Restoring Lives, Remaking Government

n the year since foreign terrorists ended more than 3,000 lives and changed many millions more, thousands of stories have been written about the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

The most compelling are about people-firefighters, innocent victims in New York and Washington, young American soldiers in faraway Afghanistan, families struggling to carry on without loved ones lost in the attacks.

Arguably more important are stories about our institutions, for in these we discern currents of change in our society that will affect us all for years to come.

In this issue, we have picked up strands of both stories: the personal and the institutional. We lead the magazine with an intimate look at one small group of co-workers and friends whose offices were just one floor above American Airlines Flight 77 as it slammed into the Pentagon. Katherine Peters interviewed the survivors of that office, and tells the story of friends and colleagues lost, of injury and recovery, of the twist of fate that brought violence and tragedy to civilian workers whose specialty was personnel.

The terrorist attacks challenged the institutional framework of our government, and it is here that we at Government Executive have concentrated our energies.

In this issue, Jason Peckenpaugh takes a look at the many problems attending large-scale reorganizations, and concludes that creating a well-run Homeland Security Department is the work of years, not months. Matthew Weinstock examines progress in creating the Transportation Security Administration, an important element of the proposed new department, detailing its budget overruns and staffing problems. Weinstock observes that the new TSA faces the same conflicts between law enforcement (keeping malefactors away from airplanes) and customer service (letting people get on without untenable delays) that have afflicted such other agencies as the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service, which also are headed for the new department. Conflicts exist too, as George Cahlink reports, in the missions of the Army National Guard and its Air Force counterpart: They are trained for combat roles but now are being deployed for domestic security functions all but prohibited by law. A wholesale restructuring of the Army National Guard would be required if its principal responsibility were changed to homeland security.

The Posse Comitatus law that prevents the National Guard from undertaking domestic law enforcement duties has parallels in the world of intelligence. The laws in this arena reflect our longstanding resistance to having the CIA involved in domestic affairs, and our desire to have the FBI stay focused on catching criminals. These agencies have not shared information, and neither one has responsibility for domestic intelligence, or assessing internal threats. The new Homeland Security Department will be just a "bare beginning" toward creating a capability like that of Britain's M-5 domestic intelligence service, writes intelligence expert Gregory F. Treverton in this issue. Shane Harris reports in this issue that even agencies not constrained by law will have great difficulty establishing effective data-sharing systems, afflicted as they are by ancient systems, disparate work processes, security problems and a history of failure with large-scale information technology investments.

A year after the fact, we honor the courage and heroism of the people directly involved in coping with last year's terrorist attacks. One wonders how many years will pass before we can similarly celebrate the people responsible for organizing our country's institutional response.