Homeland Security Week
- Americans still confident government can prevent future terrorist attacks
- Bush appoints transportation security chief
- Transportation picks search firm to hire federal security directors
- Report: significant changes in anti-terrorism plans necessary
- Marines' martial arts training aims to make the tough tougher
- Senate bill beefs up federal oversight of port security
- This week's column: Whole new defense debate
- In Other News: The week's top stories from other publications
- Quote of the week
1. Americans still confident government can prevent future terrorist attacks
Although most Americans think it is likely that more acts of terrorism could happen, they also have confidence that the government can protect people from future attacks, a mid-December poll from the Associated Press suggests.
Seventy percent of respondents said they thought terrorist attacks against major U.S. cities, buildings or national landmarks were likely in the near future; 27 percent did not think more attacks were likely.
Eighty-five percent said they had confidence in the U.S. government to protect its citizens from future attacks. And 56 percent said things in the United States were headed in the right direction.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010202njcom1.htm
2. Bush appoints transportation security chief
By Jason Peckenpaugh
President Bush appointed John Magaw as the Transportation Department's first undersecretary for transportation security late Monday.
Bush installed Magaw through a recess appointment, which allows Magaw to stay on the job until the end of the congressional session. Magaw had his Senate confirmation hearing on Dec. 20 but was not confirmed before the Senate adjourned. The recess appointment allows Magaw to begin work now without Senate confirmation, which could not have come until Jan. 23 at the earliest.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010802p1.htm
3. Transportation picks search firm to hire federal security directors
By Jason Peckenpaugh
The Transportation Department has hired Korn/Ferry International, a Los Angeles-based executive recruitment firm, to help find federal security directors to head security operations at the nation's 419 airports, agency and company officials said Tuesday.
Airports must have federal security directors under the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which became law in November. Korn/Ferry will initially recruit security directors for the 81 largest airports across the country. Salaries for directors will range from $108,400 to $150,000, according to the job announcement.
Candidates for security director positions can register and fill out an application questionnaire online at a Web site created by Korn/Ferry.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010802p2.htm
4. Report: significant changes in anti-terrorism plans necessary
By Liza Porteus, National Journal's Technology Daily
Significant changes need to be made within federal, state and local governments to counter terrorism and to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, according to a study publicly released on Tuesday and sent to the White House a day earlier.
The report of the Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security Task Force offers 25 recommendations on how to take a more proactive approach to protecting the nation's computer networks and improving intelligence-gathering, information systems and surveillance systems. Comprised of experts from all levels of government, including several governors, and industry, the task force also stressed that civil liberties can be upheld while increasing anti-terrorism efforts.
"We believe it's possible to achieve a balance between security and liberty," Heritage Vice President Kim Holmes said during a news conference Tuesday.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010802td3.htm
5. Marines' martial arts training aims to make the tough tougher
By Stuart Taylor, National Journal
QUANTICO, Va.--Capt. Louis E. Isabelle is in the ring, pounding furiously at Staff Sgt. Clive D. Mitchell. Fending off most of the blows with his heavy gloves, the sergeant gives as good as he gets. A few feet away, about 10 other members of Isabelle's "team" shout out repetitions as they struggle through a succession of drills designed to be not merely strenuous, but impossible: more 50-pound-weight curls, more "Korean jumping jacks," more "Australian push-ups," more contortions of other varieties than even an iron man could do in the time allotted. Buckets of sweat pour down heavily muscled arms and chests. The roar is deafening.
Boxing gloves and padded headgear are not the weapons that any Marine would choose for jobs such as hunting down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or executing amphibious landings on hostile shores. But in the fog of war, close-in combat is always a possibility, notes Lt. Col. George H. Bristol, "starting with assault-rifle fire at maybe 10 yards and moving in to where you're fighting with the weapon, being up in an enemy's face and having to either smash him or take him to the ground to finish him off."
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010402nj2.htm
6. Senate bill beefs up federal oversight of port security
By Jason Peckenpaugh
Legislation passed by the Senate last month would put the federal government in charge of regulating security at the nation's 361 seaports. The bill (S. 1214) does not give Uncle Sam operational control of seaport security, a move that would involve taking jurisdiction from port authorities, which fall under the jurisdiction of state and local governments. Instead, the legislation requires the Transportation Department to approve security plans drawn up by the nation's seaports. The bill also earmarks more than $150 million to the two federal agencies with a role in seaport security, the Coast Guard and the Customs Service, to hire new personnel.
The federal government must have oversight powers to create a nationwide maritime security strategy, according to Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. "Essentially, where seaports are concerned, we have abrogated the federal responsibility of border control to the states and the private sector," Graham said on the Senate floor Dec. 20.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010402p1.htm
7. This week's column: Whole new defense debate
By George C. Wilson, National Journal
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that "the Congress shall have power to ... provide for the common defense." As this traumatic year of 2001 ends, it is obvious that terrorist Osama bin Laden has changed the working definition of "common defense" and what the lawmakers should do to provide for it.
If there were any doubts about this, the current debate on how Congress should spend taxpayer money to combat bin Laden and company should dispel them. Right now, for example, senators and representatives are struggling to find the middle ground between doing too little and doing too much to protect a democracy that is vulnerable anywhere and everywhere.
Full column: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/010802db.htm
8. In Other News: The week's top stories from other publications
USA Today reported Jan. 8 that key members of the House Armed Services Committee have asked the Defense Department and the General Accounting Office "to determine the extent of management and misconduct problems in the National Guard's upper echelons." In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and GAO, Reps. John McHugh, R-N.Y. and Vic Snyder, D-Ark., said that the problems "raise important questions about the readiness of the National Guard as the nation enters a challenging phase in the war on terrorism." USA Today last month "revealed numerous instances of serious misconduct, including criminal activity, among top Guard commanders around the USA."
Knight-Ridder News Service reported Jan. 8 that the deliberate crash of a plane in downtown Tampa, Fla., "has exposed a potential weakness in national security plans in the aftermath" of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Despite increased security measures, military jets sent to intercept the Cessna 172 failed to reach it before it crashed into the 42-story Bank of America building. ... Similarly, military jets reached the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after hijackers crashed jetliners into those buildings. In both cases, the fighter jets were from bases hundreds of miles away, instead of from nearby bases."
"Of 10,000 people who may have been exposed to anthrax during the recent attacks, fewer than 2 percent have taken the anthrax vaccine, a figure that reflects postal employees' deep reluctance to enroll in a medical experiment," according to federal health officials, The New York Times reported Jan. 8. The postal workers "were so unwilling that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considered asking them to enroll in a second study to explore their reasons for refusing the vaccine. But the agency deemed the plan too politically sensitive, and it was dropped."
"In an unusual show of solidarity, African-American civil rights activists and Muslim leaders plan to march" in D.C. next week "to protest racial profiling and other alleged violations of civil liberties," The Detroit News reported Jan. 8. The march, planned for Jan. 19 to coincide with Martin Luther King day, "is the highest-profile evidence yet that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have nurtured a blossoming alliance between people of African and Arabic descent."
"I know you, like I, have asked yourselves what we could have done better to help prevent the attacks in the first place."
--FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, in a memo informing agency executives that they would not receive bonuses.