ARTICLE

March 2003

Security Beat

by Elizabeth Book

Private Defense Information Taken off Internet
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) recently removed the biography of its commanding officer from its public Web site, citing a memorandum by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. The memo reportedly said that all private information about operational commanders and their staffs must be taken off the Internet.

Numbered fleets and all other expeditionary commands have long kept all biographical information out of the public eye, but DISA, the agency that manages satellites, telephones, and Internet connections, has up until now, not been considered expeditionary.

Though certain organizations and departments within the military services have long subscribed to the policy that no private information should be available on public websites, the practice has never been actively enforced until now, said a Pentagon source.

“You don’t want your enemy to have any information about you that could be used against us in a combat situation,” he said. “On Defense Department Web sites, it’s quite common to say who they are, who their wives are, and where they live.” That information could potentially be used in a negative way in a wartime situation, the source explained.

House Creates Select Committee on Homeland Security
Instead of having homeland security issues handled within existing committees, the House of Representatives created a Select Committee on Homeland Security, chaired by Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif. Cox has served as vice chairman of the Government Reform Committee, chairman of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the Peoples’ Republic of China, and vice chairman of the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Cox also has held the elected chairmanship of the House Policy Committee, where he had oversight of U.S. policy toward Russia and North Korea, since 1994.

Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ind., said: “Overseeing the House implementation of the Homeland Security Department is one of the most important issues before the 108th Congress. I can think of no one better equipped to tackle this challenge.”

“Speaker Hastert’s creation of the Select Committee on Homeland Security is a wise decision given the President’s massive reorganization of the nation’s homeland security forces. The committee will provide needed oversight of this process and I look forward to working with the committee in partnership to ensure our civilian and military forces have the resources they need,” said freshman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

Physician Assertiveness Will Prevent Outbreaks of Illness
The ability to prevent people from getting ill after a biological or chemical agent attack does not just depend on the types of detectors installed in cities, said an expert. Just as important are “disease surveillance and integrated communication within the medical system,” said Erik Henchal, the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

“Within the medical community, what we say is, ‘Don’t depend upon environmental detection, pay attention to disease surveillance, because we believe that detectors may not work, may not be able to detect the limited use of a biological warfare agent,’” he told reporters at a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C. “What we have to then pay attention to is, ‘Are we starting to get unusual outbreaks of disease?’”

For example, when a physician notes the existence of an unusual pneumonia or respiratory disease, he should not simply expect that it is an anomaly in his locality. He can actively seek out information and communicate with other clinics that may have the same experience.

“Somebody has got to do the detective work to put that together,” Henchal said. “The laboratory’s role at that point is to take those medical specimens and…use confirmatory diagostics to try” to determine the presence of an agent and “confirm it to a level of high confidence.”

He said that as far as detectors are concerned, those would have to be “where the cloud is, wherever it is that the agent is being dispersed.” He said that a lot of the original detectors, especially for the military, were built on the concept of a “big Soviet-style air strike spreading a cloud of disease.”

A more modern scenario “may be six North Africans making ricin in an apartment and going after individual targets,” he noted. “Those scenarios are going to be much more difficult to detect if we rely on environmental screening as our trigger to future analysis,” Henchal said.

Navy Steps Up Deployment of Air Defense System
Pressing ahead with deployment of its Area Air Defense Commander (AADC) Capability system, the Navy is working on an advanced battlespace management package designed for both forward-deployed operations and homeland defense.

The Naval Sea Systems Command awarded a contract to General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, a subsidiary of Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics Corporation, to continue low-rate production and provide engineering support for the system. If all options are exercised, the contract will have a cumulative value of more than $45 million.

The AADC system already is installed on the USS Mount Whitney, a Second Fleet command ship, USS Blue Ridge, a Seventh Fleet command ship, and USS Shiloh, an Aegis-class cruiser. In coming years, the Navy wants to place similar systems on at least 17 other ships and land-based training and testing facilities.

AADC uses commercial off-the-shelf technology to allow joint task force commanders to quickly plan and coordinate air defense across broad operational areas. The system combines information from datalinks into an easily understood graphic representation of the theater, which could be the Persian Gulf or a terrorist-threatened U.S. Atlantic coastline.

