Government Executive - Authors - Greta Wodele

House, Senate look to wrap up 109th Congress next week

Mark Wegner and Greta Wodele — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

A spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said adjournment for the year depends on "completing all necessary work, with the goal of being done next week." Neither the House nor the Senate appear to have the appetite to finish outstanding appropriations measures this year, and both chambers have tentatively agreed to punt them to the new Democratic majority next year.

Both chambers are expected to pass a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running into next year, and sources reported it is likely to extend to Feb. 15. Lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol are then expected to leave town, one week earlier than previously anticipated.

The House is expected to convene Tuesday morning with suspension votes scheduled later in the day. During the week, the House is expected to take up the CR and a tax extender package that is expected to include a provision to fend off a cut in Medicare physician payments. House leaders on Thursday also were considering bringing up an offshore energy production bill next week.

The Senate returns Monday to formally receive the nomination of Robert Gates to replace Rumsfeld. The Armed Services Committee is expected to begin hearings Tuesday and the Senate could vote on his nomination as early as the end of the week.

"The goal is to get him confirmed by week's end," a top aide to outgoing Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Thursday. If the Senate is unable to confirm Gates next week, Frist could call senators back for a brief session the following week.

On Tuesday, senators are expected to resume debate on the fiscal 2007 Agriculture spending measure under a previously agreed upon unanimous consent agreement. Other goals for the week include tax extenders as well as a conference report on a U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement and the U.S.-Vietnam trade deal.

"For many of these items, it will take more time to talk about all of them than it will take to act on them, but with a little bit of elbow grease and good will, the Senate can transact business on a wide swath of bills before it adjourns," said Frist's aide. Frist, who is retiring at the end of this year, is scheduled to deliver his farewell speech next week.

The outgoing majority leader announced Wednesday he would not run for president in 2008 and instead plans to return to practicing medicine.

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Lame duck session likely to last until at least mid-December

Keith Koffler and Greta Wodele — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., are working with the Appropriations Committee to finish up as many spending measures as possible next week. Frist plans to bring up the Military Construction spending measure at the beginning of the week.

The leaders also are working on an agreement to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running until Dec. 8. The current one expires Nov. 17.

The Frist aide said GOP leaders also would like to reach an agreement on a Vietnam-trade agreement. "I think we all share the goal of at least attempting to finish that legislation," the aide said. "We have a little work left to do with Democrats on that."

In a letter today to Frist, Reid said Democrats would cooperate with Republicans on three legislative fronts: appropriations, security and tax cuts. Reid said Democrats would support appropriations measures with "fair" spending levels as well as bioterrorism legislation and a package of popular tax cuts that does not include "extraneous" language.

Reid called on Frist to bring an offshore drilling measure to the floor, but the House has yet to agree to that legislation. The Senate passed it earlier this year.

At the White House, President Bush on Thursday sketched out a robust agenda for the lame duck, speaking in the Rose Garden following a Cabinet meeting and making his case privately at a breakfast meeting with House and Senate Republican leaders. Bush said he wants Congress to finish the fiscal 2007 appropriations bills rather than pass a long-term continuing resolution.

Bush also said he wants Congress to pass warrantless surveillance legislation, permanent normal trade relations for Vietnam, legislation promoting cooperation with India on civilian nuclear technology and energy legislation. Frist spoke with Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., this week about working out a House-Senate compromise on the Indian legislation that could possibly move next week.

"We're hopeful the House and Senate could act on that as quickly as common text can be produced," said the aide. After next week, senators are expected to resume the session Dec. 4 for two weeks. Frist's aide said Senate and House GOP leaders hope to finish their workload within those two weeks.

When senators return in December, they are expected to finish the remaining spending bills and possibly take up a package of popular tax extenders. Frist's office indicated hearings would be held on President Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Frist's aide said Democrats are signaling they would cooperate on confirming Gates in December. Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., told reporters he hopes the Senate will confirm Gates by the end of the year. Neither Armed Services ranking member Carl Levin, D-Mich., nor Foreign Relations ranking member Joseph Biden, D-Del., expressed any immediate concerns over the nomination, potentially paving the way for a smooth confirmation.

Senate GOP leaders are also working with Democrats to confirm John Bolton's nomination to continue as ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton's nomination was sent to the Senate this afternoon. The Frist aide did not rule out other legislative items as well, including a domestic surveillance bill and legislation to fend off a Medicare physician pay cut. House leaders were not saying much about their plans, although their agenda appeared to be shrinking.

"My feeling is this is going to be a very short lame-duck session," said one Hastert aide. Meanwhile, Bush this afternoon had lunch at the White House with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. In brief remarks to reporters afterward, he described the session as "friendly." The president meets Friday with Reid and Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

Christian Bourge and Megan Scully contributed to this report.

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Border fence vote could require Saturday Senate session

Christian Bourge and Greta Wodele — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The border bill is one of the majority leader's four goals for the week -- and his last chance to help GOP candidates running on national security issues in November, as well as his own potential 2008 White House bid. Frist told reporters the Senate could remain in session until Saturday to vote on the measure.

However, some senators and GOP aides suggested the chamber could vote earlier if Democrats agree to yield back time and if the Senate wraps up its work on Frist's three other goals: military tribunal legislation and conference reports on the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security and Defense appropriations bills.

Frist has repeatedly touted the border fence legislation as an important first step in securing the country's borders before enacting a comprehensive immigration bill. The proposal to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border has passed the House.

Senate Democrats on Thursday said they have no qualms about running down the clock on the border fence measure, refusing to vote on it earlier than Saturday. The move presumably plays into the Democrats' campaign strategy of painting the GOP-led Congress as a "Do-Nothing" Congress.

"We want to know Frist's end strategy," Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday. "There's no reason to make it easier for them. As soon as we would yield back time, he'll throw up two more bills."

Durbin said Frist would continue to bring up bills opposed by Democrats but favorable to the GOP base, such as legislation prohibiting the transfer of minors across state lines to have an abortion. Frist filed cloture on that bill Wednesday, and the Senate might vote on that measure after a final vote on the border fence bill.

Meanwhile, the Senate continued debate Thursday on the military tribunal legislation, with senators rejecting on a 51-48 vote an amendment providing enemy combatants habeas corpus, a legal avenue to challenge indefinite detainment.

In the House, GOP leaders said they also would stick around to approve a few remaining big-ticket items before heading home to court voters in their home districts. With lawmakers expected to approve the National Security Agency wiretapping legislation late this evening, the only major bills left are the Homeland Security appropriations conference report and the defense authorization conference report.

But passage of the defense authorization measure before the end of the week remains uncertain, as it appeared at presstime that Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., would hold firm on his demand the bill include unrelated provisions.

A conference report on port security legislation might see House floor action before the recess. However, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday House-Senate negotiators have yet to finalize a deal. Boehner said the House could adjourn Friday after voting on numerous suspension bills.

"We need to have a few more conversations, but I think we will be ready to go today and head home early tomorrow," said Boehner. GOP leadership aides were a little less optimistic, with several indicating that the schedule remains in flux.

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Senate Dems unveil plans for nationwide hearings on Iraq

Greta Wodele — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Democrats accused Senate Republicans of failing to conduct significant oversight of military operations, construction and contracting policies in Iraq, highlighting reports of intelligence failures as well as waste and fraud. "They've held some here and there but very few significant hearings," said Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan of North Dakota.

Dorgan kicks off the first hearing Monday in Washington and is expected to announce more details about future proceedings. Democrats denied that the timing of the oversight hearings is linked to the upcoming midterm elections, saying they have extended invitations to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Jon Kyl of Arizona as well as other GOP senators.

Dorgan added that the hearings would not be held in battleground states ahead of the elections. "It has nothing to do with that," Dorgan said. Yet Senate Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York added that if Democrats win the majority this fall, they would continue their investigations next year.

Republicans pounced on Democrats' plans, saying they were planning campaign events to try to court voters displeased with the situation in Iraq.

"They're just staging a performance with little substance and no proposals," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who tied Democrats' hearings with their call for withdrawing U.S. troops in Iraq. "This is just another dangerous idea," he said, and argued that the Senate Intelligence Committee consistently holds closed-door meetings with administration officials to protect U.S. military strategy.

DeMint conceded that Republicans have struggled recently to effectively deliver their message to voters on Iraq, but said President Bush's series of speeches this month helped to define the administration's efforts.

"We're beginning to see the polls go up," he said, adding Republicans would continue to talk about the ramifications of withdrawing troops from Iraq on the campaign trail next month. "As soon as you do that, people get it," he said.

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GOP mulls perils of immigration fight

Susan Davis and Greta Wodele — Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

"This is a survival of the fittest moment," observed Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Franc said that immigration, joined with federal spending and the war in Iraq, will be the pre-eminent issues in the midterm election for right-of-center voters, who are "seeing the world through the prism of immigration reform right now."

Unlike their Senate counterparts, House Republican leaders have been loath to get behind the president in his call to enact legislation that would create a temporary worker program open to those who have illegally entered the country.

One senior House GOP leadership aide argued that any attempt to put their members on record before the midterm elections will "annihilate" their conservative base, which considers any form of temporary worker program as synonymous with amnesty.

When asked Tuesday to respond directly to Bush's support of providing illegal immigrants with a path to legal status, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., only reiterated his support for border security legislation.

"I think the president reflected a lot of the ideas we have in Congress," Hastert said. "The first thing we have to do is enforce the border, and then we can look at alternatives."

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has been equally reluctant.

"While I appreciate the president's willingness to tackle big problems, I have real concerns about moving forward with a guestworker program or a plan to address those currently in the United States illegally until we have adequately addressed our serious border security problems," he said Monday.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has declined to offer his personal view of a guest worker program.

