Government Executive - Authors - Deborah Shapley

Defense authorization stalled over disabled vets' benefits

Deborah Shapley — Fri, 18 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Conferees trying to finish the fiscal 2003 Defense authorization bill remained deadlocked Thursday over disabled veterans' benefits, leaving Congress to break until after the elections with a fiscal 2003 Defense appropriations bill, but no authorization.

The two chambers were close, having both agreed on spending figures of $393 billion-within President Bush's requested limit.

But the Bush administration has threatened a veto over plans in both bills to authorize disability pay on top of retirement pay instead of offsetting it, as is done now. The House authorization bill would fund this "concurrent receipt" only to veterans who are 60 percent disabled. The provision was projected to cost $18.5 billion over the next decade.

The Senate version applied to virtually all military retirees who get disability pay, and would cost $58 billion over the same period.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote to conferees that the federal government "simply cannot continue to add ever-expansive obligations" to the Defense budget.

"This would divert critical resources away from the war on terrorism, the transformation of our military capabilities and important personnel programs," Rumsfeld wrote.

The Defense Department now spends about $35 billion per year on military pensions and healthcare entitlements.

The Retired Officers Association has lobbied for years to get elected officials to support adding disability pay to retirement pay. House and Senate conferees apparently chose to put off approving either version, rather than answer to voters for an unpopular presidential veto.

But one champion of concurrent receipts, Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., dared the administration to go through with plans for a veto.

"The administration claims to acknowledge, honor and respect these patriots' sacrifices and touts itself as their champion," Reid told CongressDaily Thursday. "Who deserves a higher funding priority?"

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Claims of progress in Everglades restoration disputed

Deborah Shapley — Fri, 13 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Key parties with stakes in the massive $8 billion Florida Everglades restoration project weighed in Friday before Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., one of the plan's architects.

At an oversight hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, witnesses for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department cited progress, such as the fact that 75 percent of the land that must be acquired to carry out the plan had already been bought. Still, concerns surfaced about federal actions that seem to violate the 37-year plan authorized by Congress in 2000.

Dexter Lehtinen, attorney for the Miccosukee Tribe, noted that four court decisions had ruled federal government actions illegal. For example, he said, a court found the Corps' condemnation of homes in west Miami-Dade County to have been unlawful.

The Senate is backing the Corps' action in language in the fiscal 2003 Interior appropriations bill. In another case, Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service is changing water levels north and sound of the Tamiami Trail to save an endangered sparrow in contradiction to how water levels are supposed to be changed in the restoration's master plan. As a result, the tribe does not believe federal agencies will stick to the plan, Lehtinen testified.

Environmental groups have other worries about the plan. The World Wildlife Fund's Shannon Estenoz said draft regulations for implementing the plan must be changed to require independent scientific reviews and audits so that the Corps and other government agencies are not reviewing their own work. Comments on the draft rules will close Oct. 1.

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Coast Guard may get budget boost in 2004

Deborah Shapley — Tue, 03 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

A spokesman for House Transportation and Infrastructure Commitee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, said the White House made "a verbal commitment to make every possible effort to continue to increase the Coast Guard budget" when Young discussed the service's move into the Homeland Security Department in July.

Young agreed to back the move after the House bill was changed to elevate the Coast Guard within the new department and to affirm its non-security roles, such as boating safety.

"Young has been assured by the administration that the Coast Guard will be fully funded so it can do security and other missions," Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., told CongressDaily. The Coast Guard needs increases of $500 million to $1 billion a year for the next several years to overcome the effects of past underfunding and to upgrade the fleet and other systems in a 20-year, $11 billion project called Deepwater, Gilchrest said.

Congress is finalizing the Coast Guard's 2003 budget, which the administration requested at a record $7.3 billion, up from $5.7 billion in 2002. A Coast Guard spokesman said $1.3 billion of the requested increase is for new operational capacity, including $500 million for Deepwater.

Coast Guard Commandant Thomas Collins told the Reserve Officers Association in July that the Coast Guard faces "a capacity issue to deal with the full set of missions" that could take three years to solve. "We're in discussion with the administration to define exactly those levels," Collins said.

