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Release Date: 07/14/05 00:00:00
Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C.
July 14, 2005
Rep. Cox: The Committee on Homeland Security will come to order.
The committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the results of the internal second-stage review of the Department of Homeland Security's structure, policies and programs initiated by Secretary Michael Chertoff during his first 90 days at the department.
The secretary having just arrived and taken his seat, I want to welcome you.
The Honorable Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will be the committee's sole witness this morning.
One week ago today, terrorists committed the barbaric bombings in the London underground. That, and all of the terrorist acts that have stretched out from September 11th to today, provide the backdrop for this hearing.
The changes that the secretary is proposing in the organization and programs of the Department of Homeland Security all have as their focus achieving more effectively the overarching missions of the Department of Homeland Security: preventing terrorism, protecting against terrorism and responding to acts of terrorism when they occur.
There have been many different modalities of terrorist attack that we've witnesses. Sometimes schools have been attacked; sometimes night clubs, restaurants, embassies, banks, subways, railroads in Madrid, office buildings. The only constant has been the terrorists themselves.
Preventing terrorism, therefore, requires that we have a constant focus on the terrorists themselves. And this, as this committee has emphasized so often, requires the preeminence of an intelligence function in the Department of Homeland Security.
I want to congratulate you, Mr. Secretary, for initiating the second-stage review of the structure, policies and programs of the department. And I want to applaud your leadership in bringing prevention and intelligence to the fore. These are essential elements in what you're going to be describing to this committee today.
I also want to applaud your leadership in bringing a risk-based rigor to the Department of Homeland Security and to its management and operations. That has long been an objective of this committee, and it's critical to driving integration of the department's 22 legacy agencies.
Risk-based management is also the key to ensuring that our efforts to enhance our national security do not, in the aggregate, result in trading away features of our constitutionally founded way of life.
Mr. Secretary, you've recently stated that, "We don't drive the mission and the outcome by the structure; we drive the structure and operation by the mission and the outcome." That is precisely correct.
And your second-stage review generated constructive proposals that will help eliminate the bureaucratic stovepipes in the department and sharpen the department's focus on its core counterterrorism mission.
Your focus on the most consequential kinds of terrorism that America might someday face and enhancing information sharing -- both within the department, with state and local governments and with other homeland security stakeholders -- to prevent acts of terror is absolutely right. And your proposed management and organizational reforms will move the department significantly in the right direction.
I'm pleased that many of your specific reform proposals are consistent with initiatives that this committee has, on a bipartisan basis, advocated over more than two years.
For example, this committee has urgently stressed the importance of creating an assistant secretary for cybersecurity, as you proposed.
The committee recognized the need for an overarching, coordinated intelligence capability for the department.
We urged the view of intelligence within the Department of Homeland Security that was much more than adjunct to infrastructure protection. Your proposal properly separates intelligence from infrastructure protection and then creates the chief intelligence officer reporting directly to the secretary.
The committee's oversight and legislative efforts have focused on the need for the department to improve operational coordination among its many legacy agencies performing similar or related functions. This will not only reduce waste and duplication but also avoid dangerous gaps that terrorists can and will exploit.
You have taken this issue head on, as well.
And, of course, making the department's choices about where to put homeland security technology and manpower, what to protect and how to prepare for terrorist acts -- making that all based on risk has been at the heart of what you have been saying and doing since you have become the secretary of homeland security. It has also been at the very core of this committee's persistent efforts.
I applaud your focus on preparedness and on the specific preparedness priorities of surface transportation security, aviation security, port security and border security.
It is also important that, beyond preparedness, prevention remain the department's number one mission priority. And I am absolutely confident that, under your leadership, it will.
I would urge consideration of one more innovation consistent with each of the structural reforms that you've outlined.
The department's budget request should be organized by mission focus, from prevention through preparedness and response. That way, we will be better able to determine whether resource allocation reflects the overriding terrorism prevention priority that must drive the department's programmatic decisions.
I congratulate you, Mr. Secretary, on a job well begun. And, in completing this ambitious top-to-bottom mission-based review of the department's structure, its programs and its activities, we wish you nothing but continued success.
Now it is time to drive these, until now paperbound, reforms into operating reality in the weeks and months ahead. And we stand ready, in this committee, to help you in any way that we can.
I now recognize the ranking minority member of the committee, the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, for his opening statement.
Rep. Thompson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, welcome back. I believe the first and last time that you appeared before this committee was April 13th. I hope we can make it a little more than what you had. Seeing you here today gives me hope that you will appear before us often.
I want to thank you on behalf of the Democratic members for coming up to brief us on Tuesday.
One request that I have, though: Next time you release a significant initiative, I hope you will ask members for input more than 24 hours before its release. We can't really offer significant input to a document if it's already final.
I reviewed what you've released on your second-stage review, including the draft legislation and the 872 letter.
Your review and proposed reorganization confirms what many of us on this committee have known for a while: The department's broken.
Some of us have been waiting quite a long time for the repairman to show up and fix the agency.
The proposal you made yesterday does make some needed repairs, but it does not address the department's most serious defects. If the department was a house, what you've done is the equivalent of patching the walls, putting the new windows and siding in, and painting the building. Unfortunately, the joists of the house will crack and left untouched.
The administration must do better if we are to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil.
This morning, the Democratic members of this committee are releasing a report on your proposed reorganization. I have a copy here and I will include it in the record for this hearing, and we'll share it with your members after the hearing.
We found that some of your changes you've proposed are important. We support your efforts on these items and will do what we can to ensure that they become reality.
Some of these excellent changes have been called on by some of our members.
For the last two years, Zoe Lofgren on this committee has spearheaded the effort to create an assistant secretary of cybersecurity, which your proposal includes. I congratulate my colleague from the Silicon Valley for dedication to securing our nation's critical networks and systems.
The creation of a chief medical office is also a promising development.
Earlier this week, we held a hearing on bioterrorism.
As we mentioned to you on Tuesday, it is appalling that DHS has completed only four out of six material threat assessments necessary to develop biological countermeasures.
I hope the creation of this office will correct this unnecessarily slow process.
There are other changes that I and other Democrats support, including adjustments to the US-VISIT program and the shortening of the Reagan 30-minute rule.
That said, your plan is vague in a number of other areas, Mr. Secretary, making it difficult to determine whether we can support other items.
For example, you have eliminated the special assistant to the secretary for the private sector, creating in its place an assistant secretary for policy under a new policy directorate.
The existing special assistant position was created by Congress to ensure that the private sector is a meaningful partner in our efforts to secure our homeland.
If the secretary is proposing the demotion for the official in charge of private sector outreach, that would be a serious step backward.
There are also changes that should have been made that were not. These omissions concern me and make me wonder if in a few years we'll be sitting here doing this again, waiting for another overdue plan. The "third-stage review" is probably what we will be calling it.
