Letters

Building on Missions

Public Buildings Service officials are missing the point about what kind of service to provide ("Public Rebuilding Service," July 15). Customer service brings the entire cadre down to an individual level. This permits the squeaky wheel syndrome to evolve at a devastating rate, thereby making your services reactive rather than defined.

The overall concept should be mission driven. The real questions are: What does your agency or office do? How can you create a synergistic relationship to a physical environment that will enhance your group's ability to create within your field of endeavor?

Hidden Danger

In your May 1 article "Tag Team," you report the growing use of radio frequency identification (RFID) within the Defense Department. While the article painted a rosy picture of the ease and use of RFIDs, it failed to discuss any of their shortcomings.

Any device that transmits an electrical signal can be read by those seeking to do harm. Any truck, plane, ship or container with RFIDs attached to laden stock can be identified as to their contents. Were these contents something of interest to the bad guys, such as ammunition, biological or radiologic agents, or weapons, a timely hijack could jeopardize the shipment and the operational mission this cargo was to support. This is a very real vulnerability that needs to be addressed.

Micro Misunderstanding

In "Back to Basics" (Aug. 1), Bruce Tulgan doesn't seem to understand the difference between management and micromanagement. Micromanagers get in the way of productivity by hounding employees constantly and telling them how to do their jobs rather than what outcomes are expected. Managers steer employees in the right direction and provide sound career counseling. Big difference. Undermanaged employees usually work for a micromanager.

Once again the term "micromanaging" is misinterpreted, and employees are blamed for managers' poor performance. My interpretation is someone who worries if you take too many breaks, your lunch is too long, or you don't fill out a leave slip. Micromanagers have meetings about that stuff all the time, but never address what you should be doing, assess your performance or provide constructive criticism or praise because most of them don't know what you do.

Pay Stubbed

Shawn Zeller's article, "Cash Cops" (Aug. 1), features sad examples of our federal government's treatment of the people who protect the public.

Congress spends about five minutes to discuss their pay raises, plus all of the perks a person can handle, and yet the men and women who protect this nation get less, just like our troops fighting two wars overseas are getting less for putting their lives on the line. Can we say this is fiscal conservatives at work, or is it cheapskates in hiding?

The Right Stuff

As noted in your article "Difficult Terrain" (Aug. 1), Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Air and Marine Operations seeks to build on a limited capability to detect and respond to air intrusions along the U.S.-Canada border. Readers, however, may be misinformed about the capability that does exist on the northern border and the lead roles and responsibilities under the newly established Department of Homeland Security.

Under the leadership of Commissioner Robert Bonner, Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol has deployed more than 1,000 agents and a number of additional air assets to assist in establishing a credible detection and response capability along the northern border. Additional assets to support our agents are certainly needed to build on those capabilities, but aircraft must be the proper type and crews must be trained. To employ untrained crews with aircraft that aren't suitable for these missions would not serve our border security interests. The Border Patrol has aircraft, both rotary and fixed wing, at all eight of its sectors across the northern border, as well as highly trained law enforcement professionals to operate them.

The Border Patrol not only has the primary mission under Homeland Security to secure our borders, but has been doing so for decades. Border Patrol agents are the experts when it comes to border security between official ports of entry, and we have the most cost-efficient and effective air program in the federal government. Our pilots, all seasoned Border Patrol agents, make many more arrests and seizures per flight hour than any other law enforcement air program. Compare our average of two arrests and $1,600 in narcotics seizures for every flight hour, and you will find that no other agency compares in efficiency and operational effectiveness.

The article states that developing relationships with other federal, state, local and Canadian agencies will be vital, adding that AMO officials intend to have liaison officers working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but no formal steps have yet been taken. That doesn't mean, however, that no agency has established a liaison. The Border Patrol works with the RCMP daily. And we have had a senior ranking Border Patrol agent stationed at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa since the tragedies of 9/11.

We also spearheaded the establishment of 14 (soon to be 15) Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBET) across the northern border and established the first Integrated Border Intelligence Team in Blaine, Wash. IBET is an intelligence-driven law enforcement team of officials from federal, state, local, tribal and provincial agencies in Canada and the United States. We share technology with the RCMP. Our Border Patrol dispatchers routinely call out sensor activation "hits" and activity to RCMP officials so they can respond to border intrusions from the north. We exchange intelligence, manpower information, areas of patrol and more to expand our coverage of the border. One would be hard-pressed to find a better working relationship than the one that exists between Border Patrol and the RCMP.

The article also states that no single agency is responsible for securing the border. But Customs and Border Protection is the single federal law enforcement agency charged with security of our nation's borders-at and between official ports of entry. CBP unified inspections components from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Agriculture, and Customs and the Border Patrol. ICE's primary mission under DHS is investigative in nature, and does not have as a primary responsibility border security or cross-border interdiction. Developing this capability would be duplicative of the Border Patrol's primary mission under CBP.

Your article notes that Border Patrol agents working on the northern border were far more likely to encounter an immigrant smuggling weapons than drugs, and that there are far fewer agents on the northern border as compared with the southwest border. Different threats, however, require different approaches.

Because our agents arrest almost 1 million illegal aliens annually along our southern boundary, it is logical to place the bulk of our agents in the areas of vulnerability. Our priorities to security along that border are personnel, equipment, technology and border infrastructure.

On the northern border, because the volume of illegal border penetrations is much lower than on the U.S.-Mexico border, our approach is to use economies of scale and deploy additional detection, monitoring, and sensing technology/platforms, support equipment, and to strengthen and enhance long-standing liaison and intelligence-sharing relationships, both with U.S. and Canadian law enforcement. The CBP-Border Patrol has made a lot of progress since Sept. 11, 2001, in each of these areas, but work remains to be done. The approach we are taking under our revised national strategy, with anti-terrorism as the No. 1 priority, is the correct one.

We are proud of the strides we have made and the great work the men and women of the Border Patrol do for the American people in securing our borders every day.