http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10019

Guarding the Homeland
By Quin Hillyer
Published 6/28/2006 12:08:27 AM


A "get tough" approach at the Mexican border leads to more violence, at least in the short run, not less.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) performs better, not worse, when it is integrated within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- and the experience from Hurricane Katrina helps prove it.

DHS actually is ahead of schedule in testing at ports for nuclear devices.

And sometimes it is the "mopes" -- the culturally disaffected slackers -- rather than the brilliant villains, who are the most dangerous enemies.

Such were some of the provocative assertions by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in a 40-minute private interview on Monday. And as is evident by the scope of subjects covered, Chertoff's wide portfolio does make him privy to a plentitude of provocative information.

Take the incidence of violence at the border. Chertoff acknowledged that it is a problem. And he confirmed reports (discussed extensively in the June American Spectator article by Judd Slivka) that a fair amount of violence is carried out by Mexicans wearing police or military uniforms who have crossed into U.S. territory. But he asserted that "nobody in the Mexican government is deliberately deciding to violate our sovereignty." Instead, he said, "There are armed criminals ... who sometimes wear pieces of a uniform or a paramilitary uniform." Or else they are police chasing bad guys who inadvertently cross the border in pursuit. Moreover, he said the violence, whether by those in uniform or not, has been increasing in the past year or two.

Departmental statistics bear that out. In Fiscal Year 2004, there were 374 assaults against Border Patrol Agents. In FY 2005, the number skyrocketed to 778. This year it has leveled off a bit: Through May of FY'06, the number was at 527, on a pace toward 790.

But he said that's not necessarily something to worry about long-term:

"At a border that was not controlled for 20 years, habits have grown up... that we're in the process of breaking. South of the border, they've arrested some of leaders of the cartels. North of the border, as we have increased the intensity of our patrols... we have forced illegals [and drug runners] into less hospitable territory."

Their habits threatened, the Mexican criminals push back, according to Chertoff. Sometimes it is with guns; other times just with rock throwing at American agents. But the good news, he said, is that "I do not think we've seen widespread violence against innocent civilians." Furthermore, as the U.S. makes greater use of "more high-tech stuff" -- aerial surveillance, sensors, even satellite imagery -- "we optimize where we intersect [the infiltrators]" and the effectiveness of interdiction is likely to improve.

One certainly hopes so.


MOVING TO WHAT IS LIKELY a sore spot for Chertoff, the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, an observer might wish that his responses were not quite so bloodless, and that they were more open to mea culpas for any mistakes of omission at his end and more expressive of human sympathy and less... well, less clinical. That said, his logic and explanations seemed unassailable.

Referring to then-FEMA Director Michael Brown's decision to bypass DHS and work directly through the White House, Chertoff said: "In the first several days after Katrina, FEMA tried to operate independently of the department. The result was unnecessary delay and heartbreak. But when Admiral Allen [of the Coast Guard] went in, he did integrate with the rest of the department, and there was a dramatic improvement."

To repeat: "The go-it-alone model -- where the FEMA Director tried to do it all himself -- failed. Whereas Admiral Allen was a success." Brown "was going to act more or less as a lone ranger; as a result, he did not pick up a lot of the tools that were available to use. In fact, I became frustrated that I was not getting a response."

Furthermore, "if you pulled FEMA out of DHS, you would have a small, relatively weak agency that could respond to ordinary, run-of-the-mill hurricanes but that would not be able to deal with a catastrophe."

Nevertheless, even in Katrina, "a lot of FEMA people on the ground did a good job with search and rescue." They just did it, he said, without proper support from above.

More importantly, Chertoff noted that the Coast Guard, which is also part of DHS, joined with private citizens and with the state and federal Fish and Wildlife services to rescue 55,000 people in the wake of the storm. (True enough: See this story for more details.)

Chertoff also said that New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast were victims of bad timing. He said that the "first serious" federal departmental study of a major disaster in New Orleans did not occur all during the 1990s but instead began in 2004 and was not quite completed when Katrina hit. Not only that, but reforms of FEMA based on a systemic review Chertoff ordered had not yet had time to take place: The review was completed in July of 2005, but its recommendations were not authorized to go into law until October of that year. Katrina hit on August 29, right in the interregnum between FEMA's former operational methods and implementation of its reformed ones.


INDEED, A RECURRING THEME DURING the interview, and a legitimate one, was the newness of DHS and the reality that major improvements can't just be willed into existence overnight. (It took some 40 years, Chertoff noted, for the various military branches to be effectively integrated under the Department of Defense, which goal finally was achieved through the Goldwater-Nichols law in 1986.) Nevertheless, the Secretary said much progress is being made.

For example, he refuted criticisms that DHS is badly lagging in its duty to scour the nation's ports for signs of smuggled weapons of mass murder. On the contrary, he said: "We are actually ahead of schedule in using radiation portal monitors. We'll have them operational in 80% of our ports by October. We're making it very much harder for people to smuggle [dangerous] things into our country in containers."

On another front, all foreign visitors to the United States are now subjected to a two-finger electronic fingerprint test. A ten-finger test is in the works. For airport security, inspectors are now better able to identify not just bombs but detonators, and better at "pattern recognition" to identify suspicious types of behavior. And so on, Chertoff said, giving other examples of how, "in general, we have raised the level of security in all the ways we operate."

Most important, he said, was the "next generation of radiation detection, which will be much more discriminating" -- and able to be used not just at ports and borders but anywhere within the United States itself, with "sensors enabled to be deployed more quickly."

"Of all the challenges that we face... the really catastrophic attack is the one that in the end we have to make sure we devote some real investment to. The whole name of the game is long-term investment in security."

Finally, somehow the interview segued into the topic of why even ordinary citizens in their everyday lives ought to remain vigilant. It was ordinary citizens, Chertoff said, who kept airplane "shoe bomber" Richard Reid -- reportedly no genius -- from carrying out his intended terrorism. Using what he said was a New York word for less-than-impressive folks, Chertoff said, "Sometimes it is the 'mopes' that can do the greatest damage. The idea that you have to be an ingenious TV villain to be a threat is wrong."


IN SUM, MICHAEL CHERTOFF has a huge job. DHS oversees a vast array of functions; some would even call it an unwieldy array. There's FEMA, and the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service, and the Transportation Security Administration, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship Immigration Services, and an Office of Intelligence Analysis, and offices on domestic preparedness, energy security, animal and plant health inspections, and protection against a pandemic flu. "We unify in one department all the tools you need for threats to the county: for prevention, protection, and response," Chertoff said.

In Chertoff, President George W. Bush has chosen for oversight of all these tasks a man who, one-on-one, demonstrates a piercing intelligence, a near-encyclopedic knowledge of his subjects, and an obvious mental toughness born of prosecuting mobsters and terrorists in some of the most important cases on record. Final judgment on Chertoff's record will be difficult, because it's hard to gauge the "dog that didn't bark" or the bomb that didn't blow. And a great city and a lovely coastline both lie in ruins on his watch -- victims, to be sure, of a storm of unprecedented scope and viciousness, but also of inadequate preparation and response by officials who were supposed to be reporting to him.

But the impression Chertoff leaves on an interviewer, or on others that have worked with him, is that if this man isn't competent, going forward, to handle the mammoth job of homeland protection, then nobody can be. These are dangerous times, and never let it be said that Michael Chertoff -- former veteran prosecutor, terrorism task force chief, scourge of organized crime, and federal appellate judge -- is a man who backs down from danger.


Quin Hillyer is executive editor of The American Spectator. He can be reached at hillyerq@spectator.org.