A “get tough” approach at the Mexican border leads to more
violence, at least in the short run, not less.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) performs better,
not worse, when it is integrated within the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) — and the experience from Hurricane Katrina helps
prove it.
DHS actually is ahead of schedule in testing at ports for
nuclear devices.
And sometimes it is the “mopes” — the culturally disaffected
slackers — rather than the brilliant villains, who are the most
dangerous enemies.
Such were some of the provocative assertions by DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff in a 40-minute private interview on Monday. And as
is evident by the scope of subjects covered, Chertoff’s wide
portfolio does make him privy to a plentitude of provocative
information.
Take the incidence of violence at the border. Chertoff
acknowledged that it is a problem. And he confirmed reports
(discussed extensively in the June American Spectator
article by
Judd Slivka) that a fair amount of violence is carried out by
Mexicans wearing police or military uniforms who have crossed into
U.S. territory. But he asserted that “nobody in the Mexican
government is deliberately deciding to violate our sovereignty.”
Instead, he said, “There are armed criminals … who sometimes wear
pieces of a uniform or a paramilitary uniform.” Or else they are
police chasing bad guys who inadvertently cross the border in
pursuit. Moreover, he said the violence, whether by those in
uniform or not, has been increasing in the past year or two.
Departmental statistics bear that out. In Fiscal Year 2004,
there were 374 assaults against Border Patrol Agents. In FY 2005,
the number skyrocketed to 778. This year it has leveled off a bit:
Through May of FY’06, the number was at 527, on a pace toward
790.
But he said that’s not necessarily something to worry about
long-term:
“At a border that was not controlled for 20 years, habits have
grown up… that we’re in the process of breaking. South of the
border, they’ve arrested some of leaders of the cartels. North of
the border, as we have increased the intensity of our patrols… we
have forced illegals [and drug runners] into less hospitable
territory.”
Their habits threatened, the Mexican criminals push back,
according to Chertoff. Sometimes it is with guns; other times just
with rock throwing at American agents. But the good news, he said,
is that “I do not think we’ve seen widespread violence against
innocent civilians.” Furthermore, as the U.S. makes greater use of
“more high-tech stuff” — aerial surveillance, sensors, even
satellite imagery — “we optimize where we intersect [the
infiltrators]” and the effectiveness of interdiction is likely to
improve.
One certainly hopes so.
MOVING TO WHAT IS LIKELY a sore spot for Chertoff, the botched
response to Hurricane Katrina, an observer might wish that his
responses were not quite so bloodless, and that they were more open
to mea culpas for any mistakes of omission at his end and more
expressive of human sympathy and less… well, less clinical. That
said, his logic and explanations seemed unassailable.
Referring to then-FEMA Director Michael Brown’s decision to
bypass DHS and work directly through the White House, Chertoff
said: “In the first several days after Katrina, FEMA tried to
operate independently of the department. The result was unnecessary
delay and heartbreak. But when Admiral Allen [of the Coast Guard]
went in, he did integrate with the rest of the department,
and there was a dramatic improvement.”
To repeat: “The go-it-alone model — where the FEMA Director
tried to do it all himself — failed. Whereas Admiral Allen was a
success.” Brown “was going to act more or less as a lone ranger; as
a result, he did not pick up a lot of the tools that were available
to use. In fact, I became frustrated that I was not getting a
response.”
Furthermore, “if you pulled FEMA out of DHS, you would have a
small, relatively weak agency that could respond to ordinary,
run-of-the-mill hurricanes but that would not be able to deal with
a catastrophe.”
Nevertheless, even in Katrina, “a lot of FEMA people on the
ground did a good job with search and rescue.” They just did it, he
said, without proper support from above.
More importantly, Chertoff noted that the Coast Guard, which is
also part of DHS, joined with private citizens and with the state
and federal Fish and Wildlife services to rescue 55,000 people in
the wake of the storm. (True enough: See this story for more details.)