"I am the leader of House Republicans, and as a leader you have got to take your own personal position on some issues and set it aside and look at where the team is going," he said Tuesday.

House GOP leaders say they stand behind their border legislation because polling indicates it is a popular first step, with less potential fallout.

"If you look at all the polling, they are very supportive of what the House did, in terms of enforcing the borders and enforcing our laws," Boehner said.

"Border security is one of the few things that are working for them right now and they don't want to give that up lightly," noted Franc.

But the Senate bill on the floor this week includes a temporary guestworker proposal -- and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Tuesday he scheduled two weeks of open debate in hopes of convincing Americans that the country needs a comprehensive approach. "The American people will understand it's much more than just building a fence," said Frist. Not all of his colleagues are convinced.

"They're playing a high-wire act," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., about Senate GOP leaders and the president.

Sessions agrees with the House position and has urged Senate GOP leaders to enact border security legislation this year and then hold hearings on the economic effects of a guestworker program before passing a proposal.

But several Republicans worry that if they do not pass a House-Senate compromise before the election, voters could see the GOP-controlled Congress as lacking leadership on a defining issue.

"[Former Senate Minority Leader] Daschle lost and Democrats got bumped down because of the 'obstructionist' label," Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Tuesday about the 2004 election cycle when Republicans accused Democrats of blocking their efforts to enact legislation. "And we could fall victim to the same fate if we're not careful."

Franc noted that Republicans also need to mind three main constituencies in this debate: their core party constituency, the business community, and Hispanic voters.

"The worst-case scenario is you find a way to anger them all -- which is doable," he said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. -- a potential presidential candidate in 2008 who supports a comprehensive approach -- said Tuesday that the initiatives Bush announced Monday night could be enough to provide political shelter for the party if GOP leaders fail to push through a comprehensive bill this year.

Republicans believe that for the two chambers to reach middle ground, the president needs to play a critical role. Despite Bush's low approval numbers, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the president, "on this issue, has unique sway."

While several Republicans said Bush's speech helped build momentum for a comprehensive bill, one GOP aide said it also painted GOP lawmakers into a corner. If Congress decides not to pass an immigration bill this year, it will be viewed as a rebuke of the president. "That's the danger in the president giving a speech like that," said the aide.

The White House acknowledged that they will need to be diligent in negotiations with Congress.

"I can't tell you exactly how we're going to deal with Roy Blunt or Denny Hastert or anybody else. But I guarantee you the president knows that this is an issue of sufficient concern that he is going to pay heed to friends and allies on Capitol Hill," White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said Tuesday.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove will be at the weekly House GOP Conference meeting Wednesday to talk about immigration.

With Bush's approval ratings at historic lows, however, some argue that the White House will not be able to drive this debate, particularly as leaders in both chambers are cognizant of the party's vulnerability of losing seats -- and possibly the majority -- come November.

"This is where your presidential moment comes in," Franc said. "If [Bush] in good faith realizes that the House can only go 10 percent of the way he'll have to ask himself, 'Can I settle for a partial solution now and make a stronger case in the next Congress?' To do it all in one fell swoop, if that's his decision, he's probably not going to get very far."

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Senate to debate war funding next week

Susan Davis and Greta Wodele — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Frist originally scheduled one week of floor debate for the package. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and other conservatives are expected to challenge several provisions that they consider "pork projects" and not related to emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Democrats are expected to offer numerous amendments to increase spending for hot-button election-year issues like veteran's health care and energy independence. The Senate reconvenes Monday for morning hour business, but votes are not expected to begin until Tuesday on the measure.

If the Senate approves the $106.5 billion package -- nearly $15 billion more than President Bush requested and the House passed -- the Senate version is likely to face strong opposition from the House over the extra spending when the two chambers negotiate a compromise.

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Senator seeks Bush’s help controlling supplemental spending

Peter Cohn and Greta Wodele — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The price tag is $14.3 billion above President Bush's request, and Frist has urged Bush to "take a more public role next week" when the measure comes to the Senate floor, a top aide said Tuesday. Frist -- a likely 2008 White House contender -- needs the support of the conservative base, which has been inflamed by the size of the bill approved by the Appropriations Committee earlier this month.

Frist has not specifically recommended a veto threat to the White House, but Republican aides confirmed there have been high-level discussions with the administration and that Frist's office has urged rank-and-file senators to encourage the White House to issue a veto threat.

"Leadership is very concerned we'll have another 'bridge-to-nowhere' debate," said one GOP aide, referring to the brouhaha over spending priorities in last year's highway bill. House Republicans are expected to try to strip the additional funding once the package goes to conference.

Conservative opposition -- along with a Democratic strategy to use the debate to dramatize election-year issues -- is likely to extend debate on the emergency supplemental another week, a Frist aide said Tuesday. "This is going to take longer than people think," said the aide. "We need an extra week."

Frist and other conservatives want more time to debate the issue, arguing the extra spending could further alienate their GOP base. "The Republican base is demoralized and the last thing the Senate should do is say it's more important to secure a railroad crossing in Biloxi rather than fund Humvee patrols in Baghdad," a spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said Wednesday.

Coburn is considering drafting more than a dozen amendments to challenge non-emergency spending in the supplemental bill like a provision added by Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran and Sen. Trent Lott, both Mississippi Republicans, to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line.

Conservatives have focused their anger on nearly $4 billion in drought relief for farmers and ranchers, $1.1 billion for Gulf Coast fisheries, and other items totaling nearly $10 billion added in committee April 4. A White House official declined comment on a possible veto threat but noted the administration was "astonished" by the amount of add-ons in the Senate Appropriations Committee and will "continue to work to pass a more fiscally responsible" bill.

Cochran's staff could not be reached for comment by presstime. Cochran said during the markup that Congress should "consider very carefully a bill of this magnitude."

Democrats plan to offer several amendments to highlight the Bush administration's level of funding for health care, veterans' benefits, energy and national security. A protracted debate on the emergency supplemental might delay Senate action on other GOP priorities for May, including Frist's plans to repeal the estate tax and a week dedicated to healthcare bills.

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Lawmakers map strategies for immigration debate next week

Greta Wodele — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

According to talking points circulated Friday by Democratic leaders to rank-and-file offices, Democrats will say they have "real solutions, with tough, effective enforcement and smart reforms that will secure our borders." The e-mail memorandum instructed Democrats to emphasize that the party does not support amnesty.

"No free pass, no automatic pardon and no jumping to the front of the line," it read. But the memo also indicated Democrats think they need to walk a fine line between tough talk on border enforcement and compassion toward undocumented workers.

"[B]y reducing the flow of undocumented immigrants and creating a legal path for those hard-working families already here, we can finally focus on catching the criminals and terrorists who put our nation at risk," reads the memo.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., plans to take up immigration legislation Tuesday, beginning with debate on an enforcement and border security measure. Frist has said he would allow Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to bring up his comprehensive immigration package if he can get it through committee early next week.

While Democrats plan to hold news conferences next week to highlight their position, party leaders have not crafted a substitute bill with specific provisions reflecting the party's ideas. The memo said Democrats want to "crack down" on businesses that hire illegal immigrants and "bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this week he would support a bipartisan bill drafted by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that would allow the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants an opportunity to earn U.S. citizenship.

Over the last few months, Democrats have aggressively sought to burnish their credentials on national security issues, aiming to gain voter confidence in an area that has been largely monopolized by Republicans. They believe the party must frame next week's debate on immigration reform as a "security issue."

Democrats such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., a potential presidential contender in 2008 who has been reluctant to outline her position on the issue, also are padding the hard-hitting security rhetoric with attacks on the GOP-backed bill in order to court Latino and other immigrant groups.

Clinton told an Irish immigrant group that the Republican border enforcement bill would lead to "a massive hunt for illegal aliens."

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Senator announces plan for U.S. entity to run ports

Keith Koffler and Greta Wodele — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"Because of the strong relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the United States and to preserve that relationship, DP World has decided to transfer fully the U.S. operation of P& O Operations North America to a United States entity," the company announced in a statement read on the Senate floor by Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va..

Warner said he had spoken with DP World Chief Operating Officer Edward Bilkey before coming to the floor. The announcement failed to appease Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who Wednesday afternoon offered an amendment to lobbying legislation to stop the Dubai port deal.

"This is a promising development," Schumer said, but he added Congress still must examine the setup to ensure DP World would not have "ultimate control" over the U.S. entity. "I ask my colleagues to vote against cloture at this point in time," Schumer said just before the Senate voted, 51-47, to not end debate on the lobbying proposal.

Schumer's amendment is the pending business on the bill, but Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is likely to pull the legislation from the floor.

The White House Thursday did not back off President Bush's vow to veto legislation scuttling the deal, but White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan struck a conciliatory tone, avoiding language renewing the veto threat and focusing instead on discussions with lawmakers.

"Our emphasis is not on trying to draw lines or issue veto threats, it's on how we can work together and move forward," McClellan said. "It doesn't mean the president's position has changed, it means our emphasis is on how we can work together to move forward."

But McClellan acknowledged that Bush did not repeat the veto threat during a meeting Thursday with GOP congressional leaders. While describing the gathering as a regularly scheduled session that also focused on a variety of other topics, McClellan said Bush raised the ports issue with the lawmakers. He said the group had "a positive discussion" and an "open exchange of ideas about how we can work together on shared priorities."

A senior Senate GOP aide said Republican leaders laid out the political landscape of the Dubai port deal and suggested the White House "become more active on the issue." Schumer said Thursday's White House meeting was an acknowledgement the Senate must take up the ports debate.

"One way or another, that amendment will be voted on within the next week or two," he said.

