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Release Date: May 10, 2007
For Immediate Release
ffice of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
Mr. Jackson: Here we go. So I’ve got colleagues here that know far more than we do, Corey Gruber, who heads our Grants Office, CPT Grant from the Coast Guard, who has been a lead for the Coast Guard on the Port Security Grant programs, and Doyle Raines has been the lead inside of TSA for the operational work on the transit security portion of this as well as the intercity bus, the ATA grants and some of those other components that relate to surface transportation.
This story right here sitting in front of me tells one thing for you that I want to just call attention to. This grant program has been evolving, not so radically in the last year as compared to the previous year, but we’re now – for example, in the Port Security Grants in the seventh round of Port Security Grant funding since 9/11.
I’ll come back and talk about that for just a minute. But one thing that I want you to understand about how we’re operating here is that the purpose of the Grants Office is to be the manager, the organizer, the financial controls and the administrative support mechanism for these infrastructure protection grants. And then each of those infrastructure grants has a subject matter expert that is associated with the regulatory authority and the day-to-day operational security work that’s done out in the field in the transportation world. In the case of Port Security Grants that’s Coast Guard, and in some of the other grants that would be TSA.
So what we’re trying to do is make sure that we have our roles and definitions clear and that we’re really relying on the subject matter experts in the field who work everyday to look at the risk that we’re finding out there, threat, vulnerability and consequences of attacks, and align that with our regulatory purpose.
So just a couple of quick words and then I’ll take questions that you might have. Our goals have, as you know, from the January rollout of this program at large been focused on risk and they’ve iteratively been nailing down and strengthening the focus that we see based upon our risk analysis. This year’s grants have been significantly more consultative and iterative, and we’ll talk a little bit about some of that as we go through this.
And we have tried to be very specific last year and this year in grant guidance that we’re offering to say that the risk that we see out there and in the natural evolution of investments that have occurred over time is defined for a current cycle of grants in a very specific way so that we can try to obtain the highest return on investment for the grant dollars that we’re investing. That doesn’t mean that we substitute our will or understanding of the operational environment for that of the port director or the transit operators, but it does mean that we set high level priorities, give them some flexibility and then try to drive to things that have the highest return on investment.
And I would say that as we go through the various cycles of grant awards we’ve seen a natural evolution. And as I remember from being the deputy secretary at the Transportation Department when we did the first round of Port Security Grants, that year right after 9/11, in that spring we were looking and saying what is the most important set of things that we can do. And back then, as CPT Grant will remember, it was – for most everybody, but not everybody exclusively – to do very disciplined vulnerability analysis. And so that year’s funding drove the questions about where are your vulnerabilities, what are your vulnerabilities, simply getting a handle on what it was.
I remember what Florida had done, at the state’s insistence, a number of those exact type of vulnerabilities. So their first cycle moved them into what would be second cycle investments for most everybody else, for infrastructure perimeter protection, lights, video, et cetera, those types of investments.
As we’ve gone through the cycles we have grown and sharpened the focus. And one thing, people want to try to suggest that a certain dollar amount is an entitlement. You know, X City got this much last year and therefore they got less this year, and so therefore something is rotten in Denmark.
In fact, what you’re going to see is – there’s one city that I’m thinking of, for example, that got a very large – multiple cities fit this category – a very large Port Security Grant last year, didn’t get that significant amount this year, but that big, multimillion dollar investment gave them a core set of tools that was missing and that they need. And we’re just going to see this over time.
This will not be a program that is treated by this department as a sort of formula grant program. It is very much based on where are you, what’s the threat and what are we going to do about it.
That thinking drove the completion of a task that we started last year by tiering assets based upon risk. So in the port security world, this year we tiered the top most risky areas, highest risk areas, into a single tier and we competed all of the grants that were going to be awarded in that tier. Then we took three additional tiers and competed among like levels of risk.
Last year we had started that idea in the transit world, where in the rail part of the transit grants we had done tier one for highest risk systems, most of which had underground and underwater systems, which was the very highest level of focus of our risk mitigation strategies. And then we had a second tier which we used competitively.
