished. 

Two of our major cities were under assault, two centers of our economic and military power were in flames, as was a field in Pennsylvania. To many, it seemed that a new kind of war had begun. 

If we had had the discussion that we are having today 5 years 

before September 11, 2001, it would have been clear that those attacks were not the opening salvo of a new war, but the foreseeable 

escalation of a war that had long been underway. Nineteen ninetysix was the year that Ramzi Yousef, while awaiting trial for the 

1993 World Trade Center bombing, was convicted of a conspiracy 

to plant bombs on a number of U.S. airliners. Nineteen ninety-six 

was the year of the truck bomb attack on Khobar Towers, an attack that specifically targeted U.S. military personnel. And, 1996 

was the year that Osama bin Laden relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan and declared war on the United States. The terrorist 

strategy was evolving to direct massive attacks on high-profile 

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American targets, but we failed to see it. We failed to perceive that 

these seemingly isolated events were, in fact, tied together. 

That was the failure which the 9/11 Commission referred to as 

a ‘‘failure of imagination.’’ How different things might be today, 5 

years after September 11, 2001, if our imagination had been fully 

engaged 5 years before. 

The fundamental obligation of government is to protect its citizens. Today, we will explore a number of questions about how government can better protect its citizens. To answer those questions, 

we must first seek to identify the threats we face. 

Terrorism constantly evolves. As the devastating attacks around 

the world prove, terrorists will strike wherever opportunity allows 

and wherever innocent people are the most vulnerable. The terrorists’ resourcefulness, cunning, and patience are exceeded only by 

their cruelty. 

The recent arrests in Canada and Miami, the attacks on the London subway last year, and the thwarted airliner plot in Britain 

have made clear that terrorism masterminds no longer have to rely 

upon operatives imported from abroad to infiltrate target nations 

and carry out attacks. The emerging threat appears to be from 

‘‘homegrown’’ terrorists, much harder to detect and not deterred by 

increased security at our borders. 

I am particularly concerned by the extent to which this infection 

is spread within our State and Federal prisons. The Committee will 

hold a hearing on prison radicalization later this month. But we 

know from cases both abroad and here in the United States, with 

Kevin James, an American now awaiting trial who founded an organization based upon his radical interpretation of Islam while in 

prison in California, that the new face of terrorism may be born 

and raised right here in America. 

As the terrorist tactics evolve, the overall objective remains the 

same—to cause maximum loss of innocent lives, to damage our 

economy, and to defeat our resolve. As they adapt to our strengthened defenses, terrorists continue to pursue ever more spectacular 

and devastating attacks. 

In addition to identifying the most likely threats that we face, we 

must constantly assess and improve our efforts to counter them. 

Our efforts during the past 5 years have been substantial. We 

have closed the gap between law enforcement and intelligence that 

the terrorists exploited on September 11. We have created the Department of Homeland Security. We have made investments in 

training and equipping our first responders. We have strengthened 

our borders with additional personnel and improved technology. We 

have brought about the most comprehensive restructuring of our 

intelligence community in more than a half century. 

These efforts, though, do not describe a task accomplished but 

one underway. Each remains a work in progress, and the emerging 

threats compel us to ask the hard questions about how well we 

have done in the past and whether we are prepared for the future. 

Among the questions that I intend to explore today are: 

How can we confront the challenge of homegrown terrorists? 

What resources do State and local law enforcement need to meet 

it? How can we work with the American Muslim community to prevent the radicalization of our own citizens? 

3

What are our greatest vulnerabilities to a chemical, biological, or 

nuclear attack, and how can they be mitigated? 

How can we continue to improve the effectiveness of intelligencegathering capabilities against terrorists while protecting the civil 

liberties of the American people? 

How can we accelerate the development of a common culture at 

DHS and help DHS work more effectively with its State and local 

counterparts in detecting, preventing, and responding to acts of terrorism? 

What is the role of the private sector—the business community, 

health, education, and other institutions, as well as the public—in 

strengthening our defenses against terrorism? 

Have we neglected the security of other forms of mass transportation in our focus on aviation security? 

How can we use our technological edge more effectively? Should 

interoperable communications be a national priority? What other 

technologies can we better deploy to protect against diverse targets? 

From the perspective of the past and present, we must imagine 

the future. September 11, 2001, was a day of profound loss, but it 

was also a day of inspiring courage. The first responders and ordinary citizens who rushed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon 

to save others, the brave souls on Flight 93 who gave their lives 

so that others might live, remind us of the greatest asset we bring 

to bear against this challenge—the spirit of the American people. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Lieberman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Welcome to you, Secretary Chertoff. 

Madam Chairman, I am grateful to you for calling this hearing 

to discuss the state of our homeland security 5 years after Islamic 

terrorists murdered 3,000 innocent Americans and shocked the rest 

of us out of our false post-Cold-War sense of security. Yesterday 

was a day of remembrance and requiem. Today we quite properly 

ask: Where do we want to be in homeland security 5 years from 

today? What can we say, if I may personalize it, to the parents of 

America about what we will do in the next 5 years together to be 

able to guarantee that their children’s upbringing and lives will be 

as secure as theirs were prior to September 11? 

September 11, 2001, like Pearl Harbor, was a tragedy of such 

enormity that it began a new era in which we understand that we 

are at war with a different kind of enemy and that our country, 

led by the Federal Government, must pull together and do better 

at fulfilling our constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense against this unconventional and unprecedented 

threat. The threat of a terrorist attack at home on Americans is as 

real today as it was 5 years ago. The foiled plot to explode airliners 

heading to the United States from the United Kingdom is the most 

recent and publicly acknowledged example. 

But let me say at the outset that just as the threat of a terrorist 

attack is as real today at home as it was 5 years ago, we together 

can say to the American people that they are safer than they were 

4

on September 11, 2001, although, as we all acknowledge, they are 

not yet as safe as we want them to be. 

We have every reason, as we look back at these 5 years, to thank 

God and to thank all who work each day to protect our homeland 

security that America and Americans have not been attacked at 

home since September 11, 2001. We are thankful that a number of 

terrorist plots have been disrupted through increased vigilance at 

home and cooperative work with our allies abroad. And as Chairman Collins has indicated, since September 11, we have made historic organizational changes in our government to shore up our 

homeland defenses. These include the reorganization of our vast 

and far-flung security and emergency response agencies into the 

Department of Homeland Security, the creation of the 9/11 Commission, the enactment of its bold proposals for reform and greater 

security, and the establishment of the Northern Command to focus 

the Department of Defense on homeland as well as international 

security. 

The point of these changes has been to focus the Federal Government’s attention on terrorism 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with 

resolve, coordination, and strong leadership to bring purpose and 

effectiveness to the protection of our homeland. As I have said, we 

are clearly safer today because of all that we have done together, 

although there are clearly weak links remaining that we must deal 

with together. 

I know that along the way there have been misgivings and some 

soul searching about the Department of Homeland Security, but I 

do not hear any credible voice saying that we erred in creating the 

Department of Homeland Security. So if the Department has not 

yet fully lived up to all that we in Congress hoped it would be, let 

us resolve today, as we look forward to the next 5 years, to work 

together to make it so. 

Let me say very briefly that the first great challenge that the Department has faced is to bring itself together. We gave the Department an enormous task to bring together 180,000 Federal employees from a large number of agencies with different cultures and different directions. I quote Warren Bennis here, adviser to four 

Presidents, who said that we need ‘‘the capacity to translate vision 

into reality.’’ And that is the work of leadership, and it has been 

a challenge, but I believe progress has been made in the time that 

the Department has existed. 

The failure of leadership we saw, without belaboring, acutely and 

tragically in the run-up and aftermath to Hurricane Katrina. Mr. 

Secretary, as you know, the pain and devastation that Hurricane 

Katrina caused and is still causing would be even worse if a weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon, were to explode in a 

crowded city, if terrorists were to spray a mall with a deadly biological agent, or if a naturally occurring virus spread to the level 

of a pandemic. We are looking to you for leadership on these 

threats. I know that you have acted to apply some of the painful 

lessons learned in Hurricane Katrina. You know that we on this 

Committee have tried to do the same through legislative work. The 

fact is that there is more work to be done. 

5

Second, I continue to believe that we are underfunding some of 

the critical homeland security needs, particularly our first responders. 

Mr. Secretary, today I look forward to hearing from you, to use 

Bennis’ words, your vision of where this Department is going, but 

also what you intend to do to translate that vision into reality and 

into action. I also welcome and look forward to the views of the expert witnesses who will follow. 

The security of the American people is the highest priority of our 

government. The plain fact is, without security, there cannot and 

will not be the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that our government was formed to secure. So we have got to get this right, 

and we have got to get it right together. 

And I close with a thank you to Chairman Collins and the other 

Members of the Committee because, as we look back over the last 

5 years since September 11, 2001, in a capital city, which has become all too partisan, reflexively, on the question of homeland security—and there have been moments where this has not been totally 

true, but on balance, as we look back, this Committee has acted 

with a real sense of unity that goes well beyond partisanship for 

the national interest and for homeland security. And the legislation 

that we have reported out, that has been adopted by Congress, that 

has been signed by the President, and that I believe today makes 

the American people safer than they would otherwise be is a testament, Madam Chairman, to your leadership and to the commitment of all Members of the Committee to forget party labels and 

work together as Americans to secure our future against a brutal 

and inhumane enemy. 

I thank the Chairman. 

Senator COLLINS. Thank you, Senator. 

Senator Domenici has asked to give his statement next because 

he has to leave for another committee that he is chairing. 

Senator Domenici. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI 

Senator DOMENICI. Let me thank you so much and say to the 

other Members, I will take little time. I have to chair the Energy 

and Natural Resources Committee hearing wherein we have the 

company involved with the Alaskan spill. That is the issue before 

that committee, and I am chairing it, so I would ask that my statement be made a part of the record, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection, all statements will be. 

Senator DOMENICI. I would just say to the Secretary, I commend 

you for the work you are doing, and my observation as one who 

works here on the Committee and observes from the outside is that 

things are beginning to gel in the way you would like to see them. 

It is a very difficult job that you have taken on, and I know it is 

not always successful day by day. But I want you to know that I 

always thought you had the potential to be a great leader in this 

job. And I want to continue to give you the opportunity to prove 

what you can do. 

I also look forward to seeing you more and more on the science 

and research part of your endeavor because that is absolutely paramount. Some things are happening with our National Laboratories 

6

that seem to me to bode well for our future and send some terribly 

tough signals to our opposition that we are up to finding out what 

they are doing and we are doing something about it. For this I 

thank you and congratulate you. 

I think I will see you in my State at a dedication of an R&D facility, which does make me think very highly about your capabilities in the future. Thank you. 

Thank you to all of the Senators. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Domenici follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI 

Madam Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing to discuss the Department 

of Homeland Security’s future. Thank you also, Secretary Chertoff, for spending 

time with us today to discuss the future of homeland security. 

I want to start by thanking you for taking on the difficult task of overseeing the 

Department of Homeland Security. Your Department is young and is tasked with 

the difficult job of securing our Nation. I appreciate your service to America, I have 

enjoyed working with you over the past couple of years, and I look forward to working with you in the future. 

It is appropriate that we meet today to discuss homeland security since yesterday 

was the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001. That was a horrific day, and the 

images and shock are still with us. But I believe that since then, we have made 

significant progress in the Global War on Terror and in our efforts to secure America. 

I look forward to hearing about where we have come since establishing the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and where we are going in the coming 

years. I believe our future will include new research and development efforts; collaboration with universities, industry and national labs; secure borders and ports 

of entry; and state-of-the-art security technologies. This isn’t an exhaustive list of 

our homeland security needs, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on 

the future of homeland security. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Senator COLLINS. Senator Levin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for 

calling this hearing and for the way that you and Senator 

Lieberman have managed to run this Committee on such a wonderfully bipartisan and effective basis. 

Immediately following the September 11 attacks, America came 

together as one Nation with one purpose: Protecting our country 

from those who would do us harm. Since that time, we have made 

important progress, such as hardening airplane cockpits and federalizing aviation security. Yet 5 years later, there are still gaps in 

our homeland security system that need to be closed. The focus of 

this hearing is to look forward and to ask what still needs to be 

done. 

First, if we are serious about homeland security, we need to adequately fund it. Year after year, we have seen significant cuts to 

our vital first responder grant programs. One of the areas where 

we have a significant shortfall is in the area of interoperable communications equipment. In the Senate, we have voted to establish 

demonstration projects for interoperable communications along 

Northern and Southern borders, but those projects have been 

dropped in conference. We still do not have a dedicated source of 

funding for interoperable communications equipment within the 

Department of Homeland Security, and presumably that means 

7

that the Administration does not believe that interoperable communications are important enough to deserve dedicated funding. 

Another major shortfall is in the area of reducing the threat of 

proliferation of fissile materials. The 9/11 Commission found that 

the ‘‘greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United 

States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.’’ The report went on to 

state that al-Qaeda has tried to acquire or make weapons of mass 

destruction for at least 10 years and that there is no doubt that 

the United States would be a prime target. Preventing the proliferation of these weapons warrants a maximum effort by 

strengthening counterproliferation efforts, expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative, and supporting the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. 

In the December 2005 follow-up report card, the 9/11 Commission gave the Administration a grade of D on this recommendation, 

saying that, ‘‘Countering the greatest threat to America’s security 

is still not the top national security priority of the President and 

the Congress.’’

We also have great needs, I believe, particular needs in the area 

of developing a consolidated watchlist of persons that are suspected 

of terrorism, where terrorists are identified and stopped from entering into the country and moving around our country. Five years 

after the September 11 attack, we still have a long way to go, according to the Government Accountability Office, in compiling a 

watchlist that is complete, accurate, and available to law enforcement. 

I want to thank Secretary Chertoff for joining us today and, 

again, thank you, Madam Chairman, and our Ranking Member, 

Senator Lieberman. And I hope we can continue to all work together to accomplish these important objectives. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Coleman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I agree with 

your comment and that of the Ranking Member that we are safer 

today, but we do live in a much more dangerous world. I just want 

to thank you for this hearing, looking forward 5 years. All too often 

in the Senate, we have focused on yesterday, today, and if we are 

lucky, maybe tomorrow. This is important enough to look down to 

the future. 

A principal responsibility of government, Madam Chairman, as 

you noted, is protecting the citizens and providing for the national 

security. And in this post-September 11 world, Mr. Secretary, that 

is homeland security, your responsibility, which is right at the very 

center. In the past, we suffered from a failure of imagination. 

Today we have to worry about the failure to deal with the unimaginable. We have to imagine the unimaginable and then figure out 

a way to deal with it, and that is an extraordinary challenge, and 

the challenges are broad—border security, port security, chemical 

security, just to name a few. 

We also must rebuild the confidence of the Department of Homeland Security and its ability to respond to disasters both natural 

and manmade. We cannot ignore that and must ensure that buVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
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reaucracy and red tape don’t hinder the ability to integrate new 

technologies. There is great hope with new technologies. Senator 

Domenici talked about that. It is also a key to success. 

Finally, we need to remember the lessons of September 11, 2001, 

and the decade that preceded it. As the Chairman has noted, we 

cannot rest, we cannot let our guard down, and we cannot relent 

in fighting this battle that history will reveal as the battle of our 

lifetime. And I am confident that with strong leadership and a bipartisan effort we will succeed. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I would ask that my full 

statement be entered into the record. 

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Coleman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

I want to thank our distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member for holding 

this important hearing. 

We have the opportunity today to make an assessment of where we are, and 

equally important, where we are going in terms of homeland security over the next 

5 years. The facts are that today America is safer than it was on September 11, 

2001. It is a major accomplishment that there have not been any successful terrorist 

attacks on American soil in 5 years and this is a testament to the great lengths 

we have gone to protect our citizens both at home and abroad. It is also a testament 

to the strength, vigilance and awareness of the American people. 

Additionally, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the revamping of our intelligence community operations have institutionalized and improved the practice of defending our Nation. As a result, 15 major terrorist plots 

against America have been thwarted—and those are just the ones that have been 

disclosed. Countless more undisclosed plots are likely to have been thwarted as well. 

However, we face an enemy that is constantly adapting and changing and that only 

has to be right once where we have to get it right 100 percent of the time. 

With this in mind, a strategic vision for the future must have some built-in flexibility so that we have the ability to change as our enemies do. There are certainly 

many challenges that lie ahead including border security, port security and chemical 

security, just to name a few. We must also rebuild the confidence of the American 

people in the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to respond to disasters 

both natural and man-made. Ensuring that bureaucracy and red tape do not hinder 

the Department’s ability to integrate new technologies and ideas to address these 

issues will be a key to future success. Finally, we need to remember the lessons of 

September 11 and the decade that preceded it. We cannot rest. We cannot let our 

guard down. And we cannot relent in fighting this battle that history will reveal 

as the battle of our lifetime. 

I look forward to hearing the testimony from our witnesses today and again want 

to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for their leadership on this issue.

Senator COLLINS. Senator Dayton. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON 

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, when Minnesotans ask me, as they often do, 

whether we are safer since September 11, I reply that we are because of the constant vigilance of yourself and thousands of other 

dedicated men and women in your agency and our Armed Services, 

our intelligence agencies, and so many others. And I salute you and 

all of them for your dedicated efforts. 

