NBC Meet the Press - Transcript

NBC News Transcripts

SHOW: Meet the Press (10:00 AM ET) - NBC

July 18, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: Stephen Flynn and Chris Cox discuss homeland security

BODY:
MR. RUSSERT: Homeland Security Committee Chairman Chris Cox, Dr. Stephen Flynn, welcome both to MEET THE PRESS.

DR. STEPHEN FLYNN: Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Dr. Flynn, your new book, "America the Vulnerable," page two, some very chilling comments. Let me read them to the American people. "From water and food supplies; refineries, energy grids, and pipelines; bridges, tunnels, trains, trucks, and cargo containers; to the cyber backbone that underpins the information age in which we live, the measures we have been cobbling together are hardly fit to deter amateur thieves, vandals, and hackers, never mind determined terrorists. Worse still, small improvements are often oversold as giant steps forward, lowering the guard of average citizens as they carry on their daily routine with an unwarranted sense of confidence."

That is very sobering.

DR. FLYNN: Well, it's very sobering business. Tim, the challenge here, I guess, that I try to address in the book, is that, you know, for two centuries this country has been essentially on a joyride, where we could deal with security as essentially something we did away from our shores. We live on the most peaceful corner of the planet. You know, we have big oceans to the east and west and friendly neighbors to the north and south, never have any enemy boots on our grounds.

And so when we think about national security, it's something we often do on the soil of our allies. We have troops fully deployed on the soil of our adversaries. What was new about 9/11 was that terrorists attacked from within using our own critical infrastructure-in this case domestic airliners-against us, and it was we trying to sort it out afterwards that generated a lot of the costs.

MR. RUSSERT: But it's been three years nearly. Why aren't we better protected?

DR. FLYNN: I think one of the problems we're finding is that we've set this thing up as if we can deal with it over there, we don't have to deal with the hard problems of our vulnerability here at home. That's one problem. But the other is this is really hard. This critical infrastructure that we've built that underpins our society-these are the networks of transportation, logistics, energy, finance and so forth-information age that we're in-these are global networks that were driven by market forces with four drivers in mind: How do we make it as efficient as possible? How to make it as reliable as possible? How do we make it as low cost as possible and open as possible? Security was viewed as undermining costs, undermining efficiency, undermining reliability and making the system more closed. For three decades we've been building networks that underpin our power with no security in them.

So now we're trying to retrofit it. You can't do it overnight. But my concern is we're not dealing with it near the level of urgency that the threat requires us, because we're seduced into believing that we can fight this terrorist over there and not deal with the difficult decisions-living with risks, living with some expense-of addressing our vulnerabilities here at home.

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Cox, Time magazine has an excerpt of some of Mr. Flynn's book. They have this photograph in tomorrow's Time magazine. That's the Vincent Thomas Bridge near a cargo facility in the Port of Los Angeles. That's an automobile freighter. We have three million containers annually, 18,000 daily, through the Port of Los Angeles. And yet how many of those are protected? How many of those are inspected? How safe are we?

REP. COX: There's no question that-this book, first of all, is a great read; second, that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach-one of the scenarios in chapter two of this book deals with Terminal Island-are vulnerable, as are our other ports, to terrorism; third, that there's an extraordinary amount that still needs to be accomplished. I don't think you're going to find any disagreement between Steve and me on the subject of how much remains to be done. I do think that we need to focus some attention on how much has been accomplished in the three years since September 11, in particular, with respect to port security, where we spent almost no money and no attention prior to September 11.

As Steve points out in his book, as many others have pointed out, including Sandia National Laboratories, which had a contract to study Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, we've got to go up that supply chain. We've got to get to where these containers are loaded overseas. It's too late by the time something comes into one our harbors, one of our ports. And so with the container security initiative, we've gone around the world. Two-thirds of the shipping that comes into those ports comes from 20 megaports around the world, and every single one of those now is participating in the container security initiative, so that we're inspecting the high-risk cargo overseas before it gets to our ports. That's a beginning.