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Supplemental bill stocked with non-terror items

Deborah Shapley — Fri, 16 Aug 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Highway builders, needy college students, fishermen and a tiny town in the mountains of North Carolina are among those who will benefit from the 2002 supplemental spending bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed in the name of responding to terror-despite Bush's rejection this week of a big chunk of the $28.9 billion package.

Bush declared he would not spend $5.1 billion because "a lot of that money has nothing to do with national emergency." But the supplemental law and conference report reveal the administration as well as Congress used the anti-terror train to pull other loads. The pressure to pack the bill was great because of tight caps on agency appropriations, said Ellen Taylor of OMB Watch.

"When there are these tight situations, legislators look for any moving train to get on," Taylor said.

The supplemental's actual outlay will exceed the net $23.8 billion price tag after Bush's cuts because it commits the government to spend another $4.4 billion on highways. That money will come from the Highway Trust Fund and restores more than half of a budget cut Bush recommended in February.

The administration had proposed spreading the pain of its recommended $8.6 billion cut among the states according to a pre-existing formula. But conferees renegotiated how much states would get. They provided more money to appropriators' states-West Virginia, Kentucky, Washington, Mississippi and Alabama, according to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who called it "one of the more egregious provisions" in the conference report.

West Virginia is the home state of Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., while the Democratic Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Patty Murray represents Washington. The subcommittee's ranking member, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, represents Alabama.

The impact of the conferees' additional highway money will be felt for some time. Under the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, or TEA-21, highway spending this year provides a baseline for spending in the next five years and as a starting point for negotiations over the scheduled TEA-21 reauthorization next year.

The supplemental is packed with benefits for coastal communities as well. The measure includes more than $40 million for fishermen, fishing towns and marine researchers. New England Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who faces a competitive race for re-election, as well as Democrats worked for these measures.

Elsewhere, the administration applauded the inclusion of $1 billion for Pell grants, which help needy students go to college. House Education and the Workforce Chairman John Boehner, R-Ohio, took credit for it. OMB Director Mitch Daniels praised its inclusion while warning in June that other add-ons in the bill risked a veto, but did object to the grants being labeled an emergency.

Supplemental appropriations bills are often conduits for funds to fight fires and deal with the aftermath of flooding, and this year's was no exception. The Agriculture Department will get $94 million more for flood prevention, even after the president declined $50 million for that purpose. The Army Corps of Engineers got $108 million, including $10 million earmarked for southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia.

The tiny town of Rosman, N.C., will get $400,000 in planning funds for building a wastewater system courtesy of its House member, Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., who was a conferee on the bill. The bill also included a directive that the Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis be field-tested for finding explosives in cargo containers. One company, Ancore Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., will benefit, McCain said.

Other earmarks: the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Math and Science Education in Columbus, Ohio, a $5 million contract extension; Drexel University in Philadelphia for intelligent transportation systems, $2.7 million redirected; the National Animal Disease Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, $50 million; and mapping coral islands around the Hawaiian islands, $2.5 million.

Ironically, while adding billions for highways, floods and even security measures the president did not ask for, Congress cut $1 billion from the Transportation Security Administration, which was created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. After losing additional money in Bush's cuts, TSA will get $3.4 billion.

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Amendment bars offshore firms from defense contracts

Deborah Shapley — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, argued the provision would violate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., argued the issue was a matter for the Finance Committee and did not belong in the Defense spending measure.

But the amendment, proposed by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., was approved by a voice vote.

"We are only saying to federal contractors: Pay your fair share of taxes, as does everybody else, and for now on--December 31, 2001, and forward--any of you companies, if you want to go to Bermuda and play this shell game and renounce your citizenship, then you are not going to get our defense contracts," said Wellstone on the Senate floor.

The Senate appeared on track Wednesday evening to give its approval today to the $355.4 billion Defense bill recommended last Thursday by the Appropriations Committee.

The amount is less than the president's request and almost matches the House-passed $354.7 billion level.

Also, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered three amendments on an aircraft leasing deal the Air Force has struck with the Boeing Corporation.

Senators adopted a proposal offered by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to waive a precondition for releasing funds from the so-called Nunn-Lugar program to clean up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites in the former Soviet Union.

The administration supported Lugar's request, which would allow funds to be spent to clean up 1.9 million canisters of nerve gas stored near Moscow. The project will take at least six years.