That being said, we must continually ask ourselves what can we 

do better, and in August, just last month, I toured parts of our 

Southern border with Mexico in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and 

our Northern border with Canada along northern Minnesota. On 

our Southern border, I met with many experienced and sophistiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9

cated Federal agencies who, frankly, should be heard by this Committee and by Congress regarding what is effective and what is not 

for our border security. However, my eyewitness experience supports Senator Lieberman’s statement that we are underfunding our 

border security efforts. 

For example, in El Paso, Texas, the day before my early morning 

visit that one facility apprehended and detained 269 people attempting to illegally enter our country. There is a fence, which is 

one of the important barriers to that illegal entry, yet still within 

the city limits that fence inexplicably just stops. The reason, I was 

told, is because the funding had run out. 

Along our Northern border, the Federal homeland security presence is far more limited, and in long stretches of that 5,525-mile 

border, border security is really non-existent. Despite increased 

funding by Congress and a mandate to increase the number of 

Northern border agents during the past 2 years, that number of 

border control agents has reportedly declined from 996 to 950. At 

any one time, only 250 agents are actively guarding our Northern 

border, and local law enforcement officials, whose first responder 

funding in Minnesota has been cut to only 40 percent of what it 

was a year ago, tell me that the Federal presence, while the people 

individually are very dedicated, is simply not sufficient to meet the 

demands. The illegal trafficking of people, of narcotics, of, God forbid, terrorists, while not as strong a likelihood as along our Southern border, and certainly the volume of what they call ‘‘economic 

illegal immigration,’’ those coming across the country for job purposes, is far less, still the threat is very real. And I would commend 

to you, as others have said, the need to increase that Northern border security. 

I would ask respectfully that you and the President—and I have 

written the President, asking for your support of an amendment 

which I had introduced, which was adopted by the Senate, which 

would increase the funding by $44 million for Northern border security agents, increase the number by 236, which would be a 24-

percent increase. That is in the fiscal year 2007 Senate appropriations bill that is going to conference. I would again respectfully ask 

for your support and that of the Administration. That would be an 

important first step to improving our Northern border security. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Warner. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER 

Senator WARNER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I 

will put my statement into the record, but I do want to join in a 

most sincere way in commending you and Senator Lieberman for 

the strong leadership that you have given this Committee on a 

most critical issue. I do not know of anything more critical than our 

own homeland security. Both of you are members of the Armed 

Services Committee, so you bring that perspective to bear on this. 

I also want to commend the President for the manner in which 

he led the Nation yesterday in, I think, very respectful ceremonies 

honoring those who lost their lives and reminding America about 

the enemy we face today is unlike any enemy that we have ever 

faced in the history of this Nation in terms of the breadth and the 

10

depth and the blind conviction that they have to bring destruction 

to those people in the free nations of the world, and most particularly, I suppose, us. 

But I would say also, Secretary Chertoff, you have shown strong 

leadership. You have weathered the storms, and your strength of 

leadership seems to grow daily. And I commend you for the manner 

in which you found time during the summer period to travel extensively across this Nation, indeed to my State. And I watched you 

firsthand dealing with those first responders, be they policemen or 

firemen or other people in the communities, and struggle with the 

tough questions put down at the grass-roots level. You had the answers. You gave the assurances. But you were realistic and honest 

in your approach about how funds are not unlimited, but you are 

doing the best you can to distribute them. So carry on. 

But I would come back to a caution by my good friend, Senator 

Levin. Both of us are concerned about the progress made in establishing more robust interoperability of communications, and I 

would hope in your remarks today you would address that. 

I thank the Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Warner follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER 

Madam Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today and I wish to thank 

our witnesses for their efforts over the past 5 years to help make our Nation a more 

secure place. Much has been done to date at the local, State, and Federal levels. 

The formation of the Department of Homeland Security combined dozens of Federal 

agencies; created new agencies and directorates; and established a comprehensive 

Federal mission for the new paradigm of security risks our Nation now faces. The 

185,000 public servants of DHS are dedicated to their mission to protect this country, its people, and its ideals from those who mean to do harm. 

We have taken significant steps in critical infrastructure protection; enhanced 

transportation security on land, sea, and air; strengthened security at the Nation’s 

borders and ports; reformed our intelligence capabilities; and established a stronger 

coordination of effort among the various levels of government. 

But perhaps the single most important change in this country over the past 5 

years is one that each individual American has experienced in his or her heart and 

mind. It is simply the realization that we are not safe from those who mean to do 

us harm and that we can never again rest from the charge to protect our home. Today’s enemy is different than those of the past. No longer are we dealing with actual 

governments as the primary threat—we must now defend our own cities from within. 

I joined this Committee in the 109th Congress because I fervently believe that 

this is a critical time in American history not unlike when the branches of the military were combined into one Department of Defense in the 1940’s. We continue to 

build the Department of Homeland Security to lead efforts to protect the Nation and 

under the leadership of former Secretary Ridge and now Secretary Chertoff we are 

in good hands. 

Five years ago I said that ‘‘our people have suffered in a single day our greatest 

tragedy—yet history will show this to be America’s finest hour.’’ I look forward to 

hearing from our witnesses today and continuing the work before this Committee 

to enhance the safety and security of our entire Nation.

Senator COLLINS. Senator Voinovich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

First of all, I would like to say this: The question I am constantly 

asked when I am at home in Ohio is, ‘‘With such partisanship in 

Washington, how can Congress accomplish anything?’’ And I point 

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11

ship is well and alive. And I commend you and Senator Lieberman 

for the terrific leadership that you have provided to this Committee. The American people should be assured that we are working together on the very important homeland security challenges 

that face our Nation. 

Second, yesterday, I think standing on the steps of the Capitol 

in memory of September 11, 2001, vividly reminded me of the serious threats we are facing in the global war on terror, and I think 

most people thank God that we have not had any terrorist event 

here in this country for the last 5 years. 

I am pleased also that the President has finally leveled with the 

American people and indicated that we are at war. Osama bin 

Laden has declared war on us. Our freedom and way of life is 

under attack by Islamic extremists who have distorted the Islamic 

faith and launched jihad against the United States and anyone 

who shares our values. And the American people should understand that this is the situation. I sometimes refer to it as the 

‘‘Fourth World War.’’ In other words, this struggle is not something 

that is going to be over by snapping our fingers. It is going to be 

with us now for a long time. I would hope that maybe my grandchildren will have this off their back, but it is going to take a lot 

of hard work. 

Our success in the war on terror has much to do with the Homeland Security Department, which has been in existence now for 

over 3 years. I think people should understand that it is the most 

formidable management challenge ever undertaken in the United 

States of America: Merging 180,000 people and 22 disparate departments and programs, and it is not going to be a lay-up shot to 

integrate this new Department. And it is not going to be fully accomplished, Secretary Chertoff, during your term. The management challenges will continue for quite some time, and it will take 

significant effort and focus to ensure that the Department becomes 

all that we want it to be. 

We must also understand that we cannot guard against every security threat imaginable. We need to recognize that we have astronomical national debt, and it is the highest percentage of our GDP 

in a long time. We are neglecting the nondefense discretionary part 

of our Federal budget. We have to look at the big picture and 

prioritize based on our limited fiscal resources. I don’t know how 

we can continue overspending in this country. 

From a fiscal point of view, we simply cannot afford to accomplish every objective Congress is seeking to achieve. We need more 

budgetary resources, perhaps even a temporary increase in our 

taxes so that we can afford to address our enormous national debt, 

improve our homeland security capabilities, and also continue 

fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Secretary Chertoff, constantly Congress is telling you, do this, do that. You only have so 

much money, and we need to consider the big picture, the whole 

budgetary perspective, and better prioritize our homeland security 

spending according to risk. 

Secretary Chertoff, today I am also hoping that we can hear from 

you about your strategic plan for the Department. Where are you 

now? Where are you going? How long is it going to take? And how 

can we help you to better do the job that we have asked you to do? 

12

[The prepared statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH 

Yesterday, our Nation observed the fifth anniversary of the tragic and violent terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The brutal images of September 11 will forever 

be burned into the minds of the American people. My own memories of visiting the 

Pentagon and being at Ground Zero shortly after the attacks will never fade. 

Each anniversary of September 11 renews our national resolve to fight the War 

on Terrorism at home and abroad. The American public should be reassured that 

our Nation is undoubtedly safer, but we must remain vigilant, because Osama bin 

Laden has declared war on us. Our freedom and way of life is under attack by Islamic extremists who have hijacked the Islamic faith and launched a jihad against 

the United States, Israel, and anyone who shares our values. 

Madam Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing today to evaluate 

the Federal Government’s progress in securing the American homeland against future attacks. Five years after September 11, and more than 3 years after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, it is appropriate for this Committee 

to take stock of our national homeland security policy and evaluate where we are 

and where we need to be. 

Integral to this discussion is a review of how the Department of Homeland Security is coming together as a cohesive entity. As my colleagues know, the creation 

of DHS in 2003 merged 180,000 employees from 22 disparate Federal agencies and 

represented the single largest restructuring of the Federal Government since the 

creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. 

Building stronger management capabilities is vital to the success of the Department. In order to effectively accomplish its complex mission of securing the Nation 

from terrorism and natural hazards, DHS must have an effective management 

structure with experienced leaders who are capable of integrating the many separate departmental components and ensuring effective operations and planning. 

I hope today’s hearing will also include a thoughtful examination of ways we can 

improve our risk management capabilities. We all agree that it is imperative to secure our homeland against terrorism and strengthen our response capabilities, but 

we must also acknowledge that this country has finite budgetary resources. 

It is simply not possible for us to guard against every theat—and frankly, if we 

tried to, we would bankrupt our Nation in the process. As our national homeland 

security policy matures, we have to use our common sense and begin to prioritize 

by allocating our limited resources based upon risk assessments. 

Secretary Chertoff, thank you for being here and for your service to our Nation. 

I look forward to your testimony regarding the progress DHS has made and what 

I hope will be a candid discussion of the challenges the Department continues to 

face. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Bennett. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT 

Senator BENNETT. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

The war with terrorists did not begin on September 11, 2001. It 

was going well before that, just as the Second World War did not 

begin on December 7, 1941. Those were the two dates on which 

Americans became aware of the fact that war was going on in the 

world around them and the two dates on which it came home to 

Americans in a very terrible and terrifying kind of way. 

During and after the Second World War, we reorganized our resources and our government to deal with the threat that we discovered, and we are doing the same thing now, reorganizing our government to deal with the threat that we have discovered. It was 

not easy after December 7, 1941, and it has not been easy after 

September 11, 2001, but it is a task that we must be about. And, 

Madam Chairman, you and Senator Lieberman have led the way 

in this Committee. 

Secretary Chertoff, you have the burden of presiding over one of 

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ties in the world. You are handling it in a very capable fashion, 

and we appreciate your service. We appreciate your dedication to 

this task and look forward to hearing what you have to say. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Carper. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Mr. Secretary, good 

morning. 

I want to start off by thanking Madam Chairman and our Ranking Member for holding this hearing this morning. It is certainly 

a timely one. 

Five years ago yesterday, as we all know, the prevention of future terrorist attacks like the one that occurred for all intents and 

purposes became the Federal Government’s, our government’s top 

priority. And it became a top priority for State and local governments like my own State of Delaware. And as we reflected yesterday on the tragedy that struck us 5 years ago, I think it is good 

that we are also taking the time here today to examine the 

progress that we have made and, in some cases, the lack of 

progress that we have made since that tragic day occurred. 

There has been progress in a number of areas. As I travel in airplanes, I am reminded, especially coming back from Manchester, 

England, a couple of weeks ago, of our ability to respond quickly 

and to try to tamp down threats that would harm many people at 

once. 

As I visit nuclear power plants—and I have visited several 

around the country—I am reminded I think we are doing a better 

job there in making them more secure. 

As we look at our ports, I think we have done some good. I think 

we can do more in the legislation that we take up today, that our 

Chairman and Ranking Member and Senator Murray have worked 

a whole lot on, but there is a good deal more that we can do there. 

There is a good deal more that we can do with respect to rail and 

transit security, and we have an opportunity to consider that in the 

context of the port security bill. 

This Committee has worked long and hard on trying to make 

chemical plants more secure, and I do not know that we will have 

a chance to take that bill up this week, but we need to get the bill 

reported out of Committee almost unanimously and get it before 

the full Senate. 

I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Chertoff—I always do, 

Mr. Secretary—and from our other witnesses today about the successes of the last 5 years but, more importantly, about the work 

that you and your Department need to do and what we need to do 

to support those efforts, and hopefully to improve them. 

For a variety of reasons, whether it be the war in Iraq or the continuing standoff between Israel and the Palestinians or any number of other grievances, the number of those who wish to do us 

harm is likely growing, and it is important that we get this right. 

Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

We are now very pleased to welcome our first witness today, the 

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael 

Chertoff. 

14

1The prepared statement of Secretary Chertoff appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. MICHAEL CHERTOFF,1 SECRETARY, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Chairman Collins, Ranking Member 

Lieberman, Members of the Committee, it is a real pleasure for me 

to appear before you today, the day after the fifth anniversary of 

September 11, 2001, to talk about where we have come over the 

last 5 years and, perhaps even more important, what our vision is 

and our strategy is for the next 5 years. 

Every time we have a ceremony recalling the events of September 11, 2001, I am reminded of some new way in which it 

touched each of us, not only in our professional capacities, but in 

our personal capacities. 

Yesterday, as part of my commemoration of September 11, I was 

in Bayonne, New Jersey, and present at the unveiling of the sculpture given by the Russian people to commemorate the event. I was 

with Senator Lautenberg from the Committee and former President Clinton and a number of other people. And as we laid the 

flowers down at the base of the monument at the conclusion of the 

ceremony, I found the name of a college classmate whose name I 

had never seen on the rolls of the lost of September 11. And it was 

a reminder of the fact that the pain of September 11 continues to 

touch us even 5 years after the event. 

But it is also an opportunity to renew our dedication and our 

unity of purpose. I agree with what everybody here has said. The 

area of homeland security is one that stands above the normal division of differences that sometimes characterizes what goes on in 

our political system. It has always been a pleasure for me to work 

with this Committee because, not only as a group but individually, 

you have each afforded me wise, dispassionate counsel and always 

recall that whatever our disagreements, there is a far more central 

unity of vision that we all have about what we need to do. And so 

I am delighted to be able to appear at this very momentous time 

to recall where we have been and see where we are going. 

I would say there is one dynamic that is the most important in 

setting our strategy and our agenda going forward, and that is a 

recognition that we have to be realistic about what we expect and 

about what we do. We do have limits, and we do have choices to 

make, and it falls to me in my job most often to have to make a 

judgment about how to allocate priorities among those choices. 

Our limit is not only financial, although that is clearly a limit, 

and to understand that, one need look no further than bin Laden 

himself, who said soon after September 11 he wanted to bankrupt 

us. He understood that one tool he had in waging war against the 

United States was to drive us crazy into bankruptcy trying to defend ourselves against every conceivable threat. 

But, in addition, we have to bound ourselves with other limits. 

We do not want to break the very systems we are trying to protect. 

We do not want to destroy our way of life trying to save it. We do 

not want to undercut our economy trying to protect our economy. 

And we do not want to destroy our civil liberties and our freedoms 

in order to make ourselves safer. So it falls to us in all of these 

15

respects to seek balance and realism about what we can expect, 

what we promised the American people. 

Let me say that I have divided the task into five general buckets, 

and I will tell you very briefly—and I would ask that my full statement be made part of the record. 

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

Secretary CHERTOFF [continuing]. Where we have gone and 

where we intend to go on each of these five buckets. 

The first of these is keeping bad people out of the country. This 

was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. The good 

news is we do have integrated terrorist watchlists which do enable 

us to identify the names of bad people who are trying to get into 

the country. We have also fully deployed our biometric US–VISIT 

Program, which captures two fingerprints from every non-American 

who enters the United States and allows us to check them against 

our databases. That has kept out a lot of bad people. 

Between our ports of entry, we have committed to doubling the 

number of Border Patrol by the end of 2008. We have committed 

to building additional fencing and additional tactical infrastructure. 

And we are within 2 weeks about to unroll a strategic technological 

initiative with respect to the border that will put sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles and other high-tech tools in place to leverage our capabilities and the hard work of our Border Patrol. 

We have more we can do. The great challenge, I think, for the 

next 5 years is not keeping out the known terrorist. It is keeping 

out the unknown terrorist, the unidentified terrorist. And we have 

two programs underway that will let us do that. 

The first is we need to be able to take passenger name record information, which is information that the airlines capture or travel 

agents capture, and we need to be able to run that against our 

databases, against telephone numbers and credit cards that we 

have already identified as connected to terrorist activity. As we sit 

here, we have the capability to do that. There is one restriction. 

The Europeans, up until recently, had restrained our ability to use 

the information we got from airlines flying from Europe to the 

United States by limiting the way we could apply that against our 

databases. We are now in a position where I think we will have an 

opportunity to talk to the Europeans about modifying those restrictions. Clearly, we need to respect the interest and privacy, but I 

can tell you from my personal experience after September 11, we 

used some of that very data to track down the connections of the 

19 hijackers in the days immediately following September 11. I was 

involved in doing that personally. And one of the lessons I learned 

was this: I would much rather track down the terrorists before the 

bombs hit than after the bombs hit. And we need to move forward 

with this. 

