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79–889 PDF 2002

S. Hrg. 107–472

LEGISLATION TO ESTABLISH A DEPARTMENT OF

NATIONAL HOMELAND SECURITY AND A

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE TO COMBAT TERRORISM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 11, 2002

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Staff Director and Counsel

HOLLY A. IDELSON, Counsel

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Professional Staff Member

RICHARD A. HERTLING, Minority Staff Director

JAYSON P. ROEHL, Minority Professional Staff Member

MORGAN P. MUNCHNICK, Minority Professional Staff Member

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statement: Page

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 1

Senator Thompson ............................................................................................ 3

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 5

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 6

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 15

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 35

WITNESSES

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2002

Hon. Arlen Specter, a U.S. Senator from the State of Pennsylvania .................. 8

Hon. Bob Graham, a U.S. Senator from the State of Florida .............................. 9

Hon. Judd Gregg, a U.S. Senator from the State of New Hampshire ................. 12

Hon. Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress from the State of California ..................................................................................................................... 13

Hon. Ellen O. Tauscher, a Representative in Congress from the State of

California .............................................................................................................. 16

Hon. William ‘‘Mac’’ Thornberry, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Texas ................................................................................................................. 17

Hon. Warren B. Rudman, Co-Chair, U.S. Commission on National Security

in the 21st Century .............................................................................................. 19

Hon. David M. Walker, Comptroller General, U.S. General Accounting Office . 22

Hon. Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Director, Office of Management and Budget ...... 31

Dr. Philip Anderson, Senior Fellow and Director, Homeland Security Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies ........................................ 40

I.M. ‘‘Mac’’ Destler, Center for International and Security Studies and Professor, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland .................................. 42

Stephen M. Gross, Chairman, Border Trade Alliance .......................................... 44

Dr. Elaine Kamarck, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University ................................................................................................................... 47

Paul C. Light, Vice President and Director, Governmental Studies Program,

The Brookings Institute ....................................................................................... 49

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Anderson, Dr. Philip:

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

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 98

Daniels, Hon. Mitchell E., Jr.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 31

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94

Destler, I.M. ‘‘Mac’’:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 42

Prepared statement of Messrs. Daalder and Destler .................................... 108

Graham, Hon. Bob:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 66

Gregg, Hon. Judd:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12

Gross, Stephen M.:

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

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 114

Page

IV

Harman, Hon. Jane:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 13

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 70

Kamarck, Dr. Elaine:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 47

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 120

Light, Paul C.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 49

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 127

Rudman, Hon. Warren B.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 19

Specter, Hon. Arlen:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8

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

Tauscher, Hon. Ellen O.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 16

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 73

Thornberry, Hon. William ‘‘Mac’’:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 17

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 75

Walker, Hon. David M.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 77

APPENDIX

Organization Chart (submitted by Congresswoman Harman) ............................ 72

Letter from Dr. Steve Koonin, Provost, California Institute of Technology,

dated April 11, 2002, to Senator Lieberman ...................................................... 134

Questions for the Record from Senator Lieberman and Responses from:

Dr. Anderson ..................................................................................................... 135

Mr. Daniels ....................................................................................................... 137

Mr. Destler ........................................................................................................ 140

Mr. Light ........................................................................................................... 141

(1)

LEGISLATION TO ESTABLISH A DEPARTMENT

OF NATIONAL HOMELAND SECURITY AND A

WHITE HOUSE OFFICE TO COMBAT TERRORISM

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2002

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:01 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

Present: Senators Lieberman, Thompson, Collins, Voinovich,

Akaka, and Levin.

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN

Chairman LIEBERMAN. The hearing will come to order. Good

morning and thanks to all of you, including, of course, my colleagues from the Senate and the House for being here today.

This Governmental Affairs Committee hearing will consider legislation introduced by Senator Specter, Senator Graham, and myself to organize the Federal Government so that it can better prevent, effectively prepare for, and quickly respond to terrorist attacks made against American citizens on American territory. This

is a follow-up to two hearings we held last fall on whether the Government and specifically the Executive Branch is adequately organized to meet the type of security threats we must, unfortunately,

expect after September 11.

Given President Bush’s decision last fall to establish an Office of

Homeland Security and appoint former Governor Tom Ridge to

head it, it seems to me that it is clear that proper structures and

mechanisms were not in place on September 11 to adequately protect our homeland, and the President’s action since then makes

that clear.

But today, we have got to ask—6 months after Governor Ridge’s

appointment—whether we are adequately positioned to defend ourselves against another terrorist attack within our borders. Are the

gaps in our security policies closing? Are dozens of agencies with

a role in protecting the American people against terrorism better

coordinating their activities? Has duplication of efforts diminished?

Governor Ridge, I am confident, has done everything within his

power to make this Nation safer. For example, he has helped to

boost the administration’s homeland security budget and he has

implemented a new warning system. But from my point of view,

2

this is not enough, and the reason is that Governor Ridge and the

office he heads lack the necessary authority to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles that always get in the way of major change in

how the government conducts its business.

I will say also in this regard that the administration’s refusal to

allow Governor Ridge to testify publicly before this and other Congressional committees on his activities makes our work this morning more difficult than it should be, and incidentally, we did request Governor Ridge’s appearance here and got the same kind of

letter that Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens got. The governor is

on the House side today, although speaking behind closed doors

with the Government Reform Committee.

But given the effect his work has on the lives of every man,

woman, and child living within our borders, it seems to me that

Governor Ridge needs to work with Congress and the public in the

way government officials with the authority he has have been

doing for decades, indeed, for centuries, which is to come before a

public hearing and testify and have a transcript available for Congressional and public review to describe what he is doing, to flesh

out his successes, to speak to his difficulties, in short, to be accountable, and he must do this from a position of strength and authority. America’s war against terrorism cannot be allowed to get

mired in domestic wars over bureaucratic turf.

So the bottom line, as I see it, is that if statutory and budget authority are not conferred upon a Director of Homeland Security, the

homeland defense of this Nation will be less than it must be. Governor Ridge and his successors need to centralize their authority so

our anti-terrorism policies are clear, consistent, and comprehensive.

They need the power, frankly, to knock heads, to overcome bureaucratic resistance, to eliminate wasteful duplication of effort, and to

target precious resources, and they need control over the budgets

of agencies they are charged with overseeing so those agencies will

do what the director concludes in the national interest needs to be

done. Together, that kind of authority will give a new agency the

muscle necessary to compete with thousands of other demands for

public money and attention.

Last October, Senator Specter and I introduced legislation to establish such a cabinet-level Department of National Homeland Security led by a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed secretary

who would be a member of the National Security Council, accountable not just to the President but to Congress and to the public.

We recognize that no matter how robust a department of this

kind may be, it will not include every agency that plays a role in

homeland security. But the bill we will discuss today does contain

a number of improvements over our earlier version. The most significant changes are a requirement for a national strategy to combat terrorism and the establishment of a White House office to coordinate that strategy, as originally proposed by our colleague, Senator Bob Graham of Florida.

These key improvements underscore the seriousness with which

we regard the job of protecting the American public and they speak

to the public’s desire, indeed, the public’s need for the best protection we can provide them. On an operational level, these improvements also allow for the government to coordinate anti-terrorism

3

activities of the military and intelligence communities, which would

be beyond the purview of the cabinet-level department that we are

talking about.

With this combined approach, I think we address the need to

permanently restructure homeland security functions under a cabinet-level secretary who has operational authority and the ability to

personally direct the government-wide plan. At the same time, we

provide for the level of coordination with other Federal agencies

and budget certification authority that can most effectively be implemented from the White House.

Now, the formation of a Department of Homeland Security obviously requires a major restructuring of the Federal Government’s

public safety-related responsibilities. I know this will not be easy.

History tells us that. There will be resistance, and it seems somehow appropriate—I hope no one takes offense—that I quote Machiavelli here, who said—Senator Rudman, it is just coincidental I

raised my head when I mentioned Machiavelli—— [Laughter.]

Chairman LIEBERMAN [continuing]. Because you carry some of

his wisdom. Anyway, he once said, ‘‘There is nothing more difficult

to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage

than the creation of a new system,’’ and so it is.

But a restructuring of the kind we envision here is now critically

necessary. In fact, in previous periods of crisis, such as the one we

are in now, we have undertaken bold organizational change. I

think of General Marshall’s transformation of the Army, which

helped win World War II, or the National Security Act of 1947 that

created the CIA and the Department of Defense at the outset of the

Cold War, and more recently the Goldwater-Nickles Act of 1986 in

streamlining the military command helped us to prosecute the Persian Gulf War and so much else we have done militarily since the

1990’s. We need such a change now to help us fight and win the

war against terrorism at home and abroad.

I thank the distinguished group of witnesses who will come before us today and I look very much to their help and their testimony. Senator Thompson.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suppose we

know now when we hear that question about who is your favorite

political philosopher.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Usually, I say it is either Machiavelli or

Fred Thompson. [Laughter.]

Senator THOMPSON. The hearing today is an important one, Mr.

Chairman, and I appreciate your leadership in this area. This issue

is of concern to all of us, as well as the leadership of our panelists

today, all of whom have made substantial contributions toward trying to address the leading problem facing our country today.

Just to frame the issues a little bit as I see it, it looks to me like

we are going to address the question of whether or not, essentially,

we need a new entity of some kind—a new lead entity as opposed

to a coordinating function. Frankly, I think there can be cases

made on both sides. I think a new entity such as you suggest

makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, but as you pointed out, there

are going to be some very important terrorist fighting entities that

4

will not be under this umbrella. What we do with Justice and the

CIA and the FBI and all of that is a big question.

I think that is why it should be understandable that the administration is taking some time to come up with its own plan. As I understand it, its strategic plan is going to be forthcoming this summer. I am reminded of Barry McCaffrey. When General McCaffrey

was here testifying some months ago, he said—I forget the number

of years he used now, but he said it would be several years, as I

recall, in his opinion, before we had a good feel on exactly what we

needed and which direction that we needed to go in. He suggested

we be careful as we proceed and not assume that we have the answers to all the questions. I think today will help us get a better

understanding of what those answers are.

We are faced with the question of whether or not it ought to be

statutory. I think the administration has and will make its case

today with regard to that issue. I must say that it appears that the

job that Governor Ridge has is turning into more of an operational

one and certainly more of a public one than some of the other entities, comparable entities, such as the NSC.

A separate question is the reorganization, consolidation and integration of the various agencies. As we know, we have 40 or 50

agencies now involved. I think most people realize that we cannot

continue on with Customs being in Treasury, INS being in Justice,

the Coast Guard being in Transportation.

It is extremely difficult to make modest changes and get them

through Congress when jurisdiction is involved. We, in Congress,

have not much to be proud about in terms of our own situation. We

have 10 committees now involved conducting oversight on this

issue. How do we expect this to all come about smoothly when we

have that kind of situation? We have got jurisdiction anomalies out

our ears. The Banking Committee now has the Export Administration Authority. The consideration of dual-use items that can be

used for military purposes is considered by that committee. About

the only committee that does not have national security implications has that particular piece.

So we have a lot of work to do on our side. It occurs to me that

reorganization is essentially a Congressional problem. The President cannot do this by executive order if he wanted to. We must

be the ones that do it. If it is done, it is a challenge before us. But

nothing is going to get done unless we have strong Presidential

leadership. I think it is going to take everybody pulling together to

make even modest changes in terms of reorganization. It is a massive job and probably much more of an important one than the particular title we give the person who brings all this together.

It occurs to me that how we change this set-up, if we change it,

when we change it, is very important, but unfortunately, like so

many other areas, Presidential leadership is the vital part of any

change that we make. Without it, it does not matter what we do.

With it, it almost does not matter what we do, quite frankly. It is

rightly at his doorstep and he is going to have to provide the leadership and take the responsibility and have the accountability, and

I think he is doing that.

Can it be done in a better way? Perhaps, but I think we need

to face up to the fact that to have any changes, we are going to

5

have to work together with the White House to get them done. To

have any real results, we are going to have to do it under the

President’s leadership.

I have been of the mind that we should keep open minds about

how we should proceed and what we need to wind up with ultimately. I still feel that way. The national strategy is due, I believe,

in July. I would like to see what the administration comes up with.

I believe that because the job is so important, is so complex, as

General McCaffrey pointed out, that we need to give the administration a fair shot at coming forth with how they feel it ought to

be done and see how that flies, what it looks like, and, to the extent we can, see how it is working before we launch off into anything that would be extremely specific in the reorganizing or the

reshuffling of the boxes. I am still of that mind, but I definitely

think that we have got to continue to take a look at this as we go

along. Just as we do not have all the answers, the administration

should acknowledge that it does not necessarily have all the answers, either.

We just need to continue down this road together and I think

that this hearing today is a good first step in that direction. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Thompson. I agree totally with you that this is only going to get done if Congress is

working together with the White House. We start off from different

positions. This is not a partisan matter, as the range of our colleagues before us indicates very clearly.

I think, as maybe Senator Rudman said earlier on in one of our

discussions, that time will show the necessity of coordination in

this critical governmental function. In fact, in some ways, it is already happening. In some ways, it has already begun with some

recommendations Governor Ridge has made. Of course, I feel the

sooner the better, and hopefully, we can work together to make

that happen.

Senator Collins.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS

Senator COLLINS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your holding this hearing to evaluate legislative options to

strengthen our homeland security. It is my judgment that we do

need to have a statutory basis for the office to clarify the lines of

authority. I am very interested in not only the legislation that you

and Senator Specter have introduced, but also the other proposals

before us, and in particular, the legislation that Senator Graham

has introduced.

I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses on the best

way to ensure that the Director of Homeland Security has adequate

authority, budget resources, and the clear authority to accomplish

this overwhelmingly important mission. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Senator Collins follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS

Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this hearing. Our purpose—to examine

legislative options to strengthen homeland security—is of utmost importance, and

we have a range of distinguished witnesses to help us in this critical endeavor.

6

Since September 11, much has been done. This Committee alone has held 17 related hearings, and other committees have held scores more. Congress has authorized the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars, and the administration has created

an Office of Homeland Security and proposed tens of billions of dollars in additional

spending.

But much more needs to be done. Seven months have passed—to the day—and

we still have not made our Nation as secure as it can and should be. We have not,

for example, provided much-needed resources to our first line of defense—the first

responders in our States and localities. To make our Nation more secure by

strengthening our first line of defense, I introduced on Tuesday the Securing Our

States—or S.O.S.—Act.

Spread across the Nation are nearly two million ‘‘soldiers’’ in the battle against

terrorism who are always on the front lines when disaster strikes. Properly trained

and equipped, these State and local police, firefighters, emergency medical professionals and others have the greatest potential to save lives and limit casualties after

a terrorist attack. Even the best prepared States and localities do not possess adequate resources to respond to the full range of terrorist threats we face.

The S.O.S. Act, which is consistent with the ‘‘First Responders’’ proposal in President Bush’s 2003 Budget, will help by providing $4 billion in critically needed funding—an increase of more than 1,000 percent in Federal resources. This bill is designed to achieve four objectives: (1) provide adequate resources; (2) ensure flexibility for States and localities; (3) enhance simplicity and speed in dispersing Federal assistance; and (4) improve cooperation across the Nation so that the local,

State, Federal, and volunteer network can operate together effectively. The benefits

of the Securing Our States Act are immediate and widespread—making the Nation

safer from terrorist attacks while also bolstering everyday response capabilities.

Seven months after the tragic attacks, and 6 months after the anthrax attacks

on the office complex in which we sit, Congress still has not acted with sufficient

urgency to protect our Nation against bioterrorism and threats to the safety of the

food we eat. I am encouraged by the Senate’s unanimous passage in December of

the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 (S. 1765). That bill, which I cosponsored,

calls for improving food safety and protecting against agricultural bioterrorism; upgrading Federal capacities to respond to bioterrorism; providing grants to hospitals,

and State and local officials for first-line response; and developing new treatments,

vaccines, and diagnostic tools. I am hopeful that it will soon come out of the Conference Committee.

These and other unmet needs tell me that there is still much work to be done.

But probably the most important work yet to be done is in re-organizing the Federal

Government to provide the best possible security for our homeland. This is a large

and complex task. We must improve coordination between Federal, State, and local

governments, as well as the private sector. We must have adequate funding. We

must avoid wasteful duplication. We must have realistic plans and effective training

and exercises. We must also ensure that appropriate information about the presence

of terrorists and potential threats is shared by Federal law enforcement agencies

with their State and local counterparts.

Still, the magnitude and complexity of the task ought not cause us to avoid it.

