Hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee - Department of Homeland Security Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2009

Interview

Hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee - Department of Homeland Security Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2009

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REP. HAROLD ROGERS (R-KY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for those nice words.

This subcommittee is a hardworking subcommittee. It has had a tough chore -- one of the tougher chores, I think, in the U.S. House over at least the last five years, because of the difficulty of the problem we found ourselves in after 9/11 and then the response of the Congress to create this subcommittee and the simultaneous work with a brand new department that was being born, so it's been a tough chore, but I've enjoyed every minute of it, especially my association with the chairman, who I think has done an outstanding job as the new chairman of this subcommittee, and I look forward to working with him for the balance of the year, and perhaps I'll stay on the subcommittee.

Welcome, Mr. Secretary. I'm convinced that despite the daunting challenges facing our country, despite the constant threat of natural disasters, despite the all-too real and persistent danger of violent extremism around the globe, this great nation is unquestionably safer and more secure today than it was before 9/11, and that's in no small part due to the laudable efforts of thousands of DHS employees on the front lines and the resolve with which you have approached your job as secretary over the last three years.

I think your job is perhaps the toughest job in Washington. It's certainly the most thankless job in Washington, but you've handled it superbly. I can't imagine the three years that you've gone through being constantly aware that it would be your efforts or the lack of your efforts that the safety of millions of Americans are depending on.

So I thank you for the responsibility that you have shouldered and are shouldering even as we speak. You've made great progress in the department. We've got a ways to go, but we've come a long way under your superb leadership.

So as you make what is perhaps -- perhaps -- your final appearance before this subcommittee, I want to first thank you for your service. We should all recognize that while there is certainly much more work to be done, tremendous progress has been made under your watch. Some noteworthy successes -- let me just mention a few: aiding in the disruption of several terrorist plots; ending the flawed practice of catch-and-release on the border; hardening our critical infrastructure; integrating the IDENT and IAFIS databases -- FBI and all other agencies -- so that we can better serve the public; strengthening the controls at our seaports and ports of entry; layering the security framework across all modes of transportation from passenger aviation to seaborne cargo.

Acknowledgment of these achievements is in order. From this side of the dais, I've watched as DHS has labored through the largest federal reorganization in more than a half century. This task -- creating the third largest Cabinet agency within the government, a complex mission of protecting and preparing our country, and responding to threats and disasters while simultaneously facilitating legitimate travel and legitimate immigration entry -- this has certainly presented many challenges for both the administration and Congress.

So as I think about the expectations for a maturing department, I must remind myself that DHS is in fact only five years old.

But I'm the last person to make excuses for the department. Failure is not an option. We can't tolerate poor performance or inaction in an area of such criticality. Since this subcommittee was formed, we have stressed results, and that mantra has continued under Chairman Price's leadership.

As I reflect upon these early formative years, I believe DHS's fundamental struggle has been with finding the proper balance across all its functions -- balancing legitimate commerce with security, balancing private concerns -- privacy concerns with appropriate information analysis, balancing federal roles with responsibilities and obligations of state and local government, and balancing finite resources with competing priorities that range from border security and cybersecurity to disaster response and marine safety.

Which brings us to today and a discussion that I believe will transcend your budget request for '09. I see this hearing as an opportunity to not only look back upon these early years but also to take stock of where the department is today and, perhaps most importantly, discuss how prepared the department is for the future.

And as we look to the future, I want to offer a note of caution. As we've discussed, the missions of medical preparedness and cybersecurity over just this past week, tasks with leadership responsibilities that are more like a labyrinth rather than a chain of command, I'm concerned about accountability. As the old saying goes, if two people are in charge, no one's in charge. And if three people are in charge, well, I believe they call that a bureaucracy.

While the mission of homeland security is not confined to the Department of Homeland Security, there must be clear lines of responsibility for all critical security functions, especially as we approach the transition to a new administration. It's extremely important for DHS to have a strong foundation when you depart, a foundation that allows the department to rise above and beyond traditional hurdles and jurisdictional infighting.

This and future congresses and presidents must not allow typical bureaucratic inertia which so often drifts and expands government to take hold. I hope this subcommittee and your successors at the department will all strive to help DHS to mature into what it was initially conceived to be: a nimble, effective organization that successfully interacts with the private sector and across the government to realize the security this great nation both needs and deserves.