There is an enormous amount of work still to be done, and we're now moving on to the next phase of the container security initiative, which is going to bring in more countries, such as Malaysia, smaller countries but still important, so that we can get our arms around the entire problem. And we've got to move beyond what we're calling high-risk cargo, recognizing that people can hack into the computer manifest, as Steve points out in his book. There are abundant ways for terrorists to beat and defeat our systems.

MR. RUSSERT: To Dr. Flynn's point rather than saying, "It's over there," the problems here, in light of the fact that we have not found weapons of mass destruction, the primary rationale given to the American people for the war in Iraq, would it have not been better to spend the $200 billion we've spent in Iraq back here on securing our cargos, our ports, our cyberspace?

REP. COX: There are weapons of mass destruction abroad, including all of those weapons of mass destruction that the United Nations inventoried that Saddam Hussein had and are not accounted for right now, not the nuclear weapons program that we had flawed intelligence about, but weapons that we know that were stockpiled in Iraq. We've also got radiological loose-nuke problems or low-level radiological devices, again, such as Steve points out in his book. A lot of these problems are going to come to us from overseas. Without...

MR. RUSSERT: But was there an imminent threat in Iraq?

REP. COX: I don't think there's any question that when you've got a guy who is responsible for having murdered over one million of his own people-we've discovered over 400,000 people in mass graves, some of it with chemical weapons; when you've got the 9-11 Commission documenting the contacts with international terrorists-they, of course, debunked the notion that there was any planning by Saddam Hussein in connection with the attacks on America of 9/11, but they also found that there was plenty of intercourse between Saddam Hussein and global terrorism. I think removing a person who is that hostile to the United States, who was providing safe haven for people like Abu Zarqawi, who, remember, we chased out of Afghanistan-that's where he was. He was under the protection of the Taliban. He was given safe harbor by Saddam Hussein. He got a prosthetic fitted because we blew off his leg while he was trying to get out. Zarqawi is now continuing to lead global terror from Iraq. But when he was in Afghanistan he was focused on the development of chemical and biological weapons.

MR. RUSSERT: Dr. Flynn, do you believe that the $200 billion spent on the war in Iraq has made it safer if we had spent the $200 billion here at home, in effect, toughening, strengthening, our infrastructure?

DR. FLYNN: Well, we're a wealthy country, and we're the most powerful country in the world. I think we can afford both an offense and a defense. But my concern is that we have put all our eggs, or way too many of our eggs, into the offense basket. We have spent a total since 9/11, in three years, on our commercial seaports, 361 of them-we've provided grants, a total of $500 million. That probably sounds like a lot to the American people. That's what we spend every four days in Iraq. That's what we all spend buying four F-22 fighters. We still think that we're-almost the pocketbook is wide open for traditional national security, but we're still quibbling, really, on the margins about how we deal with these very vulnerable infrastructures here at home.

Part of the problem is because the private sector owns and operates so much of this material. And the pervasive wisdom is that the market should take care of itself. But this is a very difficult thing for the market to do by itself. It needs standards, and it needs to know they're uniformly enforced, so the good guys aren't at a competitive disadvantage for people who pay footloose and fancy free. That requires a government capacity to set requirements with private sector and partnership and to have the means to provide oversight that we really don't have much capability in right now to deal with.

And one of the big messages I try to make in the book here that I think we're struggling with: We need to come clean with how vulnerable we are with the American people. I mean, it's a bit of the hangover, the Cold War, that we deal with security as something exclusively done by the federal government while we pursue happiness. I think there's something wrong in a paradigm that says, "You shop and travel, Americans. We'll take care of you," when we, the people, are the most likely target, and it's what we own that's most likely to be sabotaged. We need to be invited into this conversation. And I think the way you deal with it is go after the cloak of secrecy. You're not talking about giving road maps, but you come clean. You say, "We have huge sectors that are right now largely unprotected, even for the amateur hackers."

We, as a country, have to decide, "How much risk are we willing to live with it, or how much resources are we willing to invest?" I do think we're being distracted by this belief that somehow we can take care of the problem over there, so we don't have to deal with the hardship here. But I think the Americans are being disenfranchised because they are told that it's being done, but we can't talk about it because we've got to keep it secret. Don't want the bad guys to know.