The Nation could not and should not permit Congress for any reason to shirk its

responsibilities to re-organize the Federal Government promptly. Nevertheless, the

importance of the task is so great that we cannot be permitted to rush to a judgment we will later regret. We must get this one right. We must carefully examine

whether the bills that are the focus of this hearing do that. In this regard, this hearing and the testimony of our distinguished witnesses will be very helpful, and I look

forward to hearing from them. We have a lot of work to do—together.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Collins. Senator

Voinovich.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to

thank you for holding this hearing to discuss establishing a Department of Homeland Security and a National Office for Combating

Terrorism. I would also like to thank our witnesses for being here

today.

Mr. Chairman, it is clear to me that our country must examine

the organization of our Federal Government from a new perspecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
7

tive following September 11. We must make certain that the Nation has effective, accountable organizations and systems in place

to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks.

We began this effort in the immediate aftermath of the attacks,

and I believe it is productive that we continue these discussions

today. We had a hearing, 5 or 6 months ago on the same subject.

Recently, FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh appeared before the Environment and Public Works Committee to discuss the President’s

budget for the First Responder Initiative, which he is going to be

charged with. I mentioned to him that I was worried about some

of the news relayed to me by local officials in Dayton, Ohio who

were part of a first responder team at Ground Zero. They were unable to get information about the environmental hazards that they

encountered there and also the fact that they were unable to get

the paperwork that they needed to make an application to take advantage of the Federal Workers’ Compensation Program.

The issue today before us is: How do we best solve these problems? There have been serious discussions about making long overdue improvements in our governmental institutions across the

country, from the White House, and Federal agencies in Washington, DC, to State houses and city councils across America. The

point I am making here, Mr. Chairman, is we need to understand

that there are a lot of challenges that we have out there, and we

are talking about a new agency and we are talking about coordination. But the fact of the matter is that the agencies that are

charged with important responsibilities do not have the personnel

and the quality of people to accomplish their missions. I think that

has to be something that we need to concentrate our attention on.

These problems are a direct result of the Federal Government’s

human capital challenges.

As a recent article in The Washington Post highlighted, at the

Immigration and Naturalization Service, there are only 2,000

agents to enforce the immigration laws inside the U.S. Borders.

I mentioned Joe Allbaugh and FEMA. I asked him about the condition of his workforce and I think his response is indicative of a

widespread problem in the Federal Government. He said, and I

think this is really important, ‘‘I have been in this position about

a year, and it was clear to me right up front that we have not been

spending enough time internally on our employees. Retention was

a problem, and there was essentially no recruitment. I think over

the next 18 months, somewhere between 45 and 50 percent of our

agency is eligible for retirement. That is just a lot of gray matter

to be walking out the door. Since September 11, the retirements

have accelerated. People have come to my office with a different

perspective on life, which I cannot fault them for, wanting to spend

more time with their kids, grandkids, their spouses.’’

‘‘FEMA suffers from its own successes in that if you want a job

done, you give it to FEMA, and oftentimes we are given tasks to

perform but not necessarily the resources to complete the task. So

as a result, many of our people in not only the Washington headquarters but in our 10 regional offices wear two, three, four, and

five hats at the same time and I think it puts an inordinate

amount of stress on those individuals, on their families, who I

8

1The prepared statement of Senator Specter appears in the Appendix on page 59.

think make the ultimate sacrifices because those individuals are

kept away from home more than necessary.’’

So what I am saying, Mr. Chairman, is that I think improving

the Federal Government’s strategic management of human capital

is the most important action we can take to better prepare our Nation against future threats to our national and homeland security

and it is critical that we address the problem as we consider legislation before the Committee today.

You can coordinate all you want to, but if the agencies you are

coordinating don’t have sufficient personnel, they are not going to

be able to get the job done, and I think too often we concentrate

on form and procedure and neglect the most important thing that

we need to have in the Federal Government and that is people. You

win with people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Voinovich. Right on.

We are very grateful for the presence of this group of Members

of both chambers, both parties here today, who have been involved

in this and we look forward to your testimony.

I think Senator Specter has an engagement he has to go to. I

think he is also, if I am looking for an excuse to call on him first,

he is clearly the most senior member before the Committee, so I

would call on Senator Specter now.

TESTIMONY OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER,1 A U.S. SENATOR FROM

THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Senator SPECTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Excuse me. Senator Akaka, do you have

an opening statement? You snuck in behind me quickly.

Senator AKAKA. I will do it afterward.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK, fine. Go ahead, Senator Specter.

Senator SPECTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Appropriations

Committee is in the midst of 2 days of hearings on homeland security and I am due there shortly, so I appreciate your calling on me

at this time.

I believe that it is very important for this Committee to move as

promptly as possible to structure a bill. The hearing on S. 1534 was

on October 12 and this is a matter of considerable urgency.

I think that Senator Thompson is correct that there has to be

input from the White House. It has to be an agreed-upon format.

But I believe that is likely to come once the legislative process

moves forward.

I served on this Committee for 4 years and I know its capability

to take the legislation which has been introduced in a variety of

sources and to move it into a bill, and when that starts to happen,

there is going to be input from the White House. But I think we

have no time to spare to do everything we can to structure homeland security in the most effective way possible.

I am glad to see Senator Graham’s addition to the bill on a

counterterrorism czar. I know from my service as chairman of the

Intelligence Committee in the 104th Congress that there needs to

be a revision in intelligence gathering, reporting, and coordination.

9

1The prepared statement of Senator Graham appears in the Appendix on page 66.

I am glad to hear the reference to Machiavelli, Mr. Chairman. I

am glad to see one more cosponsor on the list. It should materially

improve chances of passage. When you said Senator Thompson and

Machiavelli were your two favorite political philosophers, I expected Senator Thompson to reply he did not see much difference

in making alternative——

Senator THOMPSON. I am sorry I brought this up.

Senator SPECTER [continuing]. Alternative choices.

The job which Governor Ridge faces is a very daunting responsibility and he is a man of terrific ability, which I know, having

worked with him very closely for more than two decades, 12 years

in the House and 61⁄2 years as governor. When he says that he can

walk down the hall and get matters resolved with the President

and no one will say no to the President, I agree, no one is going

to say no to the President. But it is pretty hard to walk down the

hall every time there is a controversy, and we are talking about an

institution. It may be that the next Director of Homeland Security

will not have the very close relationship which Governor Ridge enjoys with the President.

We are now seeing a battle of separation of powers with the position taken by the administration on having Governor Ridge not testify before the Congress, and I believe that dispute would be obviated if the Congress acts to create a cabinet-level position. Then

there would be no doubt about it.

My own view is that when you have as much responsibility as the Director of Homeland Security has and you have a say on $37

billion, that you really have a de facto cabinet officer. This is not

like the National Security Adviser, who was created by statute and

by Congressional enactment in 1947, so that the analogy to Dr.

Condoleeza Rice, I think is not apt. The sooner we move on to have

a structure here, I think the better off we will be.

My yellow light is on and you have a long list of witnesses and

I am going to observe the time meticulously, but in closing, I would

emphasize the need for early action. September 11 has had a 6-

month anniversary. S. 1534, which you and I introduced months

ago, had a hearing on October 12. In my view, the sooner this Committee acts, the sooner we will get the ball rolling and I think we

can work out an accommodation with the White House. Thank you

very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Specter. I

agree with you, and as soon as we feel we can bring it to markup,

we will, and I hope that is real soon. Senator Graham.

TESTIMONY OF HON. BOB GRAHAM,1 A U.S. SENATOR FROM

THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Senator GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, appreciate

your holding this hearing on an important topic and I believe that

this is the time to begin serious consideration of the role of Congress in the Office of Homeland Security.

As you know, much of this bill that is before us today is a product of legislation that was introduced in the fall of last year. We

were asked by the President to defer pursuing that legislation in

10

order to allow Governor Ridge to gain control of his responsibilities

and to deal with some of the immediate issues that were facing

him after September 11. Now, 6 months plus have passed. I think

it is time to begin the process of looking to the future for this important initiative.

The legislation which Senator Feinstein and others and I introduced last fall was S. 1449, and in substantial part it has now been

incorporated as Title II in the legislation that is before us. This legislation has as its purpose to institutionalize the Office of Homeland Security and assure its accountability to the American people.

To do that, the legislation would provide that the director of the

office be appointed by the President with the advice and consent

of the Senate. The director would develop a national strategy for

the prevention and response to terrorism. The director would be required to certify all portions of the Federal budget relating to terrorism.

Last November, with Paul Light, Director of Governmental Studies at The Brookings Institute, I co-authored an op-ed in The Washington Post in which we set out seven benchmarks against which

the American people and the members of Congress could measure

the effectiveness of the current executive order, Office of Homeland

Security, and help us to determine if a more formal statutory authority was warranted. I would like to use my remaining time just

to briefly comment on those benchmark standards and hope that

they might be helpful to this Committee as it attempts to answer

that question.

The benchmarks that we identified were, first, that Governor

Ridge needs to be first in line for information. This is particularly

true as it relates to sensitive intelligence information that would

require action which had as its objective to avoid a terrorist attack.

We do not want to be in the position of constantly picking up the

pieces after an assault, but rather to be able to avoid attacks

against our people.

Second, Governor Ridge needs to have access to the principals

who will make the operational decisions for the appropriate agencies and he needs to have that access on a timely basis.

Third, Governor Ridge needs to be a gatekeeper in the budget

and personnel processes.

Fourth, Governor Ridge needs a permanent staff that owes its

loyalty to him and to him alone. This recognizes the fact that there

are inevitably going to be conflicts between this Office of Homeland

Security and the line agencies which have parts of the responsibility for implementing the plan against terrorism.

Fifth, Governor Ridge needs a staff which is close to him, that

is, not only close in terms of its loyalty but in terms of its physical

proximity.

Sixth, Governor Ridge needs a say in the selection of appointees

at the agencies which will have significant responsibility for antiterrorism and response to terrorism.

And finally, seventh, Governor Ridge needs to be involved in all

management reviews of the homeland defense establishment.

Six months after listing these criteria, Mr. Light and I would define the results as being mixed in terms of how well the operation

of the office stands up against these criteria. He clearly has access

11

to the information needed to do his job, but much of the information is still muddy, its sources diverse, and its usefulness often

mixed. Evidence of this is the color-coded system of vague threat

warnings which the office has developed.

Governor Ridge also enjoys access to key decisionmakers, from

the President to the Vice President and Attorney General, which

is our second criteria. But what he has not had, at least not yet,

it appears, is success in making his case on the need for the kinds

of changes that will be necessary to give America an organized

homeland security presence.

He appears to have had his greatest success in the budget and

personnel process, our third criteria, but the governor has continued to argue against making his case even for this area of success

before the Congress and he has said that he has no power to spend,

obligate, or audit money, and for that reason has no obligation to

come before the Congress.

As for his staff, executive office space, and role in selecting key

Presidential appointees, again, mixed success. He is still running

a minimalist operation, still looking for office space which is proximate to his own space in the Old Executive Office Building. It is

not clear that he has had a role in selecting key personnel. As an

example, two appointments were announced recently, the nominee

to be the Surgeon General and the Director of the Institute of

Health. Both of these will be essential players in the fight against

bioterrorism.

Governor Ridge does not appear to have had much to say over

the operations and management of the homeland security establishment, which was our seventh and final criteria. As the recent

events in the INS suggest, homeland security continues to depend

on agencies that are properly structured, staffed, and led, and

when those criteria are not present, then we expose ourselves to

the kind of tragedies that occurred on September 11.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask that the balance of my statement be printed in the record as if read. I applaud the President

and Governor Ridge for the progress that they have made, particularly under extremely challenging, difficult circumstances. I do not

believe that what we are about here is a clash between the Executive and the Legislative Branches. What we are trying to do is to

provide to the American people what they have every right to expect their National Government to do. If you read the first lines of

the Constitution, it clearly outlines that protecting the homeland is

one of the fundamental reasons this government was established.

That is the importance of the business that we are about today and

I commend you for doing so.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Senator Graham. That was

very helpful testimony and thanks so much for working with us to

bring our two approaches to this together. It is an honor to be

working with you.

Senator GRAHAM. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Senator Gregg, thanks for being here this

morning.

12

TESTIMONY OF HON. JUDD GREGG, A U.S. SENATOR FROM

THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Senator GREGG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be

here also. I also am participating in the Appropriations Committee

hearing on homeland security which is going on.

I think it is appropriate to raise that, not only because Senator

Specter headed off to it and I will be heading off to it soon, but because the first major witness called to that committee by Senator

Byrd was a professor of government from Pennsylvania, I believe

his name was Glover, and his basic theorem was that centralizing

the decision process in the Homeland Security Office at the White

House at a cabinet level was probably not the best approach to

take, interestingly enough.

The reasons he pointed out were the same as concerns raised by

Senator Thompson, which are that the Centers for Excellence in

our government for addressing terrorism are already pretty well established in agencies which have a line of authority which is never

going to be able to be pulled into a central cabinet-level position,

specifically the FBI, CIA, State Department, and Departments of

Defense and Justice. I am not sure that I am fully attracted to that

idea. I do think that there is a role for an individual who has the

authority of the homeland security portfolio, but the question becomes what should that authority be and what should that individual’s role be.

I have spent a fair amount of time on this issue. In fact, as chairman of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee for

the last 4 years prior to the changeover, I held a number of hearings on this specific issue, which was the interrelationship of the

different departments, and came to the conclusion that we do need

some sort of reorganization to put structure into what we are

doing.

But rather than going the full step of creating a cabinet-level position which tries to pull in homeland security but cannot accomplish it fully because some of the players simply will not be pulled

in, such as the FBI, the Justice Department, State Department,

CIA, and the Department of Defense, my suggestion is that we

take a lesser step but one which would produce an efficient response to a known problem, and that is our borders.

Probably no element of this entire exercise has less effective coordination now than the management of our borders in the area of

protecting ourselves from terrorist actions. We have seen consistently breakdowns in the INS and the Border Patrol. We have seen

overlapping responsibility and ineffectiveness from Customs and

INS trying to work together. We know that agencies such as the

agricultural quarantine efforts and the Coast Guard, which have

huge responsibility in this area, are not being coordinated in a systematic manner with the other agencies, such as the Border Patrol.

So I would like to suggest that rather than pursuing the course

that is maybe the full effort, which has reservations to it, which

have been outlined, that we take a look at resolving a problem that

we know we can resolve, which is to take all the different Border

Patrol elements of our government and put it into one agency and

then give that cabinet status.

13

1The prepared statement of Ms. Harman with an attachment appears in the Appendix on

page 70.

Specifically, I proposed this in a bill, S. 2020, which takes the

elements of INS, which include Border Patrol and visa activity and

immigration activity, the full element of the Coast Guard, the elements of the DEA which are covered by the Border Patrol, the elements of the Agriculture Department which involve making sure

that foods coming into our country are safe, put them under one

management structure and under one leadership coming out of the

administration which would have a cabinet-level status.

I believe the practical effect of this approach would be that at

least in one part of the question of how we protect our Nation,

which is determining who is coming into the country and what they

are doing when they are in the country, what products are coming

into the country and what sort of threat is coming as a result of

those products, at least in that one specific element, we would have

structure and we would have coordination and we would have a responsible approach.

Today, we do not have that. Unfortunately, our borders are porous. Our management of those borders is inefficient and the lines

of authority are overlapping and confusing.

So I would like to suggest that this Committee take a look, as

it proceeds down the road of looking at your broader bill here,

which I am sure you are going to want to mark up and report out,

that I would like to suggest it as a parallel effort, that you consider

taking a look at marking up a bill which would resolve the issue

of our borders and managing the issue of who is coming into our

country and what is coming into our country.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Senator Gregg, for a

thoughtful statement, and I promise you we will consider that. It

obviously omits some agencies that we are bringing into the larger

proposal, but it is a very serious proposal that you are making and

it touches an area of critical need and relationship to the problem

of homeland security, so I look forward to working with you on it.

Thanks for your time.

I welcome three colleagues, a distinguished bipartisan group

from the House. Thank you for being here and thank you for working along with us. Obviously, not only do we have to work with the

White House to get this done, we have got to work with the House

to get it done.

Congresswoman Jane Harman.

TESTIMONY OF HON. JANE HARMAN,1 A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Ms. HARMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be

back testifying before your Committee. Hello to Members of this

Committee. I have a formal statement for the record and hope I

can submit it and just summarize in six quick points, because

many good points have already been made and I am sure you do

not need to hear them again.

First point, I doubt that even Machiavelli could overcome the

turf disputes in the Executive Branch and in Congress. With all of

his skills, I still think they might even defeat him. In the current

14

1 Chart referred to by Ms. Harman appears in the Appendix on page 72.

language, I have been saying that turf disputes have become aerosolized. You inhale them and you die. Governor Ridge, I think, is

on life support because his office is inadequately funded and has

inadequate tools to do the job that we all need him to do.

