Bush Is to Propose Broad New Powers in Domestic Security

The New York Times ^ | 07/16/2002 | ELIZABETH BECKER

[Pokey78]

WASHINGTON, July 15 — The Bush administration's broad new proposal for domestic security, to be made public on Tuesday, calls for sweeping changes that include the creation of a top-secret plan to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and a review of the law that could allow the military to operate more aggressively within the United States.

Tom Ridge, the president's adviser on domestic security, has been at work on the plan for more than eight months — beginning long before the proposal for a new department of homeland security, which was hastily announced last month as Congressional investigators were making public new information about intelligence lapses before Sept. 11.

The administration could impose some changes on its own authority, while others would require Congressional action. Dozens of the recommendations are familiar initiatives that the government has tried to enact for years but are newly popular to help reach the goal of preventing terrorist attacks within the United States. Many fall outside the scope of the proposed new department.

Given the difficulties the president's proposal for the department is facing in Congress, the idea that this new plan could be enacted as written is questionable.

These are among the administration's proposals:

¶Establish national standards for state driver's licenses.

¶Create an "intelligence threat division" in the new department that uses what the plan calls "red teams" of intelligence experts. These teams would act like terrorists and plot attacks on vulnerable new targets in the country so that means of preventing such attacks can be devised.

¶Increase inspections of international shipping containers before they leave foreign ports and as they cross United States borders.

¶Ensure that government agencies can communicate with one another, something successive administrations have tried and failed to do.

The plan also calls for the first thorough inventory of the country's critical infrastructure — both public and private — followed by a secret plan to protect it. The inventory would include, for example, highways, pipelines, agriculture, the Internet, databases and energy plants.

"That's one of the big points," said a senior administration official, who provided a copy of the plan to The New York Times. "The whole society is vulnerable with hundreds, thousands of targets we have to protect, but the most important stuff we do won't be released."

In a letter accompanying the plan, also provided by the official, President Bush said that the federal, state and local governments and private companies should share the responsibility for — and the $100 billion annual cost of — combating what he called the greatest threat to the United States this century. It was a sign that full financing for his plan would not come from the federal budget.

"We must rally our entire society to overcome a new and very complex challenge," Mr. Bush said.

The senior official said that the idea for the homeland security department actually grew out of the secret deliberations on this broader plan. But the official insisted that the administration actively fought Congressional efforts to legislate a new department throughout the winter and spring because the White House wanted to keep deliberations secret.

"People were asking for a strategy, but we weren't ready," the senior official said. "We announced the department first because we had finished that part of the study."

Congressional Democrats are openly criticizing the White House for having been too closed and secretive in the development of what amounts to the largest reorganization of government in 50 years.

Democratic lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee issued a statement today complaining that the legislation for the security department was written by White House political appointees without proper consultations. "That kind of secretive and arrogant behavior has produced a plan that, in many areas, is poorly constructed and complicates Congress's ability to produce a good final bill," said David Sirota, a committee spokesman.

The plan begins with an acknowledgment of the difficulty of defining the problem: "Terrorism is not so much a system of belief, like fascism or communism, as it is a strategy and a tactic — a means of attack."

Domestic attacks like Timothy J. McVeigh's on Oklahoma City in 1995 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon should be treated as terrorism even if the motives may differ widely, according the study. For that reason, it proposes to make better use of the military to counter domestic threats.

Before today, senior Pentagon officials had repeatedly said that they had no plans to ask Congress to revamp the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which sharply restricts the military's ability to participate in domestic law enforcement.

In a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee in May, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, asked Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld whether the administration was hoping to make changes in the act.

"No, Senator, we're not," Mr. Rumsfeld replied. "We're not looking for any long-term or short-term change with respect to Posse Comitatus."

But the Bush plan says that "the threat of catastrophic terrorism requires a thorough review of the laws permitting the military to act within the United States in order to determine whether domestic preparedness and response efforts would benefit from greater involvement of military personnel, and if so how."

Adding these initiatives could only complicate relations with Congress, where members of both parties insist that the administration's proposed department is conceptually too unwieldy. A series of House committees, controlled by Republicans, essentially rewrote the Bush plan last week, voting not to move the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a large part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the department.

