Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Holds Hearing on Secretary of Homeland Security Nomination

LIEBERMAN:

Thank you, Madam Chair, Governor Ridge.

Senator Collins, I congratulate you and wish you well as you assume the chairmanship of this very important committee. And I have every confidence that you will lead it forward in all of its best traditions of aggressive oversight, of progressive initiatives, and of a largely bipartisan spirit in conducting our business. I look forward to working with you.

And I join you in welcoming our two new members, Senator Pryor and Senator Sununu, and welcoming that old soldier who just doesn't go away...

(LAUGHTER)

... the great senator, Arlen Specter.

As you have said, Madam Chair, this is an historic confirmation hearing literally, and I hope and believe it begins a new era of responsibility and readiness for America's domestic defenses.

Sixteen months ago, America and the world changed forever. September 11, 2001, will not only be remembered as the single worst attack on American civilians in our history, it will also unfortunately be remembered, and must be, as the most catastrophic breakdown ever in America's homeland security. The attacks revealed that just about every link in our security chain, public and private, from intelligence analysis to border and transportation security, was either broken or brittle.

The establishment of a department of homeland security is the critical first big step forward in strengthening our homeland defenses. It will consolidate more than two dozen agencies and offices and organize them in a logical, accountable and strong chain of command.

LIEBERMAN:

And at the top of the agency, we will have a single Cabinet secretary with strong budget authority who will be
responsible to the Congress and to the people.

Governor Ridge, I know you appreciate the enormity of the task ahead of you. And I appreciate, as I'm sure we all do, your willingness to accept this challenge. Perhaps I should say your courage in accepting this challenge.
You will oversee, as Senator Collins has said, the largest federal government reorganization since the late 1940s. And in this case, you must oversee that reorganization not before the crisis which it responds to but in the midst of it. As I think I said to you once, you're in a position that Noah would have been in if the Lord had asked him to start building the Ark after the rain had already started flowing. And of course that means that you and we have to act with a sense of urgency as we go forward.

Let me say from my part, as one who fought along with colleagues on this committee for the new department for as long as a year, I will do everything I can to support your efforts. And I will do everything I can to ensure that the department has the resources and the support it needs and deserves, because this is the most urgent responsibility our federal government has today.

We in the Congress have historically managed to elevate support for our armed services above partisan politics, and we must now do the same for homeland security. And I am confident that through this committee, we will do just that.

I want to say that I have never been under the illusion, and I'm sure you are not either, that reorganization would by itself be the solution to our homeland security challenges. Of course we need the right structure, but having the right structure is no guarantee in itself of success. We also need the right people, the right policies and the right programs. And we need adequate resources to enable and empower you and the people working under you to get
this critical job done.

In this area, I must say that the administration's homeland security efforts thus far have left much to be desired and, in my opinion, leave much to be done quickly. This is not only my personal judgment. Almost every independent assessment that I have seen says that, in almost every way, America is as vulnerable today to terrorist attack as we were on September 11th.

The most persuasive of these assessments was produced by former Senators Hart and Rudman, who last October issued a task force report under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations, which concluded in part, and I quote, "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil. In all likelihood, the next attack will result in even greater casualties and widespread disruption to American lives and the economy," end of quote.

LIEBERMAN:

The facts are that our local and state law enforcement officials are operating in a virtual intelligence vacuum, with no access to the terrorist watchlist, for instance, that the State Department provides to our immigration and consular officials.

In the words of the Hart-Rudman Report, "When it comes to combating terrorism, the police officers on the beat," and I quote, "are effectively operating deaf, dumb and blind," end quote. In my view, the administration has only taken small steps thus far to fix this problem.

Container ships, trucks and trains entering the United States over our borders and through our ports are subject to hardly any examination. Of the 21,000 shipping containers that come through our ports every day, no more than 2 percent are inspected. And the administration must, and you and we, must do better quickly to remove the risk—the dangerous risk that remains.

Our first responders are still inadequately prepared, in many cases unprepared, for potential chemical or biological attacks. They lack the necessary training, and their communications systems are, in most cases, incompatible with one another. Again, I know that the administration has talked about responding to this problem, but the solutions and the resources have not been seen yet.

The National Guard is still oriented to supporting conventional combat units overseas, but we can and must make much greater use of their effectiveness and skill here at home. I have offered a plan for our country which I think will help us make better use of the Guard for homeland defense.

And we still lack effective vaccines and medicines to counter the vast majority of biological and chemical weapons.
It is unacceptable that we've not come further faster.