Chertoff also said that New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast
were victims of bad timing. He said that the “first serious”
federal departmental study of a major disaster in New Orleans did
not occur all during the 1990s but instead began in 2004 and was
not quite completed when Katrina hit. Not only that, but reforms of
FEMA based on a systemic review Chertoff ordered had not yet had
time to take place: The review was completed in July of 2005, but
its recommendations were not authorized to go into law until
October of that year. Katrina hit on August 29, right in the
interregnum between FEMA’s former operational methods and
implementation of its reformed ones.
INDEED, A RECURRING THEME DURING the interview, and a legitimate
one, was the newness of DHS and the reality that major improvements
can’t just be willed into existence overnight. (It took some 40
years, Chertoff noted, for the various military branches to be
effectively integrated under the Department of Defense, which goal
finally was achieved through the Goldwater-Nichols law in 1986.)
Nevertheless, the Secretary said much progress is being made.
For example, he refuted criticisms that DHS is badly lagging in
its duty to scour the nation’s ports for signs of smuggled weapons
of mass murder. On the contrary, he said: “We are actually ahead of
schedule in using radiation portal monitors. We’ll have them
operational in 80% of our ports by October. We’re making it very
much harder for people to smuggle [dangerous] things into our
country in containers.”
On another front, all foreign visitors to the United
States are now subjected to a two-finger electronic fingerprint
test. A ten-finger test is in the works. For airport security,
inspectors are now better able to identify not just bombs but
detonators, and better at “pattern recognition” to identify
suspicious types of behavior. And so on, Chertoff said,
giving other examples of how, “in general, we have raised the level
of security in all the ways we operate.”
Most important, he said, was the “next generation of radiation
detection, which will be much more discriminating” — and able to
be used not just at ports and borders but anywhere within the
United States itself, with “sensors enabled to be deployed more
quickly.”
“Of all the challenges that we face… the really catastrophic
attack is the one that in the end we have to make sure we devote
some real investment to. The whole name of the game is
long-term investment in security.”
Finally, somehow the interview segued into the topic of why even
ordinary citizens in their everyday lives ought to remain vigilant.
It was ordinary citizens, Chertoff said, who kept airplane “shoe
bomber” Richard Reid — reportedly no genius — from carrying out
his intended terrorism. Using what he said was a New York word for
less-than-impressive folks, Chertoff said, “Sometimes it is the
‘mopes’ that can do the greatest damage. The idea that you have to
be an ingenious TV villain to be a threat is wrong.”
IN SUM, MICHAEL CHERTOFF has a huge job. DHS oversees a vast array
of functions; some would even call it an unwieldy array. There’s
FEMA, and the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service, and the
Transportation Security Administration, and Immigrations and
Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection, and
Citizenship Immigration Services, and an Office of Intelligence
Analysis, and offices on domestic preparedness, energy security,
animal and plant health inspections, and protection against a
pandemic flu. “We unify in one department all the tools you need
for threats to the county: for prevention, protection, and
response,” Chertoff said.
In Chertoff, President George W. Bush has chosen for oversight
of all these tasks a man who, one-on-one, demonstrates a piercing
intelligence, a near-encyclopedic knowledge of his subjects, and an
obvious mental toughness born of prosecuting mobsters and
terrorists in some of the most important cases on record. Final
judgment on Chertoff’s record will be difficult, because it’s hard
to gauge the “dog that didn’t bark” or the bomb that didn’t blow.
And a great city and a lovely coastline both lie in ruins on his
watch — victims, to be sure, of a storm of unprecedented scope and
viciousness, but also of inadequate preparation and response by
officials who were supposed to be reporting to him.
But the impression Chertoff leaves on an interviewer, or on
others that have worked with him, is that if this man isn’t
competent, going forward, to handle the mammoth job of homeland
protection, then nobody can be. These are dangerous times, and
never let it be said that Michael Chertoff — former veteran
prosecutor, terrorism task force chief, scourge of organized crime,
and federal appellate judge — is a man who backs down from
danger.
