Democrats give administration 'D' on security efforts

The Homeland Security Department has failed to create the information systems necessary to defend the nation against a future terrorist attack, the moderate Democratic group Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) charged in a homeland security report card released Wednesday.

The report, "America At Risk," give the Bush administration a "D" average on security in general and singled out information systems for specific criticism, noting that federal officials have failed to create counter-terrorism databases that track foreign visitors, to improve identification systems and to improve the issuance of visas and other consular services.

"Using the Texas vernacular that the president is so fond of, this administration is 'big hat and no cattle' when it comes to homeland defense," PPI President Will Marshall said upon releasing the report at a National Press Club presentation.

Marshall said databases containing terrorism watch lists are still not integrated two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a delay that he called "baffling."

"The list of things still undone is growing," he said. "There is still no sharing of information between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."

Robert Atkinson, PPI's vice president and director of technology and the new economy, said that integrating terrorism watch lists is a relatively simple task. He said administration sources told him it would take only three weeks to do so, not requiring new systems or major investments. "And yet the administration has simply not done it," he said, "largely because there has been no leadership to force recalcitrant agencies and bureaus ... to work together."

Marshall blamed the government's poor progress on the administration's "reflexive antipathy to government" that characterizes security measures as another excuse for domestic spending.

Texan Jim Turner, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said that despite America's lead in information technology, the government has not determined how to share vital security information among agencies.

"You would think that a government with technology such as ours would know who is coming in and out of the country, but it does not," he said, citing a recent government investigation in which five agents with fake IDs and passports successfully entered the United States. "Clearly, that is not protecting our borders. ... And we are so afraid of a national ID that we cannot even get to the point where we standardize our state driver's licenses so that if someone is picked up in Maryland with a fake Texas driver's license, we can at least figure out who they are and why they are there," he said.

Turner noted in particular the need to establish cybersecurity standards. He faulted the lack of progress on that front to the transfer of responsibility for that issue from the White House and FBI to the Homeland Security. "We lost a lot of talent [in the process]," he said. "A lot of good people went to the private sector."