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Homeland bill ignites race among national labs

Deborah Shapley — Wed, 24 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The compromise, which emerged from House Speaker Dick Armey's House Homeland Security Committee markup last week, may hold in the floor debate. And it would settle a backstage battle that pitted advocates for the Livermore lab-such as Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., who represents a district that contains Lawrence Livermore-against legislators who want other laboratories to have a chance to compete for the role.

When the president announced plans for the new department June 6, the entire $1.2 billion Lawrence Livermore facility was listed as part of the new department. The administration draft bill submitted later backed off the transfer, but signaled Livermore as likely to play a leading role.

Because of that, the bill now going to the House floor represents a victory for other influential labs-notably Sandia National Laboratory near Albuquerque, N.M., which is operated by Lockheed Martin Corp. for the Energy Department.

Sandia's director testified that the new department should draw on existing research centers instead of designating a headquarters lab right away. Under the House bill, the department "may" establish a headquarters lab, but does not have to do so.

In the House Armed Services and Science panel markups, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., introduced changes to let many labs compete for the role. And New Mexico's senators voiced opposition to the designation of Livermore.

Besides Sandia, Los Alamos National Laboratory is also located in New Mexico. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told CongressDaily, "I said it was not right" to endow Livermore with a lead role in advance.

The bill before the House also creates a powerful undersecretary for science and technology who will oversee the new department's research and development and coordinate with other agencies-functions that were lacking in the administration's draft.

The new department's R&D activities could represent $2.3 billion of its $37.5 billion budget, according to Kei Koizumi of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Most research will be in health and vaccines and be carried out by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Homeland Security Department undersecretary will fund the work and set priorities jointly with the Health and Human Services secretary, who oversees NIH and CDC.

As for Livermore, about $100 million of its present programs now will fall under the department, as the administration has wished.

A separate title of the bill lets the Homeland Security secretary designate Livermore or either of the other two weapons laboratories as the "primary location" for applied research and testing for ways to counter biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear terrorism.

The department may designate one of these three labs a "primary location" without going through the competitive criteria and congressional review that the bill requires for designation as a "headquarters" lab.

And with Livermore changing the signs on some of its office doors, it may gain enough momentum to become the"primary location" for countermeasures work-and then compete for headquarters lab status as well.

Tauscher said through a spokeswoman that she is "confident that Livermore will have a good chance of getting important roles" in the new department.

John Marburger, the president's science adviser, said in an interview that the White House still wants "a central location for homeland security R&D."

The language before the House "is permissive enough to let it us do this. We wouldn't want to designate a leading lab unless it fills clear criteria," he said.

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Senate panel clears $355 billion Defense bill

Deborah Shapley — Fri, 19 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday unanimously approved a $355.4 billion Defense spending bill, which emphasized military modernization and the needs of service members and their families.

The bill included 4.1 percent across-the-board pay raise for those serving in uniform.

The bipartisan bill (H.R. 5010) was approved 29-to-0 in a package with two other appropriations bills for Foreign Operations and the Commerce, Justice and State departments.

The measure is $11.4 billion less than the Bush administration requested, although $10 billion is being withheld to help cover future costs of the global war on terrorism. Committee members have said they will take up the $10 billion request when the president provides specific details.

The bill provides $7.7 billion for missile defense, with $6.9 billion of those funds directly funding ballistic missile defense programs. An additional $814 million could be allocated, at the president's discretion, to either missile defense or counter-terrorism efforts.

The committee passed an amendment proposed by Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. asking the president to come back to Congress to specify-in advance-how he planned to spend $814 million.

The bill included $71.5 billion for procurement, or $4.3 billion more than the president's request. Among the additions are: $1.4 billion in the ship building account, $586 million for 15 C-17 aircraft in addition to $3.9 billion request for just 12; $188 million more for Army aircraft, including $96 million for more Blackhawk helicopters. There is also $240 million for four F/A-18 fighters for the Navy tacked on to the $3.27 billion request for 44 of these aircraft. There is also funds for four new navy ships, submarine overhauls and other vessels and program completions totaling $9.2 billion.