So this year we migrated that tiering structure into the Port Security Grants. We did a very systematic detailed look at how we made that tiering structure work. I think it’s very clear. We talked about that in January really for those of you who were here when Mike Chertoff made his presentation about it. And it’s much more simple, clean and analytical about risk as one variable, 20 percent in the infrastructure protection grants, and then vulnerability and consequences. And we took quantifiable, measurable, solid databases in each one of these grant programs for that vulnerability and consequence analysis, and that is what we built the tiering structure on.
Similarly, we’ve strengthened and improved and made subject-matter, expert-driven the review process. In the Port Security Grant side it starts with the Captain of the port and the port security community at each given port reviewing the applications that have come in. Then it goes to a national level analysis that has both the Coast Guard, the Maritime Administration from Transportation, which is also involved in that first tier of review, along with the local security people, and does a national scan of those priorities.
We found this year for example in that world very, very strong alignment between the assessment at the ground level and the assessment at the national reconciliation level, very little business –wouldn’t you say, Captain – difference between those two?
Cpt Grant: Very little. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jackson: So I think the ground rules and the criteria are strong. We got a lot of very good proposals and we did a lot more consultative work. I just have some numbers that I’ll tell you about from the pour outreach. We had 44 Area Maritime Security Committee meetings by the Coast Guard and DHS grants and training personnel in January and February as we were releasing this. Over 8,500 man hours were expended on this effort.
DOD provided innovation and readiness training funds to reservists to coordinate outreach for this work. We had weekly telephone conference calls with local Coast Guard and MIRAD personnel that were doing this type of outreach to make sure we were getting this word out, talking to everyone. We had teleconferences repeatedly with American Ports Association, with other port groups that were interested in and supportive of the application process and we gave people this chance to have sort of an iterative back-and-forth conversation with the people who would be judging the grants and who design the programs to make sure they were calibrated.
We got from this some terrifically strong things that got funded. Puget Sound had a very strong showing this year for example of validated award categories or projects, and they did well.
Some places, despite all this outreach and work, just actually applied for things that were clearly not allowed by the grant program itself. One large port asked us to buy land and access so that they could build a new entrance to port facilities. That’s not what the program does. Another asked for us to fund a non-lethal weapons system. That’s not what this program does. Another one asked us to fund security for a facility that was not yet built, and that’s not what this program does.
So you do have to read the instruction manual if you’re going to drive the car. And that’s a lesson that we have derived from our assessment of this go round. And we recommit to making sure that we help everybody understand the instruction manual. So I think that I’ve talked a little bit about the process here and where we’re focusing.
In the port world we were looking for Cole-style IED attacks, for example. We were looking for on shore perimeter systems that were strengthened. We were looking for TWIC implementation plans that would help accelerate the TWIC programs in the ports. We were looking for maritime domain awareness investments that would train together, exercise together and help work the whole port community in some consolidated way.
In the transit grants we had similar types of very specific focal points for that work. One of the things that we found in the transit world, as we just launched the process we began to get results of a survey, Doyle, that TSA was doing about training.
One of the core lessons from 9/11 was, because the subway personnel that had been operating between Manhattan and New Jersey had been so well trained and aggressively trained after the first World Trade Center attack, they just saved thousands of lives by being able to go on automatic pilot, and they knew what to do. The communication links were down. The police and the transit worked together in harmony, and they really did just a superb job. I remember that the then-FTA head at DOT took that story around the country after 9/11 and used that as a basis for some initial training for management and transit agencies about how do you prioritize what you’re going to do.
And so the punch line is we found out in the process that some very substantial data that suggested that we were not really focusing on the training mission in a way that we thought. And I think I have a copy of this. Just to give you a couple of numbers, we did a baseline assessment of the top 50 agencies. We had more than 50 percent participation in that baseline assessment, and 77 percent of them had not implemented a refresher follow-on training program for their employees. Eighty-six percent of the bus-only systems had not implemented an initial training program for their employees.
Among the top 20 agencies, we didn’t get responses from all of them, but we got them from about half of those agencies, and of those agencies, the top biggest agencies, 50 percent had implemented a comprehensive training program. So that means half of them had not. And of those who had not, 20 percent lacked a training program at all.