Second point, I believe that your new legislative thrust that we

are discussing today, the combination of two ideas, combines the

best bipartisan ideas that we have been able to come up with in

the House and in the Senate. I know that the three of us over here

from the lower body have worked together, are prepared to work

together, and eagerly want to work with you to fashion the best

possible legislation and introduce a companion bill in the House at

the same time that you introduce this bill, so that, hopefully, that

will expedite its consideration in both bodies and its becoming law,

because I do think we need a statute to settle these issues.

Third point, this is the issue, not whether Governor Ridge should

testify. That is a side show. The main show is who is responsible

for developing and explaining the $38 billion homeland security

budget. Whose strategy is it? Who can explain to Congress why we

should authorize and appropriate that money? That is the issue.

We should not be authorizing and appropriating money that is not

justified by the Executive Branch and somebody needs to come up

here and explain that, and my candidate for that would be Governor Ridge, but Governor Ridge with a real day job.

Fourth point, and I am surprised this was not mentioned yet, but

I think it is the touchstone and we should keep focused on it, and

that is certainly those of us who serve on the Intelligence committees know this, and I know you know it as well—our country is still

vulnerable to a second wave of major terrorist attacks. We are still

vulnerable. Even though we have had considerable success in Afghanistan and around the world in rounding up terrorists, we are

still vulnerable. Everybody understands that there are sleeper cells

with al Qaeda members and followers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and so forth. We are still vulnerable. There is no more

time left before we come up with an adequate focused homeland security strategy, and it is, as everyone has pointed out, already 7

months since September 11. It is almost 6 months since your first

hearing of October 12 on this issue.

Fifth point, I would just like to draw your attention to the chart

over here.1 This chart was put together by the subcommittee on

which I am ranking member, the House Intelligence Subcommittee

on Terrorism and Homeland Security. It is the chart that Tom

Ridge held up as his organization chart when he took office. I

would call that the ‘‘Where’s Waldo’’ chart. Waldo is the Office of

Homeland Security near the top, but I bet you can barely see it.

The blue lines are around the most major players in the Executive

Branch, but there are a hundred little boxes on this chart. This is

the current organization or the current disorganization that the Director of Homeland Security is supervising, and even if we reorganize our border agencies, which I support, that just takes a few

boxes out of here. There is still the rest of it.

So I would argue, and I am not sure whether I am agreeing with

Senator Gregg or not, I was not quite sure what his view is, but

15

I think I agree with everyone else up here that while we need to

reorganize our border capacity, we also need, at minimum, an architect or orchestra conductor for the rest of it. So I think the combination of a bigger, better border agency, FEMA, consequence

management capacity is good, but then look at this chart. We need

the rest. And so combining these functions, I think is critical.

Final point, my candidate for orchestra conductor is Tom Ridge.

I think he brings the right skills. The problem is, he has the wrong

tools. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Congresswoman Harman, for

an excellent statement and very helpful.

I want to ask my two colleagues for their indulgence. I missed

calling on Senator Akaka. He now has to leave soon and I want to

ask him if he would like to give his opening statement now.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I commend the Chairman for calling this hearing and thank our witnesses for being here. The issue of homeland security is one that

demands all of our immediate attention.

Homeland security presents challenges to our country in different ways. Our commitment to both national security and civil

liberties is tested as we work to develop solutions that not only

make a stronger, safer America, but a better one. We need to determine how we can best prevent, protect, and respond to threats on

the homeland while preserving the freedoms that define America.

The legislation we are reviewing this morning raises several important issues for me. Whatever strategy we undertake must maximize the talents of those charged with homeland security and provide sufficient resources to address the threat. There are Members

on this Committee who have been addressing this. I recently

chaired an International Security, Proliferation and Federal Service Subcommittee hearing where representatives across government testified that their agencies need more people with critical

skills in math, science, and foreign languages.

Senators Durbin, Thompson, and I have introduced the Homeland Security Federal Workforce Act, S. 1800, and the Homeland

Security Education Act, S. 1799, to ensure that agencies have the

critical people with the critical skills to guide the Federal agencies

in their national security missions in the long term. Senator

Voinovich is also working on this with us.

Nor should union representation be a litmus test for patriotism

of Federal workers. The administration has already set a precedent

by eliminating certain Title 5 rights for Federal workers in national security positions. I am disappointed by the administration’s

recent action barring union representation for some 500 clerical

and support employees at the Department of Justice. We should

avoid the unintended consequences of a further erosion of the

rights of Federal employees, including collective bargaining arrangements.

Federal employees are already prohibited by statute from striking and their right to union representation does not constitute a

national security risk. Union members are no less loyal than other

members and Americans to their country. What the attacks of SepVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
16

1The prepared statement of Ms. Tauscher appears in the Appendix on page 73.

tember 11 demonstrate is that we are all soldiers in the war

against terrorism. Moreover, we need to be certain that government has enough of the right people and resources to carry out new

homeland security missions. The mission and responsibilities of the

proposed Department for National Homeland Security is greater

than the sum of the individual missions of the agencies that make

it up. Like other agencies, the Department of Homeland Security

should have enough of the people and resources required to carry

out its mission.

The Director of the National Office for Combating Terrorism and

the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security will be

charged with domestic security responsibilities. Both should be

under civilian control with the heads of both offices subject to Senate confirmation.

We should also remember that future terrorist attacks will affect

regions of the country differently. There is no ‘‘one type fits all

strategy.’’ Geographically distant States like Hawaii and rural

areas require different responses and strategies and resources than

those in New York City and Washington, DC.

As we review this legislation, Mr. Chairman, we should consider

how it can be most effective while preserving the principles that

make America great. I wish to express my appreciation to our witnesses and thank them for their patience. Thank you very much,

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Akaka. I

appreciate your being here.

Congresswoman Tauscher, thank you. Good morning.

TESTIMONY OF HON. ELLEN O. TAUSCHER,1 A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Ms. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate being before you again. I thank you and Senator Thompson and the Committee for having us here. I also thank Senator Graham for his

leadership in harmonizing the two bills that we had, that all have

been working on. I thank my colleague, Jane Harman, for her great

leadership on the Intelligence Committee, and I especially thank

my colleague, Mac Thornberry, for his prescience and his foresight

a year ago to introduce a House bill to create a homeland security

agency.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Would you put Mac up there with Machiavelli?

Ms. TAUSCHER. He is our 21st Century version of it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Maybe that is what Mac is short for.

[Laughter.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. Actually, I should probably defend him on that.

He is a much nicer guy.

Senator THOMPSON. He just likes to be called ‘‘the Prince’’ every

once in a while. [Laughter.]

Ms. TAUSCHER. I also want to thank Senator Rudman for his

help and his friendship and working with us on this issue for so

long.

17

1The prepared statement of Mr. Thornberry appears in the Appendix on page 75.

Mr. Chairman, I think that I would like to echo the phraseology

of the President on another issue, the tragedy in the Middle East,

by saying that enough is enough. I think that a long time has

passed since the events of September 11. I think it is time for us

to unify the government and to unify the purpose of the American

people behind the ability to get something done here.

What I am tremendously concerned about is while there is good

work being done here and good work being done at the House, and

obviously the President has picked a man of great pedigree in Governor Ridge, who I believe would be unanimously, perhaps, endorsed by the Senate for a cabinet-level position, too much time has

gone by where we have not done the right thing for the American

people to secure their safety and I think we have to move a bill,

both here and in the House, and we have to create a unifying opportunity to do that. I think this Committee’s work is going to go

a long way to do that.

I am concerned that we get something done on the Senate side

and we do not get something done on the House side, and that is

going to take the ability of the leadership of all of the different

parts of the government, all equal but all interested in moving

something, so that we can produce for the American people a harmonized structure that is practical, common sensical, that has real

accountability, real budget authority, and the ability to do the

things that we all know have to get done so there is no repeat of

the September 11 tragedies.

I think it is important that we work together to make sure that

we have a robust and muscular department structure that really,

I think, is accountable to the American people, and right now we

do not have that.

So I thank you for your leadership. I thank my colleagues for

working so well. We have got the right bill. We have the ability,

I think, to move to compromise. What we really need now is leadership and we need the White House to support us, and the administration to support us. My colleague, Jane Harman, was very right

to say that we cannot fritter around the edges here. We cannot

allow petty differences of power and partisanship and, frankly,

committee chairmanships on one side or the other to make these

issues less able to move forward.

So I look for your leadership to continue. I hope that we can do

something. I certainly hope we can move a bill in the House if you

are successful here, and I hope we get the leadership in the White

House to get something done very soon. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Well said. Thank you very much.

Congressman Thornberry, thanks for your patience.

TESTIMONY OF HON. WILLIAM ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY,1 A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you

and Members of the Committee having me back. I also appreciate

the time and effort this Committee has put into looking at the

issues of organizational reform. It is not very glamorous work. You

18

take this chart that Ms. Harman has and rearrange the boxes. It

just does not excite a lot of people, and yet I think it is important.

Senator Voinovich is exactly right. It is not a magic answer. We

still have to include the money, we still have to have the people,

we still have to have the technology to make, for example, border

security work. But I think the rest of the story is we can continue

to pour money, even double the homeland security budget, and if

it is not focused, if it is not integrated, we are not going to get the

most out of that money, and organizational reform is very important to making sure that it is focused and it is working the right

way.

As has been noted, the last 6 months, we have not seen a lot of

progress. Governor Ridge has certainly had his hands full. I worry

that we are moving toward some sort of a half-hearted approach,

maybe divide INS and take Customs and bring it over with the

Border Patrol and say we have done what needs to be done, but

we will not, in my view. I really think we need to try to get it right.

As you know, Ms. Tauscher and I introduced a bill last year

based on the Hart-Rudman Commission proposals to create a Department of Homeland Security similar to your and Senator Specter’s bill. I think it is important to have that sort of department

to bring together these various entities which are fractured all over

the government. In addition to the border security piece, it brings

together the cyber security as well as emergency response, kind of

a beefed-up FEMA. So it tries to bring that together.

I think it is also important for us to remember, and I will give

him a little build-up before he comes up here, that the Hart-Rudman Commission was a panel of some of the most preeminent

Americans dealing with the broad range of challenges the country

faces and they spent 3 years studying this problem. This is not a

knee-jerk reaction to September 11. This was out way before September 11, and 3 years of work had gone into it before then. So it

is well thought out and we can study a problem to death—and I

think we have to be careful of that.

I have some improvements, I think, on my original bill, such as

bringing in the agriculture inspectors that Senator Gregg talked

about and some others. I think it is significant that we are bringing

together Ms. Harman’s approach with ours. As she said, having an

orchestra leader to coordinate on a drug czar kind of model the

wide range of government responses, but still having a department

where the rubber meets the road, can make sure that the Customs

Service radios actually work with the Border Patrol radios, and the

details of implementing it is critical. But you have to have that direct chain of command and budget authority to make that happen.

So I think bringing the two approaches together makes a lot of

sense.

Mr. Chairman, I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that I am

familiar with that Machiavelli quote that you mentioned earlier

and I know part of the rest of it. It goes on to talk about how the

people who have some stake in the present system only see their

interest threatened, and the people who may have a stake in the

system to come do not see it as realistic enough to fight for the

change, and so what you are left with is getting attacked from all

19

sides and I think that often ends up happening in organizational

reform.

But every day that we fail to take on the turf battles in the Executive Branch and in the Legislative Branch, every day that goes by,

we have a vulnerability that I think we have an obligation to try

to protect, and I think we do have a responsibility to work with the

administration, but to move it ahead and not continue to sit around

and twiddle our thumbs and say, ‘‘Oh my,’’ when something else

happens, because something else will happen.

Thanks again for having me.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Congressman Thornberry.

Thank you all for your leadership, and I appreciate the fact that

you are working together as we are on this side. I think we have

got to try to move these ideas forward and then engage along the

way with the White House as best we can and hope we can have

a good meeting place. But your sense of urgency is just right and

I hope we can conduct our affairs through this Committee in exactly that tone. Thank you very much. I wish you a good day.

We will now call the second panel, The Hon. Warren Rudman,

Co-Chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st

Century, and the Hon. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of

the U.S. General Accounting Office. I thank both of you for being

here.

Senator Rudman, as Mr. Thornberry said, the truth is that the

proposal from the commission you headed with former Senator

Gary Hart is the basis and your testimony is the basis for the bill

that Senator Specter and I put in and which was put in by our colleagues in the House. I am very grateful that you could be here

today and reflect with us now, I suppose almost a year after your

proposal was first made and now a little more than a half-year

after the events of September 11. Good morning. Thank you.

TESTIMONY OF HON. WARREN B. RUDMAN, CO-CHAIR, U.S.

COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Mr. RUDMAN. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson,

fellow New Englander Senator Collins. I am delighted to be back

before this Committee again. I spent many hours in this room over

a 12-year period and I am glad to see it is still in good hands.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you.

Mr. RUDMAN. Rather than go through a number of points that I

had prepared, I think it is fair to say that you all have a pretty

good understanding of what the Hart-Rudman Commission did.

Certainly, you have all been briefed on it. We have had a hearing

on it. So rather than do that, I would rather speak very briefly

about something that has occurred to me. I purposely got here as

early as I could to hear the previous panel and to hear the opening

statements because I wanted to reflect on those statements. So let

me just comment briefly about how I am viewing this right now

and how I think our commission would.

There is no question but that the legislation that you introduced

earlier this year, that Mac Thornberry introduced after extensive

hearings in the House, and that my fellow New Hampshireman

Judd Gregg talked about this morning was the single most critical

20

thing that we thought had to be done and could be done in fairly

short order, and that was the operational side of it.

Now, it is my belief that with a President that has a popularity

now of still better than 70 percent and a country that is preoccupied with future terrorist attacks, and with good reason, there

is no excuse for not going ahead and at least trying to make our

borders secure, which is, I believe, Title I of your bill. I think you

have improved on the recommendations that Hart-Rudman made

by including some other aspects of government that properly belong

there.

Obviously, the entire prevention piece, counterterrorism, the FBI,

the CIA, all the other intelligence agencies will remain where they

are and will have to have a strong link to what you finally do with

the border agencies. But there is no reason, if you wanted to go to

a zero-based budget today, to put the Coast Guard in the Transportation Department, to put Customs in Treasury; at least their law

enforcement function—they are no longer a big revenue-raiser,

which is why they were there in the first place; or to put the various agencies in the Justice Department and also give the Justice

Department the crisis management responsibility which they currently have in this government for this kind of an event. It makes

no sense and ought to be changed.

For those in those various services that are concerned about their

personnel systems, their uniforms, their tradition, we are not saying to change that at all. The Coast Guard will still be the Coast

Guard, and that is something that Senator Collins is concerned

about from the State of Maine, with good reason. It will still be the

U.S. Coast Guard. The only difference will be it will report to a

Secretary of Homeland Security instead of a Secretary of Transportation.

I want to urge you, and I have talked to my fellow commissioners

about the testimony I would give here this morning, I want to

stress to you that nothing is more important than that. If you cannot guard the border, then you cannot have adequate homeland security. The Lord only knows, if you block the Maine Border or the

New Hampshire Border, it is difficult enough to keep it secure with

what we have, but to have it in the shambles that it is in with

these agencies not even talking to each other makes no sense.

Let me also add that although we are spending a huge amount

of money—parenthetically, I have been asked to testify before Appropriations this afternoon and I took a look at the budget numbers and they are staggering, what, $36 billion this year, $38 billion next year, and we are spending all this money on airport security, and we probably ought to. Let me submit to you that I think

a greater threat right now to the country are the 50,000 containers

coming into U.S. ports every single day, less than 1 percent being

inspected, not knowing whether they contain biological, chemical,

or nuclear devices. I mean, all of our attention is focused on airports and we are going to get maybe hit someplace else.

So when you talk about border security, I do not think there is

anything any more important than that and I hope, I would think

that in a bipartisan way, it should not be hard to convince the

White House that this is in the interest of the country.

21

Now, the second part is more difficult and that is Title II. I have

looked at it at some length. I have gone back and looked at some

of the work that we did over the last 31⁄2 years and I asked one

of the experts that we had working to look at it—a group of us

looked at it—and let me just read to you a paragraph that we put

together—it is a short paragraph—looking at Title II. This is not

said in a critical way, it is said in a thoughtful way, but I think

it will presage some of the problems you may have dealing with the

White House and the National Security Council on your Title II.

That is why I wanted to call it to your attention.

I think that section may be a mixed blessing. Surely, it puts the

Secretary for Homeland Security in the NSC, but it really transforms Ridge’s office into a legal Executive Office of the President

entity with a focus on counterterrorism that has some overlap with

homeland security. People do not understand that there is a little

bit of a difference between the two and the way they are defined

within the government.

