DHS urged to address chemical sector, management challenges
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security should make securing chemical facilities and transportation networks its top priority because these sites are the most vulnerable U.S. terrorist targets, according to a former White House official with a large role in developing U.S. homeland security policy.
Fumes from chemicals such as methyl bromide and ammonia are deadly if released into the atmosphere and inhaled.
The danger of hazardous material shipments was brought home earlier this month when a train accident in South Carolina led to the release of a toxic cloud of chlorine gas that killed nine people and injured 250. The casualty toll could have been much higher in a heavily populated area.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist airplane attacks, “the federal government has made no material reduction in the inherent vulnerability of hazardous chemical targets inside the United States. Doing so should be the highest critical infrastructure protection priority for the Department of Homeland Security in the next two years,” said Richard Falkenrath, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and until last May the deputy homeland security advisor and deputy assistant to the president.
“If terrorists were to attack that sector there is the potential for casualties on a scale in excess of 9/11,” he testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The administration has taken significant steps to protect the aviation sector and ports, but has largely neglected the chemical sector, Falkenrath said, calling it his biggest disappointment.
“I can certainly take some responsibility for that,” he said.
The administration needs to immediately exercise its authority to impose security requirements on the transportation of hazardous chemicals and Congress needs to give the executive branch the authority to mandate and enforce security arrangements for chemical facilities, Falkenrath recommended.
The purpose of the hearing was to evaluate DHS's progress in making America safer nearly two years after its inception, and how remaining management challenges impact the department’s efforts on border security, transportation security, emergency preparedness and intelligence. Falkenrath said better management is an important objective, but not compared to other critical missions.
Other pressing homeland security challenges facing the government, he said, include the need to establish a voluntary national standard for secure identification, a dramatic expansion of screening against terrorist watch lists, development of programs to secure domestic ground transportation systems and provide terrorism insurance guarantees.
Falkenrath called on Congress to reauthorize the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act of 2002, which sunsets this year, and toughen it by mandating that terrorism coverage be included in all commercial insurance polices. He recommended that Congress transfer responsibility for the program from the Treasury Department to DHS. Congress should also charge DHS with developing, in cooperation with the insurance industry, standards for private-property protective measures that would lead to premium reductions.
Much of the discussion during the hearing revolved around recommendations for management changes contained in a recent report from the Heritage Foundation and Center for Strategic and International Studies. The DHS inspector general has also issued a report identifying serious, ongoing management challenges.
The Heritage-CSIS team argued that DHS and Congress needs to eliminate the Border and Transportation Security directorate and similar layers of middle management in order to have clear lines of authority, merge Customs and Border Protection with Immigration and Customs Enforcement because their missions closely mesh, and put more resources into strategic policy development and coordination so that the secretary can plan beyond the immediate crisis of the day.
James Carafano, study co-chair and a senior fellow at Heritage, pointed out in his testimony to the department’s international efforts as a prime example of how the department needs better policy integration.
The Office of International Affairs and the deputy secretary’s chief of staff for policy conducted parallel international affairs operations, he noted. Individuals from both offices called department-wide meetings, met with foreign officials, recommended scheduling of meetings for the secretary with foreign officials, traveled internationally, drafted documents for the secretary’s consideration on international issues, and assumed the lead for international meetings, conferences or trips by the secretary — usually without knowing what the other office was up to.
“There are two centers of gravity in international affairs competing to create policy,” he said. “Agencies have a choice. They can go to whoever has the right answer.”
The task force called for strengthening policymaking by creating an undersecretary for policy who would report to the DHS secretary and be responsible for unifying international policy as well. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., endorsed the idea of a policy undersecretariat, as did Michael Wermuth, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corp. DHS officials have expressed openness to shifting functions up to the departmental policy level, but any changes will likely wait until Secretary-designate Michael Chertoff gets settled and determines how he wants to run the department.
Falkenrath, who helped create the DHS structure some now say is disjointed, said major legislation to reform DHS is unnecessary and premature, adding a major reorganization would be a distraction from the core mission. The inspector general’s report “failed to persuade me that the managerial performance is any way significantly worse than that of any other major federal department or agency — none of whom have had to cope with the unique challenges associated with the largest government reorganization in 50 years,” he said.
“No federal department or agency is immune to management failure. Indeed, I suspect the management record of even the best managed government agencies is worse than that of mediocre for-profit companies.”
Congress could address the situation instead by giving the DHS secretary more authority and thus flexibility to shuffle personnel, offices and programs where needed, Falkenrath suggested.
The hearing was the committee’s first since Congress late last session formally expanded the role of the Government Affairs Committee to include jurisdiction over many areas of homeland security.
Witnesses applauded lawmakers for finally establishing permanent homeland security committees in both houses, but several complained that Congress still does not have a regular authorization process for DHS that would allow for stronger oversight from a single committee.
“It is patently unfair to saddle this department, especially one that is new and struggling in many areas, with the requirement to report to multiple congressional masters,” Wermuth said.
Carafano also called on Congress to pass a law setting up undersecretaries for policy, and protection and preparedness; designate the deputy secretary as the departments chief operating officer and require a commission to assess every four years the department’s strategies, personnel deployment, resources and threat analysis similar to the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review process.
Differences arose over whether DHS is receiving enough funding to do its job properly. Several witnesses and senators said DHS has been starved of sufficient resources to do its job properly, but Sen. Ted Stevens and others expressed concern that the DHS appropriations process could get out of hand.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., cautioned that the DHS appropriations process could turn into a “Christmas tree” with funding for every local interest unless the department sets priorities for the highest areas of threat and operates by risk management principles.
“It’s very hard to turn people down. But the truth of the matter is we cannot be a risk-free America. Something has to be at risk or we just can’t afford homeland security,” he said.
Stephen Flynn, an authority on terrorism and supply chain security at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the department lacks the resources to make up for years of neglecting the modernization needs of frontline agencies such as Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard or to engage in sustained policy planning or coordination. The problem is illustrated, he said, by the fact that the deputy secretary is supported by a staff of just five individuals. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., noted he had a staff of 100 when he served as secretary of the Navy.
Asked to grade the progress of the department so far, Flynn gave it a “C-.”
He said the United States is not dealing with the domestic side of terrorism with the same urgency as it does overseas. “We’re treating this a bit like we’re going through Social Security reform, like a better government kind of thing” rather than adapting to the changing nature of warfare, Flynn said.
Falkenrath and Carafano gave DHS an “incomplete.”
Carafano said it is impossible to assign an overall grade because different parts of DHS are moving forward faster than others rather than as a coherent entity and because investments aren’t targeted to security priorities.
The greatest accomplishment was the creation of the department itself because now the government has an entity that is entirely focused on domestic protection, Falkenrath said.
But Flynn argued that DHS is still treated as a stepchild when it comes to competing budget priorities. The DHS budget is viewed as coming from the same basket that funds other domestic priorities rather than from the national security budget, he said.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, urged the panel to rethink how to get the job done better with the money currently in the system.
“Homeland Security has had as much money as we could possibly afford in the period since 9/11, more money than anyone though they’d get,” said Stevens, one of a number of powerful senators who fought to retain jurisdiction over homeland security within traditional congressional committees on transportation, commerce and other areas.
“I know there isn’t going to be more money,” he emphatically stated.