Posted on 07/15/2002 9:03:38 PM PDT by 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."
NO, the president can nullify them himself. There is nothing at all to stop a future president from issuing his own EO. However; he would need some justification for doing so. Once these powers are codified by congressional action then future presidents have no need to make a case. They have, by act of congress, the power invested in them.
Nope, you are saying we can be a little bit pregnant. How long will they stay on the border? Where will they be billeted? How many will be required and what are their rules of engagement? Do we militarize both borders?
Okay, Aussie, then butt out of our affairs. I don't give a hang, what you think of the USA, nor our president. Your 2 cents, aren't even worth 2 cents. LOL
I understand the bloodlust, about " getting " X42; however, NO, there isn't anything that President Bush could have done, without totally derailing his presidency. Is that </B. what you REALLY want ... just revenge and the hell with everything else ? You don't know history , politics, and understand nothing about governance.
I have never stated anything of the kind. Everyone on FR knows I'm from Australia.
You're losing it lately, Nopardons. You used to be quite a pleasant person but now you run from thread to thread, bossing everyone around like a fussing old hen. If people want to question the president's motives and where he's taking America they have every right to do so. That's what we've been doing on FR for years. Instead of bagging me, my country, my right to post on FR, how about you address the issue at hand. Are the 'broad new powers' necessary? Will they be abused, by the agencies charged with administering them, and by future presidents? How much do they conflict with the principles on which your country is built? Over to you.
No, Byron, you flat out claimed, years ago, to be living in California. I have a much better than average memory, unbefuddled by anything. You even, at one time, had the California flag flying on your personal page.
Gee, Byron, if you don't live here, why on earth do you care, at all, how we, who do, live ? It's none of your business. Do I think that President Bush is turning the USA into a " police state " ? Nope ! Do I think that the new " powers " will do any good ? I have no idea. Were there even worse laws / rules / " war powers " enacted previously ? YOU BET THERE WERE ! Ever hear of WW II, Byron, and what was instituted here, back then ?
Well, now we have Bush in power, and it is actually occuring right under our noses, but because Bush happens to be a Republican, it's okey and taking away our rights are "needed measures". Scary.
Because what happens over there impacts on me and mine EVERY DAY. From HSUS to HCI to the UN, you obviously have no idea as to the way anti-freedom philosophies and techniques are exported from certain parts of the US. So many of our homegrown lefties take their lead from what happens Stateside, especially eco-extremists and anti-gunners. Right now, our Attorney-General is rushing to copy as much of the absurdly-named Patriot Act as possible.
And BTW madame, I have never put a California flag on my FR page or anywhere else. What possible motive I could have for doing something like that I cannot imagine. Your memory is as defective as your reasoning.
Hmmmm ... and they don't take stuff from England and other parts of the globe too ? The eco-terrorists aren't American. The Greenies are Europeans and the American ones learn from them.
I just can't understand it, DB. I believe the president is a man of good heart, but he is introducing so many measures ripe for abuse by his own or future administrations. Why would any conservative with even the most rudimentary awareness of history do that? Bin Laden must be laughing with glee to watch America, in her fear, tear up so much of what's made her great.
Not as much as you'd think. I've been on FR, read about some new gungrabber or greenie initiative, and sent it around our e-mail loop out here. Six to twelve months later the local socialists make the same move domestically, using the same source material. The 501 (c) organisation status, and the tradition of philanthropism Stateside means the Left have their financial redoubts there. How much would the UN's influence be cut, if it wasn't based in the US? 50%? You guys fund and host a lot of the hard core- Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky and the like.
Cherie, perhaps you were on the sauce, when you 'saw' the phantom flag? Was it after 10:00AM in the morning?
These are all legitimate questions and I presume they are the questions our military always must answer before any action - why is this different?
I will repeat - this has been done before, it is not something new.
Now consider we continue to do nothing about our borders and we find our country even more infested with armed terrorists - are we then going to say we can't do anything about it because we don't know - how long it will take - where are they going to sleep - how many will it take - what are the rules of engagement - where do we fight them? Oh, well, there are too many questions here, let's just let them go. I prefer we stop as many as possible on the border, because I firmly believe the military will be involved eventually and I would prefer the involvement be on the border and not in the streets of America, if possible. I believe letting them guard the border, as they have done in the past, would be the best chance of NOT having soldiers in the streets.
I understand why the White House is making no change in the Posse Comitatus Act. Basically, they see no reason to change our basic operationally assumptions on the deployment of military reaction teams.
However, I can think of several situations where domestic deployment of US military forces would be useful to save civilians.
1. Direct invasion of US borders by a foreign army. If such invasion occurred, the US gov't would not recognize the change in border and would need to deploy US military to secure our borders.
2. Use of WMD on civilian population in a fashion which overwhelms civilian first-responders. If the medical system collapses in a Nuclear-Biological-Chemical attack scenario, local national guard resources could be involved as victims. Rather than national guard deployment being an option, the US military made have resources to secure a perimeter, safe the zone, and begin civilian support services. US military played these kinds of roles in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear attacks there. Japanese civilian resources in Tokyo were definitely impacted by the Sarin gas attack from the Aum cult. Israeli military figure prominently in securing Israel's borders in the existing conflict with the PLA/Arabs around that nation.
Regarding the quarantine issue, the issue should be moot. Only a bunch of whacky liberal-feel-good-and-high types are agreeing with ACIP. The need for large scale quarantine is NOT required. The only reason for large scale quarantine would be for containment of an infectious disease.
In my judgement, the public health strategy of quarantine and contain is idiotic. When you can fly 200 passengers from any city to any other city, there is little question of the ability of an virulent organism to travel first class. When you consider longer incubation periods with longer periods of contagion, the quarantine policy sounds more idiotic.
IMHO, FWIW, ACIP is embarassing. These guys haven't done their homework and they look like it too. At least the national science academies refused to go unspoken on this smallpox vaccine policy.
The administration needs to permit free market distribution of ALL vaccines.
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