Mr. Secretary, I sincerely appreciate you being here today before us. As we have always in the past, we look forward to a candid discussion of the issues. No one wants to see you succeed more than this subcommittee, I think, this member especially. It's been a pleasure working with you these years. We've got many more months to go, but this being a grand occasion to say how much we appreciate your work, I wanted to seize that opportunity. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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REP. ROGERS: Well, I'm sure we'll come back to this repeatedly, but let me switch topics for a moment and ask -- I want to know about the Merida Initiative. I know it's a multiagency effort and it's a multinational effort to try to control what goes across that border with Mexico -- especially drugs. I know that's not your primary purpose in being there --other agencies do that -- but it has to be a joint effort. I'm alarmed at the seeming war that's going on across that border in places between thugs in Mexico and Border Patrol and other U.S. agencies on our side, and repeated incursions by those insurgents on the Mexican side onto U.S. soil, especially the drug cartels.

And it's not just a local thing anymore. In my district in Kentucky, the law enforcement people tell me that the biggest source now of methamphetamines in rural east Kentucky is from Mexico. It formerly was local-made products; now it's cheaper, apparently, to import it through the drug cartels from Mexico across that border.

And I understand the Merida Initiative will give us a cooperative effort with Mexico especially to try to bolster their side of law enforcement of the border with our agencies on the U.S. side. Can you help me understand it better?

SEC. CHERTOFF: I think, Congressman, you've accurately captured what the situation is with one -- I'd make one correction. Actually, I consider the interdiction of dangerous drugs to be our highest priority at the border. We actually have the responsibility at the border to keep not only people out who shouldn't be coming in but things that shouldn't be coming in. And part of what I've tried to communicate in connection, frankly, with the fencing issue is that it's as important or maybe more important to me to have the fence to keep the drugs out and the criminals out as it is to keep out just the other illegal migrants.

We are seeing in Mexico, as you properly observe, the major pathway for getting methamphetamine into the United States. We're seeing increased violence along the border, both directed at our Border Patrol and directed at the local authorities in Mexico. This is a direct consequence of the success we're having in cracking down on illegal businesses. I know you know this because you were a prosecutor. I certainly know this from my years as a prosecutor. When you crack down on illegal organized crime activities, those criminal businesses fight back, because this is their lifeblood. That's why when you're not enforcing the law, there's very little violence. Everybody's very happy and getting along and you get the ill-gotten gains. But as you crack down, you start to see a spike in violence. They fight among themselves and they fight with us in order to be able to preserve their organized criminal activities.

We are doing, on our part of the border -- with the enhancement of the Border Patrol and the building of fencing and other tactical infrastructure, as well as some investigative things we're doing -- we're doing what we need to do to protect ourselves against violence and criminals coming in. But to really crack these organizations, the Mexicans have got to attack the problem at its source. The good news is the president of Mexico is more committed than any I've seen in history to getting the job done, at considerable personal risk to himself and his top leaders. They are retooling their enforcement system. They are using the military. They are retooling their judicial system. We need to help them. We need to help them. We need to enable them to do the job not only on their northern border but also to help them do it on their southern border. It is very much for our benefit for them to do that job properly.

And let me finally indicate as we look down the road, we have to worry about what's going on in the rest of Latin America. We have MS- 13, which is a highly organized, dangerous criminal gang with thousands of members of the U.S. that is active in Central America, where they really have their home base. We have President Chavez, who, just relying on open-source information, is an enabler of the FARC, which is a terrorist and drug organization. All of these incipient threats are threats to our part of the continent, and a strong Mexico is a very important partner in making sure those threats do not materialize in our country.

REP. ROGERS: Well, at a hearing yesterday on one of my other subcommittees, the ATF director -- Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms director -- called the Mexican government's efforts to stop the smuggling and gun trafficking heroic, that the president and the government is really cracking down in Mexico on those who are smuggling weapons, drugs, guns, people into the U.S. Would you agree with his characterization of their efforts?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Absolutely. And unfortunately there have been assassination attempts on senior leaders, which I think just underscores that.

REP. ROGERS: Well, for example, I'm told that many Mexican sheriffs are being assassinated if they don't take bribes to protect the organized crime. The chief of police in Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico recently turned himself into border protection officials in New Mexico requesting asylum, due to a claim of credible fear from cartel threats. I'm told that there have been instances where the gangs have come on American soil with weapons and had shoot-outs. Is all of that accurate?

SEC. CHERTOFF: It is accurate. We've seen an increase in violence on our part of the border, but frankly nothing like what we've seen on the southern side of the border where we've seen ambushes of public officials by these gangs and gangs that are as equipped as a military force can be.