Specifically, I'm concerned about your plan's failure to reorganize the Transportation Security Administration. The London bombing last week, coupled with the Madrid bombing last year, should be a wake-up call to us all that our trains and transit system are an attractive target for terrorists.
I've asked myself the question, "Will the department's proposed reorganization to prevent what happened in London from happening here?" Unfortunately, I concluded, no.
While TSA has focused on aviation, some would say with mixed results, rail security has become the forgotten stepchild. Indeed, the department has spent less than 7 percent of the money it received this year to inspect and patrol rail lines. This is unacceptable. Rail security must be a priority, even if TSA had to be reorganized to make it one.
You've left Immigration and Custom Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol as separate entities despite the call from many, including many on this panel, to merge the two agencies for efficiency's sake.
There are other glaring omissions in this plan that I hope we will be able to touch upon.
Again, I hope you'll review the Democratic report, and that we'll have continued dialogue on how to incorporate our ideas into your plan.
It is essential that the department be reorganized directly today so that the federal government can assure the public that it is doing everything it can to prevent, detect and respond to terrorism here at home.
Thank you.
Rep. Cox: The chair now welcomes and recognizes for his opening statement the Honorable Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Welcome, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary Chertoff: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Ranking Member, for your generous comments.
I have a longer statement which I would request be made part of the full record of the hearing.
I do appreciate the fact that I had a chance to brief a significant number of the members here on both sides of the aisle on Tuesday about what we were proposing to do.
And I do want to say that in the course of considering what approach we ought to take in our second-stage review, there were a series of listening sessions in which the people who were conducting the review did talk to stakeholders on Capitol Hill and stakeholders outside Capitol Hill, including in state and local government and in the private sector, to see to it that we got the benefit of their insights and their observations.
I appreciate the cooperative spirit that you show with respect to implementing these reforms. We are eager to move forward with this, which is only really the first step in accomplishing some of the things we need to accomplish to continue to make our country stronger.
In particular, I'd like to underscore the importance of the endorsement of risk-focused and risk-based approach to all of what we do, including funding. I think we owe the American people putting a sense of priorities on the table that will address those issues that are of greatest concern, particularly with respect to potential consequences.
And, Mr. Chairman, in terms of your budgeting suggestion, we'll certainly take that back.
And, Congressman Thompson, we'll certainly look forward to reading your review of our proposal a little bit later today.
I'm going to be very brief. I think I'll leave, obviously, opportunity for questions.
Let me say that what we announced yesterday was, of course, only a very partial element of what the review showed. It wasn't a complete agenda because the limits of time prevent me from going through everything.
I think, generally speaking, though, we've identified some very critical priorities: preparedness; transportation, both strengthening and making more efficient our various screening processes for passengers and cargo; making sure that we get control of our borders so that we can assure not only our security, but make sure that we are respecting the rule of law, which, I think, requires that we prevent the kind of flagrant violation of our borders that we sometimes see; fused and more nimble information sharing; better management, which, I think, is what we owe the public as stewards of the public trust and the public fisc (ph); and then, of course, this organization piece, which is designed to give us the tools to complete the job of integration as we go forward.
I think a general comment I would make before I close is: Balance means sometimes the balance goes down as well as up. We want to make sure that, as we get better and more precise in the kinds of protections we can build in place, we are also able to relax some of the restrictions and burdens that we have put in place at an earlier time.
And by way of making an example of this kind of philosophy, I announced yesterday our intent to eliminate the 30-minute rule with respect to people who are departing Reagan and entering Reagan Airport. That got a lot of applause.
And someone who has, from time to time, had to take account of that rule in making my own preflight accommodations, I understood where that applause came from.
I think it's meant to make a larger point, though: We are not looking to simply layer additional levels of security on the country. We're looking to always keep a balance. And where we can make things lighter and less burdensome, we're going to be eager to do that.
At the same time, with the 10-print rule, I think we've talked about taking a needed step that will enhance security by giving us increased capacity to screen people coming in from overseas, but to do it in a way that will not result in an undue inconvenience or undue burden.
So, again, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman and the rest of the members of the committee, for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today about this review.
I look forward to working with you as we go forward on implementing not only the organizational changes but, as well, the various specific policy proposals that we are going to be rolling out in the next weeks and months as we go forward, working together to make this country even safer and more secure than it is.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Rep. Cox: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Let me begin by saying that, with respect to so many of the changes that you are outlining, it is evident that you have been listening to the members of this committee and have heeded very much the urgings of this committee.
The creation of a chief intelligence officer and the emphasis on intelligence as a key driver of prevention has been a priority of this committee through two years of our work as a select committee and all this year as a permanent standing committee.
The emphasis on risk, likewise, has been a constant refrain of this committee. It is at the center of what you are proposing today.
The creation of an assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications was formal legislation proposed by this committee. That legislation is now unnecessary.
The significant refinements that you have made to the threat warning system coordinate the views, I think, of this committee very nicely.
So I have no question that you have been listening carefully and that the work that we are doing here in this Congress has had a big impact and is reflected in what you're bringing to us today.
I want to focus on one key piece of that and that is the intelligence piece.
We will now have a chief intelligence officer reporting directly to you. That chief intelligence officer is going to be responsible, among other things, for fusing the intelligence collection from elements of the Department of Homeland Security, or at least that is my understanding. And I want to ask you that.
Will that be one of the responsibilities of the new chief intelligence officer? And how is he going to do that, by the way, since these operational elements of the department have historically been separate?
Secretary Chertoff: First of all, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to underscore the fact that we did, in building this set of proposals, pay a good deal of close attention to what this committee and the Congress has already done in the reauthorization bill, in the appropriations activity, in hearings and testimony.
I fully anticipated you would see a lot of the ideas generated by this committee in our work. And I'm the last person to claim pride of authorship: We know a good idea when we hear it and we're eager to implement it.
The chief intelligence officer will have the obligation to manage the collection and fusion of intelligence throughout the entire department. We have over 10 offices now. Many of them focus on tactical intelligence. For examples, Customs and Border Protection is obviously concerned about new trends in passport fraud and things of that sort, and that will continue to be the case.
But we do generate an awful lot of strategic intelligence when we interact at the border.
What we have already begun to do, and what I will expect the chief intelligence to do, is to work with the components to put reports officers into parts of the component operational elements so that we can spot information that has strategic intelligence value, make sure that it gets written up in a form that is compatible across the board so that we don't have different formats or different understandings of the kind of information that we need, and then make sure that it gets channeled up and then, once it gets to our analytical section, make sure that we are fusing that.
Now, that will, obviously, sometimes require working with the analysts in the components. And we already do that to a large extent, but we do it now manually instead of as an institutional matter.
This is going to institutionalize a practice that we have been putting into place even in the last few months.
So the collection piece will not be the only function of a chief intelligence officer, but it will be an important function.
Rep. Cox: And will the chief intelligence officer carry the chief responsibility or some responsibility or no responsibility for moving the intelligence out from the federal government to state and local stakeholders?