Appropriators also hoped to "transform" the Army to the post-Cold War fighting environment by their boost of $105 million to the Future Combat System. This program includes the heavy artillery system known as Crusader, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced abruptly last month that he wanted to stop.

Compromises between powerful friends of the Crusader crafted in the House and by Senate authorizers, will continue development of some follow-on system at locations in Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere now working on Crusader. The committee specified that $173 million of the total Future Combat System program go for a particular indirect fire cannon, though details were not available as of Thursday evening.

Operations and maintenance is funded at $114.8 billion while research, development, test and evaluation will get $56.1 billion. The measure also provided $416.7 million for the Nunn-Lugar program to control the spread of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and $58.4 million for humanitarian assistance, foreign disaster relief and de-mining programs.

The committee also unanimously approved several other Byrd amendments. They included:

A manger's amendment specifying a dozen specific programs to be funded, such as depot maintenance in Fort Worth Texas and composite materials research.
An amendment requiring the Defense Department to report to Congress twice a year on efforts to improve financial management.
An amendment to increase basic research in the Navy by $1.5 million.

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Government Reform chairman calls for visa office move

Deborah Shapley — Wed, 10 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Burton's stand is a departure from President Bush's proposal, which would keep the visa office at the State Department but allow the new agency to offer guidelines.

Burton's panel marks up its portion of the homeland security legislation Thursday. The legislation goes before the International Relations and Judiciary committees today.

In a stinging letter to House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, Tuesday night, Burton cited an NBC report alleging a U.S. embassy employee in Doha, Qatar, had sold 70 visas to Jordanian nationals for $10,000 apiece.

One of the Jordanians apparently was the roommate of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The State Department was planning to respond to the charge Wednesday.

Burton raised two other cases of what he called mishandling of visa matters by its officers and cover-up by the State Department, arguing in the letter that the visa function must be removed from the State Department's control altogether.

Burton thus joins forces with Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., in calling for moving the visa office in the Bureau of Consular Affairs to the new department. A spokesman for the Government Reform Committee said both legislators are working to get the full committee to back the change.

"We are trying to preserve the framework the president has set and strengthen the department," said the spokesman.

The question of whether to move the visa office then would pass to Armey, who set Friday as the deadline for House committees to turn in markups of the president's proposal to his own ad hoc committee, which will decide on a final House version.

"There may be enough momentum in Government Reform to move it [the visa office] over" in the House version of the bill, said Paul Light, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

Light has testified in favor of the change, and said under section 403 of the president's bill, the new secretary of Homeland Security could issue regulations governing visa issuance through the Secretary of State.

"In practice this arrangement could be untenable--one Cabinet officer telling another Cabinet officer what to do. What Weldon is saying is: Why not just move the whole thing?" Light asked.

But Light noted that a lengthier visa issuance procedure would reverse the push in recent years to get the office to issue visas faster, because it was seen as slow and bureaucratic.

Although Light favors the change "from an organizational standpoint," he predicts the State Department will continue to resist.

The State Department "considers consular affairs [to be] core to its mission," Light observed. It believes the current director, Mary Ryan, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, "is popular" for having improved its operation. So the department will argue "she should stay and improve it further."

Light predicted that no matter what the House does, "the Senate is more likely to defer to the wishes of the State Department." It remains to be seen if revelations of new problems in its visa system will shake the Senate's faith.

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House panel examines terrorism response scenarios

Deborah Shapley — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

"Let's spin the scene of a tank truck that gets hijacked on I-95, and the hijacker has explosive material that could blow a hole in the tank," said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J. Suppose the tanker could spew out "chlorine gas that could sicken and kill a large number of people. Who would handle it?"

Stephen Cambone, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, replied that as part of the new department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service would have the job of stopping foreign terrorists from entering the country.

If they got in and hijacked a truck, he said, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement and the secretary of the Homeland Security Department would be involved. Andrews retorted that the proposal "avoids the core question of who's in charge during the precious minutes when there's an opportunity to prevent something. It [the administration's plan] creates more hurdles."

Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., asked how the plan would improve the nuclear emergency support teams' response if an illegal nuclear weapon were suspected. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., asked how the proposed department would cope if terrorists got hold of a crop duster plane and sprayed harmful chemicals on a crowd. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., asked how the plan would protect Disneyland, which is in her district.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., questioned how the plan would speed the transfer of military technology, such as sensors to detect burgeoning fires, to local responders, as he had tried to do for years.