REP. ROGERS: So briefly and quickly, this initiative is ongoing?

SEC. CHERTOFF: We're awaiting congressional action to fund this initiative, which I think would really put our current efforts working with Mexico on turbochargers -- and there's not a minute to wait to get this done.

REP. ROGERS: Well, it's urgent, and I congratulate you for putting it together.

Mr. Chairman.

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REP. ROGERS: Did I hear you -- earlier in your testimony, you referred to a Border Patrol agent that was killed on the border and that it was -- he was run over, apparently, by a vehicle. What were the circumstances?

SEC. CHERTOFF: This was a -- I'll be a little careful, because I believe the -- we're seeking to extradite the individual who did it, who was apprehended -- by the way, with the cooperation of the Mexicans, so I'm going to be a little circumspect, but here's what happened. Recently -- this was an agent, Agent Aguilar, who was in position, I think, in the Yuma sector, just on the California side of the California-Arizona border. And they were engaged in an operation to intercept smuggling and a smuggler in a vehicle was trying to run away from the Border Patrol back into Mexico.

And in an effort to lay down a device they put on the road to basically cause punctures in the tire and slow down the truck, and also to make sure innocent bystanders weren't injured, the Border Patrol agent, Agent Aguilar, was run over -- he was a fairly experienced agent -- by the smuggler. The smuggler then disappeared into Mexico.

The same day I spoke to my counterpart, the Mexican secretary of public safety, and they immediately began to cooperate with us. They identified an individual who is alleged to be the driver, the perpetrator.

REP. ROGERS: Well, the point I wanted to make was, if you had had vehicle barriers in place or the fence in place, the officer would not have been killed.

SEC. CHERTOFF: I believe that to be the case.

REP. ROGERS: So we're talking about the safety and security of a lot of American law enforcement officials, are we not?

SEC. CHERTOFF: That's absolutely right and I think --

REP. ROGERS: Not to mention the civilians on both sides of the border. So that's the reason that you are hurrying to build that fence, is it not?

SEC. CHERTOFF: Exactly.

REP. ROGERS: Not to mention the fact that the Congress has said, "Build the fence."

SEC. CHERTOFF: That's also true.

REP. ROGERS: And furnished you the money.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Correct.

REP. ROGERS: And enacted laws that allows you to waive certain requirements so that you can proceed.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Correct.

REP. ROGERS: The Congress can repeal that waiver law, can they not?

SEC. CHERTOFF: It would be unwise, but you're correct as well.

REP. ROGERS: I mean, they can do it if they -- if the Congress has the will to stop the fence, they can repeal the waiver law.

SEC. CHERTOFF: And that would stop the fence.

REP. ROGERS: But in the meantime, as long as that law is there, you've exercised your rights. We've furnished you the money. We've told you to build the fence, and it would save lives, so get on with it.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Which we're doing.

REP. ROGERS: Thank you.

REP. PRICE: Let me --

REP. ROGERS: I have another topic I'd like to bring up.

REP. PRICE: It sounded like a crescendo.

REP. ROGERS: Well, it was. (Laughter.) But you know Wagner provided several of those -- (laughter) -- and it's sort of like what Mark Twain said about Wagner's music, "It's really better than it sounds."

Quickly, TSA budget: For years we had a cap of 45,000 FTEs, employee screeners at -- for the airports. And this current year we took that cap off -- against my vote, but nevertheless, we took it off, and lo and behold TSA's exceeding that former cap. They're above the 45,000, as I figured that they would.

Now, there's a reason for that cap, that we put it on at the very outset of that program. It was to try to force the bureaucracy to bring in machinery at airports which can more efficiently and more capably find bad things that people are trying to get onto an airplane -- screening machines both for checked baggage and for carry-on. I've been to many airports, as have you certainly and others have, who still have the old sniffer machines in the lobbies of the airports getting in the way of people using the lobby but, more importantly, not very efficiently finding bad things. And number two, it's very labor intensive. If we would put machines in place of those sniffer gizmos, we could cut back on the numbers of employees we have, get the machinery out of the lobby, and more efficiently find bad things.

That was the purpose of the cap, and it worked because for all those years you were increasing the number of machines in airports and reducing the number of personnel -- screeners in the medium to small airports.