Senate Democratic Policy Chairman Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said Thursday he would offer the same amendment blocking the DP World takeover to the fiscal 2006 supplemental spending bill that was adopted 62-2 in the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday.

"It makes no sense to require law-abiding American citizens to take off their shoes and belts in order to board a commercial airline but then turn the operation of major U.S. ports ... over to a country that has direct ties to Osama bin Laden, and from which two of the 9/11 hijackers came," he said.

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Mayors vent over changes in homeland security grants

Greta Wodele — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The mayors told officials that recent changes in homeland security grants were inflexible, confusing and cumbersome.

"That's our problem in dealing with you," said Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat who added that the amounts of cuts in homeland security grants over recent years would result in the grant programs being "eliminated by 2009."

The mayors also called on Homeland Security officials to increase funding for communication equipment, transit and rail systems, ports, air cargo screening, among other items.

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff earlier this month announced that the urban area grant initiative would move from funding for the 50 largest cities to a regional approach.

The change triggered an outcry from governors and mayors who said they would have to work across jurisdictions in a tight time frame to apply for the funding. On Friday the mayors called on the Homeland Security Department to clearly outline the administration's priorities for the money so city officials can better compete for limited dollars.

Tracy Henke, the department's executive director of grants and training, conceded that the department has yet to figure out how to measure preparedness, but said it was a priority for the department.

She also told the mayors that President Bush is not solely to blame for decreased spending, but that Congress shares the responsibility. She also vowed improved clarity and transparency for city and state officials before the March 2 deadline for funding applications.

Following the homeland security session, the U.S. Conference of Mayors heard sympathetic remarks from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who said the Republican White House has made "wrong choices" on security issues.

"Wrong choices in Washington have left mayors with bigger burdens and unpaid bill," he said, contending that Democrats tried to increase funding levels for homeland security grants but were "rejected" last year.

The minority leader also criticized the administration for its decision to cut the National Guard, which state and local officials depend on for catastrophes.

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Bureaucracy hinders 9/11 commission recommendations

Shane Harris and Greta Wodele — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

For the previous 17 months, Kean and Hamilton had picked up where they and their eight co-commissioners had left off when they published the best-selling narrative account of the events preceding 9/11 and the horror that unfolded that day. The commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, officially closed on August 21, 2004.

Then, from an office on Dupont Circle in Washington, Kean, Hamilton, and a tiny staff had run the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, an effort to keep a fire going in the nation's gut to implement the commission's 41 recommendations for improving national security and overhauling U.S. intelligence.

That Monday morning, Kean and Hamilton met with a small group of reporters over breakfast, looking beleaguered -- not by the early hour, but by the bad news they had to deliver, in the form of a report card on the progress made. The grades ranged from barely passing to failing.

Congress still hadn't improved its oversight of intelligence agencies; those agencies still weren't cooperating with each other or with law enforcement; airline cargo still wasn't being fully checked for explosives; and the government still hadn't figured out how to keep terrorists off airplanes without ensnaring harmless citizens.

Hamilton, a spry septuagenarian, rubbed his graying head, trying in vain to come up with something more original to say than the simple, "Not enough has been done." Kean appeared puzzled that so many of the commission's suggestions, which seemed so uncontroversial, had gone almost nowhere. "We are very disappointed, in many ways," he said.

Common sense pretty much guided the commissioners and their staffers, who are now among the most well-informed people on national security strengths and weaknesses in the United States. So the question remains: Why hasn't the government implemented its recommendations?

To get answers, National Journal looked at 14 of the 17 most-important commission recommendations that scored the worst grades -- the D's and F's -- and examined the roadblocks to their implementation. The causes behind the failing and near-failing grades fall into six categories: a Congress resistant to institutional change; a bureaucracy that bucks new ideas; lack of money; lack of leadership; special interests that have the ear of Congress or the White House; and, finally, an inability to accurately see how the United States is perceived abroad.

To be sure, not everyone agrees that the 9/11 commission's recommendations are the end-all, be-all cure -- the commissioners themselves admit that their conclusions are imperfect. Critics of particular recommendations may be motivated by nothing more than a differing view of how best to combat terrorism.

Still, the commission's report card represents the most thorough assessment to date of how far the country has come in bolstering its security since 9/11. At the end of their long trip, Hamilton and Kean could have invoked Robert Frost: We have miles to go before we sleep.

A Congress Resistant To Change

Allocate homeland-security funds based on risk: F

After 9/11, Congress created several grant programs to help train and equip police officers, firefighters, and other emergency personnel to better respond to acts of terrorism. But rural states such as Wyoming and Alaska ended up receiving more money on a per capita basis than did more-likely targets, such as New York. Critics slammed the funding formula as just another vehicle for pork-barrel spending.

The 9/11 commission called its recommendation to revamp the funding formula a "no-brainer." Yet the reform has repeatedly been blocked in Congress.

In the Senate, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have so far persuaded their colleagues to reject attempts to change the formula. Every state needs a predictable and adequate amount of funding, they argue.

In the House, the situation has evolved. Two years ago, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the powerful Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, accused House members from urban districts in New York and New Jersey of trying to "hog" first-responder funding. Rural lawmakers beat back several attempts by New Yorkers to force a floor vote on changing the formula.

In 2005, however, Rogers and other key lawmakers reversed their position. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., now chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that pressure from the 9/11 commission and media reports about wasteful spending by rural first responders helped to change their minds.

House appropriators tweaked the formula to dole out more of the funding on the basis of risk. And three times in 2005, the House overwhelmingly approved a commission-backed bill to make the change. The legislation would lower the guaranteed amount each state receives in first-responder grants, in order to free up more money for high-risk areas.

But Collins and Lieberman have blocked efforts to attach the House proposal to legislation in the Senate. Instead, the two senators have offered a compromise that would establish risk criteria for distributing funds but would guarantee rural states more money than the House proposal does.

The House and Senate recently had yet another opportunity to change the formula, after the House attached formula language to a bill to extend the USA PATRIOT Act. But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont -- two powerful conferees from rural states who were negotiating the anti-terrorism law -- called the formula change "anti-rural" and got it stripped from the bill.

When the commissioners issued their final report card in December, they vowed to continue lobbying Congress to revise the funding formula along the lines of the House bill.

Reform intelligence oversight: D
Declassify overall intelligence budget: F

Time and again, the commission criticized Congress for its resistance to institutional changes that would improve legislative oversight over the executive branch's intelligence operations. The commission called for a strengthened committee system in both chambers and more openness about the intelligence budget. Congress has achieved neither goal -- because of the lack of support from House and Senate leaders and the White House, and because of turf battles within the executive and legislative branches.

Last year, Congress rejected the commission's recommendation to create one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities.

"I don't think anybody welcomed that proposal," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. House and Senate appropriators rejected the idea because it would take away their power to steer money as they saw fit, he said. "It wouldn't serve the interests of those who benefit from the status quo."

The Senate passed a resolution in 2004 to create an intelligence subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, but the House took no similar action. Aftergood said the House GOP leadership opposed the creation of an intelligence appropriations subcommittee partly as a way to duck the 9/11 commission's related reform proposal: disclosure of the intelligence community's top-line budget figure. Most experts agree that creating Appropriations subpanels on intelligence would pressure Congress to publicly reveal the intelligence budget.

The Senate attached a proposal to declassify the intelligence budget to the 2004 legislation that overhauled the intelligence community. The GOP-led House and the White House objected to the provision, however.

In House-Senate negotiations, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and then-Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., led the successful fight to remove the language from the bill. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney backed Hunter and Lewis, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

As long as the overall intelligence budget remains classified, and dwells primarily within the Pentagon, oversight of the intelligence community will remain weak, critics contend. "The intelligence community goes around the authorizing committees because they don't have control over the money," Hamilton said. "You need a subcommittee that focuses exclusively on intelligence to have robust oversight."

The bureaucratic stakes also became higher after the intelligence reform bill passed in 2004. Declassifying the intelligence budget would have strengthened John Negroponte, the new national intelligence director, at the expense of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The Pentagon steadfastly opposed any such move.

The Bureaucratic Bog

Improve airline passenger prescreening: F

The government's failure to set up an effective screening program that prevents terrorists from getting on airplanes but does not overly invade the privacy of U.S. citizens has many fathers. But most of them are in the bureaucracy, where turf battles, bureaucratic overreach, and its opposite -- inertia -- are rampant.

First of all, the government has failed to integrate all of its various terrorist watch lists into one list that can be effectively used to screen airline passengers. The Transportation Security Administration isn't responsible for merging those lists -- ultimately, the FBI is -- but TSA does manage the existing passenger prescreening program, a piecemeal and cumbersome process that, far from catching many would-be terrorists, has ensnared people unlikely to threaten aviation, including aged grandmothers and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

"Few improvements have been made to the existing passenger screening system since right after 9/11," the commissioners wrote.

To be fair, the government has tried to make those improvements for almost a decade. But officials have consistently failed to build a technological system sophisticated enough to screen out true risks and still protect passenger privacy.

The latest scrapped effort, known as CAPPS II, aimed to algorithmically rate passengers' risk levels and screen their names for outstanding warrants for violent crimes. Privacy protectionists on the left and the right assailed the system as arbitrary and invasive because of the large amount of personal information that passengers would have had to submit to airlines in order to buy a ticket.

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., who chairs the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity, says that TSA officials "created a cloud over the approach" to passenger screening by repeatedly crafting programs that raised too many privacy concerns and by failing to see any screening program through to completion. "They kind of blew it," he says. Lungren introduced a bill last month to restructure TSA and tighten passenger screening.