Secretary Chertoff: Again, that person will have the principal responsibility for managing that process.
Now, in terms of the mechanics of it, in terms of the intelligence community, the chief intelligence officer and the Coast Guard intelligence officers do sit as part of the intelligence community...
Rep. Cox: I'd like to make my question a bit more specific.
Will what is now the Information Analysis Office of the Department of Homeland Security -- which will now be stand-alone intelligence operation in the department and which will be run, I take it, by the chief intelligence officer -- will it contain the manpower that is necessary within DHS to conduct liaison with state and local stakeholders and private sector stakeholders when it comes to the sharing of intelligence?
Secretary Chertoff: Yes, it will. I want to emphasize that some of that, however, will take place in conjunction with our preparedness people, because a lot of -- often, the intelligence is not necessarily transient threat information, but it involves analytical pieces that drive the way we, for example, protect our infrastructure or deal with grant issues.
So they will have the manpower and they will have the principal liaison, but they will also be working, particularly on the more strategic analysis, with some of our other components.
Rep. Cox: My time has expired.
The gentleman from Mississippi is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Thompson: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, again, I look forward to working with you on the reorganization and discussing the Democratic response to it.
As you're aware, the 9/11 Act required submission of a national transportation security plan by April 1.
When the department missed that deadline, I sent a letter to you, and that was responded to by your deputy, Mr. Jackson, indicating that it would be two to three months we would have that transportation security plan.
In light of what London is facing and what we're facing here in this country, what are your plans to produce that plan for the department?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, first of all, we should make it clear that a big part of this review was a process of stepping back and looking at our current planning on transportation.
The president has nominated a very skilled and experienced individual in the area of transportation to be the next administrator of GSA, and we'll very hopeful we can get him confirmed.
Obviously, we want to be able to have his input into this planning process but we are doing a lot of work on that as we speak.
Another issue we're going to want to look at very carefully is the lessons learned from London. There's an investigation going on now. I think we will, in the next days, have greater insight as to what -- how we can take away -- that's of value.
We'll be prompt in giving Congress a plan but we do want to make sure it's well thought out. And that means addressing all the components of transportation and not merely responding with respect to one.
In particular, we are focused on TSA and where we need to make adjustments in the manner that TSA operates. It's important to make sure TSA is focused on all of its transportation missions. And although I think that's been the case up to now, the new administrator, I know, is very interested in making sure that we are adequately addressing land and rail transportation as well as, of course, aviation transportation.
Rep. Thompson: And I appreciate the comment. But I think you can understand our anxiety in not having a plan at all. And waiting for another event to happen to take best learned practices from it is probably not the way to go. We could probably just put an addendum to an existing plan and go forward.
But we do need a plan, Mr. Secretary, and I would encourage you to do that.
With respect to the special assistant secretary for the private sector that you know was congressionally mandated, you've now moved that position out of your proposed reorganization. How do you see the private sector having standing in your department given the fact that you've now done away with that position?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, actually, Congressman, we have actually elevated that position.
The current structure of the special assistant really essentially has that person with a small office attached to the office of the secretary but not really integrated with the planning process.
When we took a lot of the advice of Congress in terms of setting up a policy directorate -- which I think this committee endorsed -- we said, "How do we make sure that our policy-making and our planning in the private sector is thoroughly integrated?"
And rather than have the special assistant continue to be an adjunct of the secretary's office, it seemed we needed to give that person the stature and the authority within the entire range of our policy and planning to make sure the private sector is adequately and fully represented.
So I view it as a step up, actually, in terms of the breadth of operating authority and the breadth of responsibility of the current incumbent.
I would also point out that, on an ongoing basis in our infrastructure protection component, we regularly work with the private sector, will continue to do that; as we will in the whole area of preparedness, where many of the assets in question are in the hands of private parties.
Rep. Thompson: So in other words, the assistant secretary for policy and for the private sector -- it is still there with the same function?
Secretary Chertoff: Actually, an enhanced function.
Rep. Thompson: Enhanced function. Thank you.
The other thing is, this is a present chart of your department. There are 13 vacancies on senior positions. I would hope that, under the reorganization, we can get some real, live, permanent bodies there to move forward with the department.
One of the complaints we hear all the time is it's been musical chairs there and we never talk to the same person twice. And hopefully, with your reorganization in place, we can move toward some permanence in the senior leadership in the department.
Secretary Chertoff: I share that desire strongly. I think we announced yesterday a couple of people who have been selected to fill some new positions. I think we may have a further announcement today.
And, of course, we're working very hard with the Senate to move people through the process of confirmation as quickly as possible.
Rep. Thompson: Thank you.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. King, is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. King: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And let me welcome Judge Chertoff, and thank you for the terrific job you've done so far. Especially I want to commend you for focusing so much on risk-based funding. I think that's probably the most important thing the department can do is to set that tone. I want to thank you for that.
I'd like to follow up on the chairman's question regarding the chief intelligence officer. There are really two parts to it.
One is if you could walk us through exactly how you will interact with Ambassador Negroponte, as DNI, how that will work.
And also, as far as the question of sharing intelligence, one thing we've heard from local police and officials around the country is -- not so much with Homeland Security, but certainly with the FBI -- there has been a lack of intelligence sharing.
What can you do to assure us that your department will do all it can to work with local police, fire and emergency responders?
Thank you.
Secretary Chertoff: Well, as you know, under the Intelligence Reform Act, and then under the president's announcement recently concerning his adoption of virtually all the recommendations of the Silberman-Robb commission, the DNI has the responsibility to coordinate intelligence across the board.
We work very closely with him. I speak to Ambassador Negroponte or see him at least once a week, unless we're traveling, or his deputy. We speak regularly on the telephone. We have members of our information analysis component bolted together with the NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center, which is the central focal point for accumulating the intelligence.
And my vision of the chief intelligence officer is that that person will have an enhanced ability to deliver to the whole intelligence community all of the information that we collect inside the department.
We do that a lot manually now. I'm in regular discussion with Director Mueller and with Director Goss and Ambassador Negroponte.
But, I mean, again, we want to institutionalize this. It shouldn't be about my personal discussions with people or someone else's personal discussions; it should be more embedded.
With respect to the issue of sharing, we have been working very hard on the issue of sharing, both with respect to threat information and with respect to more sustained strategic information, lessons learned, things of that sort. And we've been emphasizing, in particular, doing that.
One set of conversations I've had with a number of the governors and homeland security advisers is their desire to set up intelligence fusion centers, where they have a single point of contact in terms of intelligence collection and also consuming intelligence.
As I announced yesterday, we are talking to the states to set up a meeting base. It will be a summit meeting where the homeland security advisers will come and we want to talk to them about networking all of our fusion centers.
And, frankly, we're going to be using some of our money to encourage that to happen.
I think that is an additional way to connect up.