Mr. Ridge, appearing today before a special House committee that is managing the legislation on the department, said the administration opposed each of those changes and more demanded by lawmakers.

"The president's reorganization is well planned and well thought out, based on input from every level of government, the private sector, the academic community and of course the Congress of the United States," Mr. Ridge said.

He also said the department must have wide-ranging flexibility to move money to different uses as needs arise.

The chairman of the special committee, Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House Republican leader, told Mr. Ridge flatly that "it's not likely that that's going to happen," but Mr. Ridge said the usual close Congressional oversight could cripple the new department's ability to respond to terrorism.

"We're at war," Mr. Ridge said. "The enemy — if you agree that they're agile, that they'll move and change targets — we ought to be able to give the secretary some flexibility to target some of these resources based on the threat, based on the vulnerability."

[AmericanInTokyo]

After the next major attack on the United States, after all the chaos has settled down and we have buried the bodies (of those we could find), and, in case none of these recommendations where actually implemented, I think those who shouted about CIVIL LIBERTIES and that we should not be taking these steps, will have a lot to apologize for. (Just as those who turn a blind eye to immigration violations will be partly to blame).

I know that any sane country in the world with such massive violations of it's internal security would do something about it. If, for example, Japan had such a cadre of sleepers inside (let's place them at 2,500 as their population is 1/2 the US), why they would have the whole place buttoned down, mass deportations, status check on ALL foreigners in their midst, and measures such as the ones proposed by the White House.

But then again, they are a people who are just a bit sensitive about atomic radiation in their major cities. Still a bit of a sore point, you know.

[Betty Jo]

Well, if Binnys boys are going to do what I think,we need more than our military!

If they take out our electricity,phones,computers,water,24/7cable TV news, etc, yada, yada, who and what will save/help us?

Add to that nuc/chem/bios...you get the picture!

So, I say , round them up, deport them all!!!

Seal the borders.

I just want Bush to announce all that he has not done re:his family business connections to Bin Laden and other terrorists.

When the whole country knows all that, and truly understands it,perhaps a new complexion will be put on this.

[aristeides]

Domestic attacks like Timothy J. McVeigh's on Oklahoma City in 1995 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon should be treated as terrorism even if the motives may differ widely, according the study.

If McVeigh was a terrorist, why wasn't Hadayet?

[Betty Jo]

Gee, aristeides, I thought you were soo smart!

Don't you know that Tim was not a terrorist because there were Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists at Murrah, along with FBI and CIA prior knowledge, and Hadayet,Hadayat is not an Islamaic Fundamentalist Terrorist because there is Bush amnesty for illegals and prior knowledge by FBI and CIA?

Also, the airline economy would totally collapse if Hadyat,Hadayet was a terrorist.

[Jhoffa_]

Dubya is an idiot.

He's slowly but surely rebuilding Nazi Germany in our own backyard. (while anyone could go carry anythign they pleased across the border, but DONT FLY WITH NAILCLIPPERS! THAT'S A SECURITY RISK!)

Thanks Dubya!

(You Moron)

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..he " claims " to live in California...

No. I've been to California several times but I live in Sydney, Australia. Freepers who've visited can attest to that.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

...only the blind can not see that something really strange is going on here....

Don, you may not like hearing this but what is happening Stateside now is similar to what happened in Australia after the 1996 Port Arthur 'Massacre.' Thirty-six people were shot by a lone nutcase with an AR-15. All gunowners were held collectively responsible for that crime in the same way most Freepers hold all Muslims responsible for 911. The media kept churning Port Arthur for ratings, keeping the public in a constant state of worry and fear. State and federal governments used it as a pretext to bring in repressive and interventionist legislation against gunowners; including, 'dob in an (illegal) gunowner' schemes, one of which is currently underway. It is only recently that people are starting to question the hysteria, in light of statistics showing that Australlian crime figures have gone up, not down. The problem you have is that people tie their egos into a rigid stance, as we have seen on this thread. As it steadily becomes obvious that they have in reality backed a huge increase in the power of the State apparatus, a development directly at odds with the core principles of FR, they refuse to change their position. Of course there are more than a few posters here who want to see an increase in the power of the State to intrude- my guess is they somehow personally benefit from advocating that.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..wait a minute, am I finding myself in a time/space warp? Is this suddenly 1935 and am I in the Soviet Union? Maybe not; they didn't have computers yet and I don't speak Russian....

