IP: Commission warned Bush

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Subject: [AnInfP] Commission warned Bush
>
> But White House passed on recommendations by a bipartisan, Defense
> Department-ordered commission on domestic terrorism.
>
> Forwarded by Garry Margolis
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> SALON.COM
> By Jake Tapper
>
> Sept. 12, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to sound
> as though they were telling the president "We told you so."
>
> But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a
> Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke
> with something between frustration and regret about how White House
> officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent
> acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.
>
> Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo.,
> and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside
> the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S.
> Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White
> House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney
> study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the
> bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying --
> while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the
> Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign
> manager Joe Allbaugh.
>
> The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the
> issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's
> attention.
>
> Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress
> seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according
> to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart
> says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over
> to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate
> this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts
> and the issue of the day."
>
> "We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said
> Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers
> -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the
> fall of 1999."
>
> On Tuesday, Hart says, as he sat watching TV coverage of the attacks,
> he experienced not just feelings of shock and horror, but also
> frustration. "I sat tearing my hair out," says the former two-term
> senator. "And still am."
>
> Rudman generally agrees with Hart's assessment, but adds: "That's not
> to say that the administration was obstructing."
>
> "They wanted to try something else, they wanted to put more
> responsibility with FEMA," Rudman says. "But they didn't get a chance
> to do very much" before terrorists struck on Tuesday.
>
> The White House referred an inquiry to the National Security Council,
> which did not return a call for comment.
>
> The bipartisan 14-member panel was put together in 1998 by
> then-President Bill Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
> R-Ga., to make sweeping strategic recommendations on how the United
> States could ensure its security in the 21st century.
>
> In its Jan. 31 report, seven Democrats and seven Republicans
> unanimously approved 50 recommendations. Many of them addressed the
> point that, in the words of the commission's executive summary, "the
> combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the
> persistence of international terrorism will end the relative
> invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack."
>
> "A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely
> over the next quarter century," according to the report.
>
> The commission recommended the formation of a Cabinet-level position
> to combat terrorism. The proposed National Homeland Security Agency
> director would have "responsibility for planning, coordinating, and
> integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland
> security," according to the commission's executive summary.
>
> Other commission recommendations include having the proposed National
> Homeland Security Agency assume responsibilities now held by other
> agencies -- border patrol from the Justice Department, Coast Guard
> from the Transportation Department, customs from the Treasury
> Department, the National Domestic Preparedness Office from the FBI,
> cyber-security from the FBI and the Commerce Department.
> Additionally, the NHSA would take over FEMA, and let the "National
> Security Advisor and NSC staff return to their traditional role of
> coordinating national security activities and resist the temptation
> to become policymakers or operators."
>
> The commission was supposed to disband after issuing the report Jan.
> 31, but Hart and the other commission members got a six-month
> extension to lobby for their recommendations. Hart says he spent 90
> minutes with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and an hour with
> Secretary of State Colin Powell lobbying for the White House to
> devote more attention to the imminent dangers of terrorism and their
> specific, detailed recommendations for a major change in the way the
> federal government approaches terrorism. He and Rudman briefed
> National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the commission's
> findings.
>
> For a time, the commission seemed to be on a roll.
>
> On April 3, before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on
> Terrorism and Technology, Hart sounded a call of alarm, saying that
> an "urgent" need existed for a new national security strategy, with
> an emphasis on intelligence gathering.
>
> "Good intelligence is the key to preventing attacks on the homeland,"
> Hart said, arguing that the commission "urges that homeland security
> become one of the intelligence community's most important missions."
> The nation needed to embrace "homeland security as a primary national
> security mission." The Defense Department, for instance, "has placed
> its highest priority on preparing for major theater war" where it
> "should pay far more attention to the homeland security mission."
> Homeland security would be the main purpose of beefed-up National
> Guard units throughout the country.
>
> A new strategy, new organizations like the National Homeland Security
> Agency -- which would pointedly "not be heavily centered in the
> Washington, D.C. area" -- would be formed to fulfill this mission, as
> well with the fallout should that mission fail. As the U.S. is now,
> the Phase III report stated, "its structures and strategies are
> fragmented and inadequate." Diplomacy was to be refocused on
> intelligence sharing about terrorist groups. Allies were to have
> their military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work more
> closely with ours. Border security was to be beefed up.
>
> More resources needed to be devoted to the new mission. "The Customs
> Service, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard are all on the verge
> of being overwhelmed by the mismatch between their growing duties and
> their mostly static resources," the report stated. Intelligence
> needed to focus not only on electronic surveillance but a renewed
> emphasis on human surveillance -- informants and spies -- "especially
> on terrorist groups covertly supported by states." As the threat was
> imminent, Congress and the president were urged to "start right away
> on implementing the recommendations put forth here."
>
> Congress seemed interested in enacting many of the commission's
> recommendations. "We had a very good response from the Hill," Rudman
> says.
>
> In March, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, introduced the National
> Homeland Security Agency Act. Other members of Congress -- Rep. Wayne
> Gilchrest, R-Md., John Kyl, R-Ariz., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. --
> talked about the issue, and these three and others began drafting
> legislation to enact some of the recommendations into law.