Then you create a National Combating Terrorism and Homeland

Security Response Council, and I think that may add a little confusion because, in essence, many of the suggestions from our commission and others said either/or, you know, either department-based

or Executive Office of the President-based. You have kind of got

both. You have kind of got a foot in each camp and I think you

ought to look at that very closely.

I think you fix the operational integration problem in the bill

perfectly, but I think you still blur the strategic integration problem.

What we proposed was that the National Homeland Security

Agency fix the operational issues and we wanted the secretary or

director of that to have membership on the NSC. Once you have

that membership on the NSC, then you would integrate the strategic functions with the other agencies. You are doing it very differently.

I would strongly recommend that you look hard at that section.

I know it is important to Senator Graham. We talked about it. I

am not saying it is wrong, I am simply saying that it could add

some blurring to what has to be a much clearer function of how do

you develop the strategy, which is what has been talked about by

people here this morning.

Finally, I would say that in the rest of the bill you have done a

lot of excellent things. It is a monumental effort. When your staff

delivered it to my office, I could not believe it. I figured Senator

Lieberman was getting paid by the pound lately for legislation.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I wish.

Mr. RUDMAN. But I did read it. I read every line of it. I sent it

out to our staff people. They looked at it. We think it is a terrific

piece of legislation. We think that Title I is absolutely essential you

get that done soon because there will be a lot of scapegoating the

next time something happens and it turns out that Organization A

had a watch list or their information technology that somehow Organization B did not have because they were located someplace

else.

We have seen it all. We did not make this recommendation lightly. After all, we made this recommendation in 1999. That is the

22

1The prepared statement of Mr. Walker appears in the Appendix on page 77.

first time we made the recommendation, as Senator Thompson and

I discussed the other day, in 1999, and now we have got September

11 that came up this past year and there is no question time is

wasting. I hope you can act on it.

If I can answer any questions, I will be pleased.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Rudman. I guess the

highest compliment I can give is that is what I would call Rudman

straight talk.

Mr. RUDMAN. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate it on both points and I look

forward to questioning your position about the focus on border control and access. It is a very important one and one I promise you

we will consider ourselves.

David Walker, thanks, as always, for being here and we look forward to your testimony.

TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID M. WALKER,1 COMPTROLLER

GENERAL, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Thompson.

It is a pleasure to be before the Committee again to talk about the

important issue of homeland security on what is the 7-month anniversary of September 11. I would ask, Mr. Chairman, if my entire

statement could be included in the record and I will now summarize it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Without objection.

Mr. WALKER. At the request of the Committee, Mr. Chairman, I

will focus primarily on two issues, first, the need for a statutory

base to address the homeland security area, and second, the status

of our efforts to work with the Office of Homeland Security on the

many requests that we have received from Congress.

GAO, as you know, has done quite a bit of work in the past in

the area of homeland security, in part based upon our strategic

plan that focused on changing security threats in a post-Cold War

environment. We had recommended months ago that a statutory

Office of Homeland Security be created as a way to institutionalize

the important responsibilities that have to be discharged in this

area.

In my testimony before the Congress this past fall, we noted and

applauded the President’s effort to establish the Office of Homeland

Security, which he could do by executive order. It was the quickest

way to be able to respond. But I think now that we have seen several months go by and heard from Senator Rudman and others, I

think we clearly recognize that as the President has articulated,

this is a long-term effort which will span years, span administrations, and span individuals, and will involve billions and billions of

dollars.

So as a result, I think it is important that we recognize what actions might be necessary to make this effective over the long term

and to ensure appropriate accountability to the Congress and to the

American people for positive results-oriented outcomes.

GAO has done quite a bit of work over the years demonstrating

which type of approaches are more efficient, effective, and economiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
23

cal and which enhance accountability to the Congress and the

American people. Bottom line, there is a clear correlation that to

the extent that there is a significant responsibility that spans administrations and years that involves significant sums of money,

that Congress has historically sought to address those with a statutory basis and to head those offices or operations with a Presidential appointee subject to Senate confirmation. History has

shown that those lead to a more effective and accountable activity.

You have also, Mr. Chairman, talked about the possibility of consolidating certain existing governmental operations as a means to

improve economy, efficiency, as well as effectiveness and accountability, and clearly in that regard border security appears to be the

most critical and, arguably, the most dysfunctional operation at the

present point in time.

So in summary, Mr. Chairman, our view is there is clearly a

need for a statutory basis to address this area in order to assure

effectiveness and assure accountability.

With regard to our efforts to work with the Office of Homeland

Security, we now have over 60 requests from the Congress, including from this Committee, to do important work in the area of

homeland security. In a vast majority of those requests, we are

pursuing the necessary information from the various departments

and agencies. There is, however, certain information which directly

correlates to the activities which the President gave to Governor

Ridge in his executive order and certain related matters that we

must obtain from the Office of Homeland Security.

We have been trying for a number of months to work in a constructive fashion with that office. In fairness, they have a big job

to do and not enough financial and human resources to get it done

and we are very, very sensitive to the need for them to focus primarily on their mission and not to inappropriately intrude or undercut their ability to get their job done.

The bottom line, however, is that to date, we have received nothing. However, just within the last 48 hours, I have been informed

that the office has decided to engage with GAO, whatever that

means. I am, however, hopeful. We have a meeting scheduled for

next week, which is our second meeting. The first meeting was attended all by attorneys on the other side, and I have great respect

for lawyers, including many here in the room, but I am a student

of history and I know that when meetings start off with nothing

but lawyers present on the other side, then sometimes you do not

end up where you want to be.

But I received a call as recently as yesterday saying that there

would be a meeting scheduled for next week that would involve appropriate high-level policy officials and I just want to——

Senator THOMPSON. I suggest you bring Senator Rudman with

you to that next meeting.

Mr. WALKER. I think he could be a tremendous help, absolutely.

[Laughter.]

But the fact of the matter is is that I think it is important that

we receive this information because, after all, Congress counts on

GAO for professional, objective, fact-based nonpartisan, non-ideological, fair and balanced analysis, and to publish our findings for

the entire Congress and, as appropriate, for the American people,

24

and I am hopeful we are going to be able to do that with the Office

of Homeland Security and I am cautiously optimistic based upon

the call that I received yesterday that we will be. But we will let

you know if we are having continuing problems.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you and others in

the Congress to address this important area and I am more than

happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Mr. Walker. Please do keep us

posted on that. We had sent, or I had sent a letter to Governor

Ridge March 19 and just got answers yesterday. These are the

kinds of questions about the functioning of the department that I

wish he was here so that we could get more information than is

contained in the letter, although the letter is an attempt to respond.

Senator Rudman, I want to ask you about the two points you

made which are important to me. The first is, just talk a little bit

more. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that, and I remember the original proposal from the commission had three functions—I may not have the right word—it was prevent, protect, and

respond.

Mr. RUDMAN. Correct.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. What you are saying now is that

maybe it would be best—the whole idea is still a good idea and the

right goal, but there is such urgency about the border, problems at

the border, that we ought to take out that ‘‘prevent’’ part and do

it separately, which would leave out some of the critical infrastructure protection and certainly the whole FEMA emergency

response——

Mr. RUDMAN. No. I am sorry. You misunderstood me. I am saying that our proposal as amplified by Mac Thornberry and Senator

Gregg——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. RUDMAN [continuing]. That ought to be your first priority.

That starts to protect the borders.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Mr. RUDMAN. So you take and you create a Department of Homeland Security, which you may recall had FEMA in it, which was

also response.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Correct.

Mr. RUDMAN. It is response.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Absolutely.

Mr. RUDMAN. You have FEMA in it and then you have the border protection in it and a few other things and you get at least the

non-strategic, non-intelligence, non-law enforcement operation consolidated, which you can do. I mean, let us face it, if somebody

comes up and says, let us put the FBI in the Department of Homeland Security, nobody would be serious, or the CIA. We know they

have to be where they are. But we can certainly take a number of

these, and it is outlined in our report, further outlined in, I believe,

your own legislation originally, as well as Mac Thornberry’s. So

that is the suggestion.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK, I have got it, because I think Senator

Gregg is talking about, if I am right, just doing the border control

agencies.

25

Mr. RUDMAN. He may be. I would add FEMA to that. But certainly the Border Patrol is very important, but if you are going to

go that far, you ought to put the first responders in, as well.

If I can make just one point, following up, so I can clarify one

thing——

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Please.

Mr. RUDMAN. The reason we made our recommendation that the

Secretary of Homeland Security, or the director, if you will, have

a seat on the National Security Council is to avoid the very kind

of thing that we are facing right now.

The Secretary of Defense will come up here about any time you

ask him to and he is a member of the National Security Council.

He has an obligation to the U.S. Congress, the House and the Senate and its appropriate committees. He is involved in strategy making for U.S. national defense.

The problem, as I see it, with what has been created by executive

order, and it had to be, it was the only thing they could do, was

if you continue to have a non-confirmed person who has substantial

either budget authority or budget veto authority over certain sections of the budget, you have got a real problem with Congress. I

mean, there is going to be a problem. There already is a problem.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is where we are right now.

Mr. RUDMAN. That is where we are, and we anticipated that. If

you go back and look at the supplements to our work, the reason

we suggested that a cabinet-level agency have a cabinet officer who

is a member of the NSC, then there is no question but that he is

accountable to the NSC and the President but totally accountable

to the Congress on the kind of questions that the GAO is trying

to find out about, and that is why we made that suggestion.

My comment is, I am not sure you fixed it in Title II. That is

my comment.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. OK. Talk a little more about that, then.

Obviously, Title II is in part as it is in the House now a blending

of two different approaches here.

Mr. RUDMAN. Correct.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Senator Specter and I focused, inspired by

your commission, to do the overall department, Senator Graham

and others wanted to just make statutory a coordinating office. Our

thought is, as reflected in this agreement, they are not inconsistent, so——

Mr. RUDMAN. It is not inconsistent with what you are all trying

to do. It is probably inconsistent, from my experience working as

chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board—

I do not know if either one of you served on the Intelligence Committee during that time, but there were occasions when we were

doing something that was of great interest to the Senate or the

House Intelligence Committee. Legal counsel to the White House

said, no way can you go up and testify before those committees on

the separation of powers. I agreed with that. That was right. So we

worked an informal way out of doing it. That was fine.

But here, this is much bigger than that. You cannot have an informal way to work this out, and I am concerned that if you try

to have someone who is really in the Executive Office of the President who at the same time is accountable to the Congress, you are

26

going to get into a problem. You are going to get a separation of

powers problem and there is going to be a lot of—you are going to

have a lot more lawyers than you need, lawyers instead of people

working with the issue.

That was why we made the suggestion we made. There is no

question that a cabinet secretary is accountable to Congress, no

matter what his role in the NSC.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I have got it.

Mr. RUDMAN. Now, maybe you can make this work, I do not

know, but my sense is the administration will have some problems

with this. I do not speak for them, obviously, but knowing how

most administrations, Republican or Democrat, feel about separation of powers.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It is a very interesting point you are making because I think there are some here on the Hill, at least, who

feel that maybe the better way to go—a better adjective might be

the easier way to go—is to make that coordinating office statutory

because it does not involve all the bureaucratic head-knocking that

is involved in the proposal that we are making. But it does invoke

other constitutional and practical political problems.

Mr. RUDMAN. And I only say, Mr. Chairman and Senator Thompson, I caution you. I think you ought to work those out very carefully, because you have got a terrific piece of legislation here. It is

really well thought out. It does need some fine tuning.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Walker, do you have an opinion on

this question?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, I think there are two things here.

One is the strategy, setting the priorities, determining who has

what roles and responsibilities, how the budget is going to be allocated, how do we measure success, coordinating, and integrating

activities. As this chart showed before, there are many, many players on the field. I think it is critically important that it be done by

a statutory body headed by a Presidential appointee subject to Senate confirmation because we are talking about years of effort, critically important activities, and billions of dollars.

It could be done in the way that you propose in your legislation,

which is a statutory entity affiliated with the White House. I did

happen to have a chance to look quickly at Mitch Daniels’ testimony. He talks about a possible ONDCP model as a possible model.

Then I think you have the separate issue of operations. You are

always going to have a lot more entities involved in this ballgame

than you are ever going to consider consolidating, but to the extent

that you want to consider consolidating some of the more critical,

some of the more dysfunctional, whose missions have changed fundamentally over the last 200 years, whether it be the Customs

Service, whether it be the Coast Guard, they are fundamentally different in many ways, it is helpful. I think you need to address the

statutory basis first. If you can consolidate where appropriate, then

great, but the statutory basis is very critical.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks. Very helpful.

My time is up. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Excuse me, No. 1 being what?

Mr. WALKER. No. 1 is to make sure that whoever is responsible

for setting strategy, determining priorities, signing off on resource

27

allocation, determining how you measure success and holding people accountable, that is creating a statutory entity, that may or

may not be affiliated with the White House, like ONDCP, headed

by a Presidential appointee subject to Senate confirmation. So you

increase the likelihood that they will be effective, and second, such

that you increase the accountability to the Congress and the American people. And then they will get their own budget, as well, with

both financial and human resources.

Senator THOMPSON. It looks like we may be headed toward a situation where we in the Congress do what we have the authority

to do and that is to engage in some reorganization and some consolidation. I could see perhaps that happening without what you

refer to as your No. 1. That would be an interesting hybrid kind

of a situation. You would still have, say, Governor Ridge with the

status he has got now, but you would have hopefully more efficient

and consolidated agencies and so forth. Would you all view that as

some improvement over what we have got now but not really where

we need to go, I mean, not far enough?

Mr. RUDMAN. If you look at national defense strategy today, national defense strategy is established within the National Security

Council by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, obviously the President and the National Security Advisor, but the majority of people that are involved in that are accountable to the

Congress.

I think what Mr. Walker is saying is that you want a statutory

agency that has that responsibility of setting strategy, that is,

somehow statutorily created but in the White House, and I am not

sure of an example of that.

Mr. WALKER. Let me clarify. I think it is critically important that

functionally, whoever is on the point, whoever is in charge, whoever is supposed to be making sure that all these are working effectively together and signing off on resource allocation, assuring integration and accountability, wherever they are, whether that be in

some entity affiliated with the White House or a Department of

Homeland Security, it should be statutorily based, headed by a

Presidential appointee subject to Senate confirmation.

Now, under this legislation, you propose two things, one, to create something affiliated with the White House that meets those criteria, maybe like ONDCP, and to consolidate a number of other existing operational activities into a new Department of Homeland

Security. You could theoretically have that Department of Homeland Security also be responsible for the strategy, also be on the

National Security Council, as Senator Rudman is talking about,

and you could do it two and one and just have it in that one.

But you properly point out, it is going to be a lot more challenging, given all the different institutional interests and the turf,

to be able to make that consolidation happen. I think it has a lot

of intellectual merit, but if you just consolidate the operations and

you do not deal with the strategy, I do not think you have gotten

the job done.

Senator THOMPSON. You mentioned a couple of times the Office

of National Drug Control Policy. That is an interesting analogy to

me because it looks to me like it is one that both sides are using.

On the one hand, you are saying that Governor Ridge is performing

28

a function much like that, so why not make him statutory and why

not make him confirmable. On the other hand, others point out

that the history of that office seems to bear out the point that it

has more to do with who heads the office at a particular time and

the President’s interest in that office than it does the nature of the

office or the details of its creation. When you had good, strong leadership, you got results, and when you did not, you did not.

Mr. WALKER. But Senator, that is true in anything, quite frankly. If you do not have the right leader, no matter what it is, you

are not going to get positive results.

The concern is that this is a very serious issue which spans

years, which involves billions of dollars. It has got to rise above the

individuals involved and the personal relationships involved.

Senator THOMPSON. You make a point in your written testimony

that I think is one that bears a lot of thought. I have been looking

at this. It occurs to me that the Congress’ big problem is that they

want something to oversee. We are supposed to do oversight, and

the question is, under the existing arrangement, who do we oversee, 50 departments or parts of 50 departments?

Some would say the President ultimately under this arrangement is accountable. The President might decide a little bit later

on that perhaps that is not such a good idea where every problem

is brought right to his doorstep because there is no one else there

who is accountable and no entity, no separate entity over which

Congress can exercise oversight. That is what you are getting at,

I guess.

Mr. WALKER. It is, Senator. In fact, there is one very wise Senator, I think it was Senator Fred Thompson from Tennessee, who

one time said you want to try to avoid approaches that by definition potentially lead to over-lawyering.

Senator THOMPSON. Did I say that? That must have been before

I decided to leave here. [Laughter.]