So we tried to call an audible on the grant program at the end, and we constructed basically a drop-in template that said we’ll fund training for you at these hourly rates, you just tell us how many people you want to train. And that became a significant part of what some of the funding yielded for this year.
Doyle, do you have those numbers about the 21 percent of them on that port? Do you have the numbers on that?
Mr. Raines: I do, sir. We received 29 training investment justifications, and that was $9.9 million of the entire $14.2 million that went to tier two. So we were very successful in getting that word out and in trying to call that audible we had a pretty good play that came down.
Mr. Jackson: Good. So anyway, I’m giving you a little bit of detail. I’ll just stop here. You’ve got this book in front of you that puts the whole thing on the page for you. Maybe I’ll hit the pause button and just say if there are any questions in particular I’d be happy to answer them – or someone from the other team.
Is that fair?
Moderator: That is fair. Please identify yourself.
Question: I’m Eileen Sullivan from CQ. And I know you said that the – changes you need a lot of money in return – New Orleans – New York – New Jersey – Delaware Bay.
Mr. Jackson: I have some notes about New Orleans I think. Captain, do you want to talk about the port side of it first?
Cpt Grant: Yes, sir. For New Orleans we saw some really positive things down there in that this year they actually formed a consortium in the lower Mississippi River, which is again in keeping with the goals of the grant program as trying to get people to start working together not everything all in one parish, in their case down there. So we saw some positives.
All of the grants that they had been allocated for, the money that was allocated in January was not requested in total by New Orleans. And some of the projects that they requested were not eligible for funding this year. But through some outreach to these folks we found one of the projects that was initially thought of as not being fundable was actually a mobile command post that was going to benefit all eleven of these parishes. So we added that back in.
So I think New Orleans was a very good example.
With Delaware Bay, last year it was decided to make some port groupings and Delaware Bay was one of those. And we feel that, as a grouping that was allowing those entities to come together and work together. And so they made a very good showing this year in submitting very good projects.
Mr. Jackson: This is an important part. What we’ve done is – if you remember our UASI and state-level grants, SHSGP grants, we tried to move over the last several years into a focus on regional cooperation and regional support.
In the port world this year, we sent out a mandate to the Coast Guard to come back and look at collectivities of ports which are geographically centered. For example, in Virginia there are several ports owned by the state and all geographically clustered. And this year we treated them as one entity for the purpose of aggregating our target level for which tier that group went into. It helps pull them up a little bit by explaining more clearly their combined economic impact in the state of Virginia in that case.
But that was a part of what was going on in this year’s port cycle that I think was very good.
Question: For New York, New Jersey, that region, and also the Delaware Bay, the New Jersey – combined total of $10.9 million. Why?
Mr. Jackson: For the Port Security Grants? Captain, I’ll let you talk about the specific application proposals that they received for that.
Cpt Grant: I don’t have the specific applications in front of me, but I can tell you that within those two regions we use a risk analysis model called the maritime security risk analysis model that is nationwide; every Captain of the port uses that. And we’re able to gauge risk not only within that port but nationwide as well. So that was one of the risk factors and formula factors that went into the allocation.
Now within the port region up there they made some very good applications. I don’t have the specifics. I can get those later to you if you want, but within those applications, all of those projects were validated by the national review panel after having been validated by the local panel. So they were very good projects and brought down risks significantly in that region.
Mr. Jackson: In New York, New Jersey, they basically bumped just a little bit above where our initial risk-based formula had suggested they be at as a target. And the validated grants for that added up to almost exactly this level, actually a little bit above what their target was.
But what we did is we set out at tier one on the basis of the aggregate risk analysis, an internal target that said this represents the amount of cash in tier one and how it was distributed proportionate to risk – come out. New York nailed their numbers with really strong programs.
Question: So they got what they wanted?
Mr. Jackson: I think so. That’s correct.
Question: I’m sorry. Could you explain to me the New Orleans thing? I didn’t understand how we go from $11 million to $1 million. That’s – if I’m reading this properly, 2006 it looks like $11 million for Baton Rouge – page 15?