And that is the mission I think you will accept, as you assume this new position.

In my opinion, the administration's record on homeland defense—though under your leadership in the office, which did not give you adequate power, some steps forward have been taken—overall, it's been too weak, its vision has been too blurry, and its willingness to confront the status quo, including with resources, has been too limited.

Bureaucratic inertia is a powerful force. That's why the Homeland Security Act, which we passed and the president signed, needs to be implemented very boldly. Bureaucratic turf needs to be ripped up.

Governor Ridge, you had great comments you made last October, which I quote here: "The only turf we should be worried about protecting is the turf we stand on." And you are absolutely right.

Thus far, I have not seen indication in several critical areas that the administration is prepared to live up to that standard that you set in that statement.

I want to give you one crucial example where I think the reaction has been more reactive than proactive, and that is intelligence collection, dissemination and analysis.

We know that the failure of our intelligence agencies to connect the dots on September 11th was the single greatest failure among many of our homeland security systems, leading up to September 11th. Nevertheless, the administration has thus far failed to challenge or adequately change the status quo of the intelligence community to fix what is broken.

On paper, the passage of a new Homeland Security Act was meant to usher in a new era which would do just that.
The bill creates a single-source—all-source information analysis and infrastructure protection unit within the new department that Senator Specter and I and others worked very hard to construct.

But I'm very disturbed by the early indications—and I hope you can turn this around—that the administration still believes that the primary responsibility of the department's new intelligence unit is to protect critical infrastructure and that performing analysis of intelligence to prevent other attacks is secondary or peripheral.

The fact is that we can imagine horrific terrorist attacks that are not against critical infrastructure as we know it, but against people. I hesitate to mention the examples, but they're in our minds—a bomb in a shopping mall, a biological agent dropped from overhead onto city streets.

LIEBERMAN:

And therefore, it makes no sense for the new department's intelligence division to put on critical infrastructure blinders rather than assessing and processing all information related to terrorist attacks against Americans here at home, anywhere.

I'm also troubled that the administration has not yet acted with sufficient urgency and directness to break down existing barriers to getting the necessary intelligence information to the new department that you will head. The assumption in the Homeland Security Act is that, "Unless the president or future presidents determine otherwise, all FBI, CIA and other government information about terrorist threats, including so-called unevaluated intelligence possessed by intelligence agencies, will be routinely shared with this new unit."

Unfortunately, there are early signs reported in the media a month ago that the administration is exceeding to the intelligence community's predictable resistance to the change that the law would bring about, and thereby undermining these provisions rather than implementing them faithfully. That's a deeply disturbing development, and it really calls out for your strong leadership to get your department what I think Congress intended it to have.
Finally, the critical problem of insufficient funding. We have dozens of federal agencies, including many that are being consolidated into the new department, that are already in the midst of urgent work post-September 11. The Coast Guard, Border Patrol and others need to train their employees, for instance, to acquire new technology. But the administration hasn't yet provided them with the necessary funding, and therefore they won't be able to do this adequately.

Indeed, as you well know, just yesterday on the Senate floor, the Republican leadership, I believe, shortchanged homeland security by nearly $1 billion compared to what Senate appropriators agreed to last Congress. As a result, now $627 million isn't being provided to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a part of the new department, for a variety of critical border security measures. And local first responders are not receiving the money that they expected to get as appropriated or recommended last year, and the list goes on.

The problem is most pressing, I think, at the local level where local and state first responders, who also if we use them well can be our first preventers of terrorism, are not getting the support that the need. Late last summer, the president inexplicably blocked $2.5 billion in emergency spending that could have gone to federal agencies and state and local officials for their homeland security efforts. That was wrong. And I think you and we have to work to turn that around, including turning around the disbursement of the money that has already been appropriated
and not yet fully received at the state and local level.

Governor Ridge, you know better than any of us that this war on terrorism and the critical work of homeland security cannot be won with a magic wand or wishful thinking. It's going to take strong leadership that you can provide and a lot of money that the administration and we must provide. It's going to take talent, training and technology. It will take real, not rhetorical, partnership among every layer and level of government. It's going to take a clear vision and a consistent attention to achieving the goals outlined in that vision as expressed in the Homeland Security Act. And of course, it will take tireless effort on the part of the thousands of federal employees who will now report to you.

All this will soon fall on your, literally, board shoulders, and so to will the responsibility to be a vigorous advocate within the administration for adequate resources for homeland security from the president you serve on behalf of the American people that you and we must better protect.

Thank you.