I think we've been doing a better job. I'm very mindful about it. It's a two-way street. And I think this is going to be another step forward in that direction.
Rep. King: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentlelady from California, Ms. Harman...
Rep. Harman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Rep. Cox: ... is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Harman: Welcome, Secretary Chertoff.
My thanks to you for bringing a systems approach, enormous dedication, to your job, and for visiting recently the part of Southern California that the chairman and I represent, and seeing our ports and our airports and actually one of our elementary schools, which is a bit challenged and trying its best to prepare for a terrorist attack, should it come.
I am impressed with what you're doing. I think that the risk-focused and the risk-based approach are absolutely critical, and the changes need to be made.
However, I think that your primary audience is not government junkies or graduate students, but an anxious public. And that is why I said to you a couple of days ago that I thought you need to talk about capability more than moving boxes around.
And I still see a couple of things that I'd love you to talk about very soon. And so let me just list them and get some of your responses. There is a vote on, so I think we're all going to run out of here in a few minutes.
But the three things missing from yesterday, at least as I heard it, were: one, steps that you will take to fix a threat-warning system that I believe is broken. You did a good job with it last week explaining a targeted and measured response to the London bombings, but I think the color-coded system does not work. So that was one thing missing.
The second is some long-overdue news on when we will see one national integrated threat and vulnerability assessment, which was the basic idea in the first place. We don't want to rearrange the deck chairs, we want one deck. And that assessment, at least as it was described by your predecessor some months back, needed a lot of work.
Finally, I didn't hear anything -- and I think this is a critical piece of the preparedness piece -- about interoperable communications. They did not exist in New York on 9/11, and they did not exist at the Pentagon either.
And although Los Angeles County and other places have done some good things, putting together bridge technologies, I would argue we still don't have one national integrated system in the event of multiple terrorist attacks and, God forbid, this reload idea that you have described, where not only do we get one attack in some place, but it's repetitive.
So those are three areas I'd like to hear more about, and I hope I'm representing this anxious public that I've mentioned.
Thank you.
Secretary Chertoff: Well, Representative Harman, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity that we've had over the last few months to talk at greater depth about these issues, and I look forward to continuing to do that.
I think, obviously, there's a lot to work on here. And, of course, a single speech and the capacity of my voice to talk endlessly is limited, so we can only do so much. But let me touch on these briefly.
As I've said, we are looking as we speak at the issue of the threat warning system. And part of that process is, we are consulting with not only other departments of government which have a stake in this, but with our state and local counterparts and with members of the private sector as well. So we are actually considering right now what we need to do with this. It's a complicated issue, but it's being very vigorously attended to.
With respect to the integrated national threat and vulnerability assessment, we have a comparatively new assistant secretary we've put in charge of the infrastructure protection component.
One thing that we are trying to take advantage of in building this out to be more than merely a collection of infrastructure, a long list of golf courses and things of that sort, is to take advantage of some of the capacities that we have in our national laboratories to do very sophisticated computer modeling.
I've already seen some of the product of this process. And, for example, in dealing with the issue of port grants, we've put together, I think, a much better analytic product in terms of our distribution of those grants that is risk-based than was the case a year ago.
So I can't say this is a process that's going to be done in a couple of weeks, but I can say that it's a process that is well under way and that the people who are executing it have a very firm understanding that this needs to be something that is disciplined and not merely an opportunity for everybody to chip in their individual pet projects.
Third, on interoperable communications, again, there are some pieces of this we own, some that we don't. I know there is pending a proposal to get a dedicated piece of the band for purposes of communication. I think that's something that we do want to move forward on.
We also need to move forward technologically in terms of equipment that will bridge existing systems. We don't want to throw out what we have, but I think we need to look at the issue of setting down some standards for new equipment.
And, finally, there are some cultural issues and process issues that have to be worked.
Rep. Harman: My time has expired. But that bill to dedicate a band for emergency communications has been offered by me and Congressman Kurt Weldon, and I'm pleased to hear that you're supportive of it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Rep. Cox: The gentlelady's time has expired and so too has the time of almost all the members here to vote on the floor. There's very little time left in the currently pending floor vote.
It is the expiration of a 15-minute vote, followed by two five- minute votes. That should permit us to take a very brief recess and reconvene this hearing no later than 11. That would be the chair's intention.
Rep. Cox: The hearing is reconvened and the chair recognizes next the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Linder: five minutes.
Rep. Linder: Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. Nice to see you again.
What do you think the TSA is going to look like five years from now?
Secretary Chertoff: I think and I hope the TSA will be an agency that uses the next generation of technology; one that allows us to more efficiently leverage our resources, both in terms of airport and also in terms of other forms of transportation. That includes screening devices at the airport that will allow us to focus more on the things we worry about and less on the things we worry about less.
I hope and envision that some of the burdensome restrictions in terms of what you can carry on will be lifted because of additional measures to protect people.
I'm hopeful that secondary screenings will be reduced because we will have a more interoperable and a more sophisticated screening system that doesn't rely only on names, but allows us to do some work with additional identifying things, like date of birth, and even some analytical tools that would let us be more focused.
With respect to rail and other forms of land transportation, I see it, again, involved with better technologically infused systems that will give us protection, particularly against the catastrophic things that we're worried about, but also using modern technology, in terms of video cameras and sensors and things of that sort.
Rep. Linder: Why should a person go through the difficulty and the background checks and the fingerprinting to be a registered traveler if all that means is they get to go through a quicker line and they still take their shoes off, take their coat off, take their computer out of the case?
Secretary Chertoff: Ultimately what these registered traveler programs should do is give you the benefit of checking and essentially acceptance of reliability throughout a whole menu of things, whether it involves getting on an airplane, getting into a federal building.
My vision of where we should go is, members of Congress, obviously, are checked and vetted and get security clearances. At the end of the day, your card that contains that information ought to be able to get you into a registered traveler status getting into the country, getting onto airplanes, things of that sort.
I don't mean to restrict it to members of Congress, but what I'm trying to suggest is a degree of interoperability and coordination that means once you get checked once, that becomes a way to ease your entry into a whole lot of things.
Rep. Linder: We had a hearing yesterday on biologic threats. But I worry that the money we spent, $20 billion so far, has just been wasted, because it's so easy to genetically alter the threat. We have 10,000 people dealing with recombinant DNA. We have synthesized smallpox. We can make smallpox more virulent and resistant to the current responses we have for it.
We've announced to everyone how much we have in a stockpile to respond to an anthrax attack. And so a modest genetically engineered anthrax will be unable to be treated by it.
We spend very little money -- I think it's less than 2 percent of your budget -- on intelligence. And it strikes me that you've said before this committee before that the most important things to you to worry about are catastrophic things like nuclear and biological.
The only way to prevent those, it strikes me, is by having a robust intelligence section that can anticipate where something might come from and prevent it. Prevention ought to be the number one thing in your department.
Do you disagree with that?