Indeed, some actions by TSA employees have called the agency's grasp of privacy regulations into question. In the spring of 2002, TSA officials in charge of developing CAPPS II, along with Transportation Department officials, met with a data-mining company called Torch Concepts, which was building a profiling system that it hoped to sell to the Army. The TSA officials thought the system might work for them too, and they agreed to help the company obtain personal passenger data from an airline to test its technology.

A few months later, a "relatively new employee of TSA" sent a request to discount airliner JetBlue to provide the passenger data, according to the Homeland Security Department's chief privacy officer. The airline complied. The employee's bosses, however, hadn't approved the TSA request.

The privacy officer concluded that a number of employees involved in the data transfer "acted without appropriate regard for individual privacy interests or the spirit of the Privacy Act of 1974.... While these actions may have been well intentioned and without malice, the employees arguably misused the oversight capacity of the TSA to encourage this data-sharing."

The TSA's office that manages screening programs has been something of a revolving door between government and industry. In December, Justin Oberman, the top official in charge of passenger screening and credentialing, announced that he was leaving the government to work for Crestview Capital Funds, a hedge fund that invests in small companies -- including three that provide screening and credentialing services to governments and business.

Oberman's successor is Stephanie Rowe, a former senior executive with Accenture. Rowe was a consultant on several Homeland Security programs, including Secure Flight, the replacement for CAPPS II, and the US-VISIT program that monitors the entry and exit of foreigners. Accenture is also the lead contractor on the multibillion-dollar US-VISIT program.

In addition to privacy challenges, passenger screening faces logistical hurdles. Only the Terrorist Screening Center can access the various watch lists, but that FBI-led operation adds another layer of bureaucracy. And according to the Justice Department's inspector general, the center maintains incomplete and inaccurate lists; uses poor technology; and is plagued by personnel turnovers, owing at least in part to understaffing and poor working conditions.

The 9/11 commission contrasted the failure of TSA's passenger screening programs with the success of the US-VISIT entry-exit program for foreign visitors (partly run by the State Department), and "Real ID," the new law that sets standards for state-issued identification cards and driver's licenses. Those initiatives benefited from something the screening programs don't have -- powerful champions. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge frequently pushed US-VISIT as an essential element of border and port security. And Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., doggedly supported the Real ID Act, even threatening to block the 2004 intelligence reform legislation if it didn't include Real ID.

Change incentives for information-sharing: D
Improve government-wide information-sharing: D

Just about everyone says that had the CIA and FBI been better at information-sharing, they might have discovered the 9/11 plotters. Yet the commission gave the government D's for its efforts to improve the information-sharing regime.

"Designating individuals to be in charge of information-sharing is not enough," the commission wrote. "They need resources, active presidential backing, policies, and procedures in place that compel sharing, and systems of performance evaluation that appraise personnel on how they carry out information-sharing."

That's a polite way of saying that intelligence personnel aren't being punished for not sharing. Intelligence agencies' Cold War penchant for secrecy, which leads to information-hoarding, still persists, say many intelligence veterans.

"The real cultural ethos of intelligence ... was that you had to compartmentalize your secrets so the Russians wouldn't get them," says Ronald Marks, a 16-year CIA veteran and a former liaison to the Senate.

But that often-cited inability to change the intelligence "culture" doesn't fully explain the sharing problem. The truth is that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still don't fully trust each other to guard their hard-won information. For example, the Homeland Security Department's intelligence unit has faced an uphill battle in prying information from the FBI that DHS needs to provide threat assessments to states and localities. Intelligence agencies have been burned when sensitive information gets shared too widely, Marks says.

Sometimes, sources and collection methods are revealed -- and sometimes, people die because of it, he says. "Enough bad things have happened," according to Marks, "that people flinch hard" when they're told to give up their secrets.

Moreover, some federal authorities don't accept that they're obligated to provide information to state and local officials, according to one veteran CIA manager. "The CIA and the Defense Department have their own contacts with state and local officials, but Langley and the Pentagon see sharing information with them as a service (almost a favor) rather than a responsibility for which they can be held accountable," John Brennan, the former deputy executive director of the CIA, wrote in a November op-ed in The Washington Post.

A new "program manager" has been named in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to develop an intelligence-wide sharing system. But he leads a skeleton crew. In June 2005, the president appointed John Russack, a career intelligence officer, to the post for two years. At the time, Russack's office had a staff of two, including him. As of mid-November, Russack's staff stood at 12, but he had no line-item budget for the current fiscal year.

Rather than increase the office's funding and aggressively hire a new and larger staff, the administration has assigned it personnel from other agencies on a temporary basis. The president has issued executive orders instructing other agencies and departments to cooperate with the coordinating office.

James Carafano, a homeland-security analyst at the Heritage Foundation, blames lawmakers for failing to give Russack's position a detailed set of requirements and for putting the office in a policy-focused agency rather than an operational agency. As it is, the "information-sharing environment" that Russack is supposed to build -- in only two years -- is a vague, ill-defined concept with few measures of effectiveness, Carafano says. An information-sharing system must be government-wide, he argues, and must come from a strong central authority, such as the Office of Management and Budget.

Lack of Funding

Improve checked bag and cargo screening: D

After 9/11, Congress required that all airline passengers' baggage be screened for explosives. Aviation experts said accomplishing that would take far longer and cost much more than lawmakers anticipated. They were right.

"The main impediment [to full screening] is inadequate funding," the 9/11 commissioners wrote. While 100 percent of passenger luggage (as opposed to cargo) is screened for explosives with scanning equipment, many airports still lack the "in-line" systems that would speed up the process.

Those systems, installed underground at airports, quickly move baggage through screening mechanisms on conveyer belts. Equipping every airport with the systems will cost tens of billions of dollars and could take years, some experts believe. In the first 18 months after 9/11, the government spent $3 billion on explosive-detection technology, but the money has flowed less freely in recent years.

But it's not just the lack of dollars that has stalled this recommendation. Politics and bureaucracy are also part of the problem. Congressional Republicans have never really liked the Transportation Security Administration, the new airport-security bureaucracy that they were practically forced into setting up after 9/11. Ever since TSA was established, GOP leaders have tried to trim it back, and TSA hasn't helped matters much by gaining a reputation for inefficiency, clumsiness, and high staff turnover.

House Republicans, in particular, have kept a tight hand on TSA's purse strings. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who chairs the aviation subcommittee that oversees TSA, has derided it as a bungling bureaucracy and warned against spending large amounts of money on explosive detection without assurances that the machines will work.

In the wake of the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the Long Island coast, which was later determined to be an accident, Mica said, some $441 million was spent on explosives-detection equipment. Some of that equipment "worked," he said, but "some did not work, and some sat idle."

Outsiders, however, argue that Congress's tightfistedness hasn't helped TSA's performance. Writing in The Washington Post last April, Brookings Institution senior fellow Paul Light said that by slashing the budget and, in 2003, capping the size of the passenger screener workforce, Congress contributed to a "tailspin" of mismanagement at the agency and "delayed the development of new technologies" to improve passenger and baggage screening.

House and Senate lawmakers have roundly rejected the president's proposal to increase security-related airline ticket fees by $3; the higher fees would have added $1.7 billion a year to TSA's budget. Some lawmakers viewed the fee as an unwarranted tax on the airline industry at a time when it is already teetering on the brink of economic collapse.

"I think both houses of Congress have spoken to that very loudly in the last couple of years," Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., told Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "I see no reason why you should pursue that, because I don't perceive it to become a reality."

But Congress isn't solely to blame for the slow progress on screening. TSA hasn't been able to keep an administrator in place for more than a year, and the screener workforce has suffered from high turnover, low morale, and inefficiency. Mica has called the screening system a "centralized, Soviet-style, command-and-control operation."

Progress on screening airline cargo -- which, unlike baggage, goes largely uninspected -- faces another challenge in addition to scarce dollars.

"The technology does not exist for us to effectively, 100 percent, inspect cargo," says Brandon Fried, the executive director of the Airforwarders Association. "Cargo is a unique animal. Unlike a passenger, ... [it] comes in all shapes and sizes," he says, which means that machines must be built to accommodate various packages and containers. Full inspection would slow the movement of goods, Fried says, and "would be injurious to the nation's flow of commerce."

Absence of Leadership

Mount a maximum effort to secure weapons of mass destruction: D

"Countering the greatest threat to America's security is still not the top national security priority of the president and the Congress," the commissioners concluded. The administration made pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq the front line of its counter-proliferation strategy. Since failing to find any such weapons, officials now are focused on interdicting suspected weapons shipments at sea, breaking up black markets, and stopping North Korea and Iran from developing big stores of nuclear weapons.

But those initiatives will hardly make a dent in what most nonproliferation experts see as the greatest potential source of deadly weapons for terrorists: the thousands of so-called "loose nukes" scattered around the states of the former Soviet Union; many of these weapons aren't secured, and experts fear that terrorists could steal them or buy them on the black market.

Compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States has spent on invading and occupying Iraq, it has invested relatively little money on rounding up the loose nukes and on providing better jobs for Russian nuclear scientists as a way to ensure that they don't sell their expertise to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The administration acknowledges that unsecured nuclear material poses a threat, and the president has raised the matter in conversations with Russian leaders. But "this continues to be a rhetorical priority, not a political or a budgetary priority," says Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The administration is spending about $1 billion a year in securing nuclear material, which is only a slight increase over the Clinton administration's program. At that rate, it will take until 2020 to get all of it, Cirincione says. About 50 tons of radioactive material housed in the former Soviet Union could be used in weapons. So far, he says, nonproliferation programs have secured only 286 kilograms.