Cambone admitted the hijacked crop duster and other scenarios were "more than appropriate concerns." But he and Gen. John Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stressed that a new department was crucial to bring the government's existing expertise together so it could react efficiently.

To legislators' concern about creating more bureaucracy, Gordon said the department "is the place to bring the threat and the vulnerabilities together. That's my definition of coherence. The people are there and the intent is there to make that part click." Gordon's NNSA manages the $6 billion nuclear weapons complex for the Energy Department.

He said the nuclear threat assessment program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which handles nuclear threats, would remain there but also report to the secretary of homeland security. So it would work more "coherently" on domestic terrorism, he said, than if it stayed in NNSA at Energy.

Also, Gordon said, the new arrangement would help scientific research to be utilized. As for speedier detection of suspected nuclear weapons, under the president's plan, the Homeland Security chief could command nuclear emergency support teams.

The same day, the administration announced plans to create a new undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. Cambone cited the job as a way to bring more coherence to Defense's sharing of intelligence with the new department and others without adding bureaucracy.

The administration's plan would move Energy programs of $218 million and Defense programs of $560 million to the new department. The two Defense programs to be moved are a new chemical and biological assessment team and a 91-person communications team. Cambone said the transfers would not amount to additions to government personnel.

But Weldon doubted the massive job of homeland security could be done without additional funds. He also expressed concern about ensuring that raw intelligence is mined and sifted better. "Nothing else is more important than intelligence, as [Rep.] John Spratt [D-S.C.] said," Weldon noted.

Armed Services Chairman Bob Stump, R-Ariz., said the committee would report on its part of the administration plan by July 12. House leaders say they can finish action on the whole proposal by mid-July.

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House panel approves Defense spending bill

Deborah Shapley — Tue, 25 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The House Appropriations Committee raced through the fiscal 2003 Defense spending bill Monday night at the breakneck speed of $18.6 billion per minute.

A grand total of $354.7 billion was approved for the upcoming year just 19 minutes after Appropriations Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., gaveled the meeting to order.

The full panel followed the direction of its Defense Subcommittee almost to the last decimal point, unanimously adopting only two technical amendments and a third from Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Fla., to provide for research on pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, which mainly affects African-American men.

Notably the committee adopted a deal that ends the Army's controversial Crusader artillery system but adds $173 million for a future combat system for indirect-fire artillery.

In May, the Bush Administration, facing a total program cost of $11 billion, announced it would cancel the Crusader. Lawmakers and some in the Army protested that they were not consulted, and the Senate adopted a compromise along these lines last week.

Development of technology will continue, notably in Minnesota. Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., spoke in support of the deal, as did Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, who nonetheless warned that the new system was undefined. He said he hoped the administration could have something buildable in "12 to 28 months."

The Appropriations Committee shifted the president's priorities a bit on other items, netting $2.1 billion less than the $356.8 billion the administration had requested. Funds were added for four KC-130 tankers, more Predator aerial vehicles and combat air patrol craft.

The total did not include the $10 billion contingency fund that President Bush had sought, but the House will act on it separately. When the appropriators get around to disbursing the contingency money among defense accounts, the House total will exceed the President's request, said Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.

The House defense total is more than half the $748 billion in discretionary budget authority passed by the House. Appropriators warned the total could change later in the session, because the Senate ceiling for discretionary spending is different, and the two will have to be reconciled.

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Senate votes to let Army study Crusader alternatives

Deborah Shapley — Thu, 20 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Although the Crusader system was strongly defended by some senators --particularly those from Oklahoma and Minnesota, where major components are made --most of the argument on the floor focused on the process.

The administration had requested $475.6 million for the United Defense-produced system for its fiscal 2003 defense authorization. But just as House and Senate panels were marking up their bills, Rumsfeld said he was terminating the program.

Because of the timing of Rumsfeld's action, the Senate committee kept the Crusader funds in the bill on floor this week. But Senate Armed Services Chairman Levin offered an amendment that would redirect the $475.6 million to other Army indirect fire support programs after the Army completed its study of alternatives.