Second, we are going to start deploying this fall the capability to 

read 10 prints and not just two prints from foreigners entering the 

United States. The ability to go to a 10-print system will give us 

a capability we have not had up to now, which is we can screen 

all of those prints against latent fingerprints picked up in the battlefields all over the world, in safe houses and off of bomb fragments. It will mean that once this is fully deployed, hopefully with 

the next couple of years, anybody who has ever been in a safe 

16

house or built a bomb is going to have to wonder whether we are 

going to catch them when they cross our border. 

The second area is screening cargo. Here again I am pleased to 

say that by the end of this year, we will have 80 percent of the containers that come into the United States going through radiation 

portal monitors, and by next year we are going to be at close to 100 

percent. 

Our next vision is to take this overseas, and I know Senator 

Coleman had suggested I go to Hong Kong. I have looked at the 

process they have in place there, which is an integrated system for 

not only screening for radiation but putting containers through Xrays. And we are currently working very actively with a number 

of foreign ports to begin deploying a system like that over the next 

couple of years as well. 

The third area is infrastructure protection. I am pleased to say 

we have done a tremendous amount to improve aviation security, 

as underscored most recently by the events of last August. That includes, contrary to some misinformation that has been put out in 

the media, that we do have a unified watchlist, the no-fly list that 

captures all the people whose identities we know about that we 

want to keep off airplanes. But we also have more work to do with 

respect to other sectors of transit. 

I am pleased to say that next month, in October, I anticipate 

that the Department of Transportation and my Department will 

roll out additional and new regulatory measures that will strengthen our ability to control and protect hazardous inhalation materials 

that travel by rail. I can also say that we have done quite a bit 

to strengthen our screening of air cargo. One hundred percent of 

the packages that are presented to the airlines by individuals to be 

put in the cargo holds of passenger planes are now going to be 

screened through baggage explosive detecting equipment. And we 

are working with freight consolidators to increase the amount of 

screening we do of their freight as well as to insist that they have 

a trusted traveler program. 

The fourth bucket is information sharing. Under the leadership 

of the DNI, we have done a tremendous amount to improve the collection and sharing of intelligence. I agree with the observations 

made here, and I think to be made by the next panel, that we need 

now to work more closely with State and locals in opening up a 

broad channel of exchange of information. Ambassador McNamara, 

who is working for Ambassador Negroponte, has been working 

closely with my chief intelligence officer and the FBI to put such 

a model in place, and we are already beginning, by embedding our 

analysts into the field, working with local authorities in fusion centers from Los Angeles to New York, and that program I think has 

a great deal of hope and a great deal of promise in terms of our 

ability to build a degree of integration vertically that will match 

what we now have horizontally. 

Finally, let me talk a little bit about response, in particular, the 

question of interoperability. That, of course, was a central lesson of 

September 11. The good news is we actually now have technology 

that will permit first responders and people from different jurisdictions to talk with one another even though they operate radios on 

different frequencies. These devices are called ‘‘gateways,’’ and I 

17

have seen them operate, and they do, in fact, work. That is not to 

say that we do not want to progress to the next level of technology, 

which will be a broader ability to use interoperability with different 

kinds of data that will require us to make some tough decisions 

about how we use the next stage of digital communications equipment. But it also means that the real challenge now is a challenge 

of leadership. These agencies have to agree on common rules of the 

road about how they are going to talk to one another, what codes 

they are going to use to describe events, who is going to talk to 

whom, what is the language that is going to be used, and what are 

the rules of the road. 

This is not, frankly, a technology issue. This is an issue of having 

community leaders come to an agreement. Some communities have 

done it. We have a lot of interoperability in the National Capital 

Region. Los Angeles County has interoperability, and they have 

reached these agreements. Some communities have not done that 

yet, and we have to guide them in doing that, and we plan to be 

doing that this year. 

Let me conclude by identifying three areas where I think Congress can act this fall to dramatically enhance our ability to continue to build on the progress we have made. 

The first is in the area of chemical security. This Committee has 

done a lot of work on chemical security. It is an urgent issue. One 

of the great remaining threat vectors for this country is the possibility of somebody attacking our chemical infrastructure and creating an inhalation hazard. We partly regulate this now through 

our ability to regulate the ports and through the regulation that we 

are going to be putting out with respect to rail transit in the next 

month. But there remains a gap, and legislation that is currently 

in Congress that would address that gap is urgently needed. And 

I would really request that Congress act on it this month. 

Second is port security. I recognize there is legislation on the 

floor now. It would institutionalize and strengthen many of the 

measures we are currently taking. We have worked with this Committee on port security. We commend it for its work again. This 

would be a tremendous contribution to put into effect this month. 

And, finally, with respect to the area of immigration, we continue 

to believe it is important to have a comprehensive plan to address 

the issue of immigration if we are really going to solve the problem 

at the border. 

There are also some short-term things that can be done. We have 

recognized the Senate has enacted $1.8 billion in additional funding as part of the Department of Defense supplemental, which 

would be addressed to strengthening some of what we do in border 

enforcement. I have also urged again and again that Congress act 

to dissolve the Orantes injunction, which is hampering our ability 

to remove people from El Salvador based upon a court order that 

arises from a civil war that has long ended. Steps like these taking 

this forward would be of major assistance to us in accomplishing 

the ambitious but, nevertheless, achievable goals that we have set 

for ourselves. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for an excellent 

statement. 

18

You emphasized in your statement the actions that you have 

taken or will be taking to strengthen border security, which is certainly a goal that I share. But since September 11, the majority of 

terrorist attacks overseas have been executed by homegrown terrorists. In fact, as Richard Falkenrath will point out on our next 

panel, ‘‘Since September 11, 2001, most terrorists plots and attacks 

perpetrated worldwide have been conceived, planned, and executed 

by individuals who are part of the local population and who have 

had only limited, if any, transnational linkages to terrorist organizations abroad.’’

The NYPD as well as the L.A. Sheriff’s Department have gone 

to great lengths to establish and deploy counterterrorism units in 

order to protect their regions against the threat of homegrown terrorism. How much emphasis is the Department placing on this 

emerging threat? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Chairman Collins, we are putting a lot of 

emphasis on that threat. We recognize, of course, that the high-consequence threat—the weapon of mass destruction—is still largely a 

threat that is international in character. But, nevertheless, as demonstrated by what happened in London in 2005, the homegrown 

threat is serious. We are doing several things. 

First of all, we are working with communities like New York and 

Los Angeles to help them build fusion centers. We opened one in 

Los Angeles a few months ago, and that is a way of integrating 

local intelligence gathering with our Federal effort so that we can 

have a two-way flow of information. 

The second thing we are doing is we are particularly focused on 

prisons. I have met with corrections authorities in New York State 

and California, where we have, obviously, significant prison populations, to make sure that our intelligence folks are working with 

their corrections folks at a State level as well as a Federal level to 

identify threats within the prison system, which history tells us is 

a fertile breeding ground for extreme groups. And, obviously, prisons are also populated by people who tend to have a willingness 

to commit acts of violence. 

The third thing is we are working hard to understand how it is 

that homegrown groups get radicalized and become operational. 

This country has a natural advantage in the way its society operates that has apparently made us much less susceptible than some 

countries in Western Europe. But it requires that we continue to 

pay attention to what causes radicalization, that we continue to 

embrace our Muslim co-citizens, we continue to emphasize the importance of not allowing ethnic prejudice to creep into what we do, 

so that we tamp down on any tendencies in our own society that 

might, in fact, replicate what we have sadly seen overseas. 

Chairman COLLINS. If you talk to State and local law enforcement officials, over and over again they point to the need for interoperable communications equipment. You have mentioned today 

that they, too, need to step up to the plate and establish common 

standards, but there is another obstacle, and that is funding. It is 

very expensive to establish interoperable communications, and yet 

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ment. Would the Department support dedicated funding to achieve 

a nationwide goal of interoperable communications so that our first 

responders will no longer be hampered in their ability to communicate during a disaster? This was one of the lessons from the attacks on our country 5 years ago, but it is a lesson that we saw 

once again in the response to Hurricane Katrina when within the 

various parishes in New Orleans the equipment was not compatible. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, we have put hundreds of millions of 

dollars into grant programs for this kind of equipment, and in principle, I think, making sure that our homeland security funds are 

significantly dedicated to this kind of equipment is worthwhile. 

But I do have to say this: Often when I push on this issue, what 

I see is the problem is we cannot get agreement about what equipment to buy. And perhaps the answer is we will at some point have 

to simply mandate that this is the equipment you must buy and 

you are not going to get money for anything else. 

But I would hesitate to dedicate a huge amount of money up 

front without the input of the localities themselves to make a determination of what they feel they need and how far they have 

come and what the remaining gaps are. 

I will say that we are planning by the end of this year to have 

done a careful study with each of the communities of exactly what 

their shortfalls are with interoperability. And once we have that 

done, we may be able to give you a much more specific answer 

about what funding needs are required. 

Chairman COLLINS. But hasn’t the Department been working on 

common standards? It is my understanding that the Federal Government has been working to develop consensus-based equipment 

standards for 15 years, and now that responsibility is hosted in 

DHS. So isn’t an answer to that problem for the Department to 

conclude its work and issue the consensus-based standards? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It is, and one thing we are going to do is, 

as we look at the new digital equipment, we are—and I have actually mandated that we do come up with a standard about the specifications on the digital equipment. One thing I want to make sure 

of when we do it is that we do not unintentionally lock in a particular proprietary form of communication that gives somebody a 

monopoly. So we may require that a condition of being designated 

is that you become open source and you make the proprietary technology available to others so we can have a competitive system. 

So I do agree that is something we need to get done. That is to 

get to the next level. What I do want to emphasize, though, is as 

we speak at this moment, there is bridging technology that 

achieves interoperability, and that is available. And if something 

were to happen tomorrow, that is out there. What needs to be done 

is those communities that have not finished making their arrangements have to reach an agreement. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks again, 

Secretary. 

You spoke at the outset of your statement, I think understandably, about the fact that we have to be realistic and we cannot do 

it all. And then you listed the five buckets, some of which imply 

20

an intensity of threat, seriousness of threat, and a lot of which understandably are priorities of methods for combating threats. 

So I wanted to ask you, as we look forward to the next 5 years, 

if you could address the question of risk in a somewhat different 

manner, which is what you believe the biggest security risks are 

that America will face here at home, and let’s focus for a moment 

at first on terrorism. Obviously, we face the continuing threat of a 

natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, but I am thinking about 

the terrorists. As you order the ways in which terrorists may attempt to attack us, what is the priority list? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Risk is composed of three things: Threat, 

vulnerability, and consequence. And, frankly, I put the most weight 

on consequence because threat and vulnerability change, consequence rarely does. 

The high-consequence event that is the biggest risk is a weapon 

of mass destruction. A nuclear bomb, of course, is at the end of the 

scale. A biological attack, even a serious radiological attack, would 

have very powerful effects on our entire country. 

The good news is at least in terms of a nuclear bomb, the likelihood of that happening, the threat in terms of capability, is low at 

this point. On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that 

threat is going to diminish over time, and I do have reason to believe it is going to increase over time. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. So would you put that at the top of the list? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I would put that at the top particularly because we need to be making the investments now against the day 

5 years from now when that threat does become more likely. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. And the investments are in prevention or 

response? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, they have got to be in everything, but 

I have to say with a nuclear bomb, prevention has to come first because there is no way a response to a nuclear attack is going to 

be anything but inadequate in terms of the lives lost and the damage done. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. So let me ask you to take a moment 

and now relate your five buckets to what you have stated is the 

number one terrorist concern you would have, which is a WMD attack, particularly a nuclear attack. How do we prevent it? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Screening bad things out. A critical element 

of what we have to do is keep out dangerous things from the country, and that is why I put radioactive material at the top of the list. 

Now, that has to begin, as Senator Levin said, overseas. The 

President signed an agreement with President Putin during the G–

8 to be much more aggressive in terms of our overseas efforts to 

intercept this material. 

From the homeland standpoint, eventually we want to make sure 

that even before a container is loaded into a ship, we are screening 

it for the possibility of radioactive material. We also, by the way, 

will have by the end of next year radiation portal monitors at each 

of our land ports of entry. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. So that ring around the country is step one. 

Step two is what we call the ‘‘Securing the Cities Initiative.’’ We 

anticipate over the next 2 years putting money into and deploying 

21

radiation detection systems around at least one major city, the city 

of New York, and two other cities yet to be selected, the idea being 

that we will then build on that to have a network of radiation detection equipment inside the country itself. So that is one bucket. 

Another bucket is intelligence. The DNI, Ambassador Negroponte, is very focused on counterproliferation. Much of our collection activity is aimed at determining whether there are people out 

there building the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Right. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. So enhancing that is a second issue. 

A third issue is response, and whether it be a radiological bomb 

or it be a biological attack, we have to have the capability to come 

up with an antidote or a vaccine. And the good news is with respect to many of these threats, we have the antidote. We also need 

to be able to distribute it, and much of the planning that we see, 

for example, in the avian flu area is also a way of planning for how 

we would do a mass distribution with respect to other kinds of biological vectors. 

I can also tell you that we have deployed in a significant number 

of cities biological detection equipment which goes off when there 

is an ambient indication of a biological measure because that enables us to respond more quickly. 

So those are three areas in which we respond to that high-consequence event. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. How about the prevention of the movement 

of chemical and biological materials into the country in place for 

an attack? In other words, we are focused, understandably, on trying to detect the coming of a nuclear weapon. I understand this is 

different because you could put together chemical and biological 

means for an attack within the United States. What systems do we 

have to prevent that? Intelligence obviously is one. If we can know 

what is coming and break it before it gets here, that obviously is 

the best way to do it. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think the challenge with biological and 

chemical is that there is plenty of stuff inside the country. You do 

not need to bring it in. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Yes. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. And we saw in the Oklahoma City bombing 

that ammonium nitrate could be a powerful weapon. 

Now, we do regulate, particularly with respect to biological hazards, we do some regulation with respect to the way in which it is 

made available to the public. But there are some kinds of chemicals 

and some kinds of biological agents that occur in nature, and if 

someone had the wherewithal, they could simply take something 

that occurs on a farm, like anthrax on a farm or foot-and-mouth 

disease on a farm, and they could, if they had the know-how, culture it to make it weaponized. 

So there the focus has got to be—we cannot keep it out of the 

country. We have got to focus on intelligence. We have got to focus 

on rapid detection capability so that if there is an outbreak, we can 

move quickly in order to tamp it down. And that is an area, frankly, where our ability to distribute vaccines or antidotes quickly is 

really our principal method of defense. 

22

Senator LIEBERMAN. OK. My time is up. So, clearly, the No. 1 

threat is a weapon of mass destruction. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. In terms of consequence. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Chemical, biological, or nuclear, in terms of 

consequences. I would like to come back, unless someone else asks 

you about it, how you rate—and I won’t ask you for an answer 

now—the threat of an improvised explosive device here. Obviously, 

these are being used elsewhere around the world by terrorists. 

Thanks from your answer, and it guides us in prioritizing our 

own work with you to try to prevent and protect and respond to 

that number one concern that you have. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Coleman. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I want to follow up on Senator Lieberman’s questioning about 

the No. 1 threat being a nuclear weapon, nuclear material, and the 

ability to bring it in through cargo, through our ports. I think we 

deal with about 11 million containers entering the country every 

year, and we have had discussions—and I appreciate your taking 

the personal effort, Mr. Secretary, to go to Hong Kong to take a 

look at that system. 

One of the nice things about this Committee with the leadership 

of the Chairman and the Ranking Member is I think we have done 

a pretty good job putting partisan politics aside and trying to figure 

out what is the best thing to do. And I am a bit concerned with 

the politicization of kind of the fear of something getting in there. 

The Washington Post has an editorial today where they talk about 

mandating 100 percent screening, and they use the phrase, ‘‘The 

‘inspect all containers’ mantra is a red herring that exploits Americans’ fears about what might slip through in order to score political 

points . . . ’’

Let me talk to you a little bit about that. The screening of nuclear radiation that you talk about, 100 percent, that is in our 

country, those are in our ports. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. And I want to be careful to use the 

word ‘‘scanning’’ because what we do is we put them through scanners, and that is in our ports. 

Senator COLEMAN. All right. But the ideal situation, of course, is 

to get them outside because clearly if a device comes in and it were 

to be in Long Beach, New York, or Savannah, wherever it is, New 

Jersey, it would have a devastating impact on not just people but 

commerce, and it would be very disruptive. So ideally we want to 

do the screening out, and then set up—we have our CSI, Container 

Security Initiative. We have the pilot project looking at the Hong 

Kong system. But Hong Kong, as you and I know, Mr. Secretary—

I think it is two lanes out of 40 that does 100 percent. And now 

there are proposals that say we need to do all cargo within 3 years 

or 4 years. 

Can you respond? Again, I want to push you on this really hard, 

but tell us what is it that we can do, and even on an accelerated 

pace, what can we accomplish in this area? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think, first of all, the biggest constraint—

there are two constraints on our ability to operate overseas. One 

is, of course, there has to be enough physical room to put these devices in place without significantly slowing up the flow of the conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
23

tainers. And I think you are quite right, Senator, in pointing out 

that each port is going to be different, and their capacity to manage 

the throughput is going to depend on the nature of the port. 

