ARTICLE

October 2004

Security Beat

by Joe Pappalardo

Homeland Security Dept. Finances Found in Disarray
The Department of Homeland Security is having a difficult time integrating the financial management systems of its agencies, a dilemma that is leading to a lack of internal controls and reliable reporting, according to the Government Accountability Office.

DHS inherited many of the internal control problems of the 22 agencies placed under its banner in 2003. Among the biggest offenders is the Coast Guard.

GAO reported 30 weaknesses in DHS agency accounting, nine of which have been subject to specific action to resolve them.

The absence of standard operating procedures, the report noted, was “not unexpected for a newly created organization, especially one as large and complex as DHS.” However, many bureaus do not have clearly documented procedures, making them vulnerable to confusion when key people leave.

GAO also noted that the department’s security program management, system software and control of system access are hampering financial reporting. For example, the accounting process at the Strategic National Stockpile was “fragmented and disconnected,” which is leading to the under-accounting of $485 million in 2003, the watchdog agency said.

At the DHS Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, GAO described the process for tracking and reporting the status of applications as “inconsistent and inefficient.”

The Coast Guard was cited for several lapses in financial oversight. The agency was unable to support the recorded value of $2.9 billion in property and equipment because of insufficient documentation. A similar problem exists with operating materials and supplies, which left a $497 million gap in justifying costs to auditors.

GAO recommended that Congress enact legislation to designate the DHS as a Chief Financial Officers Act agency, which would force it to restructure management to include financial officers and conduct annual audits in the same manner as large corporations.

In an official response to the report, DHS Chief Financial Officer Andrew Maner agreed with most of the findings, and noted that the department is “in the early phase of amalgamating redundant financial management systems” and in 2005 and 2006 will be implementing new management software called eMerge2.

The specifications underlying that program, Maner said, would bring DHS into compliance with the CFO Act and other financial responsibility legislation.

Effort Underway to Boost Bioscience Security
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is developing an interactive teaching module to introduce security issues to bioscience researchers.

The non-profit group, based in Washington, D.C., is soliciting the bioscience community for case studies on which to base the interactive module. Once completed, the materials will be provided to graduate programs across the country. The lessons will focus on security in the research environment and expositions on dual-use concerns.

“I have spoken with some researchers around the country, and I am under whelmed by the response of the community to the security risks,” said Stephanie Loranger, who runs the program at FAS. “I am sure it will take time for the community to really appreciate the risks, but I worry that before that happens, there will be another biological weapons attack and Congress and the administration will respond with overly-aggressive security regulations and restrictions.”

Loranger noted that, unlike the nuclear physics research community, few researchers in the biological sciences have experience with national security issues, security agencies or classified research programs.

“The basic fear is that there are agents and materials in legitimate labs that terrorists want to perpetrate biological weapons attacks,” she said. “However, these same agents and materials are needed by legitimate scientists for developing treatments and therapeutics for human diseases ...The free exchange of information is fundamental to the advancement and culture of science.”

FAS received a grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York to develop and implement the teaching module. The group is accepting case studies from the bioscience community for use in the interactive portions of the project. The goal is to have two modules ready to be released in early spring 2005, which would be in time for them to be tested at graduate schools.

To submit a case study, FAS contact Loranger at FAS’ offices in Washington, or by email at sloranger@fas.org.

Corporate Supporters of Terror States Under Scrutiny
The flow of investment money to regimes that the U.S. government says support terrorism is coming under increasing scrutiny.

In August, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., sent letters to governors and state fund managers that decried the funneling of money to such regimes as “unconscionable.” In the letter, he asked state pension fund managers to provide details of investments in companies with ties to state sponsors of terrorism.

The top pension systems in the United States invested an estimated $118 billion in companies with legal sales or projects with nations such as Libya, Syria, Sudan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, according to a Center for Security Policy study.

A grass roots organization headed by Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of CSP, is aiming its effort at creating legislation prohibiting state and local public money from being invested in companies that do business with terrorist-sponsoring governments.

The legislation would be similar to an amendment Lautenberg introduced to a corporate-tax bill this year that would have blocked subsidiaries of U.S. companies from operating in terrorism-sponsoring nations. However, the measure failed.

The group, Divest Terror.org, said it is emulating a model introduced in the 1980’s to end apartheid in South Africa. The targets then, as now, are large institutional investors, especially American public pension systems and Wall Street asset managers, who pump clients’ money into companies that prop up terror sponsors. Such firms, the group says, include Hyundai, Siemens AG and Swiss bank UBS, as well as hundreds of other American and international companies.

The National Association of State Retirement Administrators complains the accusations imply that institutional investors knowingly support terrorists. The group adds that critics are not acknowledging how difficult it is to determine which companies or their subsidiaries are doing businesses with such regimes.

Cities Get Tutored on Disaster Communications
A federal program mandated to help state and local public safety officials coordinate reactions during a crisis has launched a program to increase interoperability. The goal is to implement improvements before the presidential elections, Department of Homeland Security officials said.

The initiative is being led by SAFECOM, an umbrella group run by DHS and funded by nine of its agencies. It is aimed at the top 10 cities receiving Urban Area Security Initiative money. Delegations of federal preparedness officials began to visit the cities in May. They are asking what role the federal government could play in helping communications, said Derek Orr, SAFECOM’s chief of staff, at a recent infrastructure security conference.

“We asked, can we make an improvement in three months?” he said. “We found most agencies have command level interoperability. The issue is policies and procedures.”

SAFECOM’s prescription was tabletop scenarios and systems testing, as well as helping with on-site engineering support. One particular need common to most cities was an incident command structure built to organize efforts during the chaos of a natural or manmade catastrophe.

People make the mistake of thinking every responder should be able to communicate, Orr said, while “commanders and chiefs say they need to talk to, who I say they need to talk to, when I say they need to.”

Orr added that the response from the public safety community to a proposal for a national communications system with identical standards was “a resounding ‘no.’ They want local control of their systems.”

SAFECOM currently is attempting to construct a framework that can provide the minimum amount of shared standards while retaining interconnects between systems. Work on applying shared standards has been going on for decades, Orr noted, but “only since 9/11 has it truly gotten the attention it deserves and the funding it needs.”

Ridge: Media Must Prepare for Terrorist Acts
Acknowledging that the news media are a vital nexus of the nation’s information awareness, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge implored reporters to be prepared for terrorist events.

“Similar to other first responders, members of the media rush toward danger, not away from it,” he told media representatives at a Chicago roundtable. “But there may be a time when your audience needs more than the story.”

Ridge told reporters and editors that their reactions could make the difference between life and death during an attack. “They may need information beyond the ‘who, what, why, where and how’ that could be critical to minimizing damage and saving lives,” Ridge said. “We can help educate each of you so that in the event of an attack, you can react immediately.”

The Radio-Television News Directors Association, which co-hosted the workshop with the National Academy of Sciences, advised its members to pre-assign beats and specific responsibilities in the event of a number of attacks.

Since the scope of possible methods of attack is so varied, homework must be done to specialize the coverage, the association noted. Experts and sources on a wide range of topics should be identified and contacted in advance.

Above all, media staff should have disaster plans in place that ensure personal safety and newsgathering abilities are preserved. The association recommends drafting advertising and sales staff to work the phones in the newsroom, testing of vital equipment such as power generators, and performing drills to spot weaknesses in the disaster plan.

Ridge said the learning process had to be two-way. “We’re still learning how to inform the public without inciting any panic and hopefully avoiding any confusion,” he said.

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