Mr. WALKER. There were some issues that were over-lawyered,

and I will not go into the details, Senator. I think that is a risk

that we run right now with the Office of Homeland Security. It is

not only with regard to testimony, it is also with regard to access

to records and other issues that are necessary for Congress to discharge its constitutional responsibilities.

Now, frankly, I have some sympathy for Governor Ridge because

from a practical standpoint, he has got a job to do and he cannot

come up to 10 committees on a recurring basis and he cannot respond to requests from 10 different committees for basically the

same information and I would assert that is one of the roles that

GAO can play, to help consolidate those things, which is what we

have done, to try to disseminate the information broadly.

Senator THOMPSON. Senator Rudman.

Mr. RUDMAN. You might recall the original Hart-Rudman proposal still stands to have a strong homeland security deputy within

the NSC. Now, that would be totally different than Title II here.

I would point out to you that, in theory, the National Security

Advisor is the coordinator of national defense strategy, with the

Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, Secretary of State,

not accountable to Congress, not confirmed by Congress, because

when the Congress wants to get at those issues, it has three cabiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
29

net-level secretaries it can call before it to discuss those very

issues. Here, you do not have that yet until you start some consolidation, so with that confusing answer——

Senator THOMPSON. No, that is very helpful.

If I could, one more thing. Senator Rudman, in your notion of

consolidation in Senator Lieberman’s bill, would you also recommend integration of those parts of the agencies that you are

bringing together, in other words, taking down all the barriers and

just create a totally new entity and call the employees something

else?

Mr. RUDMAN. Probably not in several. The Coast Guard, you

would certainly leave as the Coast Guard.

Senator THOMPSON. Yes, but I am talking about the part you

bring into the new entity, the new consolidation.

Mr. RUDMAN. Well, the new consolidation, as we have proposed

it—it has been broadened by the bill—would be the Coast Guard,

the Border Patrol, there were parts of Customs, and I think we

also commented on INS, I believe, and we would integrate those to

the extent that they have duplicatory functions.

The one thing we would do, eliminate a lot of overhead because

you would not have to duplicate all the human resources, all of the

financial, all of the other kinds of controls that each of them have

along the way.

Senator THOMPSON. You know how difficult even making small,

modest organization change is. Do you think the climate is right

now for us to do something this large, because I have never witnessed anything even close to this being accomplished.

Mr. RUDMAN. Senator Thompson, Mr. Chairman, let me just tell

you, if after what happened on September 11 is not enough to convince people we have got to secure our borders, I do not know what

will be.

I will tell you this. I would not want to be holding public office

if something like this happens again and it turns out it happened

because somebody slipped across a border that everybody knew was

not supposed to, and that is exactly the accident that is waiting to

happen right now.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You are absolutely right, and that sense

of urgency in your voice ought to resonate in all of us as we consider these questions, because there is a danger here. As the days

pass from September 11, our sense of commitment to change the

structure to protect Americans at home will become less intense

than the institutional inclination to protect turf and avoid change.

What is on the line is just so large.

I want to ask you a last question, which is to both of you, I think

to Senator Rudman first. It has been about a half-year since you

were last here on this subject. Governor Ridge had just been appointed. I know you have been busy in your own activities, but as

you have been watching his activities from where you have been,

has it strengthened your feeling about the commission’s proposal?

Has it altered it in any way? To the best of your ability, I know

it is somewhat unfair, but how is he doing, do you think?

Mr. RUDMAN. I think he is doing very well. In fact, not so long

ago we went down, Gary Hart and General Boyd were invited down

30

to meet with Governor Ridge to give him some of our thoughts. He

wants that to be a continuing discussion, because we did a lot of

the groundwork in this area several years ago, before it was even

an issue.

Considering the daunting task he has and all of the turf protection going on, I think he is doing very well. Certainly, there are

ways to strengthen his role along by some of the things that are

recommended.

The one thing people have to understand here, and there has

been some confusion, Governor Ridge’s position and what we are

talking about in the Department of Homeland Security are quite

separate. They are very separate.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. He is actually more like the office created

in Senator Graham’s bill, isn’t he?

Mr. RUDMAN. Exactly. Precisely. So people say, well, we do not

want to do that because we do not want to give up Governor

Ridge’s position. They do not understand your bill. They do not understand our proposal.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Correct, and obviously, if we are lucky

enough and able to adopt a proposal like the one we support, it

would then naturally be up to the President where he wanted to

put Governor Ridge.

Mr. RUDMAN. Exactly.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. He might, in fact, make him the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Mr. RUDMAN. Exactly.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Walker, do you have any first reactions to the——

Mr. WALKER. I think he is doing the best he can given his significant responsibility and some of the challenges that we have talked

about here today. I know that they are significantly understaffed.

I know that they have got an allocation for about 200 people and

they are just a little over 100 right now. I know that they are having real difficulty in trying to do things on a dotted-line basis. It

was a fundamental difference between a solid line versus dotted

line. If you have got an out box where you can send things out but

not an in box where people are responsible and accountable to you,

that is kind of problematic.

My personal view is he could be even more effective if some of

the changes we are talking about today were made—his office had

a statutory basis with its own budget and own people, with clear

responsibility with regard to what has to be done, and with increased accountability to the Congress and the American people.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate it very much. Please keep us

informed, if you would, Mr. Walker, on your communications with

Governor Ridge’s office because it is critically important to us, because you are our eyes and ears and everything else, and for the

American people, that you are getting the information from that office that you need.

Thank you both very much for your continuing service in and out

of government.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Our next witness, panel three, the Hon.

Mitchell Daniels, Jr., Director of the Office of Management and

31

1The prepared statement of Mr. Daniels appears in the Appendix on page 94.

Budget. Mr. Daniels, good morning. Thanks for being here. We look

forward to your testimony now.

TESTIMONY OF HON. MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR.,1 DIRECTOR,

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

Mr. DANIELS. The card says I am honorable. Did you clear that

with your colleagues first?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is done as an exercise of the Chairman’s prerogative.

Mr. DANIELS. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. But also after extensive fact finding.

Mr. DANIELS. You have my written testimony and let me just

make a few verbal comments to get straight to your questions.

We appreciate the opportunity to be here on behalf of the administration for an important hearing that bears on the best way to

manage, if not a new, certainly the most dramatically enlarged responsibility of the Federal Government in quite a long time. It is

a very, very appropriate hearing and the bills that you are reviewing get at some very important questions.

I think as the administration sees it, confronted with the sudden

events of September 11, the President embarked on this project in

the only way that made practical sense and tried to get immediately off the mark, and we would assert that this was successful

in a myriad of ways already. Even though there is so much more

to do, already, the American public, American borders, American

infrastructure is better defended, by far, than it was just 6 or 7

months ago. For this, certainly the support of the Congress has

been absolutely indispensable.

As the President has said from the beginning and Governor

Ridge has said, the current arrangement might remain the preference of the administration or it might change. The administration is very open to alternative arrangements and they are being

looked at actively, as they have been from the outset. The national

strategy that Governor Ridge’s office is working on, we will speak

to this and may well make recommendations to the President about

an evolution of the initial organizational structure.

It will look at, clearly, the models that are reflected in the bills

that you are convened on this morning, your own bill and similar

offerings from the House side, and I think we will all need to examine together the pros and cons of each model. A model that is statutory but, I would say, not operational, that is to say non-cabinet,

I think may have very substantial shortcomings.

I would note for one thing that the size and scope of homeland

security is already twice that of our National Drug Control Policy

Office. I would note second that, at least for many, that the

ONDCP model is not well suited to operational responsibility, if it

should be decided that that should be consolidated.

On the other hand, a broader, more fundamental change like

that represented in your bill could have many positive attributes.

One question we would all have to ask each other is whether the

jurisdictional territoriality, both in the Executive Branch and also

32

here in Congress, makes such an idea practical, whatever its theoretical merits.

I would observe in passing that in each of the President’s first

two budgets, we have suggested very modest here and there transfers of authority to try and rationalize some activities and those

are not always met with enthusiasm, however sensible they may

appear. There is a very important transfer bearing on homeland security, of course, in the 2003 budget submission that has to do with

consolidating terrorism preparation assistance for first responders

in one place, at FEMA. We think that is an eminently sensible

thing, but we have to assure ourselves we can convince a majority

of Congress to make even that modest step. I know you are well

aware of the hurdles we might eventually face if we went that

route.

I would just close by saying that one thing that does appear clear

is that under any configuration, there will always be, now that

homeland security is so obviously a permanent fixture of the American Federal responsibility, a need for an adviser in the White

House to counsel the President about this very important and

multi-agency responsibility. So even if, as might be the case, the

administration concluded that new arrangements were in order, I

would look for the office, the Homeland Security Council, I should

say, to remain in some form.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Daniels, thanks very much for both

the substance and the tone of your comments, which are quite open

and made me think back to a meeting that Senator Thompson and

I and several others from the House and Senate were at at the

White House last fall shortly after Governor Ridge was chosen with

the President. I believe you were there. At one point, Governor

Ridge said that after some period of time—while they were not for

the proposal we were making at that time, after some point of time

in office, he might come to Congress and ask for some organizational alteration and your openness to that kind of change is much

appreciated.

Of course, I agree with you about the practical difficulties here.

I will tell you, and you will not be surprised to hear either, that

I have already begun to get calls from people who are clearly calling on behalf of agencies that are consolidated in our proposal and

it is fascinating how many feel like they would be drawn down by

connection. Everybody feels they would be drawn down by connection with everybody else.

So it takes me to the point that my colleagues both on the Committee and who testified on the first panel made, which is that,

one, it is obviously not a partisan matter. It is a question of what

we feel is the best way to get this done, and then this critically important job of homeland security and Senator Rudman’s typical

clarity at the end there, God forbid there is another terrorist attack

on the United States and it looks like one of the systems that we

could have made better was the porous place through which those

terrorists came. So we have got to work together on this.

I want to ask you to think, and I do not need an answer now,

but I would like to just seize the moment, if I could, and propose

that we think about setting up some kind of informal Executive

Branch/Legislative Branch working group on this subject. It is realVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
33

ly that critical. I do not have any yearning to get into a confrontation on this. I think the best thing to do is just see if we can figure

out what we can agree on and get it moving, because I think the

really fundamental and most important confrontation here ultimately will not be between Republicans and Democrats, and my

guess is not between the White House and Congress, but it will be,

if I can put it this way, between those who favor organizational

change and those who will resist it.

I do not know if you want to respond to that at all, but the tone

of your testimony evoked that unprepared response from me.

Mr. DANIELS. My instinctive response is very positive. I think

that, and I would guess, but I will not presume to speak for him,

I would guess Governor Ridge would feel much the same. I think

he is trying to reach out in every way he can to make sure that

Congress has the information, the understanding, the facts to do its

job, and as we try to explore the organizational question, I would

guess that he would be open to any sort of arrangement that allows

us to get at the right answers more quickly. Time is important

here. I know he feels that urgency and I know you do.

I quite agree with you that if there is to be a step beyond the

current arrangement, there will be an unusual alignment, probably, of proponents and adversaries. And it will not be along the

typical lines, and there will be a need for advocates of change,

whether it is small in scope or very sweeping, to pull together to

persuade others that their own currently vested interests need to

take second place.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Good. Thanks. We will continue to talk

about that.

In that regard, I gather both from some published reports and

just general word around that Governor Ridge, in some sense true

to what he said might happen when we were in the meeting at the

White House last fall, did put forward a significant proposal to reorganize some of the key border agencies into a unified department. But we have also heard that he ran into exactly the kind of

turf battles that we have just referred to and that the Homeland

Security Council recently recommended a much more limited proposal, as one of the panelists on the first panel indicated, involving

a consolidation of Customs and some INS enforcement functions

into a border agency within the Justice Department.

I wondered whether you participated in the Homeland Security

Council discussions on that issue and if you, to the extent you are

able, could reflect on what the objections were to Governor Ridge’s

proposal and what lessons you or we should draw from that as we

go forward.

Mr. DANIELS. I am a member of the Homeland Security Council,

and I did participate in multiple meetings on that subject. Without

breaching the confidence of anyone who participated, I think the

characterizations are accurate that there have been some reservations and some real practical questions, and I think this is still

very much under review. No final recommendation has been made

or accepted by the President, and he personally has asked some

very tough practical questions, some of which I had not heard

asked before. He has a way of doing that. So I think that the govVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
34

ernor’s office is still working and working with agencies who would

be affected.

I think the other thing to be said is that it is very possible that

just as the initial arrangement, as I mentioned, was from the outset described as potentially not the final one, we may have a steady

evolution as we all learn more about homeland security, where the

priorities really are, and where the dangers really are. I think even

if you proceed the legislation successfully, it probably ought to be

done in something of a tentative spirit, understanding that it may

not be the last stop or the final end state.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much. My time is up on this

round. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Daniels, for being here today.

When we have these hearings, it forces us to catch up and read

and talk to as many people as we can and really focus. Where I

come out right now on this is the following: The President and the

administration should have an opportunity to carry this ball a long

way down the field, the way in which it sees best, for a lot of different reasons. I think that is what the President wants to do. I

think it makes some sense. I think analyzing exactly what we need

is going to take a longer time than any of us would like to acknowledge. We have waited too long.

Senator Rudman’s report is just one. You could not stack all the

GAO reports in this room pointing out the problem that was imminent that we saw the culmination of on September 11.

Just because we have not acted legislatively does not mean nothing is being done. I mean, Governor Ridge’s operation is obviously

up and running. They have got a national strategy coming out in

July that I think we ought to take a look at before we do much

of anything else and I think a lot of progress is being made in a

very tough job that is going to take a long time.

But what concerns me as we go along is that we are going to be

squabbling and spending time and energy on less important things.

Congress is going to continue to feel a need to have some oversight

over something, and they cannot do that with regard to the President and they cannot do that with regard to someone who does not

come up here every once in a while and tell them what is going

on.

You have got an entity there that is involved, and a person there

who is involved in the most critical issue facing this Nation. The

office’s spending $35 billion. We cannot forever, it does not look to

me like, stay where we are right now with regard to that. I mean,

this business about coming up and testifying before all these committees is a legitimate concern. What you might do is challenge us,

as you address this problem, for us to address some of our problems in the dozen committees, almost, we have got meddling in

these areas.

But ultimately, it looks to me like that is the direction that we

are headed in. We have been trying to get accountability and to do

better oversight government-wide for a long time. I think this is a

part of that. What we are seeing here is just a small part of the

problem that we see throughout government that you are well

aware of. The whole government needs to be organized. It is not

35

just a matter of homeland security that we are outdated in, it is

with regard to so many problems facing us. We have got a framework that is geared to a prior century and it is going to be a monumental task.

So it looks to me like the thing that we really need to concentrate on is the reorganization part, and where the boxes might

wind up, what needs to be consolidated and all that. This is what

we will have to spend a lot of time on deciding, because clearly, we

have got to do a better job there. But that is going to take the efforts. Even a modest effort will run into all kinds of problems. We

are the main problem up here.

If I were the administration, I would challenge us to let us work

together toward reorganizing. It is going to take Presidential leadership. It is not like Congress comes up with something. We need

leadership. Decide what you want to do, and put the challenge to

us to do what we ought to be doing, and that is reorganizing not

only these national security-related entities but ourselves. And

then, as a part of that, be willing to look at some kind of a setup, an entity where we are not squabbling all the time over who

is going to testify to whom.

Everybody knows that, I think, eventually, with a position of this

importance involving this much money, that we have got to—as

time moves on, after you have had an opportunity to look at all of

this and keep us from rushing into doing something, perhaps, that

we might need to undo later, that somewhere, there is where we

are going to need to be.

So as a friend, I suggest that you consider that and take that

back and see if we cannot in the future concentrate on the real

issue and the real problem. We are going to have leadership. As

long as the President is on top of it, as I know he will be, I think

we are going to be fine. As long as Mr. Ridge is on the job, I think

we are going to be fine. But we need to get that little sideshow,

which is a necessary sideshow, we need to get that off the books

and concentrate on what we really need to do. We need to reorganize ourselves for the long haul in a way that will be there and be

workable regardless of who is President or who is the leader in this

effort.

So I merely suggest that to you and thank you for your consideration of that.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Thompson. Senator

Levin.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN

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

convening these hearings and welcome to you, Mr. Daniels.

Let me ask some questions about the budget, the homeland defense efforts, the anti-terrorism efforts, and how we get a handle

on those. Let me read to you from the GAO report relative to that

on page four. ‘‘We recognize that the Office of Homeland Security

has achieved some early results in suggesting a budgetary framework and emphasizing homeland security priorities in the President’s proposed budget.’’

