The State of our Defense

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030224-423465,00.html

By ROMESH RATNESAR
Feb. 16, 2003

When top officials at the FBI arrived for work last week, they had
reason to feel even more anxious than usual. Beginning each day before
dawn, FBI Director Robert Mueller and his top aides huddled on the
seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, reviewing overnight
intelligence reports gathered from human and electronic sources around
the world. Taken together, the reports suggested what intelligence
officials had suspected for weeks: al-Qaeda operatives, in the words
of a senior U.S. official, "are in the execution phase of some of
their operations." The intelligence sources couldn't pinpoint the kind
of strikes in the works or the cells charged with executing them. But
U.S. officials told Time that earlier this month Mueller and other top
officials received credible intelligence that al-Qaeda had an attack -
or multiple attacks - set to begin at some point last week, perhaps to
coincide with the end of the hajj, the five-day Muslim pilgrimage to
Mecca. Officials say the intelligence specifically mentioned that the
likely targets were New York City and Washington.

Even though the feared attacks failed to materialize, the anxieties
didn't subside. Inside the FBI, fears of a devastating attack are as
high as they've been in months, in part because of the possibility
that "other tools are in play" - meaning biological and chemical
weapons. A senior Administration official says that telephone calls
and e-mails exchanged between several suspected terrorists and
intercepted by the U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies pointed to a
plot inside the U.S. using nerve gas, poisons or radiological devices.  
"It wasn't just chatter," says Republican Senator Pat Roberts,
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It was a pattern."

Some of the plots are believed to be in the planning stages. A senior
Administration official tells Time that domestic law-enforcement
agencies are investigating a report that Islamic extremists in this
country are trying to acquire parts to build an unmanned aerial
vehicle (uav) abroad - the kind of machine that terrorism experts
believe could be deployed to spray chemical agents over populated
areas. The fear is that a uav assembled overseas could be used against
U.S. assets there.

Some alleged terrorist plans were very close to home.

Counterterrorism officials say they received a phone tip that unnamed
members of Congress could be the targets of assassination attempts. On
Wednesday, U.S. Capitol Police chief Terry Gainer warned House members
to be on alert for attempts on their lives. At a closed-door briefing
Thursday a group of Senators grilled Secretary of Homeland Security
Tom Ridge about whether they should clear their families out of the
capital in anticipation of an attack. Ridge counseled them against it,
but when pressed by the Senators for the odds of an attack on U.S.  
targets at home or abroad in the next several weeks, Ridge, according
to one source familiar with the meeting, put the probability at "50%
or greater." Ridge's spokesman denies that the Secretary gave that
figure. Still, a congressional source says the White House is
"definitely worried. They're not jacking this up for effect." In
private, White House officials sounded almost resigned to the
inevitability of catastrophe. "All we can do," Vice President Dick
Cheney told a gathering of top Administration officials to discuss
bioterrorism, "is ask ourselves, Have we done everything we can to
prevent an attack? I want to be able to look all of you in the eye and
(have you) tell me that we have done all that we can."

So have we? While the Administration demonstrated again last week its
determination to remind Americans of the dangers of terrorism, it has
done far less to prepare the country for actually defending against
it. While the White House's suggestion that Americans defend
themselves against chemical or biological attacks with duct tape and
plastic sheeting was dismissed by many for its naivete, it laid bare a
sobering truth: the U.S. still doesn't have a credible and
comprehensive system in place to cope with such attacks. "We're not
building the means to respond well," says Stephen Flynn, a
homeland-security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And
when we have that next terrorist incident, there will be hell to pay,
because the American people will be in disbelief about how little has
been done."

Though President Bush pledged last January to send $3.5 billion to the
state and local authorities who will bear the burden of responding to
a terrorism emergency, the money was appropriated by Congress only
last week. Interviews with dozens of homeland-security officials, from
New York City to Long Beach, Calif., reveal that while local
authorities around the country are more aware of the potential for
terrorist strikes, they lack the resources to upgrade defenses against
them. Hospitals say they can't train enough employees to effectively
spot and treat victims of biological attacks; fire departments can't
afford to buy the haz-mat suits needed to guard against deadly germs;  
sheriffs say they still learn about terrorist threats from cnn. The
bottom line is that in many respects, the homeland is no more secure
than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. "The biggest thing we've done," says
William Harper, head of homeland security for the state of Arkansas,
"is to avoid feeling comfortable."

The White House contends that every locality can't be sprinkled with
money from the Federal Government. Early this month, Budget Director
Mitchell Daniels said that "there is not enough money in the galaxy"  
to devise a homeland-security system strong enough to protect every
American. The White House points out that the $41 billion the
Administration's current budget devotes to homeland security is double
the amount spent on domestic defense programs before Sept. 11. But
because of the partisan bickering that delayed the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security, almost none of it has actually been
spent. Democrats are accusing the White House of neglecting homeland
security while it slashes taxes and takes up fights with enemies
abroad. "How is it," says Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, "that we're asking
widows to put duct tape on their house, when police, firemen and
medical personnel don't have adequate resources?"

Part of the answer rests in the new Homeland Security Department
itself, the impetus behind the biggest reorganization of the Federal
Government in a half-century. The new department, first proposed by
the President last July, aims to bring 22 agencies and 175,000
employees, from border agents to biologists, under a single
bureaucratic roof—and to do it before al-Qaeda tries to mount another
attack. But the department is only beginning to pick up momentum.  
Since it opened its doors Jan. 24, only three out of a possible 23
appointees to the new department have received confirmation; most have
not even been named.