Cirincione argues that it's not too late to change course on nonproliferation, but he doubts a policy shift is likely. "If you don't have the president repeatedly telling his staff that he wants this job done, then the natural bureaucratic barriers ally to slow and eventually block progress.... If you were serious about this, if you really thought that the No. 1 threat was a terrorist getting hold of a nuclear weapon and hitting the United States with it ... you would vastly accelerate the effort to eliminate that material before the terrorists could get it."

Strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: D

The oversight board is supposed to ensure that, in waging the war on terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement agencies don't trample citizens' liberties. The 9/11 commission criticized both the Senate and the Bush administration for foot-dragging on establishing the board.

President Bush's nominations for the board's chair and vice chair have been languishing in the Senate Judiciary Committee since last September. But the 9/11 commission said it saw "little urgency in the creation of the board.... Funding is insufficient, no meetings have been held, no staff named, no work plan outlined, no work begun, no office established."

Critics say that the current controversy over the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance indicates yet again this administration's disdain for oversight and its preference for secrecy, and that both tendencies will always trump civil liberties.

"This has never been an administration that welcomes oversight," says Peter Rundlet, who served as a counsel to the 9/11 commission and is now the vice president for national security and international affairs at the Center for American Progress. "Clearly, they're not interested in having a check on the executive branch when it comes to the war on terror."

Rundlet calls the operating budget for the board -- $1.5 million -- a "ridiculous amount." The relevant experience of the board members -- who don't serve full-time -- is also a mixed bag. The nominated chairman, Carol Dinkins, is a Texas lawyer who served in the Reagan Justice Department as an assistant attorney general in the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Other nominees for the board include a former Agriculture Department general counsel and a Clinton White House special counsel. The only board member with significant government experience in counter-terrorism is former Ambassador Francis Taylor, who was the coordinator for counter-terrorism at the State Department until 2002.

The only member with any obvious civil-liberties and constitutional law background is Theodore Olson, a Bush loyalist and former U.S. solicitor general who is now a partner in a Washington law firm, and whose wife was killed in the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

Stalemate of Special Interests

Provide adequate radio spectrum for first responders: F

The 9/11 commission recommended that portions of the public airwaves be set aside for emergency first responders to help them communicate with each other more effectively. But the broadcasting industry has, for years, successfully fought the government over when and how to return that valuable radio spectrum, which the government has let broadcasters use exclusively until now.

Broadcasters use the spectrum to beam analog television signals to more than 20 million homes. Even in an age of cable TV, many households still get signals over a pair of rabbit ears, and if broadcasters are forced to return the spectrum before consumers can buy TV sets that receive digital frequencies, many viewers will end up with blank screens. Legislation pending before Congress would force broadcasters to give up the spectrum by 2009.

But the 9/11 commission wanted the date pushed forward by two years. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been one of the strongest voices for the spectrum return. In a statement in September, McCain invoked the response to Hurricane Katrina as evidence that the handover must come quickly. "Broadcasters are blocking access to spectrum for first responders," he declared.

The broadcasters have long flexed their muscle in Washington. They enjoy a close relationship with most lawmakers, in part because local stations provide the airtime for campaign ads. As far back as 1986, broadcasters lobbied the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress to postpone spectrum reallocation while the industry studied a transition to high-definition television and, later, to digital TV.

In the mid-1990s, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., a college friend of the former head of the National Association of Broadcasters, moved to let the Federal Communications Commission, rather than Congress, decide whether to give broadcasters an additional channel to use until consumers made the switch to digital television.

Once broadcasters got the channel, however, they began worrying that the digital deadline would come before consumers were ready to switch. Former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., stepped in on behalf of broadcasters and added a provision to the 1997 Balanced Budget Act spelling out that the spectrum handover would come only when 85 percent of households owned digital TV equipment.

The industry says that broadcasters provide public services when they warn of impending natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes. "That's something that we don't think should be ignored as part of this debate," says Dennis Wharton, an NAB spokesperson. Broadcasters in the Gulf Coast weren't operating on the channels the commission wants reserved for public safety, he said.

On the other hand, some experts question how well prepared state and local first responders are to effectively use the spectrum. Communications equipment makers have no incentive to make more-advanced technologies, they say, until a handover date is set by law.

Support reform in Saudi Arabia: D

Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and the country is a wellspring of fundamentalist ideology. More than four years later, the Saudi Arabian government hasn't stanched the flow of funds to extremist groups or moved to promote social tolerance and moderation, the commissioners said. Given the Bush family's long-standing personal ties to the Saudi royal family, and the United States' reliance on imports of Saudi oil, many critics have questioned the administration's willingness to take a hard line with its Persian Gulf ally.

Democratic reform in Saudi Arabia seemed possible a few years ago, but the fight against Al Qaeda -- which has vowed to overthrow the House of Saud -- has led Saudi officials to crack down on freedoms in an effort to squelch official dissent. In 2004, the Saudi Council of Ministers made it a crime for government employees to sign petitions or speak critically of the government to the press.

The Bush administration publicly supports democracy in Saudi Arabia but has done little to push the Saudi government toward that goal. The country is an essential supporter of the Bush administration's Middle East peace process and has provided, albeit cautiously, support for the war in Iraq. The administration thus finds itself in a difficult position -- supporting democracy and reform, but unable to take a tough line with a key ally.

U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia pose a good example of how allegiances to authoritarian monarchies in the Mideast, as well as other decades-long policies, have generated negative blowback for the United States.

"I think the great problem we face here is also understanding just how serious anger is against us in the Islamic and Arab world, and the reasons that anger occurs," Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2005. "It is, unfortunately, our alliance with Israel. It is our presence in Iraq.... And if you look at polls of popular reactions in ... Islamic countries or countries with strong Islamic movements, you find a broad-based support for extremism."

A Tin Ear Abroad

Set coalition standards for terrorist detention: F

The United States hasn't engaged in a "common-coalition" approach with other countries to develop standards for detaining and prosecuting captured terrorists, the commissioners noted in their report card. Although some U.S. allies, most notably the United Kingdom, have years of experience in pursuing and detaining terrorists across national borders, the Bush administration doesn't appear interested in setting any transnational standards.

Instead, just about the only international cooperation the administration has sought is in the practice of "extraordinary rendition," under which the CIA has shipped "high value" terrorist suspects to third countries for interrogation and imprisonment, and possibly for torture.

As the 9/11 commission noted tersely: "U.S. treatment of detainees has elicited broad criticism, and makes it harder to build the necessary alliances to cooperate effectively with partners in a global war on terror."

The administration believes that its treatment of terrorist suspects and detainees is an indispensable weapon in the war on terror, and one that doesn't need any additional justifications under international law. But during her most recent trip to Europe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was put on the defensive in country after country as she answered questions about the rendition policy and the overall American treatment of detainees.

To monitor the United States' adherence to international conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, had requested access to U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he canceled a planned visit in December because the military refused to grant him private interviews with detainees. Officials also refused to allow a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to meet with Guantanamo prisoners.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in December that this treatment of detainees has greatly harmed the United States worldwide. Referring to Rice's trip to Europe, Albright said, "When a secretary of State has just spent all her time explaining a position, instead of dealing with the problems of terrorists that [had recently attacked] in London, Madrid, and Jordan, then it is a stunning problem."

Support secular education in Muslim countries: D
Support scholarship, exchange, and library programs: D

As part of its public diplomacy mission, the State Department conducts educational exchange programs, some aimed at bringing underprivileged or "non-elite" students to the United States, and it also offers scholarship assistance to foreign students. The government also operates libraries and information centers in foreign countries, where people can read material about the United States and get texts that might not be available in their own country's libraries.

The commission acknowledged these programs, but declared they haven't gone far enough toward informing foreigners about the United States. "Funding for educational and cultural exchange programs has increased.

But more American libraries (Pakistan, for example) are closing rather than opening," the commissioners noted. The number of young Middle Easterners coming to the United States to study is also dropping; it was down 2 percent in 2005, following drops of 9 percent and 10 percent in the previous two years, the commission reported.

One obstacle to enhancing these exchange and education programs is the fact that they can conflict with other anti-terrorism policies.

Some of the 9/11 hijackers were in this country on student visas, for example. In 2003, the administration tightened rules on the issuance of those visas and implemented a foreign-student tracking program. That action coincided with the drop in student immigration.

Increasingly, foreigners perceive that the United States, post-9/11, is no longer interested in sustaining academic exchange, according to Tre Evers, a commissioner with the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

The student tracking system, called SEVIS, run by the Homeland Security Department, has been derided as intrusive by some foreigners and by many academic leaders in the United States. Under SEVIS, the government monitors what courses students are taking and keeps tabs on when the students enter and exit the country.

Some immigration-reform advocates herald the program as a reasonable step; foreign students are guests of the government, they assert. Administration officials also note in their defense that, in general, waiting time for visas has decreased in recent years. But the overall number of students even applying for those visas is down dramatically since 9/11.

Rather than beefing up exchange and library programs, the administration and Congress have chosen to put more resources into higher-profile broadcasting initiatives aimed specifically at Middle Eastern youth. The centerpieces have been a public-relations campaign to showcase Muslims living the good life in the United States and new broadcasting initiatives designed to counter Middle Eastern media.

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees Radio Sawa and an Arabic-language satellite television station called Al Hurra. Those initiatives have received bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. In particular, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been an ardent supporter of government broadcasting, viewing it as a compelling means to deliver the United States' message to a young, Middle Eastern audience. Biden is also a longtime friend of radio mogul Norman Pattiz, who founded Radio Sawa and Al Hurra, as well as Westwood One Communications.

Library programs have also been sacrificed because of security concerns abroad. The State Department has concentrated instead on building more "virtual" outposts on the Internet.