Secretary Chertoff: I fully agree that prevention is a critical element in preventing an attack.
I have to say, though, I lived, as many people here did, through the anthrax attacks of Washington in 2001 and I think our general philosophy on taking a layered approach is not to put all our eggs in one basket but to have vigorous intelligence and vigorous prevention, but also be prepared to have a process in place and a response in place if there is an attack. It could even come from a single individual; it doesn't need to come from a terrorist group. So I think we need to do the full menu of approaches.
And one element of intelligence, by the way, is a very scientifically founded intelligence that looks to see what we know about the way people are now working to manufacture potentially biological threats. There are different signatures. And I think knowing that helps us also do some of our response planning.
Rep. Linder: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Rep. Cox: Does the gentleman yield back?
The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Markey: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, as you know, over and over again the demands of industry have been allowed to trump public safety. The chemical industry, the cargo industry, the nuclear industry: They've all steamrolled the Bush administration for the last four years in terms of public safety. So we get a chance here to start all over again.
So I've taken, Mr. Secretary, your, kind of, formula: threat, vulnerability, consequences.
The threat in each instance, Mr. Secretary, is Al Qaida; that's clear.
The vulnerability: chemical plants that have no mandatory requirements to shift over to safer chemicals; nuclear plants -- there has been no realistic upgrade of a permanent standard against terrorist attack; public transit -- hundreds of thousands of deaths could occur.
The American Public Transit Association says that we should spend $6 billion to upgrade. The Bush administration has said no.
LNG -- the Bush administration is now overriding state and local communities with a new law going through that says they can plant these LNG facilities in urban areas.
Al Qaida also wants to go after hazmat shipments. And there, the Bush administration is opposed where possible to rerouting into less densely populated areas.
And in aviation, Mr. Secretary, the Bush administration, again kowtowing to the cargo industry and the airline industry, has refused to mandate 100 percent total physical screening of cargo which goes on to passenger planes.
So that's the formula: threat, vulnerability, consequences. And what I'm going to talk about today, Mr. Secretary, is solutions.
Mr. Secretary, number one, in aviation, would you support going to a 100 percent physical inspection of all cargo on passenger planes, yes or no?
Secretary Chertoff: No. And let me explain why. And I tell you, if you want to -- it's not going to surprise you that I'm going to disagree with your characterization of the policy being that industry trumps public safety.
But I also think in fairness, you ought to let me explain when I talk about risk, I also talk about balance...
Rep. Markey: I have to go through the six questions. That's all I get is five minutes.
Now let's go to chemical security. Yes or no, will you require chemical companies to switch to safer chemicals whenever possible to reduce security vulnerability?
Secretary Chertoff: I have to say, Congressman, I don't think anybody has yet established that the appropriate way to deal with chemical security is to get into the process of making people switch chemicals.
Rep. Markey: Transit security, yes or no, Mr. Secretary, will you commit to fully implementing the recommendations of the American Public Transportation Association, which has called for an extensive security upgrade to prevent the London-style attack in our country; yes or no?
Secretary Chertoff: I will commit to use a balanced approach that evaluates the specific risks with respect to transit and balances them with respect to the other priorities that we have to deal with in dealing with our homeland security.
Rep. Markey: All right.
Now, let's go to transportation of extremely hazardous materials. Will you require rerouting of shipments of the most deadly chemicals around densely populated areas if there is a safer route available, yes or no?
Secretary Chertoff: I am and we are currently working to look at the entire issue of transportation of hazardous materials in order to make sure we are assuring the safety of a public that could potentially be affected by using a whole menu of security measures, again, focused upon risk management.
Rep. Markey: I still haven't heard a yes.
Now, Mr. Secretary, for LNG, do you agree that LNG terminals, which are tempting terrorist targets, should be located offshore or away from population centers, yes or no?
Secretary Chertoff: I have to say, Congressman, I think that's an overly simplistic view of the situation. I think it's a much more complicated situation.
Rep. Markey: Putting LNG facilities, new facilities, in densely populated areas as opposed to offshore or more sparsely populated areas: That's not oversimplified; that's just a simple yes/no.
Do you want to put highly desirable terrorist targets in the middle -- new ones in the middle of densely populated areas?
Secretary Chertoff: I think the choice you've presented is an oversimplified choice.
Rep. Markey: OK, fine. I'll take that as a no.
Biological vulnerabilities, now, Mr. Secretary, yes or no, will you commit to completing the remaining material threat assessment within the next 60 days? Only four are completed thus far.
Secretary Chertoff: I think our original target was to get those done by the beginning of next year, and we are on target to do that.
Rep. Markey: The problem is, again, we're four years after 9/11; only four of the 60 material threat assessments have been completed.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
Secretary Chertoff: Mr. Chairman, if I could just complete the answer I was originally trying to give, because I think it's an important point, you know, when I talk about risk management, I also talk about balance. And let me just take the first example that Congressman Markey raised as an example of what I think we shouldn't be doing in securing.
I could guarantee that there's 100 percent, for example -- I could guarantee that there's not going to be any threat to cargo entering this country or getting on airplanes. I simply wouldn't allow any to get on.
Secretary Chertoff: That would destroy our economy. We have to be...
Rep. Markey: Cargo on passenger planes. I'm talking about passenger planes, Mr. Secretary.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
Secretary Chertoff: We have to be very careful when we talk about security measures not to burn the village down in order to save it.
Rep. Markey: The technology exists, Mr. Secretary, to screen all cargo on passenger planes. Why don't we do it?
Secretary Chertoff: We have to be very careful to use technology and to use systems in a way that does not...
Rep. Markey: It exists.
Rep. Cox: The witness will suspend.
The gentleman is one minute and 15 seconds over his five minutes. He should at least permit the secretary the courtesy to answer some of the several questions that he's put over the last six and a half minutes.
Secretary Chertoff: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have to be very careful when we decide what kinds of system of protection to use that we deploy a system that works in a way that allows us to continue to let our economy operate, to continue to let cargo to be shipped.
One hundred percent physician manual inspection of anything will often destroy the very system you're trying to save.
So, again, when we do risk management -- and a key element of that is balance, it's optimizing things. That applies to the transit system, it applies all the way across the board.
What I am committed to doing is a disciplined approach to risk management that considers what is the optimal amount of security, but does it in a way that does not destroy our way of life.
Rep. Markey: Mr. Secretary, for four years the Bush administration has been protecting a powerful industry and not protecting the public safety. That's going to be your challenge, to change that formula. The Bush administration thus far has sided with industry, not providing (inaudible) security.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Connecticut...
Rep. Shays: Thank you.
Rep. Cox: ... Mr. Shays, is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Shays: I love my colleague from Massachusetts, but when you basically give such long comments and then ask six questions, it's clear you're not really interested in what the witness wants to say. And I think if you'd just taken one of those issues, you could have probably had a very good dialogue back and forth.
