“[T]he federal government has carved out this division of labor that says that when it comes to federal resources, it really is being put in the war on terror overseas, and states and locals need to fend for themselves.”
– Stephen Flynn, senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
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“Almost four years after September 11th, our port security is in alarming shape, and the attacks on soft targets in London are a chilling reminder why there is no time to wait. The Administration has been asleep at the switch while shipload after shipload of cargo slip into our ports uninspected. We’ve spent more on the Capitol Visitors’ Center than on securing our ports. The Department of Homeland Security’s own Inspector General said that only a fraction of the money awarded for port security grants has actually been spent.”
– Sen. John Kerry at today’s Senate Demo press conference.
Senate Democrats have seized on the London transit bombings to highlight their long-fought efforts to enact major reform of homeland security measures (CSPAN2).
More from the press release:
In his pithy, knowledgeable style, Sen. Biden spoke:
Sen. Corzine addressed “unguarded chemical plants” that “present a clear and present danger.” Sen. Kerry says Bush is “asleep at the switch.” Sen. Clinton said Bushco has “consistently underfunded security for our rail and transit systems, ports and chemical facilities.” Sen. Stabenow announced an amendment to add $5B annually to fund “first responders.”
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CHARGE: The Bush administration abandoned the homeland and the American people for its corporate- and Neocon-driven battles overseas
From Friday’s Homeland Security discussion on Democracy Now!:
STEPHEN FLYNN: Well, it’s really unacceptable, but it really reflects two things; first, that the administration has made quite clear that they believe the federal government’s responsibility is primarily the war overseas and the policing of our border, and right in the President’s Homeland Security Strategy, which he put out a little over a year after 9/11, he says quite explicitly that when it comes to safeguarding critical infrastructures within our society, that the burden needs to be shared by local and state authorities, and quote, “there’s sufficient market incentive for the private sector to protect itself.”
The fact that our transit systems are run at the local level, or state or regional, but primarily local level, and that the federal government has carved out this division of labor that says that when it comes to federal resources, it really is being put in the war on terror overseas, and states and locals need to fend for themselves, is clearly a challenge when so many states and localities are having a difficult time just keeping their transit system up and running, never mind adding rather expensive improvements.
The other side of the — the second issue is that there is this almost sense that it’s hopeless, that there’s nothing that can be done. They’re very open systems. There’s too many people. One can think about how we can police, do security at the airports, because you’re funneling people onto planes, controlled environment.
Here, I think we miss the point. One is that a lot of, while it’s impossible to protect a system 100% of the time, like the transit system, there’s a lot that we can do in terms of raising the awareness both in terms of training of the transit operators, as well as the general public, which means that our politicians need to do a little less of `everything that can be done is being done, so just go about life as normal,’ and a little more talking about the limits of what they can do and what everybody else needs to contribute.
The other side is very much about response, about being able, given that these accidents will happen, having the exercises so that you can evacuate people, you can get the system up and running quickly. Here I think the Brits deserve a lot of praise both in their ability to respond to this well, and also in terms of managing a lot of the public information that’s coming out. And that’s the kind of investments that we need to make. Not huge sums of money in many cases, but it does require resources, and the federal government has to exercise much more leadership than it’s been willing to exercise to date.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But transit systems obviously around the country are all cutting costs because so many of them are publicly funded and depend on taxpayer revenues, so that you have a situation, for instance, in New York City, where they’re cutting — they’re beginning to have trains with no conductors for the first time, just with the trainmen. So that the, it would seem that in that situation, the level of at least being able to respond to an immediate emergency would grow even less than currently exists.
STEPHEN FLYNN: Well, I think that’s – that that’s certainly the case is that the trends are not going in the right direction, overall, while certainly some efficiencies are always going to be what we work our way through. But the fact is we don’t recognize these things as critical to our way of life and our quality of life. Major cities like Washington D.C., and New York just simply cannot function without mass transit working. So, it’s not only that — you know, there actually are ways if you went up to sport events or something else, where you can kill more people, but what we’re seeing with al Qaeda and its imitator organizations are geared to do, is to cause economic and societal disruption by going after things we really, really depend upon. And our mass transit system, largely unobserved because they’re almost always working well for those who use it, but the fact is they are the lifeblood of our major cities and our major cities are a lifeblood of our economy. So American citizens really have got to start to make an investment in safeguarding these kinds of facilities. And frankly, they deserve investment even if there wasn’t a terrorist threat because of their economic role.
[About Congressmember Eleanor Holmes Norton: She’s a Democrat who represents the District of Columbia. She serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. Last year, she introduced the Safe Trains Act. ]
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: I don’t think when we talk — we ought to understand what we’re talking about, an investment, and the difference between mass public transportation and aviation. And we’re really not — there are two ways to look at this. There needs to be developed smart security for mass transportation. We haven’t begun that process.
Meanwhile, my bill would begin with a very small amount of money, you know, when you compare it to the $15 billion that aviation has got. $3.5 billion. And what would that be used for? It would be grants where public transportation systems — that means people who operate buses, ferries, not just subways, rail, light rail, could apply for grants to do the obvious, to get dogs, to have ventilation equipment, so that if you are underground people don’t simply suffocate when a bomb goes off, perhaps even in one car. These are not your aviation-type costly approaches.
What I was able to get into the Homeland Security authorization is equally primitive: a national plan for public outreach and awareness. Here we have the television telling people, `hey, look around you, make sure that if you see anything suspicious, you report it.’ We don’t tell public transportation systems and — excuse me, there’s not systematic direction from Washington or security expertise from Washington given across the board to transportation systems of all kinds and all varieties — …