Mr. Jackson: Well, I think – let me see. I think it would be useful to turn to Baton Rouge’s figures on page 20 to give you a better frame of reference here. But what I said to you earlier is that there are peaks and valleys based upon the type of programs that a port is recommending and their level of infrastructure and investment and how they pull it together.
If you look at this one, in the first round Baton Rouge got no money. In the next round they got $430,000. They got 3.7 – $162,000. Then they had, in 2006, an asymmetric bump to $11.5 million. This year they were down to $1.6, which would be, out of the seven rounds, the third highest that they had taken away from this.
The lesson I would draw for this is you have to look at the grant guidance and read where the focus is, and then you have to see how effectively they have put together meaningful, disciplined and good proposals to meet those requirements that we lay out in the grant guidance. And I think it’s natural to expect that in many places there will be ebbs and flows in the levels of funding that would occur.
But certainly if you look at this I would say that was one of the more anomalous spikes in funding last year, $11 million, and I wouldn’t want you to think that that’s a sort of baseline, once you get up to the high number that you’re going to necessarily receive the same level of funding year after year.
Question: Some of that goes towards recovery – security, post-Katrina, help-them-out kind of stuff?
Mr. Jackson: Well, we funded the recovery stuff out of Stafford Act money and other funds that were made available to the state. And as you know there is a tremendous amount of federal dollars available for infrastructure repair and reconstruction for damage done by Katrina and Rita available in the state.
Question: So you don’t think the $11 million has anything to do with recovery?
Mr. Jackson: No, I don’t think the $11 million was hurricane driven.
Question: That was just – what?
Mr. Jackson: Baton Rouge actually had less hurricane damage at their port than New Orleans did, for example. I mean if you look at New Orleans last year, theirs was actually lower as they were reconstructing and recovering.
Question: So last year’s was a hell of an application?
Mr. Jackson: Yes, that’s right. They did. And if you look at this chart on page 20, that starts on page 20, you’ll see those spikes around every once in a while, where – Houston had one, for example –
Cpt Grant: New Orleans.
Mr. Jackson: Yes, New Orleans last year had $737,000 but this year had almost $9 million. So what I would say is you really have to read the guidance and then make a proposal that is responsive to that, and then you’ll see over time.
And some people – this is multi-year money also. Some people get funding for programs that will not be constructed or completed all in one fiscal year. So they have a program sometimes that’s funded in one fiscal year but takes the payout over, say, two fiscal years. So that’s an element at play in some of these grants as well.
Question: So the application process last year with UASI – this year DHS – consulting role in between and you still even after that didn’t get applications that met the criteria?
Mr. Jackson: No, I would say we had a very strong alignment with the criteria and that the consultation process was a tremendous positive innovation in the way that we did business. I’ll ask you guys who did the work to see if you agree, but it doesn’t mean that everybody turned out to listen to the advice or to take advantage of the opportunity. And so one of the lessons here is we’re funding what we say we’re funding.
Cpt Grant: I would just add a couple things. One is that we did extensive outreach, as the Secretary says, and during that process we actually went to each of the ports. We went into their local areas so that they wouldn’t have to travel, they could find the time in the day to come and talk to us. So that was a positive thing.
I think also that in the New Orleans case that was a region, treated as a region. And so those four entities down there got together and really decided how they would divvy up the money that was allocated back in January. So Baton Rouge and New Orleans decided among themselves what applications to go in. So that’s another reason for the anomaly.
I think, again, we tend to focus somewhat on negatives. But on the positive side, the Port Security Grant program I think is really moving strongly down the road of regionalization, working together, and especially under our Area Maritime Security Plans. So I think that’s a positive aspect.
Mr. Jackson: Doyle, do you want to say a word about the TSA outreach with grants and training? Because it was a very substantial part of your work.
Mr. Raines: Yes, sir. We had extensive outreach. We went to the major regions. We meet with them face to face. We have weekly conference calls. I think we know our stakeholders really well, not only through the grants, but I mean we have in some cases almost daily contact with some of our major stakeholders because of the nature of our work as the sector-specific agent for the transportation sector.
