Haste and the Homeland Plan by Jeffrey Smith
Haste and the Homeland Plan
By Jeffrey Smith (June 18, 2002)
(Originally published in The Washington Post.)
President Bush's stunning proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security deserves high marks as a bold effort to ensure our domestic security in the face of very real threats from terrorists and potentially hostile states. The plan to consolidate several existing government agencies makes, on first hearing, great sense.
But it also raises very real concerns as to whether the right agencies are being combined, whether the plan can be implemented without causing even greater confusion and whether it solves the most important problem: improving the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence.
Congress has pledged to act quickly to enact the president's plan, but several key members have focused on what they believe to be its failure to address adequately the intelligence challenges presented by the threat to our homeland. Privately, several members have also expressed concern about the rapid pace at which they are considering the most important change to our national security structure since 1947. They are wise to do so. The plan raises important and difficult issues.
As it considers the president's plan, Congress should ask four questions:
Does it propose the right configuration of agencies? A strong case can be made, as former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman have done, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs, the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Coast Guard should be combined into a single agency. Adding some of the other agencies -- such as the national labs, parts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and those concerned with cybersecurity, agricultural inspection and trade sanctions -- seems much less compelling.
Can the reorganization be accomplished without creating even greater problems of coordination during the middle of a war? It is hard to overstate the difficulties and confusion that will result from tearing these agencies out of their existing homes and jamming them together in a new department. On virtually every front -- administrative, human and political -- the problems are daunting. It will likely be years before the desired efficiencies are achieved. In the meantime, we run the risk that gaps will be created by poor coordination within the new department, and among the new department, the rest of government and state and local officials. In war, you try to attack your opponent in the "seams" between units or when he is reorganizing. The terrorists will surely look for such seams.
How should Congress oversee the new agency? Clearly the new department needs congressional oversight and support, but it should not have to report to the vast array of committees and subcommittees (88 by one count) that now claim some jurisdiction over pieces of the new department. One possible solution is to create a select committee in each house made up of "crossover" members from the key interested committees. A good model would be the two intelligence committees, which consist of representatives from such key panels as Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Appropriations.
What can be done to improve the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence on homeland security? The president's plan leaves the CIA and FBI largely untouched. As a result, many believe it does not do enough to ensure that the CIA and FBI will work together more closely. Some are beginning to call for greater change, including creation of a domestic security service like Britain's legendary MI-5. While such a change may ultimately be necessary, it is premature to reach that conclusion now. The intelligence committees are months away from completing their investigation of 9/11, and we should not pre-judge their conclusions and recommendations.
But one thing is clear now -- the new homeland security department must have an intelligence function. Congress should consider three basic models:
The first is the president's proposed solution -- that the new department would be a "customer" of the CIA and FBI and take the lead in producing intelligence analysis for the president on domestic threats. That might work. The departments of State and Energy have small intelligence components that are also part of the intelligence agencies. State and Energy have a voice in "tasking," i.e., directing, the collection of intelligence, and the budgets of State's and Energy's intelligence components are part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program, which is coordinated by the director of central intelligence. Both components have access to "all-source intelligence" and produce very high-quality intelligence analysis for their respective secretaries. This would be good model to follow -- so long as the new department did not become a competing analysis center to the CIA. Some competition is good, but duplication and rivalry are not.
The second model would be to beef up -- and perhaps combine -- the current counterterrorist centers at the CIA and FBI. Although there is now much chatter that the FBI and CIA dropped the ball by not talking to one another, these centers were doing a good job of working together before 9/11 and are now working even more closely. We should not forget that both before and after 9/11 they had several dramatic successes around the globe in disrupting terrorist activity and arresting suspects. A strong case can be made that we should await the results of the changes instituted by the directors of the CIA and FBI before leaping to conclusions about dramatic organizational change. In the meantime, a more modest organizational change that should be considered would be to combine these two centers into a single organization under the authority of the director of central intelligence.
The third model to consider would be the creation of a new domestic security service, like MI-5. This idea has much appeal but must be considered very carefully. In brief, it would combine elements of the FBI and CIA into a new agency charged with counterterrorism and counterintelligence. The Counter Terrorism Center and Counterintelligence Center could be moved to the new agency. It could also assume responsibility for cyber security -- an important function that now has no home. The new service should probably not have arrest authority but would work closely with the FBI and state and local law enforcement agencies. Similarly, it would need to have very close relations with the directorate of operations at the CIA and the other agencies responsible for intelligence collection. It should be under the director of central intelligence, but the director of the new agency should have direct access to the president. Much thought would have to be given to the authorities and oversight of the agency to ensure that it did not infringe on civil liberties. Yet we are the only major democracy without such an agency, and surely we can devise means to protect our liberties.
All of this is a very tall order. It cannot be done quickly or casually. Congress must act only after it is certain that it is solving the right problems and not creating new ones.