This is then what the Comptroller General says. ‘‘Despite OHS’s

efforts to date, however, the informal structure and relationship of

36

that office to the White House and other parts of the Executive

Branch may not represent the most effective approach for instituting a permanent entity with sufficient authority to achieve all

the important objectives for securing our borders. Without a statutory framework that clarifies OHS’s roles and responsibilities, its

budget and resources, and its authority to leverage other Federal

departments and agencies, the office will likely face persistent obstacles in obtaining fast, effective, and sustainable results across

the government and throughout the Nation.’’ He also said that they

have had access problems. The Comptroller General says, ‘‘I must

say, we have experienced some access problems in connection with

our OHS-related efforts.’’

The numbers that we are given on budget are the following, from page five of his report. Congress’ allocation of approximately $60

billion in fiscal year 2002, including a $40 billion supplemental request, and the President’s request of approximately $38 billion for

fiscal year 2003 serve to underscore the importance of the effort

that he has described.

Are those numbers given to us in one place in the budget with

a description of all of the programs and all of the agencies that are

involved in totaling up that number? In other words, in the budget

that you have submitted to us—I should know the answer to this,

but I do not, so I want to lay that as the predicate—is that a listing

of 30 agencies and 200 programs or what is it?

Mr. DANIELS. Yes, the actual number for the 2003 submission is

$37.7 billion. We assert that it is fully accurate because it is built

up based on a definition that is certified by the Homeland Security

Council. I think that definition is very, very important. It will surely be dynamic over time, possibly like the organization we are discussing. But it is important that we have one so that people do not

succumb to the human temptation to recharacterize less-important

priorities as inherent in homeland security. But that said, $37.7

billion is the right number——

Senator LEVIN. Is there a discrete list of how many programs are

involved in that?

Mr. DANIELS. I am sorry?

Senator LEVIN. There is a discrete list in the budget of what——

Mr. DANIELS. That is correct.

Senator LEVIN. How many are there, how many programs, approximately?

Mr. DANIELS. I would like to get back to you with that answer

so as not to guess incorrectly. I can tell you that——

NOTE: There are over 100 programs (info provided to Senator Levin’s staff

at their request).

Senator LEVIN. How about a range?

Mr. DANIELS. One hundred to two hundred.

Senator LEVIN. Two hundred programs, and about how many——

Mr. DANIELS. At least in terms of line items. I am answering

that based on having rather regularly looked down an itemized list.

They are heavily concentrated. Five departments, by my reckoning,

account for 82 percent of the spending, the big five being Defense,

interestingly, Justice, HHS, FEMA, and Transportation. But there

are already, and undoubtedly there will be more, scores and scores

of individual activities.

37

Senator LEVIN. In total, how many departments might be involved, if you look at all of the——

Mr. DANIELS. Probably 30 or something like that.

Senator LEVIN. Thirty. That is the number that we have

been——

Mr. DANIELS. I will count them for you.

Senator LEVIN. Let us assume it is 25 or 30. That is close

enough.

Mr. DANIELS. I can count 24 easily.

Senator LEVIN. Twenty-five to 40. Does Governor Ridge provide

you with the budget request for all those programs or do they come

in from the separate departments?

Mr. DANIELS. Let me speak to this a little, because I think it relates back to some important things you said earlier in your statement and that the GAO report speaks to.

Before you arrived, in my opening comment, I reiterated that the

administration remains very open on the question of what the

eventual organization for homeland security ought to look like. It

may be the arrangement we have today, but possibly some evolution of it.

One problem that was forecast at the beginning that I would

claim has not occurred at all was the ability to, I think you said

the authority to leverage resources. There is plenty yet to be done

and there certainly have been some obstacles and some places

where it has been difficult to move quickly.

But one thing that I think has worked pretty well so far is that

Governor Ridge, as the President’s advisor on this subject, and his

office, where they have identified needs, have secured them, either

in the supplemental request they have made or in the budget proposal we have made for 2003. He has spoken to this many times

himself. He has said, in essence, or literally, anything he has asked

for, he has gotten. This was the President’s guidance and we have

implemented that using the offices of OMB.

So the answer to your question about budgets is that we took the

definition of what is homeland security, placed it in front of the

agencies, and invited all their suggestions. These were then

screened by Governor Ridge’s office, staffed in part by the outstanding professionals that I work with at OMB, and he then recommended to the President and certified to the President the adequacy of the requests we have made to date.

Senator LEVIN. OK, so the process now is that you get from 30

to 40 departments requests. He screens them, decides whether or

not he recommends them and to what extent he recommends them,

and certifies that they are all necessary pursuant to the criteria in

the description of homeland defense, so that——

Mr. DANIELS. I should probably also say, I think it is increasingly

the governor and his office who are initiating and guiding agencies

in terms of what is needed. This was not always like a usual budget exercise. It was not a matter of subtraction. There have been a

number of areas, and I know there will be many more in which the

governor will be initiating and recommending activity that may or

may not have been contemplated by an agency at the time.

Senator LEVIN. It is very clear that his role, then, is not only significant but growing, and we need to know here, it seems to me,

38

where those recommendations come from, who is responsible for

making them, whether or not more has been requested than has

been provided, and who is accountable for the funds once they are

provided. He is so clearly in the center of it, it seems to me that

it is very difficult for us, and more importantly for the public, to

have a handle on where they go for funding.

Do they go to Governor Ridge’s office to urge that there be a program in the next year’s budget? Do they go to one of 40 agencies

to urge that? Are they then referred to Governor Ridge saying,

well, gee, if he really wanted it, he would have initiated it? Go see

Governor Ridge. Governor Ridge then says, well, go see that department, they are the ones that really administer those funds.

It is too mushy from the public accountability perspective. It is

not clear. The accountability is not clear. The authority is not clear.

And I must say, I do not see any way offhand of clarifying all those

things without doing what the GAO has recommended, which is to

provide a statutory authority for that office. I do not see how we

are going to accomplish those important aims without doing that.

My time is up, and if it is all right, I think maybe we ought to

allow a response.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. DANIELS. You may well be right, Senator. Once again, I

think the whole matter of the best organizational form is still very

much under study. I would say that homeland security will not be

different from any other government activity I can think of in

terms of its mushiness and the multiplicity of parties who get in

the act. We frequently get advice from the public through Congressional offices, for example, about what ought to be spent, so people

know to visit various windows to make a case.

But I think under the current arrangement, Governor Ridge

should be seen and is seen by most people—his office is—as the

central place for advising on the big questions we face now. What

should the national strategy for homeland security comprise? What

are the biggest threats? Which should be met first, and so forth?

I think they are doing a great job of rationalizing all that, working

with the departments.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks, Senator Levin.

I do not have any further questions. I would just make a final

comment, which is listening to Senator Levin ask a series of questions that I was going to ask if he did not, the answers I find to

be encouraging but also leading in a different direction, which is

encouraging in that I am glad Governor Ridge is playing that central role with OMB in separating out all the requests that are coming in for funding for homeland security.

Your point about defining exactly what is homeland security is

a very important point. I heard somewhere that there may have

been over a couple hundred billion dollars in requests that actually

came in to you.

Mr. DANIELS. That is correct.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. And you got it down to $37.7 billion,

which in itself, of course, is a considerable number. It is very important that Governor Ridge was right there with you, and by your

testimony now, ultimately had the final say insofar as he certified

39

to them. But it also clearly shows that he is more than just another

advisor to the President, that he is exercising the kind of authority

that I would want someone to exercise who has responsibility for

homeland security, and clearly, it makes at least two points to me.

One is that we need to give him the statutory authority to, if I

can, legitimize or put into law the powers that he is actually, and

quite correctly, exercising, and two, that leads me also to make an

appeal to the administration through you to figure out a way that

he can testify before committees of Congress. This is one of those

cases—we have been quoting Machiavelli all morning. I do not

have a Machiavelli quote here, but we have all been in situations

in public and in private where we have taken a position and then

it gets carried down the road to a point where even we begin to

doubt it or wonder about its logical consistency, but we certainly

are not going to say we made a mistake. At least, I own up to saying I have done that.

It seems here we have gotten to a point where when Governor

Ridge was offered to this Committee and the Appropriations Committee to do a public briefing but would not come to testify at a

public hearing, there is not much difference and we ought to figure

out how to—there is a practical problem, which I think we could

work on together, which is we do not want him being called up to

every committee of Congress every day. We want him to have the

time to do his job. That, we can figure out.

So I hope while we are working on legislation, we can also work

our way through the tussle that is going on about whether he testifies, because it is fundamental to the accountability of a person

who is exercising, quite correctly, the kind of authority he is exercising.

Mr. DANIELS. The administration does, too, Senator, and I think

you characterize it accurately. The governor is doing all he can and

he is open to additional ideas about ways to inform and enable the

Congress to do its job. At last count, he has had 40 now meetings,

and more are scheduled, open, closed, and otherwise, everything

other than formal testimony. This does not count the 100-plus formal appearances that individual cabinet members have made.

All, I think, that separates the viewpoints at this point is really

an honest difference about a principle of long standing, about Presidential advisors testifying. I know he remains very flexible about

trying to achieve the end you are looking at while trying not to

walk away from that principle.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I appreciate that. Obviously, my point is

I think he is now happily and correctly, necessarily, more than an

advisor.

Thanks very much for being here. I appreciate your testimony

very much. I look forward to continuing cooperative work on this

important matter.

We will now call the fourth panel, Dr. Philip Anderson, Senior

Fellow and Director, Homeland Security Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies; I.M. Destler, Center for International and Security Studies, School of Public Affairs, University

of Maryland; Stephen M. Gross, the Chair of the Border Trade Alliance; Dr. Elaine Kamarck, John F. Kennedy School of Government,

40

1The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson appears in the Appendix on page 98.

Harvard University; and Paul C. Light, Vice President and Director

of the Governmental Studies Program at The Brookings Institute.

Thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks for your patience. I

think it has been a very interesting morning so far and I am sure

it will only continue in that productive way with this distinguished

panel.

Dr. Anderson, why do you not begin.

TESTIMONY OF DR. PHILIP ANDERSON,1 SENIOR FELLOW AND

DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY INITIATIVE, CENTER FOR

STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Mr. ANDERSON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and Senator

Thompson. It is an honor to be here this morning to present my

views on the proposed legislation. Let me say that my statement

represents my views alone and should not be considered the institutional perspective of the Center for Strategic and International

Studies.

There is a description in my written testimony of the projects

that CSIS has been involved in, both prior to and since the tragic

events of September 11.

In my view, in this new and very dangerous environment, the

proposed legislation, if enacted, would greatly simplify management processes and unify the efforts of the 46 Federal agencies

that to varying degrees have responsibility for homeland security.

Effective communication and coordination among these disparate

agencies is extremely complicated. In the absence of organizational

reform, it will only become more difficult in the years ahead.

With responsibilities spread across so many agencies, it is equally difficult to ensure that no duplication of effort exists between organizational visions, and with the additional requirement for the

Federal Government to coordinate and communicate efforts with

State and local governments, and further, to develop the means to

work with and cooperate with the private sector, it is clear that

some organizational reform must be initiated to ensure unity of effort.

The most important question to consider at this juncture is when

to initiate organizational reform. Some would argue that there is

no time to waste and that well-informed decisions should be acted

on immediately in this environment. There are two problems associated with the desire to act now.

First, an ongoing crisis may not be the best time to initiate organizational reform. With nearly every aspect of the national security

apparatus focused on the war on terrorism, such broad-reaching

change at this point in time could be an unwelcome distraction.

Second, and more importantly, in the absence of a comprehensive

national homeland security strategy, there can be no clear understanding of the threat to be assessed or any real sense of priorities

from which specific requirements will emerge.

It would seem that to organize in the absence of a strategy would

be putting the proverbial cart before the horse. The strategy should

serve as the basis to initiate organizational reform and allocate reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
41

sources rather than the other way around. Several things to consider:

First, a comprehensive national strategy should serve as the

basis for organizing the Federal Government for homeland security.

Organizational reform at any time will not be easy, but will be far

more difficult in the absence of a strategy. Without a strategy, no

framework exists to base decisions about how to organize the government and spend the taxpayers’ money.

In addition, most agencies of government that are focused on

homeland security have other primary missions that will have to

be accounted for. For example, the Customs Service has a primary

mission as a revenue-generating agency, focused on goods and

trade, not on security. Last year, the Customs Service collected

$23.5 billion in taxes, fees, and penalties, second only to the Internal Revenue Agency in generating government income.

Second, a comprehensive threat assessment should serve as the

basis for the national strategy. While we remain extremely vulnerable in many areas, most do not represent critical vulnerabilities

simply because they are not likely targets. How many would argue

at this point that commercial aviation is a critical vulnerability?

On the other hand, private aviation, with 500,000 private pilots,

200,000 private aircraft operating from approximately 18,000 air

fields throughout the country could certainly represent a critical

vulnerability.

Some would argue that the nuclear power industry is critically

vulnerable. I would submit that the nuclear power industry, the

most regulated in the United States, is far less vulnerable than

other aspects of energy infrastructure, to include liquid natural gas

operations, refineries, and petrochemical facilities.

The bottom line is that without an informed assessment of how

those that would do us harm might act, the ability to organize and

allocate resources effectively is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

Another important point relates to the way in which the current

organization of government looks at the threat. FEMA is a good example, with an organizational culture that has, for the most part,

addressed natural disasters rather than a thinking enemy.

Third, the means to create public/private partnership must be developed to ensure adequate security of critical infrastructure, and

this is critically important. The private sector remains ultimately

responsible for securing the infrastructure it owns and operates.

This responsibility is complicated by the requirement to generate

profits for stockholders and to provide customers with affordable

service. Clearly, the Federal Government should share the burden

for critical infrastructure protection. While the government cannot

always step in and assume full responsibility for critical infrastructure, it must find ways to incentivize the private sector.

It is essential that the private sector should be included in the

development of the national homeland security strategy and in its

implementation. The strategy and the organizational construct that

derives from it must simplify the communication and coordination

problem between government and the private sector.

A good example of this problem can be seen in the containerized

shipping industry. Approximately 7.5 million containers enter the

42

1The prepared statement of Messrs. Daalder and Destler appears in the Appendix on page

108.

United States each year and the contents of these containers originate with approximately 450,000 shippers. This clearly represents

an unworkable number. But an interesting statistic is that the contents of 60 percent of the containers that enter the United States

originate with about 1,000 shippers globally, and this would seem

to be a workable number where public/private partnership might

be able to make a difference.

The bottom line is that any organizational reform must formally

address the requirement for public/private partnership.

Again, Mr. Chairman, in my view, over the long term in this new

and very dangerous environment, organizational reform such as

that described in the proposed legislation must be initiated to ensure unity of effort and clear lines of authority, responsibility, and

most importantly, accountability. Assigning the bulk of responsibility to a cabinet secretary and a White House directorate the way

it is described in the proposed legislation would seem to represent

a much improved process for ensuring accountability, rather than

the current situation where responsibility is shared across 46 agencies of government, where ensuring accountability is virtually impossible.

The most important question, again, to consider at this point is

not whether to initiate organizational reform but when to initiate

organizational reform. Assuming the administration can produce a

comprehensive strategy this year, and once it is published, the debate can begin on implementation, and that will certainly involve

the appropriate organization for homeland security so that every

aspect of government can move forward together in a unified and

coordinated way to fully address what is surely the most complex

problem our government has ever had to face.

Mr. Chairman, the road ahead remains complex and fraught

with challenges yet to be addressed. I thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. The Center for Strategic and International Studies is ready and willing to help. Organizing effectively

to secure the American homeland is essential to our country’s survival and prosperity. We appreciate the Committee’s leadership on

this issue and we look forward to helping in any way we can.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

It strikes me that we go from Dr. Anderson of the CSIS to Dr.

Destler of the CISS. Thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF I.M. (MAC) DESTLER,1 CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AND SECURITY STUDIES AND PROFESSOR,

SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Mr. DESTLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Thompson.

We very much appreciate the opportunity to present our views on

organizing for homeland security. I say ‘‘we’’ because this is a statement made jointly with my colleague, Ivo Daalder of The Brookings

Institution, who was here earlier but could not stay for the entire

hearing.

We are grateful for the work that you and Senator Thompson

and your Committee and staff have been devoting to this urgent

43

issue, beginning, I think, really days and weeks after September

11, and perhaps even before that to some degree. We are all addressing an unprecedented challenge. We are trying to listen and

learn even as we give our best judgment, and so I will state very

directly the views that Ivo and I have developed, but we realize

that this is a challenge about which we continue to learn and we

should be open to changing our views.

Basically, our judgment is that this is an ambitious bill. It contains many desirable features. At the same time, we think maybe

it goes too far in some directions and not far enough in others. Let

me be specific.