The second issue, frankly, is the willingness of foreign governments to cooperate, which we do not control, because when containers go through the system that we are proposing to start to deploy, when they hit a red light, some of the containers have got to 

be pulled out and have got to be opened. You have got to inspect 

it. And the authority to do that lies with foreign governments. We 

work with them, but it is their authority that we use to open the 

containers. 

They rightly worry about the burden on their own customs officials in terms of whether they have the manpower and the capacity 

to do that. So I cannot tell you that within 3 or 4 years we can 

fully deploy a system of having everything, every container overseas go through a dual scanning system before it gets on a ship because I cannot predict that foreign governments will agree, I cannot predict that every port is going to be configured in a way to 

allow that to happen. And I would hate to have Congress pass 

something that would suggest to the American people that there is 

a solution that is completely pie in the sky. 

Senator COLEMAN. But we can tell the American people that 

every single container—every single container—is undergoing a review process. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. That is correct. Every single container is 

screened in two ways. 

First of all, based on information that we obtain about the shipper, the track record, the destination, method of payment, and a 

host of other considerations, and then the high-risk containers are 

physically inspected or run through X-ray machines. 

Second, by the end of next year, all containers, once they—at 

least at the point they arrive at our ports, will be taken through 

radiation portal monitors before they leave the port. So while not 

a perfect defense, it is a very good defense. 

Senator COLEMAN. And I keep going back to the former mayor 

in me—and I think we have a number on this panel. There was not 

a partisan way to collect garbage, I just wanted to get it done. And 

I am not going to be satisfied—if foreign countries are not cooperating, then we need to do something about that. That is not an acceptable excuse for me. Then we need to say that they are going 

to have some consequences. But I just want to make sure that we 

do not get caught up and this become a political football. It is too 

important an issue. And we will push you, Mr. Secretary. We do 

want to see the results of the Hong Kong project. Clearly, one of 

the challenges of Hong Kong is that information right now is not 

integrated into the full system. So we have got a lot of data there, 

but it is not being used currently. And so the challenge first becomes to use it, to have it integrated into our system, and then to 

assure the American people that, yes, each and every container is 

being reviewed and that we are maximizing and pushing to the 

limit of making sure what we can physically look at without in the 

end doing what Osama bin Laden wanted to do, which is to destroy 

our economy. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

24

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Levin. 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

I want to talk to you about the watchlist, Mr. Secretary. The Terrorist Screening Center was supposed to have developed a system 

through which screening agencies could directly access the database, but this has yet to be completed. That is what the GAO says. 

Is that correct? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I can tell you what my understanding is. 

There is a no-fly list that is compiled from individual databases 

maintained by individual agencies, and that list is accessible as a 

single list or as a single database, and that is what keeps people 

off of airplanes. 

At the border, there are a number of different databases because 

different agencies keep information for different purposes, but it is 

possible to access them all immediately from the port of entry so 

that we are capable at our ports of entry of screening a list within 

a matter of moments for somebody coming——

Senator LEVIN. How many lists are there? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know if I can give you an answer 

to that. Probably somewhere between half a dozen and 10, depending on how you want to characterize them. 

Senator LEVIN. Let’s say a half a dozen. Why aren’t they integrated into one watchlist? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think two reasons. First of all, there is actually no reason to make them a single list, and there are reasons 

not to make them a single list. The reason we do not need to make 

it a single list is in this day and age it is possible to check a name 

against four or five lists simultaneously, with very little loss of 

time. I mean, it is all done in a matter of seconds. 

The downside with merging them, as opposed to integrating 

them, is that they are held for different purposes. For example, the 

FBI has lists of people who are involved with criminal behavior or 

dangerous behavior, which includes American citizens. But that is 

not really of use to the Border Patrol in its entirety because we 

cannot keep American citizens out of the country. They have a 

right to come in. And, in fact, privacy advocates generally argue 

that unnecessarily merging lists into one actually raises the risk to 

privacy. 

Senator LEVIN. Can a local law enforcement person who arrests 

someone who wants to see if he is on any terrorist list access immediately all of the lists? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We have now completed phase one of merging IDENT and IAFIS, which are the two fingerprint-based systems, our system and the FBI’s system, and I believe in Boston and 

some other cities, we are now deploying that kind of inter——

Senator LEVIN. But that local law enforcement person out there 

in most jurisdictions cannot right now access, after they arrest 

somebody, all of the terrorist watchlists? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think that is right. I think they can get 

the information that is pertinent to them through one of two portals—either the FBI portal or through this merged portal that we 

are beginning to deploy. 

Senator LEVIN. So that a law enforcement person who arrests 

somebody or is suspicious of someone can, through two portals, 

25

punch a button, get all the information that all the agencies have 

that would make this person a suspicious character——

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know if I can make it ‘‘punch a button.’’ But in whatever way they access, for example, IAFIS, which 

is the Bureau list, they can access that, and through this new program, we are making it available now in some areas because we 

have now begun phase one of merging these two. 

Senator LEVIN. So that is not yet available in most place? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It is not yet fully available, correct. 

Senator LEVIN. All right. Do we have all the resources to make 

it available? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think the issue is not a money issue. I 

think it is a systems issue, making sure that we can deploy it in 

a way that is not going to create false positives. I think we are 

going to watch phase one, and I think we are on track to completing the job in short order. 

Senator LEVIN. Because I think when you just testified that we 

have a unified watchlist and we have an integrated watchlist, it 

makes it sound a lot more advanced than it really is. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I want to be clear. I was particularly 

being—I want to focus on, first of all, the TSA no-fly list because 

there seemed—I was reading things in the paper today that were 

suggesting that we do not have a unified no-fly list, and I can tell 

you that is incorrect. 

Senator LEVIN. That is not what I was referring to, though. Let 

me ask quickly because I only have a minute and a half left. How 

many of the people who were arrested in Britain had visas to the 

United States? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Britain does not—under our Visa Waiver 

Program, if you are coming as a tourist, you do not need to have 

a visa to come from the United Kingdom or a couple dozen other 

countries in Europe. 

Senator LEVIN. So that many of those people had tickets to come 

to the United States? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. If they were coming—yes, they had tickets—well, I would not say many had tickets, and I want to be careful about not saying things that are going to create a problem for 

the British case. I don’t think they had tickets yet, but I think they 

could have acquired tickets and would not have needed visas if 

they were coming in, allegedly coming in as tourists. 

Senator LEVIN. Now, had the British that had been following 

some of those people for a long time notified us of that fact so that 

they would not get tickets to come to the United States? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. We were made aware in timely fashion of 

the identities of the people. We would have prevented them from 

getting on planes. 

Senator LEVIN. From getting tickets? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I don’t know if we would have stopped 

them getting tickets. They would not have gotten on airplanes. 

Senator LEVIN. All right. So that we have checked through all 

these people and we know that we would have stopped them from 

getting on airplanes? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes, because we would have had their 

names. 

26

Senator LEVIN. We did have their names? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. Well, we had the names of many 

of them. I mean, there may have been some that turned up in the 

course of the investigation once the arrests started to get made. 

Senator LEVIN. No, but I mean before that part of the investigation——

Secretary CHERTOFF. The people that they——

Senator LEVIN [continuing]. Began, we had all the names that 

the British had. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. 

Senator LEVIN. OK. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Yes. 

Senator LEVIN. Finally, what percentage of State or local first responders would you estimate now have truly interoperable communications equipment so that they can communicate with State, 

local, or Federal agencies? Just give us a rough perspective. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I know the 10 largest cities through our 

Rapid Command Program have what we would call command-level 

interoperability, which means that the agencies and jurisdictions in 

the region can talk to one another at the command level. 

I cannot estimate for you in other parts of the country because 

I think a lot of it depends on whether they have purchased this 

gateway equipment, and a lot of it, frankly, depends on whether 

they have built the rules that will allow them to talk to one another. 

However, by the end of this year, we will complete a study and 

a survey of the 50 States and the 75 largest urban areas precisely 

to ask them to test what their interoperability is and then to come 

back and tell us what the gaps are. 

Senator LEVIN. Again, I share what others have said here with 

you that this is the greatest single complaint, I believe, that we get 

from local first responders and law enforcement people—the shortage of interoperable equipment. And it is not just because they 

have not worked out the ground rules with other jurisdictions. 

There are many cases that I know of where applications have been 

filed for funding where those ground rules have been agreed upon, 

and yet the funding has not been forthcoming. So I do not think 

that is an adequate response to a lack, an obvious lack of interoperable equipment where there is a good reason to have interoperable 

equipment and the ground rules have been worked out. And I hope 

you will pay some additional attention to that issue. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I will. And when this survey is completed, 

if it turns out, for example, that you have a jurisdiction where they 

have the ground rules and they do not have the equipment, we 

have grant funding available, which we will be pleased to make 

available to get that equipment. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, it is inadequate, I can assure you. Thank 

you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Yesterday I had a meeting with the Jewish 

community in Cleveland, and it brought home to me something 

that I have been concerned about for a long time, and that is the 

radicalization of our own Muslim population here in the United 

States. 

27

I just completed a book by Gilles Kepel called ‘‘The War for Muslim Minds.’’ We have got to recognize that this is a different war 

than we have had before. It has a lot to do with the minds of individuals and how do you deal with modernity and how do you make 

sure that you do not have homegrown situations. 

What I would like to know is: What is being done on the Federal 

level to develop the infrastructure of understanding and human relations in communities around the United States of America to get 

people together to talk to each other so that we do not end up with 

Muslim xenophobia and folks that heretofore have felt integrated 

in a society feeling that they are not part of our society? Kepel in 

his book says that he believes that one of the ways that we need 

to be successful in Western nations is considering how we deal with 

integrating Muslims into our societies. In some countries it has 

been very effective, in others it has not been so good. But what is 

going on at the Federal level? Mr. Secretary, whose job is that? 

Yours? Karen Hughes’? State Department’s? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think it began with the President 

saying shortly after September 11 that this was not an attack by 

Muslims and that we should not allow this to draw us into characterizing Muslims or people from certain parts of the world as being 

anti-American, that it was an attack by a number of ideologues 

who happened to use the language of Islam. 

It is a shared responsibility in this sense: I mean, we are doing 

a lot of work, some with the academic community, trying to understand the psychology of radicalization and trying to understand 

why it is, for example, that there are problems in Western Europe 

that we have not yet had, some of which flow from the nature of 

the societies over there. Part of it is simply getting out there and 

interacting. I mean, I have tried on a number of occasions to go out 

to the Muslim community or have them come meet with me to 

interact with them and speak with them. Part of it is recruiting 

and encouraging Muslim Americans to become part of doing public 

service and working in law enforcement and working in intelligence. And we have some of them. 

We all recognize that people of all ethnic groups can be involved 

in criminality or terrorism, and it does not condemn the ethnic 

group. What we have got to do is continue to build upon those positive aspects of our society that make people——

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, there is certainly a Federal aspect to 

this, but I also think the infrastructure of understanding and 

human relations is largely built at the local level. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It is community-based. 

Senator VOINOVICH. It is. When I was mayor of Cleveland, we 

had significant tension between our minority community and our 

police department. So we started a dialogue to bring people together to talk about it; to enhance communication and build ties. 

And I am really concerned that at the national level, there is not 

any real thought being given to how to work with maybe the National League of Cities or the U.S. Conference of Mayors to try to 

get the cities to start to think about how to bring people together 

on this issue. How do we reach out to the top Muslim leaders in 

the United States, identify who they are, begin to have a real dialogue with them, and also include the Jewish community? 

28

My other concern on an international level is the Organization 

for Security and Cooperation in Europe. For 4 years, I have been 

trying to get them to make anti-Semitism and Muslim xenophobia 

priorities because that is the underpinning of many of the tensions 

in communities. And I think so often what we are doing is preventative, to make sure something does not happen. But I think outreach is equally important, and how successful we are going to be 

will depend upon how well we start to work at integrating our 

American Muslim community. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I agree with you. Certainly internationally, Under Secretary Hughes is very focused on this. I know 

the President is actually focused on this. And, domestically, as I 

say, as we do this research, I think it is a very good idea for us 

to get some of the perspective we accumulate out to the cities and 

the States through the various organizations like the NGA and the 

National League of Cities because, I agree, the front line on understanding does lie in the local community. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Well, I would like to work with you on that. 

The other thing, and this is a big issue, as you know, we have 

been monitoring DHS management in my Oversight of Government 

Management Subcommittee, and I want you to know that I am 

deeply concerned about the high level of staff turnover and vacancies at the Department. This is a particularly serious problem at 

the senior leadership levels. The Committee has been aware of vacancies at FEMA. We know about that, Madam Chairman. But 

there are also continued vacancies in the Transportation Security 

Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol, and the National Cybersecurity Division. 

What are you doing about filling those vacancies? Also, is there 

a long-term strategic management plan in place about what needs 

to be done in the agency? And how long is it going to take to get 

it done? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Let me answer both parts of that. The issue 

with respect to turnover is twofold. It is not, by the way, restricted 

to DHS. I mean, the Bureau, the FBI, has had a significant amount 

of turnover in the counterterror area. And I will be blunt. It is a 

hard job. After 3 years, people get burned out. They get tired. And, 

frankly, there is not a lot of patting on the back, and that tends 

to drive people out of the agency, too. 

I wish I could hold these people—there are people—I mean, 

sometimes you want to see people go, but sometimes there are people you do not want to see go. But you do not have the ability, 

when people get really tired out, to look them in the eye and say, 

‘‘You have got to keep going.’’ It is a real sacrifice for some of these 

jobs. 

We are working very hard to fill these jobs, and we have been 

successful in doing it. It is a cumbersome process. I have been particularly frustrated with the ability to fill the cybersecurity job. It 

is hard to compete with the private sector. I cannot pay nearly the 

amount of money you can make in Silicon Valley. On top of that, 

we have laborious and sometimes unpleasant background checks, 

requirements of financial divestiture that people sometimes finally 

say, ‘‘I cannot be considered because I am going to be sacrificing 

the ability to put my kids through college.’’

29

So we have been very lucky in that the number of public-spirited 

people of top talent who we have gotten to join the agency during 

my tenure is extraordinary. We have had people like Charlie Allen 

and Kip Hawley and George Foresman. There are other people I 

would like to consider, but it is hard to recruit. We are continuing 

to work on that. 

On the larger management issue, we do have a strategy to implement this kind of a strategic plan for completing the integration, 

which involves not only merging the number of IT systems into a 

single system, finishing the job of having our financial systems reduced in number, empowering the chiefs of the various business 

lines to have more authority over their counterparts in the individual components, but also bringing a career path into fruition 

that, much as DOD does, actually rewards you for activities that 

are either joint or undertaken with other agencies and that has an 

educational process for the senior leadership that will emphasize 

that, like the Capstone or Pinnacle program at the Defense Department. 

I have asked my Deputy actually to work on this, and I am envisioning he may come sit with you and give you a little bit more 

granularity about that. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Dayton. 

Senator DAYTON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would also 

like to join with others who have complimented you and the Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, for your leadership on this and 

holding this very important hearing. 

Mr. Secretary, I need to, I guess, respectfully disagree with what 

I took to be your presumption that the American people are not 

willing to pay for or we have to posit a choice between bankruptcy 

and the maximum necessary homeland security. I think if you posit 

to the American people do you want realism as defined by, at least 

in Minnesota, a 60-percent reduction in funding for its homeland 

security plan from a year ago, people would say, I think almost 

overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, they do not want that kind of 

less-than-adequate funding. And it is hard to assess from the Legislative Branch what is sufficiency in funding. That is where we 

really have to defer to you. But I worry that the Office of Management and Budget is defining our funding commitment to homeland 

security rather than your or rather than what the imperative is. 

Again, having witnessed firsthand the last month, both the 

Southern border effort and certainly the Northern border, I think 

it is inadequate. I think while certainly progress has been made, 

that progress is insufficient to the risks involved. And, again, I 

think the American people expect from us—not perfection, that is 

impossible, but they expect from us that we are going to be doing 

everything that is feasible as rapidly as feasible in order to provide 

the maximum optimal homeland security; and if we are not doing 

that, I think we need to be candid with one another, you and Congress, and then with the American people, why it is we are not fiscally capable of undertaking that kind of priority. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I agree with you it has to be optimal, 

but I think there are several different realities we have to recognize. One is you could in theory spend a limitless amount of money 

30

on security. People can do that in their own home. I mean, I could 

redo my house and buy five locks and buy steel doors and buy expensive security systems with sensors. There is always more you 

could do. We all make judgments about what the optimal amount 

is. 

But it is not just a question of spending money. We cannot put 

into effect systems that destroy our ability to operate in our way 

of life. I mean, I could give you—a perfect example is the issue of 

getting on the airplane. Some people argue we should ban all hand 

luggage, walk on with nothing in your hands, not even a magazine. 

That would clearly increase security. There would be a high cost 

to people in doing that—not a monetary cost but a personal cost. 

Business travelers would find it very difficult. Mothers would find 

it difficult. 

So what we wind up doing is we wind up balancing. We wind up 

looking at what is the marginal additional benefit and what can we 

accomplish without requiring that sacrifice. 

We are going to have disagreements about that. Even those who 

are experts have disagreements. But I think the principle that 

there are limits and balance I think is when we disserve the American people if we don’t emphasize that we are always facing 

choices. 