But as far as the grants outreach goes, the way that I would measure the effectiveness of the outreach is how many of the submitted projects were actually eligible because that shows me that they’re actually getting to the risk and that they’re actually getting the right kind of things out.
So in transit we saw 84 of 85 projects were eligible. In bus we brought in all the bus companies and had a big bus conference with the tier one, the large bus companies. Every project we got was eligible in tier one, which are your large bus companies. And in the smaller bus companies, that one wasn’t as good, 117 projects, 80 were eligible. But when you look at that community, a lot of those people have never put in for a grant ever. I mean this could be your small, two-bus company in tier two bus that’s in some small town somewhere.
We’ve gotten to know some real colorful characters in tier two of bus who really this is the first interaction they’ve had with government to try to get money. So even that, we think, is a very successful outreach measure for them.
Question: You mentioned training. I’m curious if you could give me a list of the top five things this pays for?
Mr. Jackson: In Port Security Grants, 21 percent of the projects awarded were for perimeter security, including TWIC. So that’s about the same amount, 20 percent was for multilayer systems of perimeter security. And you’re going to have to help me make the distinction here. That’s control rooms and lights and systems?
Cpt Grant: It’s control rooms. It’s system interoperability with each other, trying to get the word out. It’s working with the facilities and how do they communicate back out to their folks on a security issue.
Mr. Jackson: So about 10 percent was for CCTV camera surveillance. Six percent was intrusion prevention. Another six percent, intrusion protection.
So you see the sort of clusters of prevent and protect there. There’s about five percent in interoperable communications and in training command and control, maritime domain awareness, exercising and planning together. Those captured most of the rest of the money in the categories.
Question: Question about your risk analysis as a follow up. I know that that’s been an evolving process of how you calculate how much money goes out, how much risk is a factor, but forgive me, I don’t recall the exact evolution of what percentage of it, is it today in terms of these grants, how you dole out the money?
Mr. Jackson: All of this is 100 percent risk based.
Question: Okay. So when you’re looking at the New York city area, when you look back since 9/11 – and again, how long has it been 100 percent risk based? Is it just this past year?
Mr. Jackson: Well, I mean it’s hard to say. Was the first cycle risk-based? Yes, because we said you should go out and look at what your vulnerabilities are, which is to say you should understand your risk, you should get a handle on your vulnerabilities. And so it has iteratively grown.
Question: But purely as it stands now, purely risk based, factoring intelligence, threat assessments, all those things?
Mr. Jackson: Two cycles.
Question: Two, so what is that? Does that represent two years?
Mr. Jackson: Yes. And it would be wrong to say that prior to that there was no element of that, but we’ve solidified around the basic approach.
Question: No, I understand. There are other elements too.
Mr. Jackson: Right.
Question: So looking at New York city and that risk assessment, I realize that there’s all sorts of intelligence that gets back into the benefits – generated by secret squirrels on treadmills, all kinds of classified things are going on. But how do you see the threat chart on New York city in the last five years as it’s been calculated in here? Has it dipped? Has it gone up, down, has it been a roller coaster? Has it continually gone up? Has it decreased?
When you look back at how you factored that in, how does New York city –
Mr. Jackson: Let me try to step back from that and answer it this way and then see if it helps. What I would say is this is a process of determining risk and allocating it into tiers and figuring out how to spend your money for the highest return on investment has been a combination of art and science. And there’s been an emerging and somewhat changing but I think clear directional march to get to where we are today, which is in very, very substantial alignment on where we were last year.
And let me just describe what that end state is. It’s that risk is threat, vulnerability and consequences. So if you say that risk is those three elements, what we did is we said essentially for understanding the threat part, which is what’s the intent of people to do things, we gave 20 percent of the total 100 points worth of risk – we made 100 point scale. We gave 20 percent of that risk formula to this threat that’s intelligence driven, it’s experientially driven, and it is based upon our best judgment about that. It just says that a port like New York or L.A. Long Beach has a different threat profile than a small port where one ship comes in every three weeks.
Question: Has the 20 percent been consistent over the years?