We agree with this Committee that the current U.S. Government

organization for homeland security needs to be strengthened. But

rather than seek a new department or a new White House office,

we believe Congress should build upon what the Bush Administration has established.

Specifically, we favor legislation that would make the Homeland

Security Council and Office statutory entities with their director

confirmable by the Senate, legislation that would enhance the

Homeland Security Director’s budget authority, and legislation that

would establish an independent Federal border agency including a

broad range of current units responsible for monitoring people and

goods entering the United States.

The main reason why we think a Department of Homeland Security cannot be the main organizational response is that it cannot

include more than a fraction of the agencies and functions involved.

Many players—the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Health

and Human Services, to take the largest—will necessarily remain

outside of this department, not to mention the FBI and the intelligence community. Hence, the predominant need will be effective

coordination of separate organizational entities.

The draft legislation acknowledges this fact, but its cure, at least

under current circumstances, could be worse than the disease because you would create both a Secretary for Homeland Security

and a director of a national office for combating terrorism with attendant confusion as to which one was, in fact, the leading Federal

official on this vital issue. And making the two co-chairs of a council charged with overseeing implementation of the national strategy

seems to us a recipe with low probability of success and high probability of confusion or conflict.

But we agree that the homeland security structure needs to be

strengthened. The basic organization developed by the Bush Administration is, we think, sound because coordination is the overriding problem. But its credibility has come into question due to

Governor Ridge’s unwillingness or inability to fight and win some

of the tough organizational battles. We believe that his power and

the power of the organization would be enhanced by giving the

Homeland Security Office, council, and director statutory and budgetary authority.

As a Presidential advisor confirmed by the Senate, Governor

Ridge would gain greater stature in general, and would also, by

definition, have much greater ability to work effectively with the

Congress. We do not think the parallels are perfect between this

position and those of the National Security Advisor and the NaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 15:12 Jun 28, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 79889.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
44

1The prepared statement of Mr. Gross appears in the Appendix on page 114.

tional Economic Advisor. We think there is a greater need in this

case for this official to be working directly with the Congress.

We do believe that in providing such authority, Congress should

eschew any desire to micro-organize and pass a clean bill using the

language of the President’s executive order.

To strengthen the director’s influence over homeland security

and the homeland security budget, we strongly support the provision in Senator Lieberman’s bill, which I understand will be cosponsored by Senators Graham and Specter, that would give the director power to certify or decertify agency budgets, comparable to

the power currently exercised by the drug czar. In addition, we

would integrate the homeland security budget effort more formally

with the Presidential budget process run by OMB, as we understand it has been informally integrated this year, by designating

the chief Office of Homeland Security budget person as the OMB

associate director responsible for homeland security.

It would also, as suggested by Senator Thompson, be of enormous

benefit if Congress could do more to create its own focal points.

Ideally, it would be nice if Appropriations subcommittees for homeland security could be established.

Finally, we support creation of a Federal border agency, such as

recommended in Senator Gregg’s legislation, incorporating the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the INS enforcement arm, the Agricultural Inspection Agency, and perhaps also the newly created

Transportation Security Agency and possibly the Consular Affairs

Bureau in the State Department and the entire INS, including its

service division.

The administration’s current proposal for merging the Customs

and the Border Patrol into a sub-unit within the Justice Department seems to us to fall well short of what is needed. The agency

needs to be both larger and independent of any other cabinet official. Border security is clearly an area where we believe organizational consolidation can make a major contribution to securing our

homeland.

Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Destler, very much.

Mr. Gross, I appreciate your presence here. You bring a unique

perspective and we look forward to hearing it now.

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN M. GROSS,1 CHAIRMAN, BORDER

TRADE ALLIANCE

Mr. GROSS. Thank you very much, Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Thompson, and Members of the Committee. Good

morning. My name is Stephen Gross. I want to thank you for this

opportunity to testify this morning on the proposed realignment of

Federal agencies that are so important to homeland security. I

have submitted a longer written statement for the record.

I am the president and owner of Border Trade Services in San

Diego, California. We are a cross-border warehousing logistics company, employing over 100 people in San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. But what brings me here today is my position as the

2002 Chairman of the Border Trade Alliance, the BTA.

45

The BTA is a grassroots organization that was founded in 1986

as a group of individuals, entities, and businesses that conduct legitimate cross-border business in the NAFTA marketplace. As

such, we have a unique perspective on the security challenges facing our land borders.

Representing a group that lives and works in border communities, I bring to you today firsthand experience in interacting on

a daily basis with the Federal agencies posted along our borders,

namely the U.S. Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Border Patrol.

The events of September 11 presented all of us with challenges,

the likes of which we had never contemplated before. But our organization is hopeful that these terrible events have presented our

Nation an opportunity to improve the way we approach security,

and that includes examining how the resources of our borders can

be better managed to enhance our physical and economic security.

Senators, our land border security and trade facilitation is severely lacking. The various Federal inspection service agencies

posted along the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada Borders are charged

with poorly defined and sometimes conflicting missions. Oftentimes, our ports of entry are home to petty squabbles over turf and

resources and fall victim to mismanagement.

The land border ports are not home to business’s best practices.

At each port of entry, Customs and INS personnel are operating

with different missions, despite the fact that Customs and INS are

cross-trained in the primary inspection lanes. The INS or Customs

employee at the port of entry receives incentives to carry out the

individual mission of his or her employing agency. There is no incentive to work together or speed legitimate trade and cargo

through our ports of entry.

Despite recent talks in this post-September 11 environment of

improving lines of communication at the highest levels in INS and

Customs, we rarely see the same spirit of cooperation employed at

the ports of entry themselves, where it is needed most.

Because of these reasons, we view Senator Lieberman’s legislation with great interest. We believe that Senator Lieberman’s bill

would go far in decreasing government costs, increasing efficiency

by placing both Border Patrol and Customs under the same agency

head. Realignment of this sort would improve border security by removing a layer of bureaucracy between the ports of entry and the

coordinator of all security efforts. Realignment would put one entity in charge, a cabinet-level secretary overseeing the Department

of National Homeland Security.

We believe that, among other things, agency realignment would

establish accountability for border inspection in a single agency,

eliminate overlap and duplication of efforts, prevent the development of redundant support systems, facilitate and streamline the

processing of legitimate trade and travel, and improve enforcement

of laws at our border.

We do have some concerns with this bill, however. Our organization has always believed that increased security at our borders

need not to be achieved at the expense of trade facilitation. Indeed,

we believe that the two are one of the same. With the proper resources, our Federal inspection service agencies can quickly weed

46

out those individuals who would seek to do us harm while processing legitimate trade and travelers with a reduction, or at the

very least no increase, in the time the cargo or traveler has spent

waiting at the port of entry. With that said, we want to be sure

that any new emphasis on security does not hamper legitimate

trade and travel, which is so vital to our economy.

Second, we recommend that all enforcement functions of INS, not

just the Border Patrol, be transferred to this new agency. Our hope

is to put an end to turf battles at the ports of entry and have everyone committed to the same goal. We fear that only shifting Border

Patrol to the Department of National Homeland Security and not

the other enforcement functions of INS will perpetuate these problems and leave our border security strategy without proper coordination.

Third, while it may seem trivial, we do have some concerns about

the message the Department of National Homeland Security conveys to our trade partners, especially our NAFTA neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Perhaps a name along the lines of Department of

National Homeland and Economic Security would more accurately

convey that ours is a Nation still open to the world market.

There are other proposals for agency realignment circulating on

Capitol Hill and we welcome the opportunity to comment on them,

as well. We are supportive of any effort that will secure our borders

and facilitate the passage of legitimate trade and travel. We do,

however, advise that any transfer of INS enforcement functions

and Customs not end up in the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice does not have a proven track record in consulting

with private industry on a regular basis and we fear that maintaining our country’s strong trade position will not be a priority in such

an organization.

Improving security at our land borders is a worthy and necessary

goal, not only to ensure our physical safety, but also to preserve

our economic security. The World Trade Center was targeted on

September 11 because those two towers were powerful symbols of

our Nation’s presence in the global marketplace and our strong domestic economy.

As a result of implementation of the North American Free Trade

Agreement, trade between the United States and Canada has

grown enormously and all signs indicate that this trade will continue to grow.

There are some that say now is not the time to take on an initiative as bold as that outlined in your bill. They say things are getting better and the agencies responsible for border management

are working together now more than ever. We disagree and best

answer those claims with a question. What is so great about today’s situation at the borders that is worth preserving? To what

point will things have to deteriorate before we look at making a

bold change?

We also want to assure the Committee and the public that we

have little interest in creating another large bureaucracy in Washington that the trade community will have to wrestle with. If anything, we view the proposals contained in this bill as a way to

streamline communication between industry and regulators by creating a one-stop-shop on cross-border issues.

47

1The prepared statement of Ms. Kamarck appears in the Appendix on page 120.

In conclusion, no amount of reorganization is going to result in

better border management without a commitment by Congress to

provide agencies with the tools they need to keep trade flowing and

make our borders more secure. But now more than ever is the time

to start looking at a significant realignment of agencies posted at

the border. If real security and trade efficiency are to be achieved,

we must take the first step by consolidating the agencies into one

leadership structure. It may take years to change the internal cultures at the individual agencies, but without this first step, our

goals will never be achieved. This is a matter of national survival

and economic security.

Looking ahead, we believe that, ultimately, we are going to have

to look seriously at consolidating all agencies with enforcement duties at the land border ports of entry into one agency with responsibility solely for border administration. This bill is a good first step.

Finally, we do not make these recommendations lightly and we

know that the type of changes we are discussing here will not completely insulate us from outside threats or be the ultimate solution

for our ports of entry. But years of living and working in border

communities in and around ports of entry have brought us to the

same conclusion. Bold changes are needed if our national security

and economic security are to be preserved.

On behalf of the Border Trade Alliance, I want to thank you

again for listening to my comments here today. I will do my best

to answer any questions you may have as we all seek an effective

way to organize our government for homeland security. Thank you.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Thanks very much, Mr. Gross, for interesting testimony. Dr. Kamarck, welcome.

Ms. KAMARCK. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It is nice to see you. I was tempted to say

and I will say that in your work in the last administration, you

probably earned the public servant’s equivalent of a Medal of

Honor for efforts to reorganize the government, so you have an experienced perspective that you bring to this new challenge. Thanks

for being here.

TESTIMONY OF DR. ELAINE KAMARCK,1 JOHN F. KENNEDY

SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Ms. KAMARCK. Thank you, Senator, and it is nice to see you, Senator Thompson.

Let me start by saying something that I think summarizes what

we heard this morning, and I just want to point this out. Homeland

defense is not going to happen in the White House. It is not going

to happen in the National Security Council, a coordinating council.

It will not happen in the cabinet room. Ask any American who

needs to know when there is a threat, who do you think will protect you? Some guy who is in the White House or a $45,000-a-year

employee who is guarding the border? And they are going to say

it is the latter.

I think the real importance of this bill, which you should be commended for, is to tackle the problem of the border, which, as we

have heard before, has been long ignored. Let me point out that

48

these problems at the border are not new, but until September 11,

there was never the sense of urgency to overcome all the bureaucratic intransigence to creating effective border patrol.

I would make two friendly suggestions to this bill. I would

consider including the Department of Consular Affairs at the State

Department in here. Currently, that Department is extremely overworked and understaffed. It tends to be manned by young diplomats who are trained in diplomacy, not trained in law enforcement. They do not have access to real-time intelligence, which they

need, and, in fact, as Mary Ryan has testified before the Senate,

they had no relationship with the CIA or the FBI on a regular

basis before September 11. I do hope they do now.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Just explain, for the record, what these

folks do.

Ms. KAMARCK. Consular Affairs officers hand out visas. They are

our first line of defense at the border. They are generally young

people, first diplomatic post, who are stationed, say, in Beijing.

Sometimes they have to see thousands and thousands of people a

month and they have no training in law enforcement, nor do they

have the intelligence access that they need. So I think this is worth

including here.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Just for the record, and I will give you

some extra time, I do not remember every case, but of the 19 hijacker terrorists who bought the planes in the attacks on September 11, almost all of those came in exactly that—that was their

first point of contact, was it not?

Ms. KAMARCK. Of course. Their first point of contact for coming

to the United States is getting a visa. That is the first point of contact. So if you are going to talk about really securing the border,

you do have to start there. There were actually, of these, by the

way, there were two potential hijackers who did not get visas to

come to the United States, so something was working, but obviously not enough.

The failures of the INS, I do not need to recount here, but let

me just say that they are not new. During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, the INS could only track down 9,000 of the 50,000 Iranian students who were in the United States, and here we are

many, many years later, more than 20 years later.

Customs has, as we have heard, an enormous role in our economic well-being of this country, and therefore, if you pass nothing

else out of this bill, I would urge you to pass the acceleration fund

for research and development of homeland security technologies,

because it is very clear that in order to keep our trade in good

shape and our economy in good shape and simultaneously increase

our level of security, we are going to need some substantial new investments in technology, and I think if you could start that right

away, it would be great.

And finally, I would make another suggestion to take the newly

federalized airline security force out of the Transportation Department and include it, along with the Coast Guard and the other

groups, in this new agency. There is absolutely no difference between guarding a land border in terms of what you are looking for

in security and guarding an international airport, and I think if

49

1The prepared statement of Mr. Light appears in the Appendix on page 127.

you put these together, you have some real very good synergies and

the potential for some very good reorganization.

Two quick points. On cyber security, I think this bill is a wonderful example of putting some things together. I will say, however,

that both for your new cyber security agency and for the new

homeland security agency, do not use the current civil service law.

Write into this bill its own authority to create a new personnel system or, quickly pass Senator Voinovich’s civil service reform bill.

The worst thing we could do would be to create a new agency and

then saddle it with a civil service system that more than 50 percent

of the Federal Government has already gotten themselves out of

because they find it does not work for their needs.

And then finally, on the National Office for Combating Terrorism, I am very skeptical. Having worked in the White House for

5 years closely with all these agencies, I just do not think Congress

can ever legislate the internal workings of the Executive Branch.

I just think it is not a good thing to spend your time on, particularly when there are so many other things in this bill that are so

important. The way this sets things up, it conflicts with the office

of OMB, it conflicts with NSC. I do not think it is good to create

a kind of dual-budget process within the White House when, after

all, you have to have one budget, the President’s budget, for clarity.

So, as for that portion of the bill, I would say that given all the

other things that are so important in the bill, I would urge that

you concentrate on those, particularly on the border questions and

the cyber security questions, which our government is very far behind on, and leave it to each President to figure out how they organize their own White House.

Senator I think that if there had been a little difference in those

ballots in Florida a year ago, you might have been on the other

side on this one. Thank you very much.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You make such overwhelming sense in all

that you say. [Laughter.]

Mr. Light, thanks for being here.

TESTIMONY OF PAUL C. LIGHT,1 VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES PROGRAM, THE BROOKINGS

INSTITUTE

Mr. LIGHT. It is a delight to be here. I was actually sitting up

behind you, not you, but Senator Glenn and Senator Roth, in 1988

when the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee last created a

cabinet department. We elevated the Veterans’ Administration to

cabinet status. I do not raise that memory to remind you of what

a wonderful job we did. I do not know that it improved the performance of the VA.

I was also sitting over to your left when we created the Deputy

Director of OMB for Management, a Senate-confirmed position that

we hoped would give greater attention and visibility to this important job, and now it is mid-April. The administration in a vast

rapid dash to the finish line has yet to submit a nominee for that

critical post.

50

It is with that kind of sense of sort of the limits of reorganization

that I get the last word on this panel and in this hearing, I suppose.

I have heard two things today. No. 1 is that organization matters. That is a nice thing to hear before the Governmental Affairs

Committee. Every once in a while, people in Congress and in this

town recognize that organization matters to program effectiveness.

Our temptation here in town is always to tinker, to exhort, to work

with the current system as best we can, to adopt the least common

denominator approach.

I am telling you, this is a time for a chain saw on the organizational chart of government, and not just at INS and not just for

homeland security. We have got an organization chart that is an

utter nightmare, a mess. We have got bill after bill introduced in

Congress to realign, reorganization. I think we have all come to the

conclusion that organization matters, and it is a very nice thing,

given that is what I do for a living, not that I would say that the

elevation of the Veterans’ Administration suggests that I did it well

or that we did it well.

No. 2, I think, important before this Committee, is that accountability matters. That is what we are talking about today. Everybody talks about efficiencies and who reports to whom, but you

know what? At the end of the day, if you are an Article I person

like I am, you believe that Senate confirmation matters and that

being able to call a significant player in the administration to testify matters.