I do want to say to you, Mr. Chertoff, I do think you are doing an outstanding job. I think you are digging yourself out of a huge hole.
We created a department, we did the best we could, we put a 180,000 people in it, we took it from 20-plus different parts of the government and, frankly, you don't yet have a culture that I know that you particularly want.
I would want to just say, though, I do agree with Mr. Markey particularly as he talks about passenger travel.
We first checked people's luggage when they went on a plane. Then we made sure we tracked what suitcases went in the belly of the aircraft.
But I found it outrageous that 22 percent of what's on a passenger plane is cargo. And I think Mr. Markey is dead right in saying that if it's on a plane that carries passengers it should be checked. And I would think that that's a reasonable request that we have a timetable to know when it will be done.
And furthermore, I think it's reasonable to say that if it's not going to be checked, the public has the right to know that on that plane is cargo that has not been checked.
And I'm interested if you would be willing to consider, one, a timetable and, two, warning people that the cargo on the plane has not been checked.
Secretary Chertoff: Well, I'm happy to talk about this, because clearly we do want to make sure we have verified what is going into the cargo hold of a plane, whether it be what passengers bring with them or what gets shipped.
But here again, I want to use a balanced approach. And that means we want to use intelligent screening, we want to check the cargo that we do not have a high degree of confidence in, but we also want to try to build systems which allow us to focus on a smaller and smaller amount of their cargo so we can do more and more efficient screening.
Secretary Chertoff: There exists now, for example, various air express industries -- Federal Express, DHL, UPS -- are very sophisticated about tracking their packages. And there are ways of having them verify...
Rep. Shays: Mr. Chertoff, the problem with that is you're, kind of, going the route of the known carrier. And why would it make sense to check all the luggage in the belly of an aircraft brought in by a passenger, but it doesn't make sense to check all the cargo in the belly of an aircraft?
Secretary Chertoff: Because where we have an ability to build a system that gives us confidence in the shipper and cargo so that we know what the cargo is and we can track it from the point of its entering into the supply chain to the end, we know what's inside and we know we can target what we are worried about and what is a higher risk.
When passengers present themselves to the airport, it's impossible to conceive of a system that would give us that degree of confidence.
Now, obviously, as we get technology that operate more quickly and that are more precise, it is possible to actually inspect, in a nonintrusive way, a greater percentage of cargo.
But here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to sit here without having that technology and say: "We are going to make it -- by manually checking every piece of cargo, we're going to make it impossible to put cargo on airplanes."
Rep. Shays: I hear your position. I will just say to you that I think it's really outrageous that we at least don't warn passengers that the cargo on a passenger plane has not been checked.
I will tell you, I fly less because my knowledge of the system is better than the general public. And I think we endanger the general public by not checking the cargo in the belly of an aircraft.
I'd like to ask you about the failure of the department to have gotten its report done on a strategy for protecting buses and trains and subways, that public transportation.
The department said two to three months. If it was two months, it would have been the 1st of June, and three months, the end of June. We still don't have it.
It seems to me, since we were expecting April 1st, that we have a right as Congress to know when you will provide that information. And the reason I say that is we have money that's not being used -- $150 million -- that is not being fed out to local governments to protect and harden their sites where they can.
So I'm assuming you're waiting, not give out the money until we have a strategy. And when are we going to have a strategy?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, as I think the deputy wrote, and I don't know what the date of the letter is, we did, obviously, not make the April 1 deadline.
In the course of this process of review, one of the things we wanted to look at was the way we're handling rail and land transportation strategy.
In fact, we are doing things now. We're doing programs now with respect to rail, including rail here in the Washington, D.C., area, that look at a whole menu of approaches.
As far as the money is concerned, I believe a lot of the rail money has been moved out or is moving out. But again, what we want to do is not just push money out to have willy-nilly expenditures on systems; we want to make sure it's being done in a disciplined way.
And there's no question that in the last few months we've taken a deep breath, we've looked at a lot of the ways we allocate grants, and we've tightened up that process. And we've done it to avoid the kinds of things that we often get criticized for going back a year or two, which is people say, "Oh, homeland security," and they use the money to build a gymnasium, or they use the money to (inaudible) something that's really not an effective use of the money.
So we do owe you a plan, but we owe you a disciplined plan and we owe you a plan that's intelligent. And I want to make sure we get it right. We'll get it up promptly, but I want to make sure we'll get it right.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Washington, Mr. Dicks, is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Dicks: Mr. Secretary, we welcome you and thank you for meeting with some of us yesterday.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the secretary be given an opportunity to more fully reply in the record to Mr. Markey's questions, all of which I think are legitimate questions.
But I do believe the secretary did not have adequate time to respond. And I think that would be only fair.
Rep. Cox: And I will not take any of the gentleman's time to make the following announcement.
Because, by prearrangement, the secretary has to attend a Cabinet meeting, we would like to get either the secretary or the deputy secretary back here to continue this hearing as well. And so we'll work with the department to see if we could do that.
In addition, every member will have the opportunity to submit written questions for the record. And the secretary and the department, of course, will want to take the opportunity to respond fully.
And that, I think, will give the secretary ample opportunity to respond in full to the questions put by the gentleman from Massachusetts.
The time, again, belongs to the gentleman from Washington.
Rep. Dicks: I'd like just to say, Mr. Secretary, that I know the president has called you down to the White House. And I know you're not going to be able to answer the questions of 80 percent of the members of this committee.
So I guess every member's questions will have to be answered -- unless you do come back. And I think everyone should understand that who is watching this hearing that it's about to end even though only six or seven members will have been able to ask you questions.
Thank you.
Rep. Cox: Well, I don't want to take any more of the gentleman from Washington's time, but I think in fairness to the secretary, we also have to observe that he's been sitting here waiting at a table with empty chairs here during the scheduled time of this hearing while we've been on the floor voting. That's nobody's fault but that's why we find ourselves in this predicament.
Rep. Dicks: Mr. Secretary, I wanted to reiterate the concern I have over the fact that the department has been very slow on these material threat assessments, material threat determinations.
The reason that's so important is we've appropriated $5.6 billion that cannot utilized unless these things are done. Or, as Mr. Markey pointed out, only four of 60 have been done. And they cover some very important items where the country needs to at least examine the possibility of having some way of dealing with it.
The other thing I wanted to mention, I think, as you can tell, there is a great deal of anxiety on the Hill and in the country about how well the Department of Homeland Security is doing.
And I think the biggest challenge for you is to try to restore confidence. And not getting reports up here on time, having the department being very slow to react on these material threat assessments, determinations, using a two-fingerprint system in US- VISIT instead of 10, when all of the experts, NIST, everyone else says 10 is better -- there are a whole host of these issues -- the cargo issue in passenger planes.
A number of these things need to be dealt with. I mean, you have got to show the country that there is a leader now in charge of Homeland Security, and someone who's not going to let these things drift on and who's going to honestly tell the country and the Congress and the American people about what the money -- if there are some areas where we can't spend money, but then let's not waste money.