Friendly forces, hostile aircraft, and cruise and theater ballistic missiles are identified, and their headings and impact zones are indicated in near real time, providing officers with a wide view of the action. AADC uses wide-screen, high-definition displays—supplied by Silicon Graphics Inc., of Mountain View, Calif.—that show the battlespace three-dimensionally.

“Although previous systems provided military planners with slices of data, the capability to view an entire theater’s air-defense picture did not exist prior to AADC,” said Bill Evans, AADC program manager at General Dynamics.

Avoid ‘Analysis Paralysis,’ DHS Workers Advised
With the new Department of Homeland Security scheduled to stand up on March 1, Secretary Tom Ridge urged the 170,000 employees of the 22 federal agencies that will be merged together not to fall victim to “analysis paralysis.”

Whenever a merger occurs in the private sector, employees inevitably turn their attention from their day-to-day duties, and start wondering what the changes will mean to them: Where will they work? Who will be their boss? What changes will take place in their workplace?

“Don’t worry too much about those issues,” Ridge told a recent town-hall meeting for future DHS employees in Washington, D.C. “I think that everyone understands that for a year after their unit or department moves into the Department of Homeland Security, everything about them remains the same—their pay, benefits, etc.

“There is this great concern that there will be this massive dislocation of people,” Ridge said. “But by and large, people at the borders will stay at the borders. People at the ports are going to stay at the ports … We want people to remain at their stations.”

Ridge dismissed concerns that the new department would seek to undermine collective bargaining and civil-service protections. The department would recognize all existing civil-service guarantees, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Hatch Act and whistleblower protection, he said. Employees who were in collective–bargaining units before the merger will stay in such units, he said.

But employees of new agencies in the department—such as the Transportation Security Administration, which was created after the 9/11 airline hijackings—may not receive as many protections. In January, James Loy, undersecretary of transportation for security, banned collective bargaining by 56,000 newly hired TSA airport screeners.

“Mandatory collective bargaining is not compatible with the flexibility required to wage the war on terrorism,” he said. “Fighting terrorism demands a flexible work force. That can mean changes in work assignments and other conditions of employment that are not compatible with the duty to bargain with labor unions.”

That view was challenged immediately by the American Federation of Government Employees, which filed suit in federal court to have the ban overturned. “TSA’s broad and highly questionable personnel authority certainly does not include taking away first-amendment rights,” said AFGE President Bobby L. Harnage.

Congressman Wants Nanoscience Advisory Board
Rep. Michael Honda, D-Calif., introduced legislation to establish a national nanoscience and nanotechnology advisory board, as part of a national nanotechnology coordination office, within the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.

A nanometer is a unit of measurement approximately 10-9 microns long. Using nanotechnology, it is possible to stack molecules tightly to create almost impenetrable, self-repairing, self-sensing or self-adapting materials, suitable for homeland security defense applications.

The advisory board would be comprised of 20 members appointed by the president from industry and academia, and would advise the president and Congress on research investment strategy, policy, objectives, and oversight related to the federal government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

This bill would create an advisory board of experts who would help articulate short-term, medium-range, and long-range goals and objectives. The board would also submit an annual report to the president and Congress regarding nanotechnology progress.

“The nanotechnology industry could become one of the new engines of our economy, and will have a dramatic impact on society,” said Honda. “It is of utmost importance that the United States lead in the development of the nanotechnology industry. My legislation will make sure that the federal government has an aggressive, achievable and measurable plan,” he said.

Former General Dynamics Chief Named S&T Head at DHS
The White House announced that Charles E. McQueary would serve as the first under secretary for science and technology in the newly established Department of Homeland Security (DHS). McQueary recently retired as president of General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems. Prior to his work at General Dynamics, he worked at AT&T/Lucent Technologies, serving several capacities, such as president and vice president, from 1987 to 1997.

McQueary is a former member of the board of directors of the National Defense Industrial Association. An engineering graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, he earned a B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering, folllowed by a PhD in engineering mechanics.

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