Senator DAYTON. I respect that. I am glad you went to Hong 

Kong. I mean this sincerely. I would prefer you come to northern 

Minnesota and talk with especially the local law enforcement officials there and get their perception of what—I think the imbalance, 

at least as it exists up there, is decidedly on the side of lack of sufficiency rather than the excess, which I agree with you, more is 

never enough. 

Regarding the interoperability issue, and I am way beyond my 

limited expertise when you talk about something like gateways, but 

that is a problem, again, with the local officials in Minnesota. You 

talk about leadership. If there is an expertise that your agency possesses about how to define this—because I think it is critical, as 

you say, that people get on the same page before they are spending 

money to upgrade their equipment or buy new equipment and compound the problem rather than resolve it, whether there is some 

kind of national conference or State conferences that you could be 

part of—your agency be part of either convening or participating 

in, I certainly, again, would like to convene one of those in Minnesota because I think the local officials are starving for that kind 

of understanding, if they do not have it, if it exists out there, that 

expertise, they do not have it. And I think to communicate that 

now, as I say, before we are spending more money that is not going 

to resolve the problem or make it worse, it would really be imperative. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, that is why we are doing this study 

with the States in the 75 large urban areas, precisely to pinpoint 

in a systematic way what the gaps are. And once we get that done 

by the end of the year, I think we can have a much more focused 

discussion with the States and localities about what it is they really need and what it is they have to do in order to get up to snuff. 

Senator DAYTON. Well, I think the time, the urgency of that undertaking, if it needs to wait until the end of the year until the 

31

study is complete, but I hope the beginning of next year then your 

agency could provide that leadership and that expertise and get everybody as much as possible, at least show them what the page is. 

If they are not going to get on it, that is their responsibility, but 

at least give them that guidance. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Bennett. 

Senator BENNETT. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, I have to say I am impressed at your presentation 

here this morning, the degree to which you have gotten your arms 

around the problems and catalogued them in a way that is very coherent and intelligent. And I come away from the hearing with a 

higher sense of confidence in the level of progress that has been 

made by the Department. We both understand it is not where it 

wants to be, where it needs to be, but frankly, in the period of your 

stewardship, it has moved farther than I might have anticipated 

that it would. 

Most of the concerns that I have had have been talked about by 

those who have questioned you before me, but I want to come back 

to Senator Voinovich’s question and focus on one aspect, which you 

raised in your response to Senator Voinovich, and that is the Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Telecommunications. You 

may remember that I got quite exercised about that and urged you 

to move ahead and was delighted when it was created. Now it has 

been a year since that position was created, and it still has not 

been filled. 

And I hear what you said to Senator Voinovich about the difficulty of filling it, but I want to share with you my own experience 

when I have been to Silicon Valley, where the first question I was 

asked was, ‘‘Why hasn’t this position been filled?’’ And my answer 

was not as completely sophisticated as yours, but it was basically 

the same answer: ‘‘Well, Federal salaries compared to Silicon Valley salaries are so low that they are having a hard time attracting 

somebody.’’ And I was told, ‘‘Senator, we will give you a list of half 

a dozen people who are willing today to give up their Silicon Valley 

salaries to come into government service on a 1-year, 2-year kind 

of mission, if you will, to try to get that thing under control.’’

I don’t know if you have been to Silicon Valley. They did not give 

me the list, so I have no names to share with you. But have you 

made that kind of an effort to say, ‘‘All right, we understand that 

this is a fairly significant financial sacrifice on your part, but your 

country needs you and give us 2 years, step aside from your more 

highly paid job, step aside from your career long enough to sacrifice 

for your country,’’ and gotten any kind of a response? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I have been to Silicon Valley, Senator, and 

first of all, I want to say that I believe we will actually be in a position where the President will have somebody to nominate in the 

very near future. But I actually tried to do some of that and also 

reached out through people in the Department who have backgrounds working with people in the field. I want to be careful not 

to get specific about people in a way that would invade their privacy. 

I would say that it was a combination of challenges. It has really 

been probably the biggest personnel frustration I have had since 

32

taking this job because I have had extraordinary people coming to 

fill other jobs. This one, it has been a combination of not just the 

money, but many of the people with experience face conflict-of-interest issues because the technology they would have to pass upon 

would have been technology that they had something to do with, 

or they have divestiture issues, which I frankly—it is hard to argue 

to people—or it is one thing to give up your salary. It is another 

thing to get into a hefty divestiture, particularly if you are a comparatively young person. And some of them eventually just culturally were—took themselves out of the running. We had some 

false starts, I would say. 

I think we are at the point now where I am hopeful we will have 

this position filled in very short order, but I confess to you that filling this job has been really tough. 

Senator BENNETT. I understand that, and it may be, Madam 

Chairman, Senator Lieberman, that Senator Voinovich with his interest on human capital, we consider amendments to the law that 

say for a specified period of time—that is, if you serve for a specific 

period rather than make a career, there can be a waiver for some 

of the other aspects that you have. In my position as Chairman of 

the Agriculture Subcommittee of Appropriations, we run into some 

of this same sort of thing with respect to the FDA because the 

rules are very firm that you cannot be an expert for the FDA if you 

have any connection with this, that, or the other pharmaceutical 

company. And we end up unable to draw on anybody who has any 

real expertise because everybody who has an expertise has someone who is willing to pay for it. And we take the automatic assumption that if someone on the outside is willing to pay for your 

expertise, you are prima facie corrupt and, therefore, cannot work 

for the government. 

Now, I do not believe that is true. This is as critical a position 

in Homeland Security, as I think Secretary Chertoff has made 

clear, as we can find, and perhaps we ought to consider in this 

area, and maybe some others, passing legislation that would say if 

they come in for a specific period of time, they are not going to be 

in a permanent situation, they ought to be allowed a waiver from 

some of these conflict-of-interest circumstances, as long as they are 

fully disclosed and everybody understands all of them, because failure to do that leaves us naked in an area that, if I were a terrorist, 

would be my first area of attack on the United States right now. 

I think we could have greater devastation shutting down some 

computers, hacking into the capacity—talk about interoperability of 

equipment. If you hack into the network that these people are 

using and shut the network down, the equipment could be the best 

in the world and it does not work. And having someone focusing 

on this with the kind of attention that it needs is very critical, and 

we have gone, frankly, longer than we should have to create the 

position, and now we have gone a year without anybody in the position. And I think it is something that Congress ought to look at 

because I believe the Secretary has laid out his challenge very dramatically to us here this morning. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg. 

33

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Mr. Secretary, I commend you for the effort and the intelligence 

that you bring to this assignment. It is still such an incredibly complicated, gigantic thing that I think that despite your efforts and 

a lot of interest in what is taking place, there is still some exposure 

that we ought to try to deal with as quickly as we can. 

Do you believe that 100 percent inspection of cargo would be a 

worthwhile endeavor? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I want to define three separate things: 

‘‘Screening,’’ which means identifying through intelligence and information what is in the cargo, we do 100 percent. ‘‘Scanning,’’ running through radiation portal detection equipment, we will be close 

to 100 percent by the end of next year. ‘‘Physical inspection’’——

Senator LAUTENBERG. It currently is 5 percent. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. No. Running through radiation——

Senator LAUTENBERG. Scanning? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Scanning through radiation portal monitors 

in our ports will be 80 percent by the end of the year and close to 

100 percent by the end of next——

Senator LAUTENBERG. In our ports. Are you talking about cargo 

containers coming here——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. 

Senator LAUTENBERG [continuing]. Will have already been 

scanned——

Secretary CHERTOFF. No. When they arrive, before they leave the 

port, they will have been scanned through radiation portal monitors, 80 percent will have been scanned—we will be at 80 percent 

by the end of this year and close to 100 percent by the end of next 

year. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. This is after the container has been put 

down on American soil. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Correct. That is correct. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. And if there is something in there that is 

designed to wreak havoc in our community, would it be a little 

late? It takes some time to get the cargo off the boat and——

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, the screening, in terms of intelligence-based screening, in terms of what is in the container, is 

something we do—actually a good deal of it we do overseas. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes, I would like to pass that, if you do not 

mind, because screening to me is not really an effective way to do 

it, and I particularly want to focus on the scan side. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. The scanning, some of it we do overseas, 

but the vast majority of it is done once it has arrived here. That 

is why, as I said earlier, I went to Hong Kong, we looked at the 

system they have there, and we are——

Senator LAUTENBERG. When did you go, Mr. Secretary? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. This spring. I think it was March or April. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. This year. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. And we are working with a number of foreign governments now to begin to deploy a system overseas that 

would scan containers before they actually get loaded on the ship. 

The constraint there, as I said earlier, will be twofold: It will be 

making sure that physically they are able to do it, given the conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
34

figuration of the port; and, second, of course, the foreign government has to agree because it is their port. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Do you believe that it can be done? The 

equipment that you saw in Hong Kong, does it work as it is suggested, a 2-minute slide-through and a relatively modest cost per 

container? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think it moves quickly, but there are 

some technological barriers. One of them is, depending on the nature of the port, sometimes there is background radiation that creates a problem. And the second thing is you have to have the ability, when you actually do get a red flag, to do a timely inspection. 

The constraint there is whether the foreign port has enough inspectors——

Senator LAUTENBERG. I am going to interrupt you, as much as 

I hate to do it, because we were friends way before we got here. 

So would it make us safer in any measure, do you think, scanning 

the cargo? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Overseas? 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Sure, I mean, if we can get it done in practical terms and if the foreign governments are supportive, that is 

where we would like to go. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Would you think that it is an appealing 

idea—scanning each of 11 million cargo containers entering American ports each year is a recipe for crippling our manufacturing and 

commerce, wasting time and money that could be better used for 

other measures, adding little to our homeland security? Do you 

agree with that statement? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I want to be real careful because people use 

words in different ways. I think the idea that you are going to 

physically inspect every container is not realistic and would, in 

fact, destroy the entirety of our maritime system. I think the ability——

Senator LAUTENBERG. Would a nuclear explosion in a cargo container destroy our maritime system? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. It would, Senator, but you could also bring 

a nuclear container through a container on the back of a truck coming from Canada. So the logic——

Senator LAUTENBERG. So what do we do? Do we just throw up 

our hands——

Secretary CHERTOFF. No. 

Senator LAUTENBERG [continuing]. And say because that could 

happen, why bother? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. No. Again, what we try to do is we try to 

come up with a risk-based solution, one that raises a significant 

barrier to the risk, but not at the cost of destroying that which we 

are trying to protect. 

I think that a combination of what we are doing with radiation 

scanning here, what we are working with foreign governments to 

do overseas—and I would love to see us do this Hong Kong pilot, 

roll this out overseas, and we are going to be doing that over the 

next few years—I think that is all good, and that will really raise 

the barrier. I do think that 100 percent physical opening is not realistic. 

35

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, not opening, but, again, scanning, if 

you are looking for radiation, if you are looking for explosive materials, and that can be detected promptly. 

I read further from a press report that was handed out by this 

Committee during a press conference before in which it declares 

that 100 percent scanning of cargo containers is a red herring, and 

we say—it says, ‘‘Even if manpower and equipment necessary for 

100 percent scanning were available, the process would impose 

delays and create massive backlogs at ports. Scanning a shipping 

container takes several minutes. Analyzing the scan images can 

take up to 15 minutes.’’ Is that correct? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I think, Senator, it is going to depend a lot 

on a number of different things. It is going to depend on whether 

it is a transshipment port, which means you have containers coming from Port A to Port B, and then they have to be offloaded—

that makes it much more difficult and time-consuming—as opposed 

to a port where the containers originate in the port and, therefore, 

they just move through in a single line. It depends on the physical 

structure of the port. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. But it does not necessarily—you are not 

suggesting that it does simply impose delays, create massive backlogs at ports? I mean, do you see our industry and our economic 

activity being destroyed by scanning, attempting to scan 100 percent of the cargo that comes in? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I understand, Senator, you are trying to 

drive me to give you a yes or no answer. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes, I would like that. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. If I am going to be accurate, I cannot do it. 

I have got to tell you it depends a lot on the individual port. In 

some ports, we are probably going to be able to do something like 

100 percent scanning overseas, and we are working to see whether 

we can get some ports in the next couple of years to——

Senator LAUTENBERG. I am going to be cut off here very soon, but 

there is a bill on the floor of the Senate in which I called for 100 

percent scanning of containers and am attempting to get that done. 

The Committee has in turn decided that three pilot projects would 

be enough. 

Mr. Secretary, you and I were at a very important event yesterday with citizens typically from our State of New Jersey, your 

State and my State, 700 people died; there still is injury that affects the health and well-being of people. A firefighter died last 

week who tried to help in the rescue operation because of a lung 

disease that he contracted. 

So when we talk to those people, we make promises that we are 

going to do everything we can to try to keep them safe. And to me, 

when we start talking about pilots when, in fact, we have effective 

equipment—you say the equipment is effective in Hong Kong that 

you saw? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I mean, the pilot was effective, but I have 

to qualify it. There were some constraints in the ability to use it 

in real life, and that is what I do not want to do is tell the American public we have got a magic bullet and the bullet turns out not 

to be effective. So, I mean—there is promise in——

36

Senator LAUTENBERG. So the alternative to that is tell the public 

we are going to ask you to take some more risk while we pursue 

this debate. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Senator, I can say this because we are old 

friends. I confront this argument a lot, and there is nothing I would 

like more than to be able to say, Wow, we have a way to make 

every port in the world scan all the radiation overseas. But I cannot do that with a straight face because not every port is physically 

constructed to be able to do that, and not every country is willing 

to do that, and I cannot make other countries do things. 

It is like I get in my car or I put my daughter in my car, I understand it is not 100 percent safe. If I wanted my daughter to be 100 

percent safe, I would put a 5-mile-an-hour speed limit cap on the 

car, and it would not go more than 5 miles an hour. But I do not 

do that because that is more safety than we can afford. 

All of us—we have 40,000 people die every year on the highway. 

That is a guaranteed 40,000 who die. We do not require that cars 

be manufactured to go no more than 5 miles an hour. So we do 

judge this——

Senator LAUTENBERG. But we require them to be sober and we 

have red lights and we have other things. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. That is right. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. We have other protections, and if we——

Chairman COLLINS. The Senator’s time has more than expired. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. And if we inspected one out of 20 people 

going into the White House for tours or coming into this place, 

would we feel secure? I don’t think so. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Carper. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks, Madam Chairman, and thank you very 

much for your testimony, Mr. Secretary, and for your responses to 

our questions. 

I want to come back to a point that you made with respect to 

chemical security, an issue that this Committee spent a whole lot 

of time on, and with the leadership of our Chairman and Ranking 

Member, we hammered out a consensus, at least on the surface, 

and reported a bill out—I don’t know, was it unanimously or——

Chairman COLLINS. Unanimously. 

Senator CARPER. Unanimously, which was a minor miracle, as I 

recall, a month or two ago. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. A major miracle. 

Senator CARPER. There you go. 

There are those who—and I know Senator Lautenberg spent a lot 

of time on this. He cares a lot about this. Senator Voinovich, among 

others. Among the issues that I think keeps us apart is the issue 

of preemption, how we should deal with States that have turned 

to—in the absence of any kind of Federal standards or approach, 

what States would like to do, and a handful of States have already 

passed, I think, legislation or are considering it. Many others are 

debating it. 

What advice would you have? And apparently this is something 

you think is important, the Department, the Administration thinks 

is important. We have got, I think, one other Committee, the Environment Committee, on which I serve, and I understand there is 

37

some jurisdictional wrangling that is going on between our Committee and that committee that might keep us from taking up the 

legislation. 

And the other major issue—and correct me if I am wrong, 

Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, but I think the other major 

issue might be preemption. There are perhaps others. But a little 

bit of advice would be welcome as to your willingness—maybe just, 

first of all, your willingness as the Secretary to work with some of 

our colleagues on other committees to help remove a procedural 

road block to actually bring chemical security to the floor. We have 

talked about whether or not it would be offered as an amendment. 

The Republican Leader in the Senate does not want to waste a lot 

of time on legislation that would get bogged down in a food fight 

on chemical security. And we do not want to spend a whole lot of 

time on trying to figure out what is the right thing to do on preemption, when we are, Democrats and Republicans—it is not a partisan issue. It is just that people have different views. 

One, your thoughts on how hard you are willing to push to try 

to get something done on chemical security, and opportunities, as 

we do port security legislation this week, could be offered as an 

amendment. I think some folks are offering rail security, transit security, which I very much support. But rather than give a good testimony, what can you do to help us actually get something done 

this week? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I know that we have been working 

very closely with this Committee and other committees on both 

sides of the Capitol on this issue. My desire is to get a chemical 

security bill that gives us the authority to do what we are poised 

to do for that gap area that we do not have the authority. And I 

also do not want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, so 

what I have told the lawyers who are deeply involved in working 

on this with people on the Hill is to focus on what are the essential 

issues. 

What I am totally unqualified to do is to opine on the ins and 

outs of the legislative process and to give advice as to how to best 

manage through the various committees and the various vehicles. 

Senator CARPER. Could I interrupt for just a second? I spent 8 

years as a governor, and I was not supposed to be an expert about 

that stuff either, but I was. And, frankly, you have been at this 

job—you are good. I have a lot of respect for you. But you need to 

have your antenna and your focus on that as well. 