We have got to deal with the major threats, the ones that will have the greatest possible impact: the use of a nuclear device, for example. And one of the threat determinations that's not got over to HHS is what to do about dealing with a nuclear weapon. We know for a fact that we will lose a million people, potentially, in New York, Washington, or wherever it is, if it is detonated.
Not to have that issue worked out between your department and HHS is just negligent. You've got to take that responsibility; you've got to get in there and get on the phone and get that cleared up. And you've got to do it.
We expect you, now, to lead this department. And it's time for action. It's time to get this thing moving in the right direction. And we are confident that you can do it, but we need to see action.
Thank you.
Secretary Chertoff: Let me try to deal with several of the points you made.
And let me begin by saying, although I talked yesterday about improvements that we need to make, and I've talked here about improvements we need to make, and I'll continue to talk about improvements, I wouldn't want to leave the public with the impression that nothing has been done. Quite the contrary is true.
We are, in fact, considerably safer than we were certainly before 9/11, and, frankly, safer than we were last year. And that's because, along with a whole host of things we've done, we've done a lot better.
I mean, I share with you the view that the issue of biological threats is at the top of the list, with a few other things, of threats. And one of the reasons that we've talked about a chief medical officer and consolidating preparedness is precisely to create an accountability and a system-wide approach to this issue.
On the other hand, I have to say I'm pleased to say that we do have, for example, under our BioWatch program, biosensors in 32 cities around the country. And while they are not -- you know, there's a next generation that we are going to accelerate bringing forward, they do do a very good job and, in fact, they don't yield many false positives. So that's something that we already have in place we're going to make better.
Likewise, I share with you the importance of doing 10 prints. And that's why I announced yesterday we're going to do that.
And, again, we want to make sure we do -- we need to actually roll out the infrastructure, but I think at the end of the day we'll take what is a good program, US-VISIT, and make it even better.
Likewise on the issue of nuclear detection, I think this is exactly why the president's budget envisioned having a domestic nuclear detection office, to give us essentially a, kind of, a mini- Manhattan Project on developing not only the technology for nuclear detection, but also the whole system and architecture for nuclear detection; and to make sure that what we're doing here at home is fully integrated with what we're doing overseas in terms of trying to locate loose nukes and use our intelligence to go out and focus on proliferation.
So I think the three issues you've raised are things that we are very much tuned into. They're built into the budget, they're built into our structural plan.
I think the public should understand we've made a lot of progress, but they should also understand that, as I said, we're going to be candid about where we need to improve, and we're going to move very quickly to do that.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Souder: Mr. Secretary, I wanted to raise two somewhat different issues, one related to border.
I know from meeting yesterday with the president, you're working on and hopefully will be unveiling in the very near future some border initiatives. And I wanted to make sure they called direct attention to something that many of us are working on here and very concerned about, and that is the lack of attention to the criminal smuggling organizations themselves; whether it be civil forfeiture laws that the GAO has pointed out that we need, whether it's the fact that ICE agents are only spending about 7 percent of their time on these illegal smuggling organizations -- the lack of a coordinated strategy even pass off of data from CBP to ICE as far as -- because you probably have the data on who these people are.
And also in OTM strategy -- other than Mexicans -- who right now Mexicans are at least deported back into Mexico. The others are released on their own cognizance, including if they don't have any terrorist record, if they're from one of the watch countries. They're released and lost to the system.
And those are number of the more pressing things. And I hope that you have a clear understanding that it isn't just about biological, chemical and so on; that ultimately the borders are our key points of entry, whether it's airport, ports or our land borders.
The second question, and then if you want to respond, I'd appreciate that, is that I chair the Narcotics Committee; I co-chair the speaker's Drug Policy Committee. It was very disturbing in as long a statement as you had that you didn't make any reference to counternarcotics and yet you have legacy Border Patrol, legacy Customs, Air and Marine, the Shadow Wolves, the Coast Guard -- you have the bulk of the people who do counternarcotics enforcement.
Twenty thousand to 30,000 people die every year. Because they don't die on the same day at the same place does mean they aren't dead. And that, in fact, if there isn't a coordinated effort in your department to make sure that this doesn't get lost, more are going to die.
There isn't any meth problem in the United States if the pseudoephedrine wasn't pouring across the borders. There isn't any cocaine problem if the cocaine isn't pouring across the borders. Or there isn't any heroin problem if the heroin isn't pouring across the borders. There isn't a B.C. bud problem if it isn't coming across the borders.
We can't tackle the narcotics problem without your agency.
I have a letter that went to Secretary Ridge that has been held up in the -- as you do your reorganization, I'd appreciate if you look at it, particularly related to two laws that we passed unanimously in the House and Senate.
One says that every officer has to have a counternarcotics enforcement in their job performance measurement. And I would like your response -- if not today, because I know you're at the initial stages of this -- to this request that we have put into your department, as well as several others, about how your new reorganization is going to address the counternarcotics and border question.
Thank you very much.
Secretary Chertoff: Well, as I think I indicated in my remarks yesterday, border is a very critical element. And that also involves counternarcotics. I mean, our principal focus in counternarcotics is at the border.
And you're completely right: We need to have a systems-based approach that looks not only at the border itself, but what do we do about, for example, detention and removal of other than Mexicans.
I have spoken to a number of members of Congress about this. We're very focused on this and we do have a strategy that we are going to be rolling out on this.
Likewise, a piece of this is a focusing on the smuggling organizations smuggling all kinds of things: drugs and people. And we are, in fact, working cases with this.
There is a structural change we're going to make which is going to help this, and this is this operations integration element.
What this is going to give us the ability to do is look at operationalizing a policy like this across the board -- with Customs and Border Protection, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with Coast Guard -- to make sure that when we make a strategic move at one part of the border, for example, or one part of the problem, everybody else is also taking account of that in adjusting and thinking up their resources.
And it's kind of what the military does when they do a joint operation. I think that's the kind of mechanism that is going to make us more efficient in dealing with the concerns that you have.
Rep. Cox: The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentlelady from New York, Ms. Lowey is recognized for five minutes.
Rep. Lowey: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to thank the secretary again for meeting with us. And I hope that we can continue this communication on a regular basis.
And I hope you understand from my colleagues the sense of urgency and anxiety that we feel. As a New Yorker, I went to too many funerals. We can't afford a 9/11, we can't afford what happened in London. And you know that all the threats, primarily, have been on the transit system.
So if you sense an anger, if you sense that we are anxious, I think we are entitled to feel that way.
And I understand that you're coming here and that you put a plan in place. But we don't have the luxury not to consider what just happened as a wake-up call and to act now in addition to putting a plan in place.
So when April 1 is the deadline for a comprehensive transit plan, this is July, Mr. Secretary; for you to tell me as a New Yorker that we won't get this until the beginning of the year, this is of real concern.