Another 9/11 commission recommendation called for new funding efforts to provide students in the Middle East more access to secular education. For decades, Middle Eastern countries have suffered from a shortage of skilled teachers, and the region faces widespread illiteracy and a dearth of institutions where boys and girls learn side by side. Religious schools, called madrassas, have mushroomed in many nations, particularly in Saudi Arabia, but they sometimes become a magnet for fundamentalists.

To counter the rise of religious education, the 9/11 commission recommended the establishment of an International Youth Opportunity Fund to help pay for more teachers and secular textbooks in the Mideast. The commissioners viewed this as a vital effort for cutting off extremist teachings at their source, and the fund was established by the 2004 intelligence reform act.

But the effort has languished, with no effective legislative sponsor and no momentum from the administration to ramp it up. To date, the administration has requested no money for the program.

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Insurance industry debates federal role in disaster coverage

Greta Wodele — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Allstate CEO Edward Liddy today said his company is pushing a House bill that would require state and federal backstop initiatives. Heading up the effort in Washington is former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt, now a lobbyist.

Liddy said Witt is helping Allstate build a coalition of supporters within the insurance, real estate and property developers industries. But he faces an uphill battle garnering support from his colleagues.

"It's not the right time to have a decision about a federal backstop for disaster coverage," said Julie Rochman, senior vice president of public affairs for the American Insurance Association. "We don't think the entire country should be subsidizing people living in coastal areas."

Rochman added that so far only Allstate and State Farm support the House legislation. The AIA, along with numerous insurance organizations, earlier this year won a hard-fought battle to convince Congress to extend a federal backstop for terrorism insurance.

Rochman argued that a federal backstop for terrorism risk differs from disaster coverage, because the private sector can manage disaster coverage with help from state regulations on building codes and coverage flexibility.

But Liddy challenged that argument, saying "there is not enough money in the system to handle these mega-events."

He predicted that insurance companies would vacate states with high-risk areas like Florida and California because experts believe hurricanes are growing more frequent and severe. The scientific evidence, coupled with increasing populations and home values in catastrophe-prone areas, has made the current system inadequate, he argued.

Liddy said the House bill would fund the state and federal backstop programs with money from residents living in high-risk areas. The House bill, which was drafted by Florida lawmakers, would require states to strengthen building codes and regulations.

There is not a similar Senate bill. Liddy also called for a federal regulation board as a regulatory option for insurance companies rather than the current state-by-state oversight structure.

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DHS seeks to outsource identification system

Greta Wodele — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"The government is seeking information on the capability to provide outsourcing of the infrastructure needed for any or all" components outlined in a recent request for information about creating the system, the General Services Administration wrote in a document posted Monday at FedBizOpps.

GSA last month posted a request for information from companies on the potential of such a system, saying the agency wants the "capability to completely outsource the technical solution." Companies had until Monday to respond, and GSA said the contractor would have until August to design a system that would satisfy a 2004 presidential directive ordering a system by October.

President Bush issued the directive to establish common ID credentials to control access to federal facilities and computers. "This policy is intended to enhance security, increase efficiency, reduce identity fraud and protect personal privacy," GSA said in its request for information.

But the administration's plans for a privately run system could spark the ire of members of Congress and privacy rights advocates who repeatedly have voiced concern with companies controlling homeland security databases that contain personal information.

The department also appears to defy a congressional mandate to more effectively use a transportation security clearinghouse database. The database should be the "central identity management system for the deployment and operation of the ... transportation worker-identification credential program," read the conference report to the fiscal 2006 Homeland Security spending bill.

The database is run by a consortium of airport owners. The worker ID initiative aims to control access to airports by issuing a smart card to employees of the Transportation Security Administration and airports.

The Homeland Security Department would give the private sector responsibility for collecting, storing and maintaining workers' personal information, such as driver's licenses and passports, as well as digital photographs and scanned fingerprints. Companies potentially could secure a lucrative five-year deal, as the system would be used for hundreds of thousands of employees and federal contractors, according to the GSA document.

GSA wants to know if a commercial vendor can issue and distribute a card within 24 hours; notify or suspend a card within 20 minutes; and activate a card within five minutes. GSA said individual agencies would control personnel management systems, background investigations and access-control systems for their own employees.

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Senate homeland security leaders sketch 2006 agenda

Greta Wodele — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut plan to continue their investigation of the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. The senators want to finish the inquiry and issue legislative recommendations by February, when their House colleagues also plan to release findings.

Committee aides said the senators are likely to recommend legislative changes to the Stafford Act, which governs federal assistance to natural disasters. The panel also could recommend a bill to reorganize the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was criticized for the government's response to the hurricane.

On other homeland security issues, the panel plans to debate changes to the funding formula for "first responders" to emergencies. The debate has pitted urban lawmakers against rural.

Urban legislators and the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks repeatedly have urged Congress to tweak the formula to give more money to areas at a higher risk of terrorism.

In the rural lawmakers' corner, Collins and Lieberman last year successfully fought a House proposal backed by the commission and urban lawmakers. This year, the senators plan to reintroduce their proposal, which they argue would distribute more money on the basis of risk but also give vulnerable rural areas an adequate and predictable flow of money.

Collins faces tough opposition from her House colleagues. The chamber passed its proposal three times last year, and Collins' counterpart in the House, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., has vowed to stick to the House plan.

The Senate committee also plans to consider legislation to implement a reorganization of the department proposed last year by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Among other things, the legislation would create a post for a policy undersecretary and possibly merge the Customs and Border Protection division with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Other panel priorities include legislation to bolster protection of chemical plants and seaports.

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TSA seeks business plans for frequent flier program

Greta Wodele — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

"The goal of the [Registered Traveler] program is to increase the efficiency of the transportation security officers and security resources," the agency wrote last month in its solicitation for business plans posted online at FedBizOpps. "Airline passengers who have successfully completed a security threat assessment by TSA may be expedited through security-checkpoint processing and allow security resources to focus on unknown travelers."

Kip Hawley, the Homeland Security Department assistant secretary in charge of TSA, told Congress in November that the agency plans to select companies by April to issue biometric "smart cards" to participants and deploy the screening program by summer.

To do so, the agency last month called for "critical functions" inherent to the proposed Registered Traveler business models, including technology to capture travelers' biometric information. The criteria would include scanned fingerprints or digital photographs; "smart cards" embedded with biometrics and biographic information; and data storage and transfer capabilities.

Registered Traveler has become a popular, albeit contentious idea. It had been in limbo after TSA abruptly stopped pilot programs in September. Since then, several members of Congress and industry representatives have been pressuring TSA to create a nationwide program to help reduce the burden and hassle of airline travel.

The system would let frequent travelers bypass long security lines at airports in exchange for voluntary background checks and biographical information. The initiative would be paid for with the fee that participating travelers will be charged.

A pilot program at Orlando International Airport last year charged $79.95 a year and found the cost at the low end of what travelers would pay to participate. There are an estimated 6 million frequent fliers who could join, according to the American Association of Airport Executives.

While many lawmakers have sought the system, others have expressed concern about private companies running a security program and how they would protect personal information. Their concerns are shared by civil rights and privacy groups that oppose the initiative.

In last month's solicitation for information, the agency said it would use a private database run by airports to store and transfer Registered Traveler information between TSA and companies enrolling passengers.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has testified against the database, saying it would not be subject to safeguards in the 1974 Privacy Act. The law requires agencies to let people access, and correct, information that the government collects about them.

But Hawley responded said TSA would establish a redress process for travelers who are rejected from the program and would address privacy concerns for travelers.

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Homeland Security seeks proposals for border technology

Greta Wodele — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

In a request for information posted Wednesday, the department asked companies for data by next month about "highly mobile detection systems" with long-range, thermal night imaging, cameras, wireless communications equipment, monitors and remote controls to help border patrol officers.

The document, posted online at FedBizOpps by the customs and border protection directorate, said the agency would install the system on the existing infrastructure at the southern border. The former Immigration and Naturalization Service placed the infrastructure there in the late 1990s.

That contract has been shrouded in controversy. A 2004 inspector general's report found that tens of millions of dollars were wasted under the 1997 deal because the contractor overcharged for its equipment and installation costs, and government officials allowed the company to install faulty equipment. The report claimed that the federal government paid L-3 Communications a total of $234 million for an incomplete and inadequate job.

The former INS hired International Microwave Corp. to install cameras on poles along the Mexican and Canadian borders. L-3 Communications acquired IMC, and the contract, in 2003. The controversy prompted the government in September 2004 to terminate the L-3 Communications contract.

In Wednesday's solicitation, the border patrol office claimed that L-3 Communications technology is "no longer state of the market and has been superseded many times over by technological advancements." The agency added that after officials canceled the old INS contract, field operations have been in limbo, which is "significantly challenged by the ever-changing threat environment."

Border enforcement has become a hot-button issue for members of Congress. Many lawmakers have demanded that the Bush administration concentrate on securing borders and enforcing immigration laws before they would agree to the president's plan for a program to allow temporary guest workers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in November announced a multiyear plan to secure the borders and reduce illegal immigration. The Secure Border Initiative called for more agents, advanced technology and enhanced infrastructure to control both the northern and southern borders within five years, and to improve enforcement of immigration laws.

The proposal includes the America's Shield Initiative, which focuses solely on buying high-tech devices for the borders. It is expected to cost $2.5 billion. Congress provided $31 million in fiscal 2006 funding for the initiative -- $20 million less than President Bush requested.

Appropriators said in a conference report on the Homeland Security Department's spending measure that they rejected the increase because the department said it is reviewing the entire shield program and "may suspend all major procurement action until it has resolved fundamental questions about scope and architecture."

