ARTICLE

May 2003

Security Beat

by Elizabeth Book

Weldon Organizes Homeland Security Caucus
The House of Representatives is planning to create a homeland security caucus in an effort to shape homeland security legislation, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn, announced in a recent speech.

The caucus will be an outlet for the members of the House’s Select Committee on Homeland Security and others to debate issues and push legislation.

Weldon—who is vice-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security—will co-chair the caucus with Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash.

Weldon said he met with both Republican and Democrat congressmen to discuss priorities for the bipartisan working group.

“I am fully confident that once this is up and running, the homeland security caucus will be one of the most active and effective caucuses on Capitol Hill,” he said. “Clearly, the new caucus will bolster our efforts to draw on the experiences and knowledge of members from across the country.”

Los Alamos Lab Opens Homeland Security Center
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has opened a Center for Homeland Security, which will serve as a contact hub for government organizations needing assistance with their projects on homeland security.

The center will concentrate on science, technology and analysis relevant to national security, said John Browne, director of the laboratory. Los Alamos is one of three national laboratories operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The center will focus on critical infrastructure protection, radiological and nuclear programs, chemical and biological defense, and the National Infrastructure and Simulation Center.

The center will provide essential contact points for agencies working with and within the Department of Homeland Security, according to Thomas Meyer, who will the center’s director.

Meyer is an 11-year veteran of the laboratory and most recently was assigned as director of the advanced technologies office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Washington, D.C.

The center will ensure that “government agencies needing our assistance are immediately connected with the right people,” said Browne.

Secrecy in Anti-Terror War Stifles Science
The federal government’s efforts to protect the United States against terrorist attacks are having “profound effects” on the climate for scientific research in this country, warned Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The war against terrorism is changing the research and development priorities of federal agencies, national laboratories, universities and private corporations, Teich said.

Even though the government is pushing science and technology as necessary ingredients to fight the anti-terrorism war, both at home and abroad, “it is developing policies that could cause serious, long-term damage to the science and technology enterprise,” Teich charged. He spoke at a seminar sponsored recently by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, in Arlington, Va.

Resulting from those policies, Teich said, is “a growing atmosphere of secrecy and nationalism in this country that poses the most serious challenge to the traditional values of openness and free communication in science that we have seen in many years.”

The large number of foreign students pursuing science and engineering degrees in U.S. universities—widely regarded as an asset to national research capabilities—is viewed as a threat in some quarters, Teich said.

He said that the notion of “sensitive but unclassified” information—a term used during the Cold War is resurfacing, and “it is being applied to some areas of basic research.”

Medical Research Focuses on Bioterrorism
Research and development in bio-terrorism this year is top of the list, diverting funding from other core medical research, said Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The spending for counter-terrorism research and development has shot up from $500 million in fiscal year 2002 to $3 billion in 2003. About half of the $3 billion was to be devoted to bio-terrorism R&D, he said.

A large part of these funds—the share for the National Institute of Health—was not added on to the NIH budget, Teich said. The secretary of homeland security has been given joint authority with the secretary of health and human services to set priorities for bio-terrorism, he said. “How this is going to work in practice is not yet clear.”

So far, bio-terrorism projects have displaced other priorities at the NIH. Specifically, Teich said, about half of the planned increase for studies of AIDS, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other areas of basic biomedical research was redirected to bio-terrorism research.

At the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, priorities also are shifting from naturally occurring conditions—such as tuberculosis, heart disease, cancer and stroke—to bio-terrorism, Teich said.

Terrorism Prevention Center Will Help First Responders
First responders and emergency planners now can tap into a national, internet-based network to share information about counter-terrorism and consequence management.

The Oklahoma City-based National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) and DFI International, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., teamed up to establish this network, whose services will be free of charge.

“We know a great deal about preventing, deterring or mitigating the effects of terrorism,” but the lessons and exercises “are scattered in numerous sites across the country,” said Dennis Reimer, director of MIPT.

The institute, established through private and public grants after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, will work with DFI to collect information, which will be placed in a standardized format.

Emergency responders will have instant access on the internet to the “lessons learned,” Reimer said.

First responders will also be able to benefit from “best practices advice” in various situations, Reimer said. These tips will be generated from comprehensive research and analysis that will have the input from individual first responders and emergency planners around the country, he said.

The network will be operational within 12 months, according to Reimer.

Visa Backlogs Grow for Foreign Scientists, Students
Two new antiterrorism laws are creating unreasonable backlogs and delays for foreign scientists and students seeking to enter the United States, said Albert Teich, director of science and policy programs for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Nearly a third of all doctoral degrees awarded in this country each year go to foreign nationals, Teich said. Most of them remain in the United States after completing their studies, making “an enormous contribution to U.S. science and technology,” he said. “More than a third of U.S. Nobel Laureates are foreign born.”

Before passage of the two laws—the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002—it generally took a foreign student no longer than 30 days to get a visa. Today, visa applications from 26 Arab and Muslim nations are required to receive special FBI security checks before approval, no matter how long it might take, Teich said. Since last summer, consular officers have been applying this procedure to applicants from many countries beyond the 26, including China, he said.

Intelligence Gathering Techniques Have Changed
“We do not have good intelligence primarily, because for a very long time it was illegal to have good intelligence,” Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told a conference on Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict organized by the National Defense Industrial Association.

For example, Ledeen said that on September 10, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigations was “not permitted to clip newspaper articles about openly violent anti-American organizations.”

The intelligence community can’t be transformed easily because for 20 years, it could not report information, even if they discovered it “because the political leaders were not prepared to take action,” he said. “Not only were they not prepared to take action, they did not want to hear about this stuff. This makes them look bad.”

On the delivering end of intelligence, Ledeen said, people from other countries have learned not to help Americans, “because helping Americans means a threat to their lives.”

“You must act in order to get intelligence, and then they will start to give you the information,” he said. For example, special operators “will have to fight for their ability to get in, and get involved, and get engaged, even when the intelligence system is not good enough, theoretically because the only way the intelligence is going to be good is paradoxically if you jump in. There is a certain amount of jumping that is going to have to happen,” Ledeen said.

Government Must Set Priorities
The most pressing needs for homeland defense are new measures to protect mass transit and maritime security, actions to prevent radiological and biological terrorism, and stronger protection against possible attacks on chemical plants, said David Isenberg, a senior analyst for the British American Security Information Council.

Isenberg brought up these points in his new book, “Less Talk, More Walk: Strengthening Homeland Security Now,” published by the Center for Defense Information.

“There’s an old saying that military historians like: ‘He who tries to defend everything ends up defending nothing,’” he said.

Isenberg said the key in securing the homeland is to focus spending and political effort on the near-term threats, rather than diffusing efforts by trying to address everything at once.

“You have to, rather cold-heartedly, think what would do the greatest harm to the population, and then make prioritizes based on that,” he said.

Rep. Thornberry Heads Subcommittee on Cyber-Security
Texas Republican Congressman Mac Thornberry has been appointed chairman of the homeland security subcommittee on cyber-security, science, and research and development.

The subcommittee will oversee the Homeland Security Department’s efforts to identify cyber vulnerabilities and ensure that the information and communications infrastructure is protected from any attacks.

The subcommittee will also make sure that the homeland security department employs research and development programs that will result in the necessary technology for the first responder and counter-terrorism community.

Key to both of these efforts, Thornberry said, will be working with the private sector.

“It is very important that we create a new partnership between government and industry to protect our infrastructure from cyber-attacks,” he said in a statement.

The subcommittee is part of the new select committee on homeland security. Thornberry will also serve on the subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness and Response and the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism.

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