Incredible, isn't it?

I wonder if some Slavic forerunner of FR saw the same kind of debate, once. Perhaps a bunch of kulaks gathered around an oak tree in the village centre, to discuss politics? You and I, warning the rest, and some Russian equivalent of Texasforever telling us SMERSH are our friends, here to protect us against the evil tsarists.

[savedbygrace]

If this article is accurate, then President Bush will never get another vote from me. The same for any senator or representative who votes for this, if it's an accurate report.

We'll soon see what the truth is.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..an initiative confined to providing a well-publicized place for people to report suspicious activities, with staff trained to screen out the nutcase and harassment calls (with severe penalties for proven cases of the latter) would be worthwhile...

they're not going to be 'screened out', Steve. No-one in Homeland Security would dare arbitrarily 'screen out' a tip, after the outrage over the way warnings about 911 were ignored. They'll be filed away, for possible use later, no matter how malicious or outrageous they are.

Matter of fact the more outrageous the claim made, the more it shows how concerned you are, right? It would be perfectly understandable for that busybody down the road to call the TIPs hotline about you, for instance. You're a gunowner, you've expressed hostility to the government any number of times on a well-known right-wing website. I think Homeland Security would be remiss if they didn't at least log onto FR and check your posts. And perhaps try to investigate the volume of any ammunition purchases you make. Maybe, you're 'stockpiling'? If there's nothing to worry about, fine, but they have a duty to investigate, once the complaint has been made. There's a war on. And if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Everyone knows that.

[Texasforever]

Please stop instigating flame wars.<P. Thank you, may I have another? lol

[Don Myers]

Governments and the media have long been allies. The value of propaganda is nothing new. I see a lot of that in other countries and in the U.S. Manufactured hysteria is a good way to get the non-thinking citizens to back any crazy laws the government can think of, and the citizens will thank them for doing something to increase their security. I well understand how that works.

[Texasforever]

Not a chance in hell. Jorge "Open Borders" Bush is a "Once your in, Your in" President. He may try to shut off the flow, but he won't touch what is already here.

MI maybe you should quit a job that causes you so much anger and a boss that you obviously hold in contempt. Maybe you could go on the talk circuit and promote your tell all book on the corruption you seem to be intimately familiar with.

[archy]

Almost exactly the description provided by the Guardian, though they describe him as a *Frankenstein*:

Frankenstein the CIA created

...From his base in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, he used his experience of the construction trade, and his money, to build a series of bases where the mujahideen could be trained by their Pakistani, American and, if some recent press reports are to be believed, British advisers.

One of the camps bin Laden built, known as Al-Badr, was the target of the American missile strikes against him last summer. Now it is used by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based organisation that trains volunteers to fight in Kashmir.

Some of their recruits kidnapped and almost certainly killed a group of Western hostages a few years ago. The bases are still full of new volunteers, many Pakistanis. Most of those who were killed in last August's strikes were Pakistani.

A Harkut-ul-Mujahideen official said last week that it had Germans and Britons fighting for the cause, as well as Egyptians, Palestinians and Saudis. Muslims from the West as well as from the Middle East and North Africa are regularly stopped by Pakistani police on the road up the Khyber Pass heading for the camps. Hundreds get through. Afghan veterans have now joined bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

Some have returned to former battlegrounds, like the university-educated Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key figure in the Egyptian al-Jihad terrorist group. Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East. Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group. Al-Zawahiri has become a close aide of bin Laden and has now returned to Afghanistan to work with him. His al-Jihad group has been linked to the Yemeni kidnappers.

One Saudi journalist who interviewed bin Laden in 1989 remembers three of his close associates going under the names of Abu Mohammed, Abu Hafz and Abu Ahmed. All three fought with bin Laden in the early Eighties, travelled with him to the Sudan and have come back to Afghanistan. Afghan veterans, believed to include men who fought the Americans in Somalia, have also returned.