MR. RUSSERT: We could never afford 100 percent protection. We'd have to close down our freedoms, our liberties, our borders.

DR. FLYNN: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: But on a scale of 0 to 100 percent, how well protected are we right now?

DR. FLYNN: Well, if I would put it maybe on a 1-to-10 scale here, where 1 were a bull's-eye and 10 were secure, we were 1 on 9/11. Today we're a 3. That's why I'm sort of saying that we're still failing. I just can't give a passing grade. But I take heart with the-take umbrage with the notion that security is about closing us down and shutting us down. This is a tricky concept, but if you talked about safety 100 years ago to the captains of industry and said, "Look, you have to deal with the fact that a lot of people are being hurt in your factories and that you're spilling stuff into the environment and you have to address these concerns," they said, "You'll shut down the free market if we do anything about it." It's not an either/or. It's about saying there's a risk that people with malicious intent, vs. acts of God or vs. mechanical error-that will attack these systems. And therefore, given that risk, what's of value, what safeguards we have to put in place. And we can layer security in.

The challenge is like this, Tim. It's like we have a split ranch home and we have-trying to make handicapped accessible, all right? When you try to do that for your elderly parent, it looks ugly, it costs a lot and doesn't work well. But when you build it into the design, when you make the house handicapped-accessible in the design, the aesthetics are good, it works well and the cost isn't that bad. As we build our systems and networks, we're constantly doing this. Building security into them is a way we can go so we don't become a nation of moats and castles.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to an issue that you write about rather forcefully: chemical plants. And on page 118 of your book, you say this: "It is crucial that we dramatically improve security of the chemical industry. Our enemies do not need to smuggle chemical weapons across our borders. ...Chemical facilities and the thousands of tons of chemicals that move each day around the U.S. on trucks, trains, and barges could be targeted by terrorists to devastating effect. All told, there are about 15,000 chemical plants, refineries, and other sites in the U.S. that store large quantities of hazardous materials on their property. ... There are no federal laws that establish minimum security standards at chemical facilities."

Congressman Cox, tomorrow in your committee, Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts is going to move a motion, a resolution, which would, in effect, call for protecting chemical plants and the moving of chemicals around the country. Will you support that legislation?

REP. COX: Well, the White House, as you know, also supports similar legislation. President Bush is very keen on making sure that there are homeland security regulations of chemical plants. In our legislation tomorrow which authorizes the Homeland Security Department, we're going to have a little bit of a jurisdictional problem because the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Representatives has jurisdiction over chemical plant security. So whether we'll be able to get that on germaneness grounds, I'm not sure. The main point, the substantive point, the very solid one-we do need to move forward on this, and I think we will.

MR. RUSSERT: This year?

REP. COX: I certainly hope so, although you have to recognize that Congress has very few legislative days yet, and we can't get any legislation through the Senate because of bipartisan gridlock. We expect that when we pass our homeland security authorization act in the House of Representatives that there will be no counterpart on the Senate side. Part of that is because, of course, the Senate doesn't even have a homeland security committee. And we are hoping, with the impetus of a strong recommendation from the 9-11 Commission, that Congress has to clean up its act and Congress has to get focused on its own oversight, both on the intelligence side and the homeland security side, that we will have permanent homeland security committees in both the House and in the Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: Critics who've been watching your committee say that the chemical industry has a huge influence on your committee, that they've given $6.5 million in soft money between 2000 and 2002, and that's why nothing's being done. Also, Dr. Flynn writes in his book about Congress: "In the House of Representatives, the work of the Select Committee [on Homeland Security] is complicated by the fact that it has fifty members, most of whom are powerful chairmen of standing committees. ...[The] members seem more intent on ensuring that the new committee does not encroach on their turf, rather than working toward the special committee's mandate. The result is that DHS officials end up practically living on Capitol Hill, responding to legislative inquiries ..."