But the Senate accepted by voice vote an amendment by Armed Services ranking member John Warner, R-Va., that would allow Rumsfeld to reallocate the Crusader funds after notification. Warner said that amendment would remove a Bush administration veto threat.

Meanwhile, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee --meeting in closed session Wednesday --also was working on a related compromise, approving language under which the Army would begin planning a lighter, less expensive artillery system.

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Ships, ports called vulnerable to terrorists

Deborah Shapley — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

House Armed Services Special Merchant Marine Oversight Panel Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said at a hearing he plans to propose measures to lure ship owners away from the notoriously lax "flag of convenience" system used by most of the world's commercial fleet.

A new merchant marine policy, Hunter said, could include a flat tax on tonnage instead of regular corporate income taxes. Denmark and the United Kingdom have increased their merchant fleets by 40 percent by this and other measures.

The hearing was sparked by reports that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has used merchant ships to ferry arms and operatives.

Over the past two decades, the U.S. ship owners have followed those in other advanced nations ands registering their vessels with flag of convenience states such as Panama and Liberia.

Less than 10 percent of freight that arrives or leaves U.S. ports is carried in ships registered in the United States, so it is difficult for authorities to trace crews, operators and cargos of the vast majority of ships that make 51,000 calls to U.S. ports annually.

At a hearing of his Special Oversight Panel on the Merchant Marine of the House Committee on Armed Services Committee, Hunter questioned Coast Guard officials about whether they can detect chemical, biological or nuclear weapons entering U.S. waters.

Hunter also asked if terrorists masquerading as crew members then could commandeer ships carrying flammables and use them as weapons.

Rear Adm. Paul Pluta, assistant Coast Guard commandant, gave no guarantees. U.S. authorities decide which ships are suspect based on information they provide 96 hours in advance; checking foreign crew members' identities is a "flawed process," he admitted.

Other witnesses said it would be hard to assure that ships entering U.S. waters are terrorist-free without also cleaning up the entire merchant marine industry.

Peter Morris, chairman of the watchdog International Commission on Shipping, charged the industry is "built on deception, fraud and abuse." His group and others have has tried to assure that crewmembers are not "slave labor" and are properly trained. For example, Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., a member of the panel, charged that shipmasters' licenses could be bought on the black market in some countries for $2,000.

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War and Aid

Deborah Shapley — Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Inside the hectic scramble to launch an aid campaign in Afghanistan and win support for the war on terrorism.

ast fall, as U.S. troops launched a war on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a battle of an entirely different sort was being waged in the White House and across several federal agencies. This campaign didn't get as much attention, but it was no less important, because it involved winning new allies in the war on terrorism with economic support, providing humanitarian relief to millions of refugees and trying to convince the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world to support the fight against terrorism.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal officials rewrote the book on how the United States should use economic, humanitarian and development aid to advance its interests.

The draft of that new book was shaped over 10 weeks by a team of crisis managers working in the marble halls of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., at the Defense Department's Central Command operations center in Tampa, Fla., and in hastily expanded U.S. offices in Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan itself was closed to the outside world-except, of course, for the U.S. troops and intelligence agents who were prosecuting the war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But U.S. civilians waging the aid war walked through camps teeming with tens of thousands of Afghan refugees on the country's border with Pakistan. They watched as local truck drivers lurched along treacherous mountain roads in one of the most isolated regions on earth, ferrying U.S.-bought food to people in grave need.

Shortly after Sept.11, President Bush decided to mount a major humanitarian assistance campaign at the same time planning began for the military campaign in Afghanistan. He specifically directed the Defense Department to drop packets of food in the country, according to a senior administration official. On Oct. 4, the President announced the United States would send a total of $320 million in humanitarian and economic aid to address food shortages in Afghanistan and in neighboring countries.

Billion Dollar Plan

Meanwhile, administration officials reached out to other heads of state to convince them to join a coalition to battle terrorism. Foreign aid became an essential part of that effort, too.

The first concern was Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan's entire southern rim and contains critical access routes to the country. The problem was that virtually all U.S. aid to the country had been cut off after the Pakistanis revealed they had conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998 and after Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999.

So it surprised many when, on Sept. 20, Musharraf announced he would support the U.S. effort. It was a risky course, since some of Pakistan's 142 million people supported the Taliban, and many more hated the United States. Musharraf's decision quickly sparked anti-American riots in Pakistan.