But now in the proposed budget not only are we seeing a request for monies that would exceed the numbers of employees that we formerly had limited TSA to, but we're also seeing a decrease in the amount of money requested to put machine in the airports. So it's a double- edged sword cutting the wrong way, in my judgment, and I wonder what you think about it.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, I'd say I think we agree that getting the machinery that will give us a better capability is the desired end state. I have to say here a couple things, though.

I'm disappointed to tell you that a lot of these machines are not -- they don't deliver what they promise. We have not yet found a machine I think that has really taken us forward in a significant way. We're continuing to work with some machines. There are some things we're doing with magnetic waves, for example, that are very promising, but they're not there yet.

The problem has been compounded by the fact -- and here I want to be careful what I say publicly, but it's illustrated by the London airline plot -- that we are now dealing with a wider variety of types of explosives, including liquid explosives, and that has made the technological challenge greater.

The third point I would make is that part of our decision to increase personnel is that we're changing the mission. We're moving not only from having people sit there with the machines and look at the bags, but we're using document checkers and behavioral detection officers, and a big chunk of the money that we're asking for in the increase is to promote these alternative programs.

By way of example on the behavioral detection officers, two weeks ago in Orlando Airport, one of these officers saw an individual behaving in a suspicious way. Before that individual's bags even entered a screening machine, the officer arranged to have the individual surveiled, opened the bags, and found in the bags all of the components for an explosive device, including liquid explosives, BBs, a pipe, and other materials. It was not an assembled device and this is obviously now a criminal case, so I can't say very much more about it --

REP. ROGERS: Well, let me interrupt you. I disagree that the machines that are on the market that can be placed in airports are inadequate for the purpose. I think they're perfectly adequate. In fact, that's why we have them there, and they're working.

So the machines that can be procured are available, effective, and I think needed. And I still say we have too many screeners in the small and medium airports working on old swipe machines -- swab machines -- that are labor intensive and ineffective. And there's machines that can be bought to replace all of that, right?

SEC. CHERTOFF: And we're currently testing some of those.

REP. ROGERS: But in your budget request, you don't reflect that.

SEC. CHERTOFF: Well, I think the budget request reflects -- and part of it is, of course, this passenger surcharge to allow us to put more machines in. I think the budget request reflects wanting to be -- given the existing state of the technology, including the technology we're testing, we want to make sure before we make a substantial investment in current technology that we can identify emerging technology, put the money into that.

I think a longer discussion would be finding a way to capitalize these investments so we don't simply buy machines that get obsolete, which is maybe outside of the scope of this. But I think what we are doing is taking a balanced approach, both to proceeding with acquiring new equipment but also to making sure we're putting the personnel in place in a variety of missions not just swiping -- that have proven to be very good for security.

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REP. ROGERS: Well, we took a break awhile to go to go vote on the floor, and one of the things we voted on was to congratulate the department on its fifth anniversary. I'm happy to tell you, it carried. It was a little bit like the senator who was ill at home and was sent a get-well card by his committee and was informed that it carried 8 to 7. (Laughter.)

SEC. CHERTOFF: I hope we did a little better than that.

REP. ROGERS: Well, you did. I think there were two or three dissenting votes, but I wanted to use that to close out my part of the questioning here and give you a chance to tell us, to reflect a bit philosophically on your tenure and where you started, and where you are, and where you hope to go before you leave here. How have you done so far, do you think?

SEC. CHERTOFF: That's a -- I used the fifth anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on that a little bit, too. I think that, first of all, looking back in the three years I've had and then also knowing where the department began under Tom Ridge, I am remarkably grateful to the people of the department for the job they've done in a very short period of time, creating a much more mature department. I think you remember at the time you were chairman, we could barely get responses in on reports and letters. It --

REP. ROGERS: I remember that very well.

SEC. CHERTOFF: And I think that's really largely turned around. And it's emblematic of the fact that we now have management tools, including metrics, reporting, planning, that are, I think, the equal to that of most departments, and that's a very long distance in terms of our operations.

I think it's not an accident that we haven't had a successful attack in this country since 9/11. I don't mean -- it is certainly not only DHS. It's -- credit for that is shared not only across the federal government but with state government and with some of our foreign partners as well, but it reflects that it's very much tougher to get in through our ports of entry now using phony documents because of the measures we've put in place. It's tougher to smuggle things into ports because of the measures we've put in place. We've got planning and infrastructure protection now, which we only dreamed about having some years back. We've got a degree of international cooperation on information sharing that was just a glimmer in our eye when I came onboard three years ago.

These are all, I think, really positive developments that give me the confidence that if we keep doing what were doing and keep challenging ourselves, we will stay ahead of the enemy.