>
> But in May, Bush announced his plan almost as if the Hart-Rudman
> Commission never existed, as if it hadn't spent millions of dollars,
> "consulting with experts, visiting 25 countries worldwide, really
> deliberating long and hard," as Hart describes it. Bush said in a
> statement that "numerous federal departments and agencies have
> programs to deal with the consequences of a potential use of a
> chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon in the United
> States. But to maximize their effectiveness, these efforts need to be
> seamlessly integrated, harmonious and comprehensive." That, according
> to the president, should be done through FEMA, headed by Allbaugh,
> formerly Bush's gubernatorial chief of staff.
>
> Bush also directed Cheney -- a man with a full plate, including
> supervision of the administration's energy plans and its dealings
> with Congress -- to supervise the development of a national
> counter-terrorism plan. Bush announced that Cheney and Allbaugh would
> review the issues and have recommendations for him by Oct. 1. The
> commission's report was seemingly put on the shelf.
>
> Just last Thursday, Hart spoke with Rice again. "I told her that I
> and the others on the commission would do whatever we could to work
> with the vice president to move on this," Hart said. "She said she
> would pass on the message."
>
> On Tuesday, Hart says he spent much of his time on the phone with the
> commission's executive director, Gen. Charles G. Boyd. "We agreed the
> thing we should not do is say, 'We told you so,'" Hart says. "And
> that's not what I'm trying to do here. Our focus needs to be: What do
> we do now?"
>
> Of course, as a former senator, Hart well knows what happens to the
> recommendations of blue-chip panels. But he says he thought that the
> gravity of the issue -- and the comprehensiveness of the commission's
> task -- would prevent its reports from being ignored. After all, when
> then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen signed the charter for the
> 21st Century National Security Strategy Study, he charged its members
> to engage in "the most comprehensive security analysis" since the
> groundbreaking National Security Act of 1947, which created the
> National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the
> Office of Secretary of Defense, among other organizations.
>
> Neither Hart nor Rudman claim that their recommendations, if enacted,
> would have necessarily prevented Tuesday's tragedy. "Had they adopted
> every recommendation we had put forward at that time I don't think it
> would have changed what happened," Rudman says. "There wasn't enough
> time to enact everything. But certainly I would hope they pay more
> attention now."
>
> "Could this have been prevented?" Hart asks. "The answer is, 'We'll
> never know.' Possibly not." It was a struggle to convince President
> Clinton of the need for such a commission, Hart says. He urged
> Clinton to address this problem in '94 and '95, but Clinton didn't
> act until 1998, prompted by politics. "He saw Gingrich was about to
> do it, so he moved to collaborate," Hart says. "Seven years had gone
> by since the end of the Cold War. It could have been much sooner."
>
> Rudman said that he "would not be critical of them [the Bush
> administration] this early because the bottom line is, a lot has to
> be done." The commission handed down its recommendations just eight
> and a half months ago, he said, and they'll take years to fully enact.
>
> "On the other hand," Rudman said, "if two years go by and the same
> thing happens again, shame on everybody.
>
> "I'm not pointing fingers," Rudman said. "I just want to see some
> results." He may get his wish. On Wednesday, Thornberry renewed his
> call for a National Homeland Security Agency. Sen. Harry Reid,
> D-Nev., the assistant majority leader, called for the formation of a
> federal counter-terrorism czar.
>
> Three days ago, if asked to predict what the first major foreign
> terrorist attack on America soil would involve, Hart says he would
> have guessed small nuclear warheads simultaneously unleashed on three
> American cities. But, he says, "there wasn't doubt in anyone's mind
> on that commission" that something horrific would happen "probably
> sooner rather than later. We just didn't know how."
>
> In addition to the Bush administration, Hart has another group that
> he wishes had paid the commission's suggestions more heed. "The
> national media didn't pay attention," Hart says. One senior reporter
> from a well-known publication told one of Hart's fellow
> commissioners, "This isn't important, none of this is ever going to
> happen," Hart says. "That's a direct quote."
>
> Hart points out that while the New York Times mentioned the
> commission in a Wednesday story with the sub-headline "Years of
> Unheeded Alarms," that story was the first serious mention the Times
> itself had ever given the commission. The Times did not cover the
> commission's report in January, nor did it cover Hart's testimony in
> April, he points out. "We're in an age where we don't want to deal
> with serious issues, we want to deal with little boys pitching
> baseballs who might be 14 instead of 12."
>
> Hart says he just shook his head when he saw a former Clinton
> administration Cabinet official on TV Tuesday calling for the
> formation of a commission to study the best way to combat terrorism.
> "If a former Cabinet officer didn't know, how could the average man
> on the street? I do hope the American people understand that somebody
> was paying attention."
>
> In his April 3 testimony, Hart noted that "the prospect of mass
> casualty terrorism on American soil is growing sharply. That is
> because the will to terrorism and the ways to perpetrate it are
> proliferating and merging. We believe that, over the next quarter
> century, this danger will be one of the most difficult national
> security challenges facing the United States -- and the one we are
> least prepared to address." He urgently described the need for better
> human intelligence and not just electronic intelligence, "especially
> on terrorist groups covertly supported by states."
>
> He's far from happy to have been proven correct. Both Hart and Rudman
> say with grim confidence that Tuesday's attacks are just the
> beginning. Maybe now, Rudman says, Congress, the White House, the
> media and the American people will realize how serious they were
> about their January report.
>
> "Human nature is prevalent in government as well," Rudman says. "We
> tend not to do what we ought to do until we get hit between the eyes."
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> About the writer
> Jake Tapper is Salon's Washington correspondent and the author of
> "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency."



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