I think Governor Ridge should be called to testify. I think that

he is enough like the Director of OMB, enough like the drug czar,

enough like the International Trade Representative to be called to

testify. I do not see a problem with that. I see all the maneuvering

about getting a situation under which he might step into these hallowed halls and sit down before you and give you a public briefing,

but he controls a lot of money. He is at a point now where his success, in a sense, confirms the notion that he should be confirmed

and invited to testify.

On your legislation, I believe that the rationale for creating a department exists. I think there is plenty of history to demonstrate.

I mean, we have created cabinet departments on the basis of many

arguments. They all exist here, actually. We can look at the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, HUD, we

can look at Education, HEW, the Department of Defense. We created them with the same instinct that is on the table here.

And let me say that you do not have to include every last piece

of a policy area in order to create a department. That is just not

a requirement of past cabinet building. If we did that, we would

have exactly one cabinet department in the Federal Government.

That is how we would get everything under the same tent.

Second, I believe that statutory authority for the Homeland Security Director, Tom Ridge, or whomever it is, is the sine qua non of

accountability. I think it should be done.

Third, I argue in my testimony that the organization chart is a

mess, that we have a moment here before us where we ought to

take that long look at the organization chart of government, take

a look at food safety, take a look at bioterrorism, take a look at

51

homeland security, take a look at intelligence services, take a look

at them in a systematic fashion by enacting a bill that has been

pending before this Committee for 12 years and is now under the

title of the government in the 21st Century Act.

I think we ought to take this look. It can be done quickly. It can

be reported back to Congress within a 12-month period, even less.

I think if we are going to do a reorganization, let us do it well and

let us do it in a fashion that forces Congress to deal with it up or

down through some sort of a forced decision mechanism that would

require a military base closing type of decision.

I guess that is the last word.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. It is a good word. We are going to ask you

a few questions, but thanks, Mr. Light. It is reassuring to know

that there are a few Article I people out there. [Laughter.]

I appreciate it very much.

Mr. Gross, let me ask you, if you could from your experience, to

share an anecdote or two with us so that we can get a feel, because

very few of us, maybe none of us have actually been at the borders

to the extent that you have trying to move goods, particularly, back

and forth.

Mr. GROSS. Sure. And I invite you, with that opening, to come

to the border, come to San Diego.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I might just do that.

Mr. GROSS. The problem is when we have people of your stature

come to the border, the agencies know they are coming so they

have their best hat on. They open up all the lines and there is

never a problem because they know you are coming. We need you

to come undercover, not know you are coming, put a Machiavellian

disguise on you and we will show you what really happens on a

day-to-day basis going on down there.

The anecdotes are many. You read about some in the press, I

think, that are probably more accurate than others, but from the

passengers’ side, we have experienced mismanagement. Half the

lanes are never open. And San Diego is an example. We have land

ports. We do not have bridges, so we have infrastructure to be able

to get people across more efficiently with better management.

In Otay Mesa, as an example, there are 14 lines at the border

at the passenger side. Never more than five or six are open, half

staffed by Customs, half staffed by INS. They have a 50/50 responsibility at the primary lanes. Their management has to talk together with each other to make the passenger side efficient. There

is never proper coordination. Again, I think the INS guy, because

of his training, is looking more for the illegal immigrant coming

through, whereas the Customs guy is looking for the contraband

coming through. So there is not total cross-training on whether

they are looking for contraband or when they are processing people.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Somebody told me the other day—it was

actually one of my superb staff members—that there is some indication that people who are trying to break the system know by the

uniform who is going to be looking for what and go to——

Mr. GROSS. I have heard that before, because you can tell. They

have distinct uniforms.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. People trying to bring contraband in——

52

Mr. GROSS. They will want to find an INS line versus the Customs line.

Chairman LIEBERMAN [continuing]. Find an INS line.

Mr. GROSS. Sure. I would not doubt that would be the case. I

mean, these are very sophisticated people that are doing bad deeds

at the border, with drugs or with illegal immigrants. There is big

money involved and they are very sophisticated. They will find a

way around the system if it is not secure. If there is a breakdown

in the system at the border, they are going to find it.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I take it, then, and you said this, I believe, or suggested it, anyway, in your testimony, that you would

find what the press is reporting, which is that Governor Ridge’s

original proposal for consolidation of the border agencies, which has

now been reduced to the point of putting the Border Patrol and

Customs in the Justice Department, not to be enough.

Mr. GROSS. Yes. We think the Justice Department is not, again,

from my testimony, not the right department. We have seen at our

borders mismanagement issues. I mean, we have seen it. It has

been well documented about problems with the Justice Department

and INS. We have seen, in my opinion, and let me state this is my

opinion, that at least where I am involved, Customs does a much

better job of management at the ports than INS does, and that is

going out on a bold statement. I am going to hear from them, I am

sure. [Laughter.]

That is my opinion.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I will say, your boldness has been echoed.

Dr. Kamarck, did you want to add something on that?

Ms. KAMARCK. Yes. Can I add, that was very troubling to me

when I heard that they were going to put this in the Justice Department.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Ms. KAMARCK. That would be such a terrible mistake. It would

undermine—if even a piece of this bill ended up in the Justice Department, it would really undermine it. If any version of this ends

up in the Justice Department, you run a significant risk that the

flawed management structure that has run INS now for several

decades would, in fact, then be running a new agency.

Customs has a much better track record in reform, in using technology, etc., and so I would heartily say, put it in Customs if you

have to do that, but keep it away from the Justice Department.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. How do you react to Senator Gregg’s proposal, which is to say to create a separate, if I understood him correctly, a separate border agency in lieu of both the smaller step

that seems to be coming along in the administration and the larger

agency that we proposed?

Ms. KAMARCK. I think that would still help, but I think that it

is better to go the route you have proposed because I think it gives

it more clout. It is more inclusive. You would get more synergies

from the technology and from cross-training. Everyone would be

trained in one area.

There is a huge problem facing this entire enterprise, which is

the economic problem, and I do not think that a sort of subsidiary

Border Patrol agency would have the ability to get what it needed

53

from Congress, etc. So I think you are right in making it a cabinetlevel agency.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Destler.

Mr. DESTLER. I just wanted to emphasize, to generalize a point

that Dr. Kamarck made on border security, that all these units

that are to be brought in are not, or have not been before September 11, priority units in their departments. The Coast Guard is

not the prime business of the Department of Transportation. The

Customs Service is not the prime business of Treasury. INS is not

the prime business of the Justice Department, etc. The cabinet

members do not pay attention to them. They pay some attention

to them now because homeland security is such a big thing, but

there is not a strong argument for the status quo based on these

agencies’ connections to the mainstream of their departments.

Transportation security is slightly different in that it is a new

unit and obviously the Secretary of Transportation is paying enormous attention to it and they seem to be doing fairly well. But

there is a real tension between having security in an agency whose

main job is the promotion of transportation, so we also think it

makes sense to put that in a border agency, as well.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Mr. Light.

Mr. LIGHT. I am spending a lot of time right now looking at the

Transportation Security Administration, and I will tell you something, you move that agency right now at this particular moment

in time and you set it back 12 to 18 months.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Why?

Mr. LIGHT. It is just such a hard job. They have some momentum

now. They are setting up policies and procedures. The deputy secretary is completely and totally engaged in making that TSA a reality. I just think if you move it someplace else, you lose that momentum. You just do. I mean, just finding the office space and getting the hiring criteria in place, I just think 12, 18 months from

now, maybe. But right now, it would disrupt motion, I think, very

seriously.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. A final question. What about the law enforcement functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service?

Some have suggested they be brought into this agency. Others have

said that it should not be separated out from other functions in the

INS. Any opinions on that?

Ms. KAMARCK. I think the naturalization functions should definitely be kept in the Justice Department. I think they are fundamentally different and the administration even has a bill that

would simply do that.

I think that then you have to look carefully at the enforcement

functions, their relationship to the border, their relationship to security. My guess is probably most of them should go into this new

agency, but I do not have a real firm opinion on that, except to say

naturalization should definitely stay in the Justice Department.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes, Mr. Gross?

Mr. GROSS. I think I would agree with Dr. Kamarck on that. The

enforcement agencies, we believe strongly should be part of this

new agency, any enforcement agency, and they should have the

same law enforcement status.

54

One of the practical problems that we have seen at the border

is, and I think it is documented, one of the problems is the resources. They are not able to recruit new Border Patrol agents and

new INS agents quickly enough and there is a lot of looking around

for these people. Once they get hired and trained, which takes 6

to 12 months, they are jumping. They are jumping to where they

can get law enforcement status, better pay, and better benefits.

They are jumping to the Customs Service. Half of them jumped to

the sky marshal program as soon as recruitment was escalated—

because it was a much better status for them. Now, they are having to rehire again.

So the retention is a big problem at these agencies, because even

though they are all working on the border, there are different pay

scales and there are different levels and that is another big problem we have at the ports of entry.

Mr. LIGHT. May I add a word?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIGHT. I think if ever there were a reason for taking a chain

saw to an agency, INS presents it. You must divide that agency.

I mean, the question to you is, how is it doing where it currently

is?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. Right.

Mr. LIGHT. How well is that agency running? You have got to do

something radical to INS in order to give it the wake-up call. I just

think that is one where the argument is quite different from TSA.

This is one where this agency just is going nowhere unless you do

something radical.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I think there is a lot of sentiment here on

the Hill that agrees with you. We will see about INS, see what

happens and how quickly. Senator Thompson.

Senator THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to get back to ask some of you what you think about a

couple of comments that Mr. Destler made about having to do with

getting a strategy first. We are talking about what agency goes

where, how the boxes should be rearranged. We are never going to

get a consensus on that, for sure, and we do not need to endlessly

debate this. But on the other hand, we have got supposedly a strategy document coming out.

I know GAO says that it took the Drug Control Office 10 years

to come up with a national strategy, and we are not going to wait

10 years, hopefully, or anything close to that. But that just goes to

show how difficult it is deciding really what we need to do. I mean,

we are looking at all of government. We ought to be looking at all

of government. We have got 45 or 50 different entities out there,

agencies, what not, participating in all this.

Do we know enough to decide at this point exactly where the

boxes ought to go or how we need to reorganize. How significant

will this comprehensive national strategy that the administration

is putting together be in that?

Dr. Kamarck, do you have any thoughts on that?

Ms. KAMARCK. Yes, I do. I do think that Tom Ridge’s role should

not be operational. I do not believe White House offices are ever

effective if they are operational. I think there is, in fact, a long history of White House disasters when they try to be operational.

55

Ridge’s office should be—and I think they are doing this—should

be developing a strategy that is comprehensive, because even the

provisions in this bill are only a small piece of what needs to happen overall in the government. We have not even talked about CDC

reform or any of the other pieces.

Senator THOMPSON. Or intelligence, as you pointed out.

Ms. KAMARCK. Or intelligence reform——

Senator THOMPSON. Which is a key part.

Ms. KAMARCK. Right, a key part. However, I do think that when

things like this happen, there is a coalescence around government

problems that everybody has known about for a long time and that

is why I think you hear so much unanimity in here about the border. In other words, before September 11, people made the same

criticisms of the border problem as they are making now. Now, we

have, however, a much more important reason to pursue those.

So while I agree with the need for a national strategy, I do think

there are pieces of this that people who have been in government

a long time and studied it are ready to go forward with, and hopefully in July, a Border Patrol agency will be part of this national

strategy, but hopefully there will be a lot of other things, including

some intelligence agency reform, too.

Senator THOMPSON. Perhaps we need to take advantage, frankly,

of the political momentum that we ought to be having right now.

I assume that the worst national disaster we have ever had will

not be sufficient enough to reorganize government. It is going to

take something more than that, I assume. [Laughter.]

As you point out, there are some things that we can do that we

have known for a long time. It is just a matter of attention and momentum, which perhaps we have now that we have not had before.

We can do some things though we may not be able to do everything.

Another kind of corollary to that, I guess, is a question having

to do with the fact that regardless of what kind of entity we come

up with, it seems that some very important parts are going to be

left out of the tent. Intelligence comes to mind. Everything gets

back to that. We know how deficient we are there and how much

better we have to do.

We have to figure out how we communicate, how the FBI counterintelligence, for example, and the CIA communicates with these

entities. They do not like to talk to anybody, even among themselves. So now we are asking them to figure out a way to communicate with governmental entities that have nothing to do traditionally with these other problems.

So how significant is it? I mean, one could make the case, because of that, perhaps we ought to fall back and have this entity

just be a coordinator. How significant a problem is it, if you see it

a problem, if we create something new, a very important part of

the picture is necessarily going to be left out? Did you want to comment further on that?

Mr. DESTLER. Yes. Our sense is that certain things are moving,

though they may not be perfect. The Homeland Security Council is

not perfect, but Governor Ridge is moving. He has a head of steam.

He has a mandate. He has had a budget role. He does have an

interagency process working. And so the logical thing to do right

56

now is to build upon this and to resist the wrong-headed administration desire to deny him a role with Congress. But we do not

favor radical change.

The situation is not perfect. There are signs Governor Ridge is

losing battles. But he could be reinforced by this Committee along

the lines prepared in our testimony.

We also believe that when you look at the border, you have functions that by their logic seem to belong together. They have the

same purpose. As Dr. Kamarck suggested, you also have a history

of problems. And so there seems to be a very strong sense for pulling these together.

Beyond this, you get into gray areas. For example, most of the

homeland security department bills, including yours and including

the Hart-Rudman recommendations, include FEMA in a united

agency. We would not include FEMA because we think they are basically doing something different, responding to catastrophic

events. Now, somebody might do a study here and prove us wrong.

They might prove that there are important synergies in putting

FEMA together with the border agencies, say.

But our sense from looking at it is that you try to look for

groupings with closely-linked functions, and the border agencies

are a particularly clear case where the linkage is logical and the

current location is not. The Coast Guard, for example, has bounced

around in various places, and the Department of Transportation is

as comfortable a place as any for a good agency that——

Senator THOMPSON. Did anyone else have any comment on that?

[No response.]

Senator THOMPSON. I guess, finally, I especially took note of your

comments about research and development, Ms. Kamarck. That

seems to be the first place people cut and the most——

Ms. KAMARCK. I know, and it is——

Senator THOMPSON. Is that your experience?

Ms. KAMARCK. That is my experience. The first place people cut

is the development side and we cannot solve this problem without

that. We cannot solve this problem at the border without significant new technology. People are talking about biometrics and all of

this stuff. Well, you know, we are facing this sort of terrible choice.

We can make our borders really secure and stop all trade, right?

Nobody wants to do that, so the technology is the only answer to

that. So that is why I said in my written testimony and here is

that if you do nothing else, I would do that first and try to get

some of that technology in development and in testing, etc., so that

we can improve the situation.

Senator THOMPSON. Some of these agents are still filling out

forms by hand.

Ms. KAMARCK. Well, INS is—going back to my comment about

why you cannot put this in the Justice Department, INS has a history of not being able to implement technology that you guys in

Congress have given them and funded them.

Senator THOMPSON. That is a government-wide problem, as you

probably know, too.

Ms. KAMARCK. That is right.

Senator THOMPSON. We have an abysmal record. We have wasted

billions of dollars trying to integrate information technology into

57

these various departments. IRS is a classic example. They are constantly high-profile. INS has not been that high-profile up until recently.

Mr. LIGHT. May I add a last word of encouragement?

Chairman LIEBERMAN. You are actually going to get the last

word.

Mr. LIGHT. If you look back at the 1988 Department of Veterans’

Affairs Act, you will see that the final title in the Act, as a price

of passage by this Committee and by the Senate—that bill came

over from the House—was the creation of a comprehensive look at

the overall organization of government. It was enacted by the Senate. It was enacted by the House and signed by the President. It

carried a trigger that allowed the——

Senator THOMPSON. The next President to do away with it.

Mr. LIGHT [continuing]. The next President to do away with it,

and our colleague, one of Dr. Kamarck’s colleagues, Dick Darman,

among the very first decisions he made as Budget Director was, no

way am I going to have such a thing on my watch. If we had done

such a thing on his watch, I will tell you something, we would have

the road map right now that we need to do exactly what this Committee wants to do. Maybe that is the last title, maybe that is the

fourth title of this legislation.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. That is a nice suggestion to end on. I

thank you all. You have been, both in your written testimony and

in your oral testimony and response to the questions, you have

been very helpful.

This has been, I think, a constructive hearing. I have learned

from it and I have a renewed sense of urgency that we should go

to markup as quickly as we can and get done what we can, because

this is an urgent problem every day and then try to meet up with

the administration and actually provide for better homeland security. Thank you very much.

We will keep the record of the hearing open for a week in case

you want to add any comments, other Members want to ask you

questions. I would ask each of you, because you bring extraordinary

experience and knowledge here, to stay tuned to what we are doing

and I invite your comments and responses and suggestions as we

go on. Thank you very much.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:08 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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