On Sept. 22, the Bush administration asked Congress for blanket authority to waive economic sanctions against countries whose help is needed in the anti-terror coalition. Congress quickly granted a limited form of such authority.

Four days later, the International Monetary Fund approved a $135 million loan for Pakistan, which had been woefully behind in paying off its staggering $37 billion national debt. The Treasury Department then announced it would ease terms on $379 million of Pakistan's debt to the United States, setting the stage for other nations to follow suit.

On Oct. 15 in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would provide $600 million in aid to the country in fiscal 2002, a figure that later rose to $673 million. On Nov. 10, President Bush said long-term aid for Pakistan could total as much as $1 billion.

The funds for the Bush administration's foreign aid initiatives in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 came from the $40 billion supplemental appropriations bill Congress passed on Sept. 18. The administration quickly pulled together a $1.06 billion aid package out of those funds, covering the aid packages for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and millions more for the four former Soviet states on Afghanistan's northern rim: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

While a $1.06 billion aid package doesn't compare with the $88 billion in today's dollars that the United States spent under the Marshall Plan after World War II to rebuild western Europe, it does mark a significant increase in the United States' foreign aid budget, which was an estimated $9 billion last year.

'In Permanent Session'

Last spring, Agency for International Development officials found that 10 of 12 preconditions for wide-scale famine were present in Afghanistan. In late September, as rumors that the United States was about to attack Afghanistan mounted, millions of Afghans fled their homes.

With the harsh Central Asian winter just weeks away and the prospect of a massive refugee crisis looming, federal officials swung into action from the top of the Bush administration down through the ranks of the foreign affairs bureaucracy.

"We had government in permanent session," says a senior administration official. At the top was the President, who met daily with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and other members of the National Security Council. Also meeting every day, by videoconference, was a deputies committee, consisting of the deputy secretary of State, the deputy Defense secretary, the deputy national security adviser, and No. 2 officials at other key agencies as needed.

After each deputies' meeting, a one-page summary of the group's deliberations was sent to the White House. With the deputies meeting daily at 11:30 a.m., and top-ranking officials usually meeting at night, "it was possible to do things that were needed and follow up in real time," says the senior official. "Decisions that might take three months to get through took three days or less."

As the scope of the crisis in Afghanistan became clear, the administration set up a cross-cutting Interagency Coordination Group for Humanitarian and Refugee Assistance, chaired by Paula J. Dobriansky, undersecretary of State for global affairs. The group, which met twice a week starting on Oct. 2, included representatives from the Defense Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Agency for International Development.

In late October, Dobriansky began holding weekly conference calls with her counterpart in the United Kingdom and representatives of international relief organizations, such as the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program. This was crucial in keeping Washington players abreast of international aid efforts.

Meanwhile, at the headquarters of Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., officials formed what they called a "humanitarian cell," borrowing the lingo of their terrorist foes. It included representatives from the State Department's refugee office, AID and other agencies that needed information about how to coordinate aid efforts with military operations. Another "cell" in Pakistan kept civilians who knew what was happening on the ground in close contact with the military.

Members of the Bush administration's crisis response teams describe them as a set of powerful, efficient, temporary cross-cutting groups working in a tidy chain of command. But as a former ambassador with experience in crisis management notes, "the government resorts to task forces whenever there's a crisis. The issue with them is the quality of decisions they make and whether they carry them out effectively."

Supply Surge

Many of those decisions involved getting relief supplies to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Representatives of non-governmental organizations criticized the U.S. military's efforts to drop yellow-packaged humanitarian rations into Afghanistan at the same time they were dropping bombs on the country.

Delivering meals is a very inefficient way to feed people, and it met less than 1 percent of the need. The ration packages looked somewhat similar to unexploded cluster bombs, and some had Spanish labels.

By early October, what refugees really needed were wheat supplies. Millions of people were at risk of famine in the winter. And the country was still mostly closed. But getting the wheat-a staple of the Afghan diet-to where it was needed would require some political maneuvering.