Other members of al-Quaeda remain overseas. Afghan veterans now linked to bin Laden have been traced by investigators to Pakistan, East Africa, Albania, Chechnya, Algeria, France, the US and Britain.

At least one of the kidnappers in Yemen was reported to have fought in Afghanistan and to be linked to al-Quaeda.

Despite reports that bin Laden was effectively funded by the Americans, it is impossible to gauge how much American aid he received. He was not a major figure in the Afghan war. Most American weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, were channelled by the Pakistanis to the Hezb-i-Islami faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bin Laden was only loosely connected with the group, serving under another Hezb-i-Islami commander known as Engineer Machmud. However, bin Laden's Office of Services, set up to recruit overseas for the war, received some US cash.

But according to one American official, concentrating on bin Laden is a mistake. 'The point is not the individuals,' he said last week. 'The point is that we created a whole cadre of trained and motivated people who turned against us. It's a classic Frankenstein's monster situation.'

-more-

[archy]

If McVeigh was a terrorist, why wasn't Hadayet?

McVeigh was murdering federal employees, with the assistance of Muslim terrorists, and probably, some agents of other federal agencies. Hadayet was only killing civilians and Jews, which is no big deal in Washington.

It's interesting, though, that the investigation of what should be a California Penal Code Section 187 murder/homicide investigation is instead being run by the FBI's antiterrorism group, despite whatever they claim Hadayet's motivations were or weren't.

[Texasforever]

How about quarantine and mass vaccination following a bio-attack?

Why? In case of such an attack martial law would be immediately in force until the scope of the attack is assessed OR until the quarantine is lifted. Do you deny that the need for large scale quarantines may be required?

[Sabertooth]

Why? In case of such an attack martial law would be immediately in force until the scope of the attack is assessed OR until the quarantine is lifted. Do you deny that the need for large scale quarantines may be required?

I'm simply trying to figure out the possible need for modifying the Posse Comitatus Act. I'm not buying the "found up of the Illegals" scenario.

As for quarantines, I fully understand their efficacy.

Sidenote: I do however have a problem with the CDC's hording of the smallpox vaccine, rather than putting it on the market for the 115 million Americans never vaccinated. We have more than enough for them now, and will have enough for boosters for the rest of us before the end of the year. I'm not aware of a good medical reason to delay proceeding with voluntary immunizations.

Vaccine hording was a Clinton brainstorm. I'm flagging bonesmccoy, who's an MD and very up to speed on the matter.

[Texasforever]

I don't know about the hording motives but you can see threads about how people are scared to death of any vaccine or have religious problems and on and on. It seems to be a dammed if you do type of thing.

There could be another factor at work. The interstate highway system was proposed and authorized as a national defense system. It could be that with the bill authorizing all of the nation's nuclear waste being shipped to Nevada that the PC act was a problem for military escorts of trucks carrying the waste and even for highway check points of trucks.

[Sabertooth]

I don't know about the hording motives but you can see threads about how people are scared to death of any vaccine or have religious problems and on and on. It seems to be a dammed if you do type of thing.

You're only damned with forced immunization, which you have in attack anyway.

The advantage of a voluntary immunization before an attack is two-fold... fewer left to be vaccinated, and greater herd immunity.

There could be another factor at work. The interstate highway system was proposed and authorized as a national defense system. It could be that with the bill authorizing all of the nation's nuclear waste being shipped to Nevada that the PC act was a problem for military escorts of trucks carrying the waste and even for highway check points of trucks.

Wouldn't it be preferable to simply put some aspects of the nuclear program back under the DoD?

[Texasforever]

Wouldn't it be preferable to simply put some aspects of the nuclear program back under the DoD?

Yes. But that still puts military involvement at odds with the PC act. You and I agree that this is a bad idea. I don't want the military operating inside our borders. It has so much potential to get out of hand. The problem is that there are many "conservatives" that are screaming to have it done so the immigration problem will be solved. We both know that if it is "solved" that way then the military MAY just find other problems to be solved.