Mr. Jackson: No, this formula is the last two years. This is the Chertoff regime focus on this. And I can’t honestly speak for how it went totally in years before. It wasn’t inconsistent with threat, vulnerability and consequence at all, but the gradations, the waiting, the math that went into the formula was much different.
Mr. Gruber: And the sources – they were growing for each of those facts.
Question: I’m sure that vulnerability and consequence have been used. In all the actions somebody –
Mr. Jackson: Well, what you have is that some are less vulnerable now. And as a whole I would say our port systems and networks are less vulnerable. But vulnerability is a relative term. As soon as you think you’re invested and you’re not vulnerable anymore the bad guys are going to find a way to make you vulnerable.
So this is not about eliminating vulnerability. It’s about trying to manage vulnerability in some systematic and deliberate way and also in the places where it matters most.
Question: Well, I guess what I’m drilling down to is the 20 percent threat. How is the threat –
Mr. Jackson: What I can say is there’s been very substantial stability over the period of time of this department relative to the overall threat for the top couple of tiers of ports. And after you get below that you get into a layer of granularity that is hard to differentiate the tier three versus tier four having a substantial difference. Tier four, you could, say the very lowest threat because they’re the lowest volume and the lowest consequence.
But what we did – the UASI formula, we have the same type of discipline, same type of structure. And on the transit and port securities what we did is we – in order to do the vulnerability and consequence, I’m going to tell you, we had been trying to get increasingly mathematical and throw a lot of databases at those calculations of vulnerability and calculations of consequences.
And one thing we said was it was hard to peel out what was a pure vulnerability versus a pure consequences metric. I’ll give you an example. Is the number of people that would be killed in an attack, a comprehensive explosive attack, let’s say, a vulnerability issue or is it a consequence issue? Well, in part it shares elements of both, and so what we did is we have this chart that says we have one variable, 20 percent, which is the threat, and then we have 80 percent in the infrastructure protection grants associated with the vulnerability and consequences.
Then, this is an interesting thing. This is what – we’ve probably spent – I don’t know, guys, what? About 50 hours worth of discussion about this at my level in the department, much to everybody’s chagrin, I think?
Cpt Grant: Yes, sir.
Mr. Jackson: The chagrin part?
Cpt Grant: Yes, sir.
Mr. Gruber: Quality time.
Mr. Jackson: But what we did was we said, show us the math, and let’s talk about it; what can we measure, what databases are out there? And we had actually began to try to take every database we could find, but what we found was there was highly variable quality and not so much additional value to that exercise.
So, for example, we had some very episodic information about so-called surveillance numbers from various ports, people who are taking pictures in a suspicious way and that –
Question: I’m sorry. Are we back on the threat?
Mr. Jackson: Yes. The vulnerability and consequences and how it relates to the threat.
Question: So you’re trying to figure out the math of how do we take a bit chatter about some folks talking about blowing up –
Mr. Jackson: And quantify it. So we quit taking in that observational data. We took – that’s a data set we said, you know what, that data set is not valid.
Question: What’s the answer?
Mr. Jackson: The answer is, on the threat side, it’s a professional judgment of people who wake up every morning and work this in the ports and in the intel community and in DHS operational modes that have responsibility for it.
It’s a judgment call. It’s driven by facts and specific incidents, but it is not – I’m not going to try to kid you and say that that is mathematically precise like calculating the number of people that live in a city.
Question: So it’s kind of an arbitrary, educated call?
Mr. Jackson: I wouldn’t say it’s arbitrary. I would say – you know, I’ll give you an example. I did a little test of our top intel people and asked each one to basically say, without consulting the other, give me your top five most threatened or risky ports, and there was 100 percent agreement. And it came not math but from –
Question: So what are they?
Mr. Jackson: Well, our tier one ports.
Questions: Oh, okay. L.A., New York, et cetera?
Mr. Jackson: Exactly.
Question: So did you come up with any kind of mathematical formula that you can measure chatter and intel and –
Mr. Jackson: We have some math on that. Where the real math is, is in the 80 percent, which is in the – so we have, for example, in transit we have unlinked passenger trips. We have underground track miles. We have number of stations. We have weighting on things that are mathematically measurable and that are consistent from one –
Question: Number of passengers pass through a station every day, and blah, blah, blah.