When you sit there and you tell us chemical security is a major 

priority of this Department, if you are not prepared to weigh in 

here, roll up your sleeves, and try to get something done, it is not 

as helpful as it might otherwise be. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, I think we have been doing that, and 

I think we have been up—and I have talked to not just the Chairman——

Senator CARPER. If I can interrupt again, Senator Voinovich has 

just come back in. We are talking about chemical security. We are 

talking about jurisdictional disputes here that might preclude our 

getting something done. We are talking about the issues of preemption, which I know you have a lot of interest in, too. And I am tryVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
38

ing to enlist the Secretary’s active participation in getting some 

progress here. 

Secretary CHERTOFF. As I say, I spoke to the Chairman, I spoke 

to the Ranking Member over the last several months, I spoke to 

members of the House leadership, leaders in the House, all trying 

to forge what I thought was a workable compromise which would 

get us the authority to do what we need to do by regulation. 

I guess my advice would be to keep it as simple as possible, that 

the more that is laid on something, my observation has been, the 

greater the likelihood it will not navigate through the very narrow 

channel which is available to move something like this on. And 

particularly because what we may get in the short term may not 

be the ideal solution, but it will get us a good deal of the way to 

an ideal solution. 

My weigh-in on this would be let’s take the simplest vehicle possible, the one with the highest likelihood of success in both Houses, 

and let’s try to get that done. And if it turns out that we want to 

add to it later or with the experience of time it is inadequate, that 

is fine. But we actually can do a lot now, even with the most bare 

bones type of thing which is out there, and so that is for someone 

who is in the Peanut Gallery, so to speak, that is my coaching. 

Senator CARPER. Well, you are not in the Peanut Gallery. We are 

in the car, and these two folks are like—one is driving, and the 

other is riding shotgun, and the rest of the Committee is in the 

back seat. You are not far away. 

Secretary Chertoff. I am in the trunk? [Laughter.] 

Senator CARPER. We are going to keep you out of that trunk. 

Chairman COLLINS. He wants you to be the engine. 

Senator CARPER. That is good. 

Chairman COLLINS. Don’t sound surprised. 

Senator CARPER. The other thing I wanted to mention, if I can, 

Madam Chairman, to go back to rail security, there are a bunch 

of tunnels that go into New York City. Every day they carry, I am 

told, hundreds of thousands of people in and out of New York City. 

They are submerged. I don’t know what body of water they go 

under—the Hudson River or the East River? 

Secretary CHERTOFF. Hudson River. 

Senator CARPER. But they carry a lot of people. I am told that 

if there was an explosion on any one of those commuter trains or, 

for that matter, Amtrak trains, it could not only hurt a lot of people on the train, but could actually puncture a tunnel, cause flooding into the tunnel, flood that tunnel. The water could back into 

the Penn Station and flood the other tunnels as well and create 

great havoc and loss of life. 

When I look at threats on the rail transit side, that to me is like 

a preeminent threat. You have other threats that include tunnels 

under Washington, DC, and Baltimore. You have a lot of bridges 

between here and New York City and Boston that are important 

as well. 

When you consider transit and rail security in terms of actually 

prioritizing what needs to be done, how do you set those priorities? 

What are the priorities? And how are we doing a better job today 

in rail and transit security than we were a couple of years ago? 

And how do you see us doing even better in the next year or two? 

39

Secretary CHERTOFF. Well, actually, Senator, that is exactly what 

we do. We looked at exactly the issue you talked about. In fact, this 

past year—in the past, we had looked at the issue of rail transit 

and mass transit in terms of amount of trackage, and what we did 

is we changed that, so now we look at trackage underground as opposed to—we tier it. We have aboveground, underground, and then 

underground in tunnels that are underwater, of which the third is 

the highest priority for precisely the reason you talk about. And 

without saying it in an open hearing, much of our transit grant decisionmaking this last year for the first time was driven precisely 

by a recognition that the consequences of something occurring in 

a tunnel underwater are significantly greater than the same event 

occurring on a stretch of track aboveground. And that is exactly the 

disciplined approach we want to take. We have tried to inject, 

among other things, real science into this process now. 

So I would envision that we will continue to push a significant 

amount of the money on a risk basis to precisely those elements of 

the rail infrastructure that have the greatest vulnerability. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. The last thing I would say, 

if I may, Madam Chairman, going back to the issue of chemical security, I would urge you to be proactive today, this week, next 

week. Thanks very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for your testimony here today. 

We obviously could keep you for several more hours, but you are 

in luck that we have several more witnesses. So thank you very 

much for your excellent presentation. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Madam Chairman, will the record remain 

open? 

Chairman COLLINS. The record will stay open for 15 days, as it 

always does, for the submission——

Senator LIEBERMAN. Madam Chairman, if I may end on a light 

note. Mr. Secretary, I think you made a generationally sensitive 

comment about the Peanut Gallery before. If I remember from my 

youth, that was a term coined during the Howdy Doody television 

show, and I prefer to think of you not as a member of the Peanut 

Gallery but as Buffalo Bob. [Laughter.] 

Secretary CHERTOFF. I actually thought it was a baseball expression from when you were back in the bleachers, but——

Chairman COLLINS. I must say this is all completely lost on me. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. For obvious reasons. [Laughter.] 

Chairman COLLINS. Senator Pryor has just arrived, and Secretary Chertoff, I want to give him the opportunity, if he does want 

to ask a question. 

Senator PRYOR. That is OK. 

Chairman COLLINS. OK. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

I am going to call forward both our second and third panels in 

the interest of time. We are very pleased to have such distinguished witnesses with us today: Sheriff Leroy Baca and Deputy 

Commissioner Richard Falkenrath, as well as Steven Simon and 

also Daniel Prieto. 

Sheriff Baca is the Sheriff of Los Angeles County and commands 

the largest Sheriff’s Department in the United States. He is also 

Director of Homeland Security-Mutual Aid for California Region I, 

40

1The prepared statement of Mr. Baca appears in the Appendix on page 69. 

which serves 13 million people. I want to say that I had the pleasure of meeting the sheriff through Representative Jane Harman on 

two trips to the L.A. area, and I was so impressed with the work 

that he is doing to strengthen the region’s defenses against terrorism. 

Dr. Richard Falkenrath was named the Deputy Commissioner for 

Counterterrorism in the New York Police Department in July. 

Prior to joining the NYPD, he was a Fellow at The Brookings Institution, and from 2001 to 2004, he served on the White House staff, 

including serving as the First Deputy Assistant to the President for 

Homeland Security. 

Steven Simon is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the 

Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of the book, The Next 

Attack. 

Daniel Prieto is the Director and Senior Fellow of Homeland Security Center at the Reform Institute. Previously, he was the Research Director of the Homeland Security Partnership and Initiative, as well as a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

We welcome all four of our distinguished experts here today. I 

want to apologize to you for your having to wait so long. We had 

a greater attendance than we expected today in view of the importance of the issues before us. 

Sheriff Baca, we are going to begin with you. 

TESTIMONY OF LEROY D. BACA,1 SHERIFF, LOS ANGELES 

COUNTY, CALIFORNIA 

Mr. BACA. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member Senator Lieberman, and Members of the Committee, 

which I know have other things to do, and I realize that time is 

short. I have seven points and six categorical recommendations to 

make, and I would like to say that Los Angeles County is one of 

America’s engines for imagination and innovation when it comes to 

public safety in view of this recent responsibility of homeland security and terrorism. 

The first point on the categorical side here is that California is 

a formal mutual aid State. It has been that way since 1950. We 

have a very defined system in law where local government is enabled by State support, through counties as well, and that the mutual aid system that we use has been well in place and time-tested. 

Whether it comes to earthquakes, fires, any incident of disturbances or attacks, emergency activities included, we know what to 

do. 

Second, California sheriffs are mutual aid coordinators, which 

means it is an integral part of the governmental process and governance for mutual aid and first responders. In the case of California, and Los Angeles County in particular, each regional area—

and I happen to be in command of Area I, which includes two counties, Orange County and Los Angeles County—we serve 10 million 

people and, therefore, organize over 50 police departments and over 

40 fire departments in whatever we do in a mutual aid context. 

And therein the law enforcement mutual aid coordinator, there is 

41

a need for us to operate in an area that includes multi-level governance. And that is the operating interoperable side of how you 

manage something in that you have many governments working together to work at solving a problem. 

The third point I will make is that we had developed a Terrorist 

Early Warning Group System prior to September 11. Although 

more than 5 years have elapsed since the tragedy of September 11, 

we continue to institutionalize the lessons learned of that day. We 

have Federal, State, and local partners, and we aggressively pursue ways to integrate our disparate agencies into a seamless network of information-sharing cooperatives. To understand where the 

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is headed, there must be 

an understanding of where we began. 

We formed in 1996 the Terrorism Early Warning (TEW) Group 

System, which analyzes trends and potentials for terror attacks 

within Los Angeles County. The TEW now employs subject matter 

experts from law enforcement, the fire service, public health, academia, and the military, all working together to ensure the safety 

of Los Angeles County residents. Representatives from the FBI and 

the Department of Homeland Security also work within the TEW 

to produce high-quality, analytical products that are provided to 

decisionmakers covering a variety of subjects related to terrorism. 

The fourth point is our Joint Regional Intelligence Center of 

Southern California that was mentioned earlier. Recognizing the 

value of cooperation between Federal, State, and local agencies, 

leaders from the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, the State 

Office of Homeland Security, Los Angeles Police Department, and 

the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department decided more than 2 

years ago to join together and create a model for intelligence fusion 

centers. The vision became reality in July 2006 with the grand 

opening of the Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center and 

Mr. Chertoff was there. 

Using analytical processes developed by the TEW, analysts from 

a variety of agencies and disciplines create an expansive view of 

trends and potentials that could indicate a potential terrorist attack. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was also present 

at this center, and the components of that Department, such as 

Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Agency, and the Coast Guard, 

are contributing personnel to this organization. These agencies possess critical information that must be synthesized with local products to make the forecast of potential threats clear. I strongly encourage the participation of any public agency involved in issues of 

homeland security with its local TEW fusion center to do exactly 

what we are doing in Los Angeles. 

Fifth, we have terrorism liaison officers. This is necessary to 

keep the coordination of communication going on an ongoing basis. 

Sixth, there is a formal private sector outreach and partnership. 

It is called the Homeland Security Advisory Council. It is chaired 

by Marc Nathanson, founder of Falcon Cable Corporation. We have 

every possible source of the business community involved in this, 

and we work this Committee very hard in a partnership with the 

National Security—it is called the Business Executives for National 

Security (BENS), based here in Washington, and therein inteVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
42

grating the private sector into our intelligence process. This is a 

very big part of what we do through infrastructure liaison officers. 

The infrastructure liaison program further expands the network of 

trusted agents to include people dedicated to the critical infrastructure protection. This addition to our intelligence process creates a 

comprehensive network that provides a better opportunity for the 

prevention, disruption, or mitigation of a terrorist attack. 

I wanted to commend Senator Voinovich for his thoughts concerning the Muslim American society. We have a formal Muslim 

American outreach and partnership program. Another key component to our strategy is our connection to the Muslim community 

through the creation of the Muslim American Homeland Security 

Congress. Consisting of respected leaders from Muslim organizations within Southern California, their mission is to foster communication, education, and mutual respect between law enforcement 

and the Muslim community. Programs such as our Homeland Security Advisory Council and our Muslim American Homeland Security Congress are reflective of our belief that homeland security is 

not an issue that can be resolved through traditional police practices only. 

This program will be moving itself to Chicago, and I will be traveling with its leaders to Detroit, where our largest Muslim American ghetto exists, so that we can further empower Muslims to 

speak up in the securing of our homeland mission here in the 

United States, as well as in nations abroad. 

For the next 5 years—and you have heard this, and I will just 

be very brief so the others can speak. What do we do in the next 

5 years? Well, there are seven things I would like to say. 

First is communications, and you have talked about interoperability so I do not need to continue to focus on that. But it is a gap 

that needs to be closed. Second, intelligence must be shared 

vertically and horizontally across jurisdictions for analysis, investigative, and operational purposes. Those are three key components 

to intelligence: Analysis, investigative, and operational purposes. 

The second point is technology as a general subject. Surveillance 

technology needs additional development and standards. There are 

a lot of things going on out there in the world of surveillance, but 

we do need to have better standards on a national scale. 

The next point under technology is detection technology, on 

which we heard a significant amount of comment here by the Senators and Secretary Chertoff. Detection technology for chemical, biological, and radiological applications needs additional development 

as well. I think that is clear. 

The next point is national technology resources need further 

logistical development for regional and national application. In 

other words, I am talking about shared classified technology. For 

example, the Department of Defense and the National Intelligence 

Community have equipment that local police do not have, and we 

would like to see further access to that opportunity to use the 

equipment. 

Finally under the point of technology, research and development 

of new technology should be jointly managed to avoid wasteful duplication. This should be managed by a national board of volunteer 

Federal, State, and local intelligence and first responder experts. 

43

My third point on what can we do in the next 5 years is to develop a joint forces training center, a system throughout the United 

States. In other words, develop three or more training centers on 

terrorism for Federal, State, and local first responders and intelligence first responders of terrorist acts. Currently, the California 

National Guard and the California Mutual Aid Region I, which is 

Los Angeles and Orange Counties, are developing this proposal, 

and we think it can be a model for the rest of the Nation. 

My fourth point is international cooperation, training, best practices, and personnel exchanges should be expanded. I have traveled 

to Jordan after the Amman bombings. I have traveled to London 

after the bombings there with the train stations. I have traveled 

to Israel. I have been to Turkey after the bombings that have occurred there. And this is a very critical part of how we all learn 

about what is going on in different parts of the world. Current 

plans are underway to have training in Paris, France, at the 

Interpol Headquarters led by cities and countries that have experienced a terrorist attack. I think we should take every major target 

city in America and have those police chiefs and firefighter leaders, 

along with their mutual aid coordinators, go to this conference so 

that they can hear directly from these countries as to how they 

managed the particular terrorist attacks they have endured. 

The fifth point is to continue to fund the National Terrorism 

Early Warning Resource Center that partners with local and State 

law enforcement. There are currently 26 local terrorist early warning systems in our Nation today. The long-range vision and effort 

is to link more than 50 terrorist early warning systems across the 

country with other local and State fusion centers, such as the Joint 

Regional Intelligence Center in Los Angeles. 

Sixth, the Department of Homeland Security’s major policies—I 

wish Mr. Chertoff was here, but I have told him this before—

should be developed in partnership with selected experienced local, 

State, and Federal law enforcement leaders in deciding financial, 

operational, and training policies. The UASI grant program is one 

example where we can improve significantly in what we are doing. 

Thank you for listening to my comments. They have been very 

brief in their content. I am talking about unified government, unified first responder planning, and I am talking about unified leadership, which is what American society wants today on this subject 

of terrorism. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Sheriff. 

Mr. BACA. And I have copies of my testimony here. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Your full statement will be put 

in the record. 

Dr. Falkenrath. 

44

1The prepared statement of Mr. Falkenrath appears in the Appendix on page 74. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD A. FALKENRATH, PH.D.,1 DEPUTY 

COMMISSIONER FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, NEW YORK CITY 

POLICE DEPARTMENT 

Mr. FALKENRATH. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is always an 

honor to be at this Committee, which did so much important legislation in the last 5 years for the country. 

I want to start by saying a few words about my new job in New 

York City in the New York City Police Department. I think as everyone knows, we are the biggest and most densely populated city 

in the country. We have a population of 8 million people; 40 percent are foreign born. The most diverse, ethnically diverse county 

in America is Queens County. The gross metropolitan product of 

New York City and its surrounding areas is $900 billion. That is 

larger than all but about a dozen countries. The New York City Police Department has 52,000 personnel, a budget of just under $4 

billion. That puts it on the order, in terms of size, with most armies 

in the world. 

We have created a Counterterrorism Bureau and dramatically 

expanded the Intelligence Division since September 11. The 

Counterterrorism Bureau I have the privilege of now heading. The 

Intelligence Division is headed for the last 41⁄2 years by a former 

Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA, backed up by a former 

Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA who runs our intelligence shop. All together, we have about 1,000 officers dedicated 

to counterterrorism and intelligence missions and a total budget of 

on the order of $200 million per year. 

We have about 110 to 120 NYPD detectives assigned to the Joint 

Terrorism Task Force at the FBI. They all report to me. In addition, we do a very wide range of training and other programmatic 

activities, both for our own people, our partners inside the city, 

other State and local agencies, Federal Government agencies, and 

international agencies from time to time. 

We have a cadre of civilian analysts whom we have hired since 

September 11 who are as good as any I saw when I served in the 

White House. They are headed by a Rhodes scholar and former Supreme Court clerk. We have an outreach program to the private 

sector. 

The list goes on, and I catalogue this in my prepared statement, 

which I ask be submitted to the record. 

Chairman COLLINS. Without objection. 

Mr. FALKENRATH. The extent of the special events we need to 

handle in New York City is shown this week. Yesterday we had the 

commemoration of September 11. The President of the United 

States was there. Next week, he is coming back, along with 159 

other heads of State. It is the largest, regularly scheduled meeting 

of heads of state in the world, the UN General Assembly. We do 

it every year, have been doing it for 50 years, and know how to do 

it pretty well. 

