Infrastructure Official Draws Praise for Job

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A515-2003Nov4.html

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 5, 2003

Robert Liscouski still has the pierced ear but not the long hair that
he sported in the 1970s, when he was an undercover narcotics officer
in northern New Jersey selling marijuana and cocaine to biker gangs.

Now Liscouski, 49, has a higher-ranking job, but one requiring the
same long hours and cool demeanor that he exhibited as a narc -- he is
the Department of Homeland Security's top official protecting gas
pipelines, railroads, dams and other critical facilities from
terrorist attacks.

The job of assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is one of
the most challenging in the 170,000-employee department, as well as
one of the main reasons Homeland Security was created, officials said.

While many of the department's divisions are being criticized for
disorganization, Liscouski's 200-person shop is widely praised for the
crispness of its analysis and its efficiency. Some members of Congress
who are highly critical of other Homeland Security offices praised
Liscouski's performance, as did a number of industry figures.

"He's very knowledgeable on issues of infrastructure protection," said
Ronald Dick, a former top FBI counterterrorism official who is now
director of national security and foreign affairs at Computer Sciences
Corp., a federal contractor. "He's got some huge challenges addressing
things never done before in this country."

Some defense experts say the war on terrorism is one of the first U.S.  
national-security crises in which the government is forced to ask for
voluntary help from wide swaths of industry. It is Liscouski's job to
secure that help.

U.S. intelligence says al Qaeda is interested in targeting elements of
the nation's critical infrastructure -- sites as diverse as the Hoover
Dam, Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the DuPont chemical complex
in Delaware. The terrorist network's central goals would be to cripple
the economy and strike symbols of U.S. power.

> From the government's point of view, the problem is that many of those
facilities -- some of whose destruction could devastate communications
or transportation or commerce -- lie in private hands. So Liscouski
must jawbone to persuade industry executives to blanket the facilities
with security.

"We need to frame our arguments to CEOs [in favor of spending money to
secure corporate assets] on the basis that it is good for
shareholders," besides being good for the country, Liscouski said.

After leaving the Bergen County, N.J., detective squad in 1980,
Liscouski joined the State Department's security office in Europe. It
was the early 1980s, when German, Italian and Palestinian terrorist
groups were on the loose in Europe. Liscouski protected U.S.  
Ambassador Maxwell Rabb in Rome, trained foreign security agents and
acted as the department's representative to Interpol.

In 1991, he joined a software firm, Orion Scientific, and sold
data-sorting software to U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement
agencies. Six years later, he set up a small company, largely with his
own money, that researched news and market trends for corporate
clients.

Ultimately his firm went under, and he joined Coca-Cola Co.'s security
division.

Far from simply guarding gates, his office was in charge of protecting
Coke's secure data -- including its all-important product formulas --
as it zipped across the 200 countries in which the company operates.  
Liscouski also helped handle all manner of crises, such as a 1999
health scare in Belgium stemming from allegations that Coke cans had
been contaminated and leading to a $250 million recall.

"At Coke, I learned you have to articulate a business argument for why
to spend money on security," he said.

"Bob's DNA is he's very focused, very dedicated, and when he's
committed to something, he does it 1,000 percent," said James Hush, a
Liscouski friend and Coke vice president also in security.

Liscouski joined Homeland Security on March 24, only weeks after the
department was formed as the combination of 22 separate agencies. It
was also a few days into the Iraq war, and the imposition of the
highest security alert in U.S. history. National Guard troops guarded
some nuclear plants, and hundreds of other sites were locked down as
never before.

Despite having a staff that was only a fraction of what his budget
called for, Liscouski was one of the top officials coordinating this
security alert. "There was so much to do and so few people to do it,"  
he said, recalling months of hectic 20-hour days.

His key task is examining the possible threats against U.S. industry
-- as gleaned from, for example, the vague intelligence picked up in
interrogations of captured al Qaeda operatives -- and matching them
with the possible vulnerabilities at thousands of key sites and
networks across the country. Then he takes action to batten down the
hatches.

House Democrats, declaring in a recent report that "two years is too
long to wait," criticize Liscouski's shop as too slow in finishing a
listing of which parts of the infrastructure are most at risk. But
agency officials say the delay is caused by his office's understaffing
and the importance of the task.

One question facing Liscouski is whether the government should demand
through regulation that industries secure themselves, or let them do
it voluntarily.

"Only time will tell," he said. "We're now using the bully pulpit, but
industry has to step up and take responsibility."

Harvard University information policy professor Anthony Oettinger said
he cannot imagine anyone better suited to crack such a challenging
puzzle.

"Bob's range of expertise is astonishing," said Oettinger, who chairs
a CIA science advisory panel on which Liscouski served as a member.  
"He's got such common sense, and he's unflappable. . . . He's
bedrock."



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