Why can't Congress set aside these turf fights and jurisdictional elbowing and focus on chemical plants and their security immediately?

REP. COX: This turf problem is near and dear to my heart and I want to address it. But I want to go back first to the little bullet you had about the chemical industry. The chemical industry supports, as far as I know, the Markey legislation, the Corzine legislation, what the White House is proposing. The chemical industry is in support of regulations so that there are standards across the board so that we can protect plants. So to whomever they're donating goes either credit or demerit for that support.

MR. RUSSERT: But then nothing will happen tomorrow because of jurisdictional infighting.

REP. COX: But the jurisdiction problem is a much more serious one. When Congress reformed the executive branch it did not take the next step immediately and reform itself. I give enormous credit to the speaker of the House, Denny Hastert. We met with the president-I'm, as you know, on the House leadership, we met with the president very shortly after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and both the president and the speaker said they wanted to have single authorization and appropriation for this new department. We created the third-largest Cabinet right off of the bat. But we don't have one authorizing committee for it. We do now have one source of appropriations, of funding. Again, that was leadership in the House. The Senate followed suit. We've got to do the next thing, otherwise you're going to have the secretary of Homeland Security and all of these different important functions within that department coming up to Capitol Hill and reporting literally to every single committee and subcommittee in the Senate and almost as bad in the House.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the chemical industry wants regulations?

DR. FLYNN: Well, I think it's when you get down to the nitty-gritty that they want some standards but they're very interested in there being very minimal oversight. There are fears for costs. The chemical industry's under tremendous pressure in the international marketplace to basically stay alive, and they're very fearful that security will cost a lot.

But, Tim, I'm sure the audience listening to this at home is wondering, we're a nation at war. We had Tom Ridge stand up in front of the American people just 10 days ago and say "The terrorists are here. They're planning attacks potentially before the next election," and it sounds like business like usual in Washington. This is something we need to confront. There are men dying overseas and women dying overseas for the war on terrorism but we're not taking near the same effort here at home.

In the final-I am an optimist about this. This is not-there's scary stuff in this book, but I believe what we haven't done is draw on the strength of our society. We're a great society. We had a great generation. In your book you talked about your father's generation, how everybody chipped in. We can deal with this problem. I draw inspiration from the words of a president who dealt with the greatest crisis of the nation, when he said this, that "Dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with uncertainly and we must rise with the occasion. As the case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." That was Abraham Lincoln in December, 1862 in a letter to Congress. We must act anew, we must think anew about this vital threat.

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman, why not tomorrow say, "Never mind this process and this infighting. Let's today protect our chemical plants and pass regulations which will help make America safer"?

REP. COX: Well, as Rodney King said, "Why can't we all just get along?" It's a wonderful sentiment. We've got to, however, move legislation through the process. I think what we're focusing attention on here is that reform of Congress and the way Congress is organized is as vitally important as was reform and overhaul of the executive branch.

But to return to a point we opened with, we have accomplished an extraordinary amount in a very short period of time. It took me 10 years to privatize the national helium reserve, which I did with Barney Frank and Bernie Sanders, the only Socialist member of Congress. We had bipartisan support. It took a decade. Look at what we've accomplished in just three years since September 11 in standing up the Department of Homeland Security, in 60 percent increase in what the FBI is doing, likewise with the Coast Guard and port security. We're spending more than 1,000 percent increased dollars on first responder grants for homeland security. We've got counterterrorism support for countries around the world. We've got the first international maritime regulations in history with countries all over the world now subscribing and beginning to implement these changes. None of this would have been possible if we weren't thinking anew. I think the president's leadership on this has been decisive and strong, eliminating al-Qaeda, taking care of terrorist havens, having an offense as well as a defense. All of these are important pieces and yet we have miles to go.

MR. RUSSERT: Let's hope it all works. Congressman Chris Cox, Dr. Stephen Flynn, thank you very much.

DR. FLYNN: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Next up, George W. Bush vs. John F. Kerry. Then our MEET THE PRESS Minute: kids campaigning for their dads. All that coming up right here on MEET THE PRESS.