This is who we are. New York City had to respond after September 11 in this way and did. The same could also be said in different ways of the other New York City agencies—the Fire DepartVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
45

ment, OEM. They have also stepped up. It just so happens that I 

am the one testifying today. 

A word on the threat. In my testimony, I list 18 recent encounters that New York City has had with international terrorism in 

the past 15 years. They have repeatedly targeted New York City. 

That is why we take it so seriously. The most recent threat and 

plot came to light just a couple months ago when a leak revealed 

an extremely sensitive intelligence investigation into an ongoing 

threat against one of our tunnels and, in fact, against a critical 

piece of infrastructure. 

We view the threat to the city as a global phenomenon, and 

hence, we take a global view, which can manifest in our city at any 

moment in almost any way. We do not confine our work and our 

analysis to the five boroughs for which we have direct responsibility. 

Globally, clearly on the good side, we have seen a reduction in 

legacy al-Qaeda which attacked us on September 11 to a fraction 

of what it was before. This is good. We have also seen an improvement in our border security, which has made it somewhat more difficult for international terrorists to get into the United States to 

conduct attacks. We do not take any comfort from that because the 

baseline vulnerability was so high, but there has been some 

progress. 

Aside from those two items, though, I would say most of the 

other indicators are bad. We have seen the proliferation of extremist Muslim ideology, Muslim militancy, and Salafism, which we 

think is a precursor to terrorism. That proliferation, that spread of 

that ideology has been very well documented abroad. A lot of people write about that. They talk about it on television. We have observed it, and we have hard evidence of it in New York City as 

well. It has us very worried, and I would add, in many surrounding 

areas, not just in the five boroughs. 

The homegrown threat you referenced, Madam Chairman, in 

your question to Secretary Chertoff we are very worried about. 

These are the most common forms of attacks since, and there are 

important implications for how we conduct counterterrorism operations if we take the homegrown threat seriously, which I will reference. We have seen increasing use of the Internet, of course. The 

threat is very serious. I wake up every morning thinking today 

might well be the day that we get another attack in our city. 

Now, recommendations. At your request, we will give a few. They 

will not be confined just to issues of immediate interest and concern to NYPD, but I will base them on that. 

First, with respect to Federal counterterrorism, we note that the 

vast preponderance of Federal effort—money spent, hours spent by 

Federal personnel—is international in character. It focuses on collecting and countering international threats. The domestic counterterrorism effort that we have is most powerfully predicated on this 

international effort. Most of the high-profile investigations that we 

have in the United States are begun because of a lead that was 

generated abroad, and those are very important. And the FBI has 

made a huge amount of progress conducting those sorts of investigations. We work with them very closely, and we now, I am 

46

happy to say, have an excellent partnership with the FBI for those 

sorts of investigations. 

We have a problem, however, when you deal with a homegrown 

threat, which has no international connectivity or limited international connectivity for which your massive national technical collection abroad is unlikely to give you a predicate to begin an investigation. Then the question is: How do we find out about it in the 

first place? And there the answer is far more likely to be found in 

the structure of law enforcement-driven, local, highly tactical intelligence programs of the sort we conduct. 

Second, on information sharing. The Federal Government has a 

plan or a vision for how information sharing is supposed to work 

between Washington and State and local agencies, such as my own. 

We are not sure what it is. There is a lot of different information 

sharing going on. Occasionally it is useful. Mostly it is not. The one 

that is consistently useful is the sharing of classified information 

done in the context of the JTTF. That works reasonably well for 

what it is. We have several hundred personnel with top secret security clearances, so we are able to handle that. Not all agencies 

are. 

The important thing I would say here is the Federal Government 

cannot try to control this. If they try to tightly control it, if they 

have one single pipeline to the State and local issues, it is sure to 

fail. And so I hope they do not go down that road. 

On the watchlist, a couple questions on this one. I believe we 

have an integrated terrorist watchlist in this country. The question 

is how well do we screen against it and when do we screen against 

it. When we book somebody at NYPD, they are always checked 

against the terrorist watchlist because we do a national criminal 

records check, and that is linked up with the TSC watchlist and 

that is good. There are many other areas, though, where we could 

be screening where we are not. When you get on an airplane to fly 

from New York to Washington, DC, you are not screened electronically against a watchlist. Secretary Chertoff and others here in 

Washington need to be working on that. 

Critical infrastructure protection. I have a lot to say on it. I 

spend a lot of my time on this now that I am in New York. For 

us, it is very tactical. It is about super-high-value targets, and we 

catalogue them. We have studied them. I have a list of what we 

deem to be the 30 or so most dangerous targets in New York City. 

We guard it carefully, and we work on them to try to reduce it. 

What we do will depend on the case. In some cases, we might 

close a street. We might put up a vehicle screening center. We 

might put bollards in. We might work with the real estate developer or the owner to enforce better standards in their design for 

blast resistance. 

On this I would say we are pretty much on our own. We do not 

get a lot of help from Washington. If Washington wanted to do 

something, it could set a standard for building codes that would include blast resistance and performance standards. There is no such 

thing. And it would get a policy on terrorism risk insurance. Right 

now commercial policies do not insure against terrorism risk and, 

hence, the private sector has no financial incentive to take really 

prudent measures against it. They are assuming that the Congress 

47

will insure them, that if there is an attack, they will just buy them 

out. So there is no terrorism risk insurance anymore. And if you 

wanted to do something, that would make a difference. 

The five last items, and then I will stop. Chemical security, you 

know my views on this. I hope something gets done in this Congress and to the President’s desk. That would be great. As a legislative handicapper, I would have to say the odds are long. It is late 

in the season to be doing this. But if it happens, great; otherwise, 

it is to the 110th Congress. We will be disappointed, but we have 

been disappointed before on that. 

I would, however, want to state something on ANFO, ammonium 

nitrate and fuel oil. This is the most common explosive. It was the 

one that was used in Oklahoma City to take down the Alfred P. 

Murrah Federal building. It was procured legally and easily by 

those two bombers, and since then we have done nothing—nothing—federally to improve the security of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. 

When you combine it with fuel oil and it is sold precombined, it 

is governed by Title 18 criminal codes. Separately—they can be 

easily combined. Separately, they are not governed by anything. 

We conducted a test, a special project to go to upstate New York 

and other areas to buy fuel oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizer to 

build a bomb. We did it with no difficulty whatsoever. We got companies, in fact, to deliver supplies and materials to Brooklyn, tripping no wires. And we built it in a warehouse in the Bronx. All 

right. Case in point. So do not exclude ammonium nitrate from 

your chemical security legislation. 

On mass transit, in a very real way mass transit security is New 

York’s security. A couple statistics. In 10 weeks, more people ride 

the New York City subway than ride all airplanes in the entire 

country all year. One-third of all mass transit rides in the country 

are on the New York City mass transit system. If you look just at 

subways, 65 percent of all subway rides in this country are in New 

York City. The terrorists are attacking the subway system worldwide. We think that means they are likely to come at ours, which 

is hugely vulnerable. The Federal Government has spent $9 for 

every air passenger in the country and 0.6 cents on every mass 

transit passenger in the country. There is something wrong with 

this, so if government were to be able to do a little bit there, it 

would help. 

We have 2,700 mass transit cops who never come aboveground 

during their duty. They stay underground, and that is their whole 

job, and they do it on their own with no Federal assistance to secure that. 

Ports. I think on the port security, I think this town is focused 

on the wrong part of port security. It has been on the container security problem. The real problem, in my judgment, is what alQaeda has done before when they attacked the Cole, which is a 

small, explosive-laden boat brought up against a passenger ferry or 

a critical infrastructure facility, and it is security on the water. 

And there, again, we are doing it more or less on our own. The 

Coast Guard helps out a little bit. They are great partners, but 

they are really not in New York harbor. It is mostly done by New 

Jersey State Police and NYPD Harbor Patrol. 

48

1The prepared statement of Mr. Simon appears in the Appendix on page 106. 

The last thing I will say on grants. We have big problems with 

how the Federal Government has done grants. That is well known. 

I would say six things. 

First, the overall level of grants from the Federal Government to 

the State and local agencies right now nationwide is indefensibly 

low. The President proposed in February 2002 $3.5 billion. The 

level now, depending on what comes out of the conference report, 

is going to be about $1.6, $1.7 billion for the whole country for the 

whole year in 2007. That is nearly a $2 billion reduction. That is 

too low, particularly when we are spending $10 billion per month 

in Iraq. It just makes no sense. 

Second, we believe 100 percent of the Federal money should be 

risk-based, just like the 9/11 Commission, which in its review of 

the implementation of its recommendations gave the Congress an 

F on that matter. That is their opinion. 

Third, of the State grants, we think those need to be distributed 

by the governors on the basis of risk, not spread around to all the 

outlying areas as they wish. DHS, when it distributes money based 

on risk, needs to get a comprehensive and coherent way of doing 

it. We don’t think they have one now. 

Finally, I would say DHS needs to permit the charging of operational expenses that are dedicated to counterterrorism and intelligence activities, separate and distinct units, to the grants. They 

do not currently allow that. If you want to buy equipment, that is 

great. If you want to conduct an exercise, that is great. If you want 

to do a study with Booz Allen or SAIC, that is great. But if you 

want to pay for an intelligence operative who is working in a highthreat area, in a very dangerous area with a lot of Muslim extremism, no, you cannot charge that. 

The last thing, I sincerely hope that the Congress does not condition the disbursement of Federal grants on city confidentiality policies with respect to immigration. This is a very divisive issue in 

this country, immigration, and there is an idea in the House markup that you should not give any money to any city that prohibits 

its employees from talking to ICE about a person’s immigration 

status. New York City happens to prohibit that in some cases. If 

the House bill became law, by definition we would get no money, 

and this would be a bad idea. It does not make any sense to hold 

the city hostage to the country’s ongoing dispute about immigration. Thank you for your time. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Simon. 

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN N. SIMON,1 HASIB J. SABBAGH SENIOR 

FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

Mr. SIMON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am grateful for the 

opportunity to address the Committee on this vital topic. 

My understanding of the Committee’s objectives in holding this 

hearing is that witnesses should focus on the future and address 

themselves to issues that might help both Congress and the Executive Branch set homeland security priorities. The Committee, it 

seems to me, is doing the right thing. 

49

I have some very personal reflections on this issue that are fairly 

broad-brush that I would like to share with you. I am going to concentrate on three issues in particular. 

First, the importance of cities as terrorist havens and terrorist 

targets. There has been a lot of talk about that in these statements, and the talk is well placed. Second, I am going to address 

myself to the continuing significance to many jihadists of weapons 

of mass destruction. And, third, to the need to preserve the good 

will and sense of belonging of America’s Muslim communities as a 

matter of national security beyond the intrinsic virtues of a cohesive, considerate society in which citizens of all creeds can feel at 

home. 

On urban warfare, the crucial point is that the jihad that has 

evolved since September 11, 2001, has become a war of cities. The 

transition from caves to condos, as one observer described the evolution, has been impressive. The relatively remote, rural bases that 

incubated the jihad had strong advantages, especially given the importance of social networks to the jihad, but municipalities have 

their own attractions, as other witnesses have indicated. They offer 

anonymity, but also community, both of which can confer a kind of 

cover. 

Urban neighborhoods, with their numberless apartments, coffee 

houses, mosques, and Islamic centers, provide the setting for recruitment, clandestine meetings, preparation of weapons, and other 

activities that form the terrorist enterprise. They are not subject to 

Hellfire missile strikes or submarine-launched cruise missiles or 

things like that. Those tools will not work against this kind of presence. Think of Mohamed Atta’s Hamburg or the Leeds of Muhammad Siddique Khan, who was the orchestrator of the July 7, 2005 

bombings. 

Qualities that favor the jihadists’ defensive requirements do not 

tell the whole story. However, the other side is that cities are 

where their targets—both symbolic and of flesh-and-blood—are to 

be found in abundance and proximity. 

New York, as my colleague here has indicated, has shown itself 

to be a crucial target for jihadists. This great city was construed 

by al-Qaeda to be the beating heart of America’s economy, which 

bin Laden believed he could cripple; the symbol of American arrogance as embodied by the ‘‘looming towers’’ of the World Trade 

Center; and the seat, of course, of Jewish power, which jihadists 

believe accounts for the global subordination of Muslim interests to 

America and Israel. It is also a teeming city, whose large and 

densely packed population promised the most efficient path to a 

successful mass attack that, from a jihadist standpoint, might even 

begin to settle the score with the United States. There is no reason 

to think that this conviction has weakened. Furthermore, New 

York City proffers the same advantages to the attacker as do all 

large cities. 

The array of targeting opportunities, I might add, in New York, 

as well as in other large cities in the United States, particularly 

Los Angeles, as Sheriff Baca has indicated, is quite wide. We can 

be perversely certain that an attack, when it comes, will be the one 

we least expected, but one can make some preliminary judgments. 

Mass transportation, as has been indicated, symbols of authority, 

50

financial districts, and, we should bear in mind, schools as well, 

given the importance in jihadi propaganda to the depredations that 

the United States has carried out against Muslim children, either 

directly or through Israeli allies. 

Improvised explosive devices like car bombs—the icon of urban 

violence in Iraq and elsewhere—we can expect, as well as Palestinian-style backpack bombs. 

Now, the implication of this analysis, I hasten to add, is that 

community policing and extensive video surveillance will need to be 

stepped up. In this kind of urban warfare, intelligence is acquired 

best by those who are most familiar with the terrain: Police officers 

walking their beat. On the front line, they get to know their neighborhoods, the residents and the shopkeepers, form and cultivate relationships with local citizens, and develop a sense of the natural 

order of things and, therefore, of signs that something is out of the 

ordinary or warrants investigation. The pivotal role of local law enforcement is reinforced by the incapacity at this time of Federal authorities to gather information skillfully, discreetly, effectively, and 

without alienating potential sources of intelligence. The FBI, in 

particular, presently lacks the numbers, skills, knowledge base, 

and orientation to contribute. 

This does not mean, as my colleagues here have said, that local 

law enforcement can or should operate in a vacuum, especially in 

light of connections that have been disclosed between the self-starter groups in the United Kingdom and al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan. 

On the contrary, local police need an umbilical connection to national intelligence agencies in order to connect the dots they are 

collecting on the ground. It is worth noting, by the way, that the 

success of the U.K. counterterrorism effort in Northern Ireland was 

largely due to the tight linkages between the local police, national 

police, and Britain’s domestic intelligence agency that were forged 

early in the conflict. 

Information sharing, which all parties now claim to be essential, 

has not advanced significantly, and to illustrate this point, I will 

just note that, at most, less than 1 percent of the detectives or police officers in the United States have security clearances that enable them to receive relevant and operational kinds of information 

from Federal agencies. This is a circle that clearly needs to widen. 

The other issue we need to focus on is where the police officers 

who will be collecting these dots I referred to are going to come 

from. In the upcoming Federal budget cycle, the COPS program is 

again under pressure to be cut. This program has put more than 

100,000 policemen on the street. It is an invaluable program for 

American counterterrorist interests at home. 

Very briefly, I wanted to highlight the continuing importance to 

jihadists of weapons of mass destruction. On the basis of 10 years 

of dealing with their documents and intelligence about them and 

so forth, I can guarantee to you that they are very interested still 

in acquiring, deploying, and using weapons of mass destruction. 

This puts a premium on consequence management. That is the only 

aspect of this problem I will highlight. It will be essential in the 

wake of an attack, and it will be very difficult to prevent a successful attack—that is to say, it will be very difficult to prevent a wellplanned attack. We must be able to respond at the Federal, State, 

51

and local levels in lockstep and with the appearance and reality of 

deep, deep competence. This will be essential to preserving the fabric of our society in the wake of an attack and deterring further 

attacks. 

In operational terms, what I recommend is that there be a single 

Federal enforceable standard for State and local capacities for consequence management. Right now in the United States, we are all 

over the place. The Federal Government needs to establish a standard, establish milestones and benchmarks. This is not just a matter 

of appropriating funds, but ensuring that cities meet a given standard. 

Finally, the September 11 disaster showed that skilled and selfpossessed and highly determined attackers could do tremendous 

damage to the homeland without an infrastructure. But that is not 

the only way things work. It is not the adversary’s sole option. 

Other approaches do require infrastructure, in the shape of cells 

that may or may not be linked to outside networks. 

We have a potential problem in the United States with our Muslim citizens. According to recent research, they are increasingly 

choosing not to assimilate into American society. They have been 

under huge pressure since September 11. This is having its effect. 

They are finding solace instead in their religious identity. Muslim 

student associations on college campuses are growing rapidly as 

havens for Muslims who prefer not to socialize with non-Muslims, 

and Muslims are building Islamic schools as alternatives to the 

public school system, which is perceived as inhospitable. They are 

trying to thwart media bias by developing their own radio stations 

and so forth. 

These are telltale signs of a growing problem, and the evolving 

attitudes of non-Muslim Americans toward their Muslim compatriots are also likely to spur alienation. According to a 2006 Gallup poll, a third of Americans admire ‘‘nothing’’ about the Muslim 

world, and nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. Government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. This 

is increasing the pressure on our Muslim citizens. 

Now, of course, they have shown no sign of violent protest. We 

really should be sure to keep it that way. 

Now, I have put this issue before the Committee for lack of a better place. The challenge outlined here requires leadership and a 

program, yet given the way our government is structured, there is 

no obvious lead agency or Special Assistant to the President on the 

National Security Council or Homeland Security Council to formulate a program to provide such leadership. 