The President's $320 million aid package for Afghanistan included $95 million for wheat purchases. U.S. wheat growers groups expected that American farmers would get all of that money. But AID Administrator Andrew Natsios pushed to buy some of the wheat in Pakistan, where it could be moved much more quickly to where it was needed. The administration ultimately decided to purchase 15,000 tons of Pakistani wheat and ship more than 100,000 tons purchased from farmers in the United States to Afghanistan.

By late November, as the Taliban retreated into southern Afghanistan and the borders loosened, food ferried by trucks that made the perilous trek into the country was reaching about 4 million people, according to the World Food Program, which managed the deliveries. Many observers credit Natsios with keeping the humanitarian and foreign aid machine moving during the first 10 hectic weeks. "He is passionate and thinks a lot about moral issues," says a friend who knows Natsios from his stint running AID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the previous Bush administration.

Natsios' passion comes from personal experience; he is a native of Greece and he lost relatives to starvation during the civil war there in the late 1940s.

In the early weeks of the crisis in Afghanistan, Natsios flew into the country and toured refugee camps. Earlier, he had made a successful appearance with a notoriously difficult interviewer on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera. "I was told he thought I looked like an Arab," Natsios said after the interview.

At Natsios' side as special coordinator was Brent McConnell, who had been designated to take Natsios' old job at the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. McConnell spent 26 years in the Air Force and then worked on humanitarian aid to the former Yugoslavia, eventually becoming director of the Defense Department's Balkans task force. At the end of the Clinton administration, McConnell served as acting assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs. McConnell brought perspective to the relief effort. "None of this is new," he says. "What is new is the way the pieces are put together."

On to Nation-Building

Most of the pieces of the initial aid campaign were in place within the crucial 10 weeks after Sept. 11. U.S. officials then started looking to the next phase, which is likely to last much longer and be much more expensive. On Nov. 20, Powell told a packed State Department audience that the United States would be involved in "a reconstruction program that will take many, many years." Powell said the department would have to conduct a "comprehensive needs assessment" before the details of reconstruction could be worked out. Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program, said donor countries might have to spend a total of $6 billion. Others put the figure as high as $10 billion.

The question now is whether the large increases in foreign assistance already approved, and those likely to come, will be spent more effectively for development than in the past. Previous efforts to use U.S. aid to win political support for foreign policy goals have often been ineffective in helping countries develop their economies and help their citizens.

The $600 million that Pakistan has been promised represents a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to the country. The ability of Pakistan and other central Asian nations that are supporting the war against terrorism to absorb aid increases is very much in doubt. Indeed, the value of foreign aid was deeply questioned before Sept. 11.

The debate was sharpened by the publication of a devastating book by former World Bank economist William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth, last July. The book holds up Pakistan as an example of how development aid fails to produce economic growth or improve the lives of the poor. Easterly notes that Pakistan, supported by foreign aid, spent $8 billion on social services from 1993 to 2000. But by the end of the period, it was spending no more on health than at the outset: the cost of one bottle of Tylenol per person per year. Easterly, from his perch at a new think tank, the Center for Global Development, is skeptical that the huge sums pledged to Pakistan in the crisis will bring better results. "All the pressure that was on them to use aid to improve social indicators will be off if they know they're going to get tons of money," he says. Easterly argues the United States should wall off its geopolitical aid from economic development programs. The latter, he says, should be awarded only after the recipient has a demonstrated track record of results and should be withheld if such results are lacking.

But former AID Administrator J. Brian Atwood says aid given for political reasons isn't wasted. Egypt won very large amounts of assistance after it agreed to a peace pact with Israel in 1979. "Without our assistance, Egypt would have been on its back now," Atwood says. "But it's doing quite well." In Pakistan, he says, "it is going to take time to get development results that American taxpayers would like to see happen right away."

As the war on terrorism and its foreign aid component continue, the stakes are high for the United States. If the funds provided to Pakistan and other countries do little to improve the lives of ordinary people, we will lose credibility in the Muslim world-the opposite of the good will that assistance is supposed to buy. And while recent aid efforts in Kosovo and Ethipoia have had some success, there is no precedent for rebuilding Muslim societies that mistrust us. That campaign may be long indeed.

Deborah Shapley writes about international affairs, development, science and technology. Her most recent book is Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara(Little Brown, 1993). She can be reached at dshapley@erols.com. ]]>