Mr. Jackson: Exactly.
Question: Before we get too far, forgive me for letting up on the original question. When you look at New York city on that 20 percent threat, has it been consistent going up, has it been even in terms of how that’s been calculated or has it decreased?
Mr. Jackson: I think it’s been consistently in the highest tier relative to other ports in the country. So you’re asking two questions. One question is have their preventative measures strengthened the port and made it less risky. So I’m going up to the top port, which is risk, threat, vulnerability and consequences. I think they have reduced the risk significantly by the efforts that have made post-9/11 there. They have not eliminated the risk. But relative to the rest of the ports in the country, all of whom have – all the large ones of whom have made investments also to try to strengthen their systems and help eliminate risks with – I mean diminish risk without eliminating it, they’re all marching in some direction of strengthening each other.
So if you’re asking the question, as a cohort, who’s been in that top cohort consistently in terms of overall risk or your more particular question about threat, I’d say that’s been a pretty consistent assessment.
Question: I understand that, but – off of it, I know – Russ, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe Secretary Chertoff has said repeatedly that New York is the number one terrorist target. So that’s my starting point. Is that – number one doesn’t really mean anything. But you know, has the threat as it’s been assessed diminished at all? Has it increased?
It would seem by all the plots that keep being uncovered that it would be increased –
Mr. Jackson: If you’re asking if it is a target, it is clearly higher on the scale of probability as a target than something in tier two or tier three. It’s been consistently that way.
If you look at where we invested our money, which tells you a lot about what we think, it took significantly more of the dollars away for their port security than any other single port in tier one, and tier one took 60 percent, I believe, of all of the funds that were allocated for port security. So that tells you where we think the risk and the need of the investment is. And that, I would say, has been fairly consistent over the four year period of this department.
It’s been made much more mathematically disciplined in the last couple of years because we’ve had the benefit of now four years worth of work. And I’m telling you about – it’s sort of, I think, very interesting. I haven’t seen any lights go off out there, but we have made a decision that we are not just throwing every database we can make at it. Right now we’re making prudential judgments about taking some clear and defined and very strong data sets and driving our numbers around those things.
And we put a lot of effort into thinking what is it that would really give you that vulnerability and consequence measure in a disciplined and predictable way over time. And that’s what our new formulas represent.
Question: Vulnerability and consequence, would threat be reduced – the grants pay for?
Mr. Jackson: Absolutely, absolutely.
Question: Threat not necessarily –
Mr. Jackson: The threat is not something that goes away. The threat speaks to intent.
Question: Do the vulnerability and consequence change because the –
Mr. Jackson: Absolutely, and I would tell you that we have made significant improvements in vulnerability. The consequence part – actually, I should be more precise. The vulnerability part is really what you can flat or reduce, the consequences change over time. If a city gets more people, if there’s a new chemical plant that comes in that puts a highly toxic chemical facility adjacent to a port, their consequence changes by virtue of that changed environment. The grant program may or may not be addressed to minimizing consequences, but it certainly is addressed to reducing vulnerability.
Question: Just so I’m not misunderstanding something on the chart, when you say no funding requested, does that just mean that Cleveland, for example, just didn’t want any –
Mr. Jackson: Didn’t send an application in, had every chance. We mailed them the packet. We said, you know, what help do you need?
Question: Who would turn down free money? That’s crazy.
Mr. Jackson: Look at the list. There are a lot of names there.
Question: Valdez turned down, strange.
Mr. Jackson: And some people, I’ll just mention this one, some people even if they knew that they were in tier one in a target didn’t send us application money consistent with what we said the maximum output would be. So if you look at Sabine-Neches River, which was the 10th tier one facility, they actually asked for $6 million worth of requests and a $10.9 million target zone. So right away they said, this year, this is what we want to apply for, and we recognize that it’s not the maximum possible that we might have been eligible for based on risk analysis.
Okay, thanks guys. Appreciate it.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on May 10, 2007.