We are not the first to face this conundrum. Several years ago, 

in the wake of a Whitehall study showing upwards of 10,000 alQaeda supporters in Great Britain, Her Majesty’s government 

tasked the Security Service—MI5—both to dismantle jihadist networks and devise a plan to win the hearts and minds of Britain’s 

Muslim minority. Ultimately, the Security Service balked at the 

difficult job for which they had no experience or clear jurisdiction. 

We need to do better. Fortunately, unlike our sister democracies 

across the Atlantic, we have time, and I urge you not to squander 

it. 

Thank you. 

52

1The prepared statement of Mr. Prieto appears in the Appendix on page 113. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. Mr. Prieto. 

TESTIMONY OF DANIEL B. PRIETO,1 SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER, REFORM INSTITUTE 

Mr. PRIETO. Thank you very much, Chairman Collins and distinguished Members of the Committee on Homeland Security and 

Governmental Affairs. 

My name is Daniel Prieto. I am Director of the Homeland Security Center at the Reform Institute. I want to thank you for inviting me to testify before you today on the topic of ‘‘Homeland Security: The Next 5 Years.’’

At the 5-year anniversary of September 11, the question is unavoidable: Is it safe? Dustin Hoffman’s answer to that question in 

the 1976 movie ‘‘The Marathon Man’’ was alternately, ‘‘Yes,’’ ‘‘No,’’ 

and ‘‘It depends.’’ The same is true when it comes to homeland security. For every area of progress, significant gaps and vulnerabilities remain. 

In many ways we are safer. Members of the Committee and the 

previous speakers have outlined many areas where we have made 

progress. But in many ways we are not safer. Five years from now, 

there are five areas where we need to make significant progress. 

One, we have not fully engaged our citizens and captains of industry to protect America. 

Two, we lack a national consensus on priorities, and our supposed strategies are not strategic enough. As a result, it seems that 

we are perennially reacting to the latest threat. 

Three, DHS struggles to meet the expectations that accompanied 

its creation. Management is key. 

Four, as the Nation that invented Silicon Valley, the Internet, 

and companies like Microsoft and Google, we are the technology 

envy of the world, but the government cannot seem to get it right 

when it comes to important homeland security technology projects. 

And, five, information sharing is very much a work in progress, 

and, in particular, on controversial data-mining programs, we are 

forcing the trade-off of liberty for security in an unnecessarily zerosum game. 

To start out on the first point, we need to engage society better, 

both citizens and the private sector. The inaugural National Strategy for Homeland Security argued that ‘‘the Administration’s approach to homeland security is based on the principles of shared responsibility and partnership with the Congress, State and local 

governments, the private sector, and the American people.’’ While 

that sentiment was and is correct, we have failed to execute on it. 

We have done too little to engage and educate the public. Too many 

policymakers tend to view the general public not as a source of 

strength, but as either victims or prone to panic. Too many officials 

fear that too much information provided to the public will either 

frighten them or aid our enemies. 

This discussion should end. The more informed and self-reliant 

we are when the next attack or disaster strikes, the better off we 

53

will be. The United States will win the war on terrorism not by 

force of arms alone, but by the resolve and resiliency of its citizens. 

Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation puts it best in his new 

book, Unconquerable Nation: ‘‘We need to aggressively educate the 

public through all media, in the classrooms, at town halls, in civic 

meetings, through professional organizations, and in volunteer 

groups. . . . The basic course should include how to deal with the 

spectrum of threats we face, from ‘dirty bombs’ to natural 

epidemics, with the emphasis on sound, easy-to-understand science 

aimed at dispelling mythology and inoculating the community 

against alarming rumors and panic.’’

In addition to educating the public, we need to get to a point 

where public-private partnership for homeland security is more reality than rhetoric. Five years after September 11, the capabilities, 

assets, and good will of the private sector to bolster our homeland 

security remain largely untapped. 

Second, homeland security needs to move from tactics toward 

doctrine, especially when it comes to preparedness and on critical 

infrastructure. While many security strategy documents have been 

produced since 2001, most of them are largely documents about 

tactics, methods, and processes. As such, they fail to articulate the 

strategy and doctrine which can guide implementation and provide 

goals with which programs can be measured. This is particularly 

true, as I mentioned before, in the areas of preparedness and critical infrastructure. 

On preparedness, we need to create a homeland security doctrine 

that takes a lesson from U.S. military doctrine. If our armed forces 

through much of the last 50 years had to be ready to fight two simultaneous wars in different theaters, then DHS, the National 

Guard, NORTHCOM, and State, local, and other Federal authorities should be prepared to confront two to three simultaneous 

large-scale homeland security events of the kind envisioned by the 

15 DHS National Planning Scenarios. 

In support of such doctrine, I see the creation of National Guard 

Special Forces providing specialized and regionally based training 

against the 15 DHS National Planning Scenarios for the National 

Guard. Additionally, it would make sense for NORTHCOM to have 

their own dedicated resources. They are currently only allocated 

1,000 permanent personnel and $70 million on a total DOD budget 

of $400 billion and 1.4 million active-duty personnel. 

On critical infrastructure, we need a strategy that finally makes 

tough choices about priorities. We have fallen into a certain political correctness about critical infrastructure as if all sectors—computers versus cows versus chemicals—pose equal risks. They do 

not. Some sectors are more important than others. In my view, this 

Committee is doing a very good job looking at those priorities because, in my view, the priorities are chemical facilities, transportation with an increased focus on mass transit and hazmat transport in addition to airplanes, and energy, including oil, gas, and the 

electric grid. 

As a number of the other speakers have mentioned as well, it is 

obviously extremely important to focus on regional concentrations 

of critical infrastructure as well. 

54

Bills in Congress are rightly seeking to give DHS authority over 

chemical security. At the same time, authorities should not stop 

there. Congress needs to give DHS clear authority over security activities at any infrastructure sites that threaten large-scale casualties or are critical to the functioning of the U.S. economy regardless 

of sector. For example, DHS should have authority to regulate critical energy infrastructure sites in order to mitigate known 

vulnerabilities in the electric grid. 

DHS also needs to display better leadership on critical infrastructure. First, DHS assumed that the market would provide sufficient incentives for companies to adequately protect critical infrastructure. That has not happened. Now DHS has sharply curtailed 

protective efforts and is now acting largely as a coordinator for the 

efforts of other agencies. This is a mistake. 

Third, security investments can help the overall health of America’s decaying infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently graded American infrastructure with the grade of D. 

We need to do better. Security investments can make infrastructure healthier, and we need to use all of the policy tools at our disposal. I have argued repeatedly for the use of greater tax incentives 

to increase investment in critical infrastructure where the private 

sector is not doing enough. 

Third, we need DHS to be a respected and successful organization, and to do that, we need to dramatically strengthen DHS management. 

The birth of DHS has not been easy. For its successes, it has suffered significant failures and missteps, which in my view have seriously damaged its credibility. Hurricane Katrina was its lowest moment, but it has been beset by a number of public missteps on a 

host of other topics. Due to ineffectiveness or immaturity, DHS has 

increasingly diminished, spun off, or shed responsibilities in such 

areas as intelligence and information fusion, critical infrastructure 

protection, and post-disaster housing and health. In the most recent Federal personnel survey, DHS employees ranked their organization at or near the bottom of nearly every measure of effectiveness. Other Departments—Justice, State, the Department of Defense—too often do not view DHS as a peer organization. 

DHS is falling behind, and the window of opportunity to get 

things right may be closing. DHS risks becoming what I call ‘‘the 

DMV of the Federal Government’’—widely viewed as inefficient and 

ineffective. If DHS fails to create synergies among the many entities it inherited and to mature into a more effective organization, 

we will be worse off as a country. 

I present these facts about DHS not as an indictment. Many of 

the problems were to be expected in a merger integration exercise 

as large and complex as this. My point in raising them is to urge 

this Committee to do all it can to shepherd the maturation of DHS. 

It may be necessary to read between the lines when senior DHS 

officials state that they have all the resources and capabilities they 

need—rosy scenarios which may be born of political expediency or 

pride. To the extent that DHS’s shortcomings stem from underresourced or structurally weak management, it is essential to not 

just punish or withhold money, but to address the root of the probVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:28 Oct 15, 2007 Jkt 030595 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\30595.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
55

lem by helping strengthen management capability and accountability for the long term. 

To improve DHS management, key CxO level positions must be 

given greater power and more resources. The Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Information Officer, and the Chief Procurement Officer continue to lack effective department-wide purview and authority. Some changes implemented by Secretary Chertoff have helped, 

in particular, the creation of a Policy Office and an Office of Strategic Plans, as well as increasing the power of the Deputy Secretary. But an organizational chart that has 22 separate divisions 

reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary while failing to fully leverage the CxO positions does not make sense. Management control and integration of DHS, in my view, remain far too weak. 

Fourth, get technology right. America, as I said, is the envy of 

the world when it comes to technology, but too many homeland security projects since September 11 have stumbled, from the FBI’s 

virtual case file management to DHS’s Homeland Security Information Network to border security systems. 

To keep the country safe, we need to make serious and sustained 

efforts to improve how the government deals with technology. 

Fifth, and then I will close, we need to develop rules for the use 

of consumer and company data for counterterrorism. In May 2006, 

it was revealed that the NSA was augmenting domestic surveillance with large-scale data analysis of consumer telephone toll 

records. That revelation was only the latest instance of government 

efforts to use data-mining and other data analysis techniques in 

the war on terror. There is an ongoing controversy over the government’s use of private sector and consumer data for 

counterterrorism purposes. Many of these programs have raised little controversy. Other ones—DOD’s TIA and TSA’s Secure Flight—

have raised concerns and public outcry and were shut down by 

Congress. 

The growth in data analysis efforts marks the recognition of a 

simple truth: Our spies are not well suited to address the jihadist 

terrorist threat. At the same time, government programs that analyze commercial data are imperfect and risk wrongful entrapment 

of innocent citizens along with legitimate terrorists. That risk is 

magnified by the fact that the laws governing these programs are 

unclear. 

We need to move beyond an environment where it seems different Executive Branch agencies are simply experimenting with 

large-scale data analysis techniques to see what works and what 

they can get away with. In the next 5 years, we need to move past 

experimentation and develop comprehensive legislation, guidelines, 

and rules to govern the growing use of consumer and company data 

in the fight against terrorism. 

Within the next 5 years, Balkanized rules for the government’s 

use of company and consumer data need to be addressed. Any attempt to harmonize those rules should focus on the full life cycle 

of data: Procurement, receipt, storage, use, ability to combine with 

other data, sharing within the government and outside of the government, encryption, anonymization, dispute, and redress. 

56

Clear and consistent rules to govern this activity are needed so 

that Americans do not feel that the only relationship between civil 

liberties and security is a zero-sum game. 

In conclusion, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has said that 

we always overestimate the change that will occur in 5 years and 

underestimate the change that will occur in 10 years. While we 

have made progress on homeland security in the first 5 years, 

many of us are frustrated by the pace of change. In the next 5 

years, we have the opportunity and the duty to make America safer 

and more secure. Five years from now, I hope that we have exceeded our own lofty expectations. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you. 

I want to thank all of you for excellent testimony. Unfortunately, 

we have a vote underway that started at 12:10, so I am just going 

to ask one question and then submit our additional questions to 

the record. But our having to abbreviate the hearing in no way diminishes our gratitude to each of you for coming here today and 

sharing your expertise. 

Sheriff Baca, my question is for you. I mentioned in my opening 

statement my concern about homegrown terrorists. If we increase 

border security but do not deal with the increasing efforts to 

radicalize Muslim citizens of our country, we are going to face a 

very serious threat. 

You have mentioned an initiative that you have undertaken 

which seems to me to put you far ahead of the Federal Government 

in coming up with a strategy to engage leaders of the Muslim community, and I commend you for that. And I am very pleased to 

learn that you are sharing your efforts with other cities, such as 

Detroit. I think that is terrific. 

One area of particular concern to me is the conversion and then 

in some cases radicalization of prison inmates, and we are holding 

a hearing on that issue next week. Could you share with us any 

thoughts you have on strategies to be used to try to prevent the 

radicalization of prison inmates? And do you have anything underway in that regard specifically focusing on prisons? 

Mr. BACA. Currently the California Department of Corrections is 

aware of an incident that occurred in the city of Torrance, which 

is in Los Angeles County, where inmates from the State prison system became radicalized. One, upon release, expanded that radicalization to some local community people who were not from Muslim nations, but one in particular, however, was a Pakistani national who came here and became an American. 

At that point, they engaged in bank robberies and were looking 

to fund themselves to attempt some attacks on targets that they 

had identified within the county. Fortunately, we intercepted them 

in the commission of the crimes, and then through search warrants, we were able to find out the in-depth nature of their plan. 

Thus, what we have done in California is to alert ourselves because the county jail system that I also manage feeds 40 percent 

of the State prisoners into the State system. So we have intelligence officers in our local jails as well as in the State jails, working closely with ‘‘those inmates who have leanings toward radical 

thinking.’’ 

57

Chairman COLLINS. I think there is so much we can learn from 

the L.A. experience, the New York experience, and from our two 

other expert witnesses. In many ways, our larger cities are ahead 

of us at the Federal level in identifying these threats and coming 

up with successful strategies. And that is why it disturbs me, Sheriff, to hear, because you and I have talked about this before, that 

DHS is still not tapping into the expertise as much as it should 

when it develops its own policies and procedures, and that is something we are going to need to push the Department on. I think that 

is so important. And I know you stand ready to help. 

Senator Voinovich. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. I am going to follow you. It 

would be very interesting to me to get your observations about 

what the Federal Government is or is not doing in terms of this 

radicalization of the Muslim population in the United States of 

America. 

Dr. Falkenrath, you have mentioned that you see it in New York 

City. Mr. Simon, you have said that you see it. And the issue is: 

What role should the Federal Government play? Who should be 

playing it? And then what models are available around the country 

to try to bring the communities together so that we have something 

that we can try to replicate in other places? 

Mr. BACA. If I may, Senator Voinovich, I was very pleased when 

you made your very strong and appropriate comments about your 

thoughts concerning what Muslim Americans and the radicalization issues are in the world and, of course, here. Homegrown terrorists are something that we concern ourselves with. 

After the bombings in London last year, I came back from visiting with the Commissioner of Police and understood clearly that 

we would have to do something more than what we are doing now. 

So I got a hold of the Muslim American leaders in Los Angeles 

County, Shura Council President, which is the president of all the 

mosques, all mosques are nonprofits, got a hold of religious leaders. 

And at the time there was a fatwa that had occurred earlier, a few 

months earlier, from Canada and the United States of religious 

leaders that were Muslims, as well as scholars, who said that the 

Islamic belief and the Koran does not authorize and sanction suicide bombers, criminal terrorists, and the like. 

We have formed, therefore, the nucleus for what is a formal nonprofit called the Muslim American Homeland Security Congress, 

and on the executive board are students from our local universities, 

women, leaders of mosques, scholars, and people who are active 

business people in the Muslim community. And I would say that, 

in deference to my friend to the left of me, I don’t think that American Muslims are uninterested in participating with all of us in 

protecting our Nation. I think they have not organized themselves 

yet, and this Muslim American Homeland Security Congress is the 

first step through that organization. We will go to Detroit, as I 

mentioned. We will go to New York. We will go to Chicago. And 

we will go anywhere in the United States to further the regionalization of this national effort. The principal goals are to educate 

Muslim families as to what are the trends of radicalization within 

the home itself. In the London experience, many of those that were 

captured, their families were actually in some form of denial, in 

58

some form of disbelief that their children were not really a part of 

these terrorist attacks, when, in fact, they were. So the self within 

the family, the educational process within the family is a very high 

priority of this Congress, and also its mission is to work closely 

with law enforcement, to work closely with local government leaders, and to not have their schools—and we have three Muslim 

American schools in Los Angeles County—be viewed as separatist 

efforts, which they are not. We have Armenian schools. We have 

French schools. We have various ethnic schools. And they are not 

viewed in the same fashion. 

I can say, finally, that all of us, myself in particular, since Los 

Angeles County—and I do want to say Los Angeles County has 10 

million people. It is the largest county in the United States, and 

we claim to be, like New York, the most diverse part of the United 

States. But we are just going to stay at a tie. And I have traveled 

to Jordan and met with King Abdullah. I have traveled to Pakistan 

and met with President Musharraf. I have traveled and met with 

the leaders of the justice system in Turkey, and I have seen what 

they have done in response to the bombing attacks that they have 

experienced. All three of these are Muslim nations. 

What you are suggesting, I am following, and I commend you for 

your vision on this issue because I have heard how passionately 

you feel. American Muslims are patriotic to America, and that is 

why they are here. The radicals that are roaming about who are 

going to seize the moment and think they can ride themselves up 

on the secrecy of some kind of a cover is what we have to go after. 

Those are the needles in the haystack, as far as I am concerned, 

and that should be one of the top priorities of the Department of 

Homeland Security. 

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you so much for your testimony 

today. It was very valuable to us, and I very much appreciate your 

time. 

The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for the submission of additional questions. All those great questions that we unfortunately do not get an opportunity to ask you today we will submit for the record. 

Thank you again for sharing your expertise and for your commitment to this issue. This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:33 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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