What are the things we need to continue to do? I think we need to continue to build standards for identity and identification documents at the border and for people who want to get on airplanes. We're on track to do that, but there are some people who think it's going to be inconvenient or bad for business, and if those who want to stop making progress prevail, we will then find ourselves slipping backwards.

I think we need to continue to work with FEMA, particularly to get them focused on the issue of emergency management. As I said a little bit earlier to Congressman Rodriguez, in terms of planning and capability for emergencies, FEMA is light years ahead of where I found it when I came onboard shortly before Hurricane Katrina.

But I will also tell you that the burdens that have been placed on the agency have expanded dramatically to include major reconstruction efforts, including efforts that may be years ultimately before they're concluded -- efforts that require sophisticated case management for communities that are in distress, require a lot of medical attention, require essentially urban redevelopment, and I'm taking the somewhat uncharacteristic position of a Cabinet secretary in suggesting that some portion of the domain of my department maybe does belong in another department. This was an issue which Fran Townsend put in her White House lessons learned from Katrina, that once the emergency is over, and once we've dealt with the urgency of action, in those rare occasions when we are reconstructing a city or reconstructing part of a city and we're talking about redeveloping housing, redeveloping medical capabilities, case management for people who are -- have a whole lot of problems apart from the disaster, there may be other parts of the government that are better equipped through the capabilities of the people and the capabilities of the department itself to take a hand off of that and continue to move it forward.

I guess I'd say the final issue is this: I know there are some people who believe that to talk about terrorism and to talk about the threats we face, which I think are not just al Qaeda, but they're Hezbollah, it's international organized crime, it's what's going on in South America with the FARC and what Venezuela is doing to kind of enable the FARC -- all of these things -- I don't think talking about these things are fear-mongering. I think the press reporting of what's going on in London, a trial that's reviewing what occurred in August of 2006, is a very vivid recollection of what we are facing.

That doesn't mean I suggest we need to be hysterical. I think that the country should have a calm and deliberate but nevertheless serious attitude about these threats. I know this committee takes that view, and I think as long as we continue to be transparent about the threats we face, disciplined about using risk as a way of addressing those threats, I think we will be in a very good place over the next five years, but if we allow ourselves to get distracted or allow ourselves to, you know, get exhausted by thinking about this, which I know that members of this committee will not do, then I think we will -- I would hate to see us in another five years being at a place where there is another 9/11 commission and everybody says, why did the government lose its focus after the terrible events of 9/11 and everything that's happened in the world since then?

So I appreciate your opportunity -- your giving me the opportunity to kind of sum up and once again to really thank this subcommittee. It's been -- I think the American public, if they knew not only just the public interchange but the private interchange we've had on these issues, would feel very good about the government. We don't always agree, but I've never left a discussion or meeting without feeling that it's helped me understand better what I need to do, and I hope I've been able to convey the same to you.

REP. ROGERS: Well, I thank you, Mr. Secretary, for that summary. That was enlightening.

Reflecting back to actually before there was a department, when Tom Ridge was the White House adviser to the president on internal security and we were trying to debate about whether or not to create a new department and, if so, what would be in it, or would it be better to do some other way to get at homeland security. And those discussions, from that point on, until this moment -- we're dealing with things we had never done before as a nation. We've never had to protect our bridges and tunnels and nuclear power plants and cyberspace and so forth, because there was no threat to us. And yet now, we find all of those things threatened, plus a lot more.

And so you have been a pioneer; you've occupied that chair at the department now much longer than anyone else has, and you've brought it a long way. It's been a really tough chore. We understand that -- 22 agencies that had to be uprooted from their former locations and thrown together under one umbrella and get along and organize and be a machine. That's been an extremely tough struggle. You've got 204,000 or so employees now. But you've had to plow new ground and do things that we had never done before and put some sort of policy behind that and make it work, and this subcommittee has been having to do the same thing. We were plowing new ground up here as well, trying to help you run things.

So I want to congratulate you on the department's five years of life and your third year more or less as the head of that agency, and say that we've disagreed many times along the way. We've agreed most of the time along the way. But I do think that the department is functioning a heck of a lot more smoothly than it was a year or two ago when we were hammering you for reports and threatening you with everything almost to the death. So congratulations on bringing us this far, and I want to wish you good luck for the remainder of your tenure and your life.

SEC. CHERTOFF: I appreciate the privilege of working with you. I know we will continue to work together informally, and I look forward to continuing to see you.

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