Given the challenge he faces in launching a new department in the
midst of war and mushrooming deficits, Ridge has stayed upbeat. He has
tried to shrug off the late-night barbs aimed at the department's
color-coded alerts and duct-tape tutorials. A sheepish but
good-humored Ridge finally said last week that "we do not want
individuals or families to start sealing their doors or their
windows," adding that "there may come a time" when authorities
recommend that Americans do so. Undaunted by criticism that the White
House may be needlessly frightening the public, Ridge plans to unveil
this week yet another set of practical guidelines for how citizens
should prepare for attacks.

Ridge insists that on the whole, the country is safer than it was on
Sept. 11. "Let me count the ways," he says, rattling off improvements
in aviation security—from the hiring of 45,000 new federal screeners
to the hardening of cockpit doors. Ridge says the Administration has
improved communication between the FBI and the CIA, struck agreements
with Mexico and Canada to tighten border controls and upgraded the
"push packs" of medicines that can be dispatched to cities hit by
biological or chemical attacks.

But bad guys may still be slipping in—or eluding detection. FBI
officials told TIME the bureau has identified "less than a dozen"  
Islamic men residing in the U.S. who have been to al-Qaeda training
camps and are currently in contact with al-Qaeda leaders.

Law-enforcement agents are monitoring these men with wiretaps,
physical surveillance and other covert means; a handful of known Iraqi
intelligence agents and 20 to 40 suspected al-Qaeda associates are
receiving similar scrutiny. Officials say there's no credible evidence
that Saddam, on his own or in league with al-Qaeda, has managed to
smuggle biological or chemical weapons into the U.S. Still, so many
targets on U.S. soil remain undefended or indefensible. Federal
Homeland Security officials confided last week that the country's
major subway systems are vulnerable to a toxic attack. The government
has developed new sensors that can detect a toxic-chemical release and
instantly alert emergency workers to where the substance is and how to
fight it. So far, Washington has installed 100 sensors in its Metro
stations; Boston has a small program in place, while New York City is
still experimenting. That's it. The agency that regulates the
country's 103 nuclear plants ordered security around sites tightened
after Sept. 11. But watchdogs say those measures haven't been
rigorously tested, and past test runs identified obvious security
lapses like unlocked doors.

Federal Homeland Security officials say they are now focused on
bolstering security at the country's commercial seaports, which
counterterrorism experts believe would be the most likely point of
entry for a nuclear or dirty bomb. Customs officials have invited port
owners to apply for grants for increased video monitoring,
strengthened security fences and patrol boats; U.S. agents have also
been deployed to foreign ports to check out containers before they
head Stateside. But U.S. ports are still porous. The Coast Guard says
it needs $4.4 billion to make minimal improvements to physical
security at the nation's 361 ports, but so far the government has
authorized only $92 million. The Long Beach-Los Angeles port, which
handles 43% of the nation's incoming seaborne cargo, has received just
$5.8 million. "Right now," says Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander,
"we have a port system running that practically invites terrorists to
attempt to come after us."

So why are the holes so large? Put the question to just about anyone
outside the Bush Administration, and you'll hear a familiar answer:  
money. It's a typical complaint, but experts of both parties agree
that in this case increased funding would actually lead to more
protection. A Brookings Institution study released last month
estimates that the President's 2003 budget falls $7 billion below
what's needed to fund basic security needs. Others want even bigger
boosts. Last week Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman called for an
additional $16 billion in homeland-security spending, to pay for
thousands of additional border-patrol agents, bigger stockpiles of
vaccines and antidotes and more aid to fire fighters and police
departments.

Outside Washington, at least, there is consensus. In New York City,
police commissioner Ray Kelly says the city is still waiting for $900
million it has requested from the feds, some of which would go toward
training police officers. "We are continuing to ask Washington for
that money," he says. In Detroit, a critical node of homeland
security, given its heavily trafficked border and large Arab-American
population, city officials say they have spent $10 million on
helicopters, protective suits and beefed- up border patrols. But other
needs, including a communications system that would allow the city's
emergency teams to talk with one another and their Canadian
counterparts, have been shelved until federal help arrives. Detroit
mayor Kwame Kilpatrick says he has pleaded for more money. "It's very
frustrating," he says. Smaller cities have fared even worse, with many
forced to spend money on basic equipment they expected the feds would
pay for. Says Donald L. Plusquellic, mayor of Akron, Ohio: "If you had
told me when we met with Bush that it would now be some 500-plus days
since Sept. 11 and we would still not have this money, I wouldn't have
believed you."

And yet in small and even heroic ways, officials across the country
have thrown themselves into roles as the country's new defenders.  
Officials in rural Hardin County, Ohio, purchased a portable
decontamination shower and are planning to simulate a
terrorist-sponsored train derailment to test the danger posed to the
area's local chemical facilities. In Iowa, state officials have held
eight-hour seminars with farmers on the possibility of "agroterrorist"  
attacks on the food supply.

But do citizens in Akron and Hardin County have any real reason to
believe they could be hit next? The Administration's duct-tape alert
had the perhaps counterproductive effect of suggesting that every
household should consider itself a target—even while prime targets
went undefended. "These threats are real," says Brian Jenkins, a
terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., "but the increased probability of
a terrorist attack does not increase the risks to any single
individual." At the same time, even strengthening our defenses won't
deter terrorists forever. The truth is, we probably have no way of
knowing whether the country is prepared for the next attack until
after it occurs.

- Reported by Timothy J. Burger, James Carney, John F. Dickerson,
Viveca Novak, Elaine Shannon and Michael Weisskopf/ Washington, Maggie
Sieger/Detroit, Leslie Whitaker/ Chicago, Steve Barnes/Little Rock and
Leslie Berestein/Los Angeles, with other bureaus



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