I also want to mention two items. I've been trying to guess from hearsay, from everyone we could, from local airports, a comprehensive understanding of how many people at airports are going through with badges which they might have gotten three, four years ago and going into secure areas -- these are maintenance workers, these are caterers -- and not have to go through detectors. I can't even get a number.
I finally got something from the Port Authority. They said, "Well, we think it's about 7,000 at La Guardia." That's unacceptable, frankly. If Heathrow can do it, if other airports are working on it, everybody -- if I have to go through a metal detector, every worker should go through a metal detector.
So I'd appreciate a response at some point, not today, on that issue.
Secondly, you must be aware that El Al has the technology to check all the baggage in the hold. Before any passenger goes on a plane, when all the cargo is on the plane, they increase, decrease the pressure, which, from my understanding, would detonate a bomb if there was a nuclear device in the hold, in addition to scanning and having human evaluation of each of the bags that are there.
They open many of them, they use scanners on others. But they also do this to ensure that if there is a bomb on board, it would explode before the people get on that.
And I'd appreciate a response to that at some time.
Mr. Markey, all my colleagues and I share the sense of urgency. I feel a real responsibility to my constituents when I go to the New Rochelle train station, and I understand that metro north trains -- and this is the same in San Francisco, Washington, Boston, all these suburban trains feed into essential city transit system. And we've done almost nothing to harden these suburban stations.
And I would really appreciate -- perhaps you can answer that if I have a few minutes left now -- are we focusing on the centralized targets in a transit rail system? What are we doing to ensure that we're securing the back doors into these targets, the suburban stations?
Could you perhaps answer that? What are we doing now?
We know that these people, many of whom came from Leeds, took these trains in -- some of them might have come by car. What are we doing to harden and to protect our suburban stations?
Secretary Chertoff: I'm happy to address that. And, obviously, the other questions, we'll get you answers shortly.
But I wouldn't want people to walk away with the impression that the fact that we haven't submitted a formal plan means that we're not planning and doing things at transit stations and train stations.
And one thing I also want to make clear is this is not a federal issue exclusively. We are working with state and local transit authorities.
The general level of security in trains has increased since before 9/11 and since before Madrid. One of the things we did, in fact, after Madrid, is we did quite a comprehensive analysis that we shared with our state and local transit agencies about lessons learned and things that could be done to enhance security.
And that includes everything from what I described to you earlier, which is our BioWatch sensors with respect to biological things. It involves some use of cameras.
We've got a system now we're deploying in Boston, New York and Washington to detect chemical attacks in train stations. It's an integrated system which uses video, as well as sensing devices that would allow us to react quickly to a chemical attack.
So there are a lot of things being done. There is more to be done.
Rep. Lowey: Mr. Secretary, could you tell me, or respond to me when you can, how much funding is directly to suburban transit systems?
As I understand, there isn't funding for those devices. Could you discuss that?
Secretary Chertoff: I will. But let me say this. I guess I feel an obligation to come back to this risk point.
I understand everybody's station worries them personally. And when I lived in the suburbs of New York, if I got on a train, I had a particular station, that would concern me.
But we still have to drive our priorities ultimately by looking at consequence, vulnerability and risk.
You know, the New York subways -- I rode the subways, I'm sure you did, too -- there are dozens and dozens of stations. We have to be very careful as we go about a process of managing security we don't break the system we're trying to save.
We could never run the New York subway station like we run an airport. We couldn't have people walk through magnetometers. It's not possible.
Rep. Lowey: Could we have dogs up and down with police? I haven't seen them at suburban stations at all.
Secretary Chertoff: Well, we can do things with dogs. And here I have to say, we rely an awful lot on the people who manage the individual systems.
Rep. Lowey: But then they have to get the funding. And we shouldn't be making the false choices between chemical, nuclear, airplanes. We don't have the funding for the transit system.
Secretary Chertoff: But I do have to say, respectfully -- and I don't want to get into a debate -- in the end, again, it's about balance and choice. We still have to continue to look at those things which have the greatest consequence with the greatest vulnerabilities.
And it's very easy to isolate and pick out a particular type of infrastructure, and we all understand how important that is. But at the end of the day we have to make sure that what we do looks across the whole range of things. And that's, I guess, part of my responsibility in this.
So we'll get you an answer on the suburban stations. But I did want to make it clear that people shouldn't think that the delay in presenting a formal plan suggests there hasn't been an awful lot of planning and working. And as we speak, our level of security is significantly greater than it was, and it's going to get better.
Rep. Lowey: Let me just say, Secretary -- may I just conclude my sentence?
Rep. Cox: The gentlelady's time expired two minutes ago. I'll let the gentlelady wrap up.
Rep. Lowey: If I could just conclude and thank the secretary; I have great confidence in you.
But the issue of balancing is what concerns so much of us. Because let's recall we're up to upwards of $250 billion for Iraq, for Afghanistan. We need to protect our homeland here. And we shouldn't be making what I think are false choices between the transit system, between the airport system, between our container system and our evaluation.
So I appreciate your work. I know it's a huge undertaking. Thank you for appearing before us. And we look forward to having further dialogue.
Rep. Cox: The gentlelady's time has expired.
And it is now past the time that the committee has agreed the secretary would be excused to attend the concurrently scheduled Cabinet meeting at the White House.
At this point, therefore, I am constrained to thank you, Secretary Chertoff, for your valuable testimony, and thank the members for your questions.
The members of the committee, both those who have had the opportunity to ask questions and those who have not yet had the opportunity to ask questions, will have additional questions in writing. I ask that you respond to these in writing. The hearing record will be held open for 10 days for that purpose.
In addition, we look forward to continuing the committee's inquiry on this topic with you and the deputy secretary in subsequent hearings. And it would be the chairman's suggestion that when that occurs that we pick up the questioning at the same place that we left off...
Secretary Chertoff: Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to correct one misimpression. It's actually not a meeting at the White House. It's a meeting of Cabinet members, but it's going to take place at HUD. I didn't want to have any misunderstanding on the record.
Rep. Cox: I appreciate that.
The witness is excused. I will hold the hearing open for an inquiry from the gentleman from New Jersey.
Rep. Pascrell: Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the secretary -- and we thank him for being here today -- could be back before the August break.
Rep. Cox: I don't know what that schedule might be, but it is the intent of the chairman and the ranking member to move with alacrity on this topic and to have either the secretary or the deputy secretary up at the earliest possible opportunity.
Rep. Pascrell: That may mean September and October.
Rep. Cox: But I don't think so. I hope not.
Rep. Pascrell: Most of us have not asked questions. I think at least if we can agree that within the next two weeks we will have the secretary back, if that meets with his schedule, I think that's something that we were owed.
Rep. Cox: All I can tell you is that that is the committee's intention. And we will do the best we can working with the department to make that happen.
Again, I want to thank the members of the committee and our witness, now departed.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
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