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Groups differ on countering shoulder-fired missile threat

Greta Wodele — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Congress has been pressuring the Homeland Security Department since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to install devices on the underbelly of commercial airplanes to protect against Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS. The department plans to finish testing different technologies next year and make a decision about deploying countermeasures.

"We're going to make a multi-billion mistake if we move" to put countermeasures on airplanes, said John Meenan, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Air Transport Association, about the debate. "We seem to be on the path to conceivably spending billions of dollars to address one threat."

Meenan argued Congress and the Bush administration must step back from their plans to review other technologies that could combat multiple threats. He dismissed statements from defense contractors that current technologies are inexpensive and easily deployed.

Jack Pledger, a Northrop Grumman representative whose company is participating in the Homeland Security initiative, said its device would cost $1 per passenger for a New York to Los Angeles flight and have a life cycle of 20 years. Mark Slivinski with Raytheon told Congress their alternative technology to put an infrared grid around airports would cost one-tenth of the price tag for loading the devices onto airplanes.

Meenan said ATA estimates the cost at $5 per passenger and the technologies could cost hundreds of billions.

Lawmakers provided $110 million in the recently-enacted fiscal 2006 spending measure for the Homeland Security Department to complete the project. But they also expressed concerns with the initiative, saying preliminary results "are not entirely encouraging."

The House Appropriations Committee said in its report on the department's spending bill that the "resulting technologies will not be sufficiently able to meet the challenges of commercial application at a cost that is economically feasible. The committee is also aware of emerging technologies that may be simpler and more cost effective but are far from fully developed."

The Government Accountability Office estimates that more than 800,000 shoulder-fired missiles exist worldwide, with 27 terrorist groups known to possess them.

The missiles are relatively cheap to purchase and take only seconds to prepare, require minimal training and have a flight time of three to 10 seconds. The missiles are most effective at 10,000 to 15,000 feet, when airplanes are taking off or landing and are at their most vulnerable altitude.

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FEMA officials: Military delayed Superdome evacuation

Greta Wodele — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The FEMA official, Philip Parr, who was working out of the Superdome, said he had devised a plan to use helicopters to evacuate victims to dry land and later bus them to adequate shelters in less than 30 hours on Wednesday, Aug. 31 -- two days after the storm hit the city and massive flooding ensued.

Parr said National Guard officials told him that Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore had taken over evacuation operations and Parr's plan was on hold. On Thursday, Sept. 1, FEMA and state officials sent buses to begin evacuating victims, a process that took until Saturday, Sept. 3, to complete.

"The result of that delay ... was that thousands of people in the Superdome had to spend another unpleasant, hot and dangerous night," said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Parr, along with two other veteran FEMA officials, said the event portrays the problem that can result when the military takes the lead in a domestic disaster response. "We need to have a command role," said Scott Wells, a FEMA coordinating officer, instead of its current one as a coordinating agency.

FEMA officials explained that they hand out mission assignments to other federal agencies, which are immediately approved by agency officials on the ground.

The military "takes issue with the term 'mission assignments' " and must seek approval through its chain of command in Washington, said William Carwile, who ran FEMA operations in Mississippi.

Parr said he constantly had to "rein in" military officials who sought to take over recovery efforts from state and local officials. "Having DoD is like someone giving you an 800-pound gorilla. ... In the end, that gorilla is gonna do what it wants," Wells said.

To run disaster relief efforts, the FEMA officials said their agency needs to be bolstered, because it now lacks training, equipment, staff and expertise to respond adequately to catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina. Wells said Congress must tweak the Stafford Act that governs federal disaster relief assistance to handle catastrophic disasters.

"It's like bringing a donkey to the Kentucky Derby," he said about the law.

The officials testified that Congress and the Bush administration have not provided enough funding to train and equip FEMA response teams in recent years. They also defended the agency against recent criticism from Louisiana officials about their efforts, saying state and city officials lacked an understanding of the agency's role.

Wells said requests from New Orleans officials for golf carts, major weapons and ammunition, as well as air conditioners at the height of the crisis demonstrated this point. Parr added that Louisiana had not adequately prepared for the hurricane, failing to designate satisfactory shelters and sanitation facilities, as well as stocking food and medical supplies.

"That's the job of state and local governments," Parr said.

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Congress settles dispute over Snow's Secret Service detail

Greta Wodele — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Senate lawmakers slipped language into the fiscal 2006 Homeland Security appropriations bill President Bush signed into law Oct. 18 that requires all agency heads receiving Secret Service protection -- except for the Homeland Security secretary -- to pick up the tab for their security detail.

That provision actually applies only to Snow, whom sources said has been adamant about retaining Secret Service protection despite losing the agency during the government reorganization after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Other Cabinet departments hire and train their own security details, according to the Government Accountability Office, which also reported in 2000 that most of those hired guns do not receive adequate training and are not given sufficient authority to protect Cabinet personnel.

To ensure clarity, senators added more language to the bill alerting the Treasury Department it could no longer boss around the Secret Service on the issue. Secret Service funding cannot be used for activities outside the Homeland Security Department's mission, they wrote, insisting that Secret Service personnel answer only to the Homeland Security secretary.

Senate appropriators wanted to make sure the Secret Service "would not have to eat the cost of protecting another department's secretary," according to a source familiar with their thinking.

The squabble surfaced last year when the Treasury Department persuaded the Senate Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee to include a provision in its fiscal 2005 spending measure denying the Secret Service's request for $2.4 million in payment for protecting the Treasury secretary.

"The committee believes that protective services are a core responsibility of the [Secret Service], which should be funded in the department of Homeland Security's budget," Senate appropriators wrote in their report accompanying the fiscal 2005 Transportation-Treasury spending bill.

But that language was later stripped from the final version of the spending measure, allowing confusion to persist over which department should pay for Secret Service protection, according to Senate and Treasury Department aides. The Treasury Department, which has had Secret Service protection for its secretary since its inception, believed Congress backed its argument that it was not required to reimburse the Secret Service for Snow's detail.

"We've always had Secret Service protection," said a Treasury spokesman. He declined to elaborate on the department's position, and instead pointed to the Bush administration's Statement of Administration Policy on the issue.

Addressing the Senate fiscal 2006 homeland security appropriations bill, the administration said July 11 that the president "should continue to have the flexibility to direct the Homeland Security secretary to provide, whether on a reimbursable or nonreimbursable basis, Secret Service protection to the head of an executive agency."

Despite the president's objections, House and Senate conferees kept the Senate provision in the final spending bill, which Bush eventually signed into law.

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Panel proposes wider use of private baggage screeners

Greta Wodele — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Homeland Security Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., said legislation the committee is introducing would provide airports with incentives and flexibility to hire private screeners.

If airport owners can show a savings by hiring a private screening company as opposed to federal screeners, the owner can use the savings to buy more technology, Lungren said. He dismissed the notion that the bill aims to eliminate the federal screening program but rather gives airports flexibility to get around the cap on the number of federal screeners.

Congress has prohibited TSA from hiring more than 45,000 screeners since creating the agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Lungren, along with Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y, said he wants to move the bill early next year.

Democrats on the panel did not join their Republican colleagues Wednesday, but Lungren said the GOP members consulted them about the legislation and tried to address their concerns in the bill.

But the bill does not include provisions on several hot-button issues raised by Democrats, such as screening cargo placed on passenger airplanes and bolstering rail and mass transit security in the wake of the London bombings last summer. Lungren said the bill would increase accountability and efficiency at TSA and, as a result, allow officials to focus more resources on those issues.

"This does not put us back to the pre-9/11 position," Lungren said. "It does not eliminate [security] standards."

Another provision in the bill would allow TSA to use commercial databases to verify airline passenger's identity before boarding the aircraft. Congress in the recently enacted fiscal 2006 Homeland Security spending bill prohibited TSA from using commercial data.

Lungren's bill would limit the use of commercial data by not allowing TSA to "purchase, compile, obtain or otherwise possess" the information. Nonetheless, the provision is likely to spark heated debate among Democrats and privacy groups.

The legislation also would set performance goals for TSA, state and local governments and the private sector to continue improving airport security. It would aim to reduce airline passenger frustrations with long security lines by requiring TSA to develop a list of vetted passengers through various programs that could bypass security checks and reduce lines.

It would also create an independent, performance-based organization within TSA to focus exclusively on airline passenger and baggage screening.

There has not been a comparable proposal in the Senate, although Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, plans to hold a series of hearings early next year to determine if the agency needs to be reorganized, a committee spokeswoman said.

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Panel offers framework for airline passenger pre-screening plan

Greta Wodele — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee said the department should narrowly focus the pre-screening program known as Secure Flight. The committee advised the department to require a passenger's name and date of birth, and airlines should verify a traveler's identity through two government databases. The group said the program should not be expanded to commercial databases.

Collecting passengers' personal information and protecting the data is at the crux of the debate over the program between policymakers and privacy and civil rights advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union repeatedly has called on the Homeland Security Department to eliminate the program.

The advisory panel on Tuesday said the Transportation Security Administration, which runs the program, has yet to fully define Secure Flight. The committee submitted several recommendations for its future deployment.

Beyond limiting the scope of the initiative, the panel said TSA should create transparent processes for Secure Flight. "Recognizing that security concerns limit the disclosure of some operational details, the [Transportation Security Administration] should specify what information Secure Flight will use and how it will handle that information," read the advisory panel's report.

The panel added that TSA must provide an effective process for passengers who have been wrongly delayed or prohibited from boarding a flight. "The determination and any resulting corrections must be made in a timely manner and corrections must be rapidly disseminated throughout the Secure Flight system," it said.

Lawmakers in September decided to provide less funding for the Secure Flight program than outlined earlier this year because TSA has not provided a fully justified cost estimate to Congress. The agency also has not set up the program with two airlines as originally proposed.

