Advisors, Czars and councils: organizing for Homeland Security.

• Author: Daalder, Ivo H.

NINE DAYS after September 11, President George W. Bush announced that the Federal government's effort to secure the American homeland against future terrorist attacks would be led by a new, White House-based Office of Homeland Security (OHS). He appointed his close friend, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, to head the office. While this step was widely welcomed, there has been a near-consensus among Washington veterans that Ridge lacks the leverage necessary for the job, even as a member of the White House staff with clear and direct access to the President. "I fear that as an advisor who lacks a statutory mandate, Senate confirmation, and budget authority, he will not be as effective as we need him to be", Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) argued. "A homeland coordinator with only advisory authority is not enough. We need a robust executive agency to carry out the core functions of homeland defense."' Lieberman and others have accordingly introduced a number of proposals to rectify these imperfections, and Offi ce of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., recently told Congress that the administration was open to proposals for re-organization. (2)

Almost every proposal thus far seeks to fix the problem by bringing widely dispersed authorities and agencies into a new central structure. But centralization alone cannot be the main answer to this formidable challenge. Currently, responsibility for preventing, protecting against, and responding to a terrorist incident is spread not only across the Executive Branch, but also across Federal, state and local authorities. Moreover, the private sector also has a critical role to play. It is simply not possible, nor is it desirable, to bring all the major homeland security functions under a single roof.

What is needed instead is leadership, coordination and mobilization of the responsible agencies and their leaders--at the Federal, state and local levels. That is precisely the task President Bush has handed Governor Ridge. Given the number of agencies, interests and people involved, it is a task of truly mammoth proportions. It requires strong, personal support from the President, more than has been evident in the first seven months of Ridge's tenure. Past experiences in parallel coordinating efforts--for national security and economic policy--provide valuable lessons on how Ridge might accomplish the task. Within such a coordinating context, some consolidation of functionally similar activities (for example, dealing with border security) makes sense, as does making Ridge's position statutory and subject to Senate confirmation. Enhancing his authority over budgetary matters would make sense, as well. But on their own, the structural reforms championed by many critics of the current arrangement will be of li ttle help, and could even undercut Ridge's ability to influence the broad range of government activity that he can never directly control.

Re-organization Would Help...

PRIOR TO September 11, a succession of government commissions as well as legislators argued that terrorism constituted a real threat to U.S. security, but that the U.S. government did not give the threat the priority it deserved. (3) Consolidating homeland security functions, they argued, would give it that priority, by creating what the General Accounting Office called a "focal point." (4) In an effort to ensure that homeland security would be a White House priority most proposals sought to place the new organization within the Executive Office of the President.

Clearly, these advocates were on to something. Before terrorists turned commercial jetliners into weapons of mass destruction and killed 3,000 people on U.S. soil, homeland security was not a top priority for the U.S. government. To be sure, successive presidents had talked about the threat of terrorism. Bill Clinton frequently and often publicly worried about a germ-weapons attack by terrorists on U.S. territory. George W. Bush mentioned the threat of terrorism during his campaign, and continued to talk about it once in office (although often as an argument for developing missile defenses). Spending on counterterrorism activities also increased significantly--from $6 billion in 1998 to well over $10 billion in 2001. Finally, with the appointment of Richard Clarke in 1998--in one sense, Ridge's predecessor--as coordinator of counterterrorism, an attempt was made to pull together the myriad agencies and interests involved in preventing and responding to terrorist attacks.

Nevertheless, as of September 10, 2001--even with heightened presidential interest, increased funding and improved coordination--the terrorist threat had not moved anywhere near the top of the White House agenda. Clarke, a Clintonera holdover, remained a senior director on the NSC staff, but reported to the national security advisor, not to the president. Terrorism was still just one concern among many. Although the various agencies all had terrorism coordinators, other concerns dominated their agendas. For the Pentagon, re-equipping the military to fight two major theater wars simultaneously remained the priority. China, not Al-Qaeda, was the rising threat, and ballistic missile attacks by rogue states, not suicide bombers, were the immediate concern. Drugs, not dangerous pathogens, were the targets of customs agents searching luggage and cargo entering the United States. Consular and immigration officers fretted about granting visas to potentially illegal immigrants rather than students-cum-terrorists. The FBI focused on building criminal indictments against terrorists who had committed acts of violence against U.S. interests overseas, rather than tracking non-U.S. nationals who might undertake terrorist acts on American soil. Other priorities displaced the attention and resources that should have been devoted to homeland security.

September 11 changed all that. Now, for all of these agencies, at every level, the terrorist threat stands front and center. The commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service, Robert C. Bonner, told the New York Times that "terrorism is our highest priority, bar none. Ninety-eight percent of my attention as commissioner of customs has been devoted to that one issue." (5) The INS, FBI and other key agencies have been re-organized so as to make counterterrorism their top concern. Priorities have shifted in agencies that have not been reorganized--including even the Internal Revenue Service, which has assigned some of its criminal investigators to assist in helping determine how terrorist groups are funded.

There are other reasons to consider re-organizing homeland security beyond the need to focus public attention; the key one is the fact that responsibility for homeland security really is very widely dispersed. According to the OMB, nearly seventy agencies spend money on counterterrorist activities--and that excludes the Defense and State Departments and the intelligence community. (6) One organizational chart of Federal government agencies involved in homeland security contains 130 separate boxes. (7) Even by more discriminating accounting standards, anywhere between forty and fifty agencies are believed to be involved in the effort-- ranging from the departments of Defense, Treasury, Justice, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture; to intelligence agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency; to law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; to agencies monitoring points of entry into the United States like the Border Control, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; to agencies responsible for responding to an attack, like the Federal Emergency and Management Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Guard Bureau and the Pentagon's soon-to-be-established Northern Command.

This diffusion of responsibility is inherent in providing homeland security because success depends on a multitude of unconnected individuals making good decisions. It is an inherently decentralized operation. A customs service agent sensed something amiss with a car traveling from Canada to the United States in December 1999 and discovered its trunk loaded with explosive materials designed to blow up the Los Angeles International Airport. A flight instructor found it suspicious that a student was interested only in steering a commercial jetliner, not in taking off or landing, and then reported his suspicion to locally-based Federal authorities (who tried in vain to get FBI headquarters in Washington to take the matter seriously). A firefighter yelled at people coming up from the World Trade Center subway station to go back down, before himself climbing the stairs to fires burning on the 75th floor of one of the towers. A doctor re-examined the X-ray of a postal worker and diagnosed inhalation anthrax in tim e for an effective antibiotic treatment to be administered. A flight attendant noticed a passenger lighting a match near his feet and acted swiftly to prevent him from detonating a bomb concealed in his shoe. Ultimately, the security of the American homeland rests upon individual judgment calls by those who guard the frontlines: the border guards, immigration officers and...