It also directed the Government Accountability Office to keep monitoring TSA to make sure Secure Flight meets the 10 criteria that appropriators set for it in fiscal 2005.

Meanwhile, Homeland's acting chief privacy officer, Maureen Cooney, outlined the office's goals over the next year during Tuesday's advisory meeting. She said the privacy office would issue final guidelines for the government's use of data as well as reports on Secure Flight and government databases, among other objectives.

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Investigators to shed new light on military’s role in Katrina response

Greta Wodele — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

History books are filled with pages about high-profile congressional investigations, such as the Watergate and Iran-Contra hearings. Many inquiries required years of questioning and cost millions in taxpayer dollars.

By contrast, the lawmakers and staff working on the Katrina investigations -- headed by House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine -- are working within a timeframe of six months and with less than $1 million in each chamber to produce their findings. Nevertheless, they believe that when they issue their reports in February, the hurricane inquiries will be on par with other major investigations.

"Clearly, [the deadline] is our biggest challenge," said David Marin, the deputy chief of staff on the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina, which Davis is chairing. But the deadline also "helped to shape and focus the scope of our investigation," Marin said. "There comes a time when you have enough information."

To gather evidence, the investigators are sifting through hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewing hundreds of officials in Washington and the Gulf Coast region. The aides believe that the effort is likely to lead to crucial policy changes on several issues dealing with the government's response to natural disasters or to a terrorist attack.

"I think it will lead to major legislation," said Michael Bopp, staff director of Collins's committee in the Senate. "The role of the Department of Defense is likely to be one of the most significant findings of this investigation."

The Senate report could contradict the positive media attention surrounding the military's response to the storm, Bopp said. He added that the report may also recommend reorganizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was widely criticized for its sluggish response in the critical days following the hurricane, and tweaking the law governing FEMA relief assistance, known as the Stafford Act.

House investigators said their report could lend weight to President Bush's argument for a greater military role in domestic crises. "It will crystallize a lot of issues," said Larry Halloran, deputy counsel on the House select committee. He suggested that Congress might change the 1878 law prohibiting the military from acting as a domestic police force, to allow the activation of troops early in a crisis.

Despite the investigators' hopes for far-reaching policy changes, politics have overshadowed the congressional probes into Katrina from the very beginning. In early September, shortly after the hurricane struck, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., announced they had agreed to create a bipartisan, bicameral committee to conduct an investigation.

But Democrats balked, arguing that the GOP-controlled Congress could not objectively investigate the Republican White House, and they called for an independent, 9/11-style commission. "An investigation of the Republican administration by a Republican-controlled Congress is like having a pitcher call his own balls and strikes," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., complained at the time.

The partisan standoff led to the separate House and Senate investigations. Ultimately, Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed to work together in Collins's committee. But in the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the select committee a sham and refused to appoint members.

House Republicans have used the spotlight of public hearings to criticize the Democrats' position, charging that they are shirking their constitutional responsibility to oversee the executive branch. Davis has vowed to conduct the investigation "by the book" and "let the chips fall where they may," even if blame lands on the shoulders of the Bush administration or the Republican-led Congress.

Likewise, Halloran, who has conducted several congressional inquiries, insisted that partisanship has been sidelined in the Katrina probes. "One thing that you learn very early up here is that the institutional interests of the branches override party politics" during an investigation, he said. "Those interests trump party every time."

Fairly or not, though, it seems that the media have paid far more attention to Capitol Hill's partisan sniping over Katrina than to the actual investigations. Still, some veteran observers are heartened to see Congress attempting to flex its oversight responsibilities, which critics charge have been badly neglected in recent years.

"Oversight investigations are a critical function of Congress," said Thomas Mann, a congressional expert at the Brookings Institution. "Just because most don't attract blockbuster media coverage doesn't mean they are inconsequential."

But former Rep. Bill Frenzel, R-Minn., who served in the House from 1971 to 1990 and is now a guest scholar at Brookings, contended that while a few congressional investigations have produced significant findings, most just waste taxpayer dollars and divert lawmakers' attention from policy-making.

"Investigations are on the front ranks of something Congress is not good at," Frenzel said. "The parties get all mixed up" in politics.

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FAA restrictions bar wider use of drones to patrol border

Greta Wodele — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

"We're going to use drones to be able to help enforce the border in rural Texas and in rural New Mexico and rural Arizona," Bush said Tuesday. "Slowly, but surely, technology is being employed up and down the border, and that's a key part of our strategy." The president's proposal also includes a guestworker program and bolstering immigration laws.

After more than two years of negotiations, the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Customs and Border Protection Directorate recently finalized a deal with the FAA to fly one drone in the Tucson, Ariz., area.

CBP also issued an environmental impact study in September that helps clear the way for an expansion of UAV operations from the western corner of Arizona to the eastern corner of Texas, but the agency still needs to work out a deal with the FAA to fly the drones outside restricted military airspace. Because of the restrictions, CBP officials have been forced to deploy a fleet of Blackhawk helicopters to patrol the rest of the southern border.

A CBP spokesman said Wednesday that the agency has recently received the "green light" to buy its second UAV early next year and plans to deploy the drone in the Tucson area until CBP and FAA officials reach additional agreements.

"We have to talk and ask for permission, but FAA is very strict," he said. "We're looking at what we can do to get exemptions" from FAA regulations or maximize the requirements set by FAA for UAVs.

Lawmakers this year repeatedly called on the Homeland Security Department to buy UAVs for border security after the successful conclusion of a trial program in Arizona. The department signed an initial contract in September with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to buy its first UAV and support services for $14 million.

The second UAV is expected to cost half that amount, and the agency could spend up to $59 million for four UAVs under the contract, said the spokesman. Congress provided $10 million for the agency's UAV program in the recently enacted fiscal 2006 Homeland Security appropriations measure.

"Ideally, with UAVs, the focus is to create a virtual curtain of air detection," said the spokesman about deploying the drones from Arizona to Texas.

The agency argues the drones provide significant financial savings compared to operating and maintaining its fleet of helicopters. The agency spends $4,000 every time it launches a Blackhawk and must pay additional labor costs.

The drones, called "Predator B," have the capacity to fly 30 consecutive hours without refueling at 230 miles per hour and over remote land border areas. The UAVs are equipped with electro-optic sensors, radar and infrared cameras and can immediately and automatically transfer images to ground controls.

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Congress OKs funds to fortify planes against attack

Greta Wodele — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Lawmakers in September matched the department's request of $110 million in its fiscal 2006 spending measure, which is $49 million more than last year's enacted level, to complete the program next year and begin installing the devices. But House lawmakers said preliminary results of the program "are not entirely encouraging."

House lawmakers directed the department to spend $10 million of the $110 million on alternative technologies. But House and Senate lawmakers negotiating the final bill in September deleted the language. President Bush signed the final spending bill into law last month.

The department last week finished the second phase of the initiative, successfully testing two rival companies' technology against shoulder-fired missiles known as man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS. The department initiated the counter-MANPADS program in 2003 after repeated calls from lawmakers to protect commercial airplanes from the prolific weapons.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that more than 800,000 shoulder-fired missiles exist worldwide, with 27 terrorist groups known to possess them.

Shoulder-fired missiles are relatively cheap to purchase, at $25,000 to $80,000 each. They also take only seconds to prepare, require minimal training and have a flight time of three to 10 seconds. The missiles are most effective at 10,000 to 15,000 feet, when airplanes are taking off or landing and are at their most vulnerable altitude.

Lawmakers over the last two years have continued to write legislation demanding that the department place the counter measures on commercial airplanes, but Congress has yet to approve any measures. Florida Republican John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee, authored legislation, H.R. 2905, to require the installation of counter-missile technology on the Airbus A380 within two years of certification of the technology.

"This legislation is the next logical step to protect commercial aviation from the threat posed by shoulder-fired missiles." Mica said in a statement. "When you launch a new aircraft that can carry the population of a small village, it must require -- at a minimum -- a missile-defense system as standard operating equipment." The bill is pending before his subcommittee.

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FBI's cyber division wins key backing in Congress

Greta Wodele — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

"Cyber investigations have been deemed an FBI top priority mission by the FBI and by this committee," the Senate Appropriations panel wrote in its report on the measure to fund the Justice Department, among others. "As such, the committee was surprised to learn the FBI imposed funding decreases on the cyber division, particularly to the special technologies and applications section, disproportionate to its mission priority and impact on counter-terrorism efforts."

The section engineers support hundreds of counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence and criminal investigations involving digital or electronic information, according to the FBI. They also develop new tools and technologies for various FBI projects, ranging from computer-intrusion investigations to hostage rescue teams.

The FBI director has slashed $35 million from the squad over the last five years. This year, Senate appropriators decided to stop the gouging, directing the agency to restore the $35 million in cuts.

But when the committee met with House colleagues to craft a compromise spending bill, the lawmakers settled on $20 million "because of competing interests," the panel's spokeswoman said. The $20 million is in addition to the division's estimated $65 million annual budget, according to appropriations staffers.

An FBI official argued that the Senate appropriators' $35 million figure is misleading because it included funding provided in emergency spending measures from previous years.

"The amount referenced in the mark can be characterized by line items that were funded for one year, rather than into perpetuity," the official said, adding that the cuts also were due to government-wide rescissions and the director's decision to transfer money to higher priorities.

"A program manager may be disappointed that their program was cut, but they are taking it along with everybody else," said the official, explaining that the agency used some of the funding to compensate employees for a cost-of-living adjustment in their salaries and hire personnel because Congress did not provide enough money this year for compensation benefits.

The House last week overwhelmingly approved the final version of the spending bill, and the Senate is likely to follow suit this week.

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