So far President Obama has absorbed criticism from his right and his left on national security issues. In a recent interview with NationalJournal.com's Alina Selyukh, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff declined to join the chorus of conservative disapproval, and praised Obama for facilitating a seamless transition -- though his comments may add fuel to liberal outrage over the apparent continuation of some Bush policies.
NJ: Dick Cheney recently blamed Obama's administration for making the country less safe by turning the fight against terrorism more into a law enforcement problem. Do you agree?
Chertoff: I actually think the best take on this is that of President Bush, who has said he's not going to get in the position of sitting on the shoulder of his successor and starting to criticize. I think that's a very good position.
Speaking more generally, I'm pleased with the fact that President Obama's administration is going forward in a very measured way in looking at all the tools that we've used in dealing with terrorism. The new president has talked about closing Gitmo, but he hasn't been in a rush to do it.... They are not just throwing over everything that went before. They are protecting secrets that need to be protected. They are not relinquishing the authorities that are very important.
NJ: So you don't think the country is less safe?
Chertoff: Right now, from my standpoint there's a lot of continuity. And I think that's a good thing.
Chertoff also discussed cybercrime, border security, Somali pirates and former FEMA Director Michael Brown. Read the full interview here.
Dora Schriro was recently appointed to the new position of special adviser to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detention and removal. Immigration detention is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the U.S., and the issue will inevitably come up in the push for immigration reform from President Obama. After moving to Washington from Arizona, where she headed the Department of Corrections under Gov. Napolitano for six years, Schriro spoke to NationalJournal.com's Alina Selyukh about adapting to government at the federal level and working to improve the national detention system.
NJ: After being in Washington for about two months, how do you feel about the city?
Schriro: It's great to be here for cherry blossoms.... I've always been kind of a news junkie, so it's pretty exciting to be in a place where so much news comes from. People here are great. I'm very close to the airport because I'm on the road a lot.
NJ: Where do you travel?
Schriro: In these first 90, 120 days, I am actively involved in preliminary assessment for the secretary, so I've been hitting a number of facilities... speaking with as much of the detained population as I can, talking with staff.
NJ: So what will come out of these travels?
Schriro: It's a first assessment. That's why I'm calling it preliminary; it's not a one-time kind of a thing. It is to get a really good feel for the many strengths that are here at ICE.
NJ: When will we start seeing new policies from ICE?
Schriro: There have been some small but I think symbolically substantive changes already. For example, the whole of how we detain aliens has attracted considerable public and congressional attention -- as it should. Included in that is the health care that the population receives, and included in that is deaths in detention.Early in my tenure, at the beginning of March, there was an appropriation hearing... about deaths in detention. Within several weeks of that hearing, there was a death, apparently of natural causes -- we are still pending, of course, the autopsy to make that confirmation. That was an opportunity to make an immediate change... to make immediate notification to Congress, also to release a news advisory and to put that news advisory on our Web site. So it's faster and clearer transparency.
Continue reading DHS Immigration Adviser Faces Learning Curve.
By LUCAS GRINDLEY
The selection of Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., to head the Commerce Department shows how important the Obama administration expects it will be to forge bipartisan agreements, said Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary in President Clinton's Commerce Department.
"Just looking at what happened in the House last week with the stimulus package, you can see that old habits die hard in terms of partisanship and so forth. So I think that it's a welcome development that Senator Gregg will join this administration," she said in an interview mainly about how to prevent waste in the stimulus package and about her upcoming book on improving the federal workforce, titled The People Factor.
Bilmes praised Gregg's knowledge of budgeting and said it will be an asset while brokering compromises. "He was on the Senate Budget Committee. He's been in the appropriations world for years. I think he has a very good understanding of the budget, of the competing issues and so forth. And I think that the need -- in the economic crisis -- the need to try and create a bipartisan approach is a very, very important need. And I think that government will be stronger for having that."
Bilmes said that since her former agency focuses largely on science, "a lot of what the Commerce Department does is very bipartisan in nature."
Read more from Blimes in today's Insider Interview at NationalJournal.com. Check back next week for more about her book, which outlines how the government can spend $10 billion on efficiency to earn a $300 billion return.
(Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
National Journal's Kirk Victor recently spoke with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who set out his concerns about the implementation of President Obama's order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
Graham, who has served as a judge advocate and as a prosecutor, worries that closing the prison is the "easy" move, but the more difficult call is what to do with the approximately 245 prisoners there. Graham also voiced concern that the president will feel pressure from critics on the left who favor prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others from the previous administration as war criminals for approving brutal interrogation techniques. Edited excerpts follow.
NJ: Have any of President Obama's actions in his first days in office surprised you?
Graham: The one thing I am somewhat concerned about is executive orders on Guantanamo Bay. I support closing it. I support making sure that we have a process that restores our image in the world, but I do not support a plan that would criminalize the war. I think we can find a system, a rule of law called the Law of Armed Conflict, to deal with these detainees when they are brought to the United States. The point I am trying to make is that we are at war and the Law of Armed Conflict should apply, not domestic criminal law. I don't know where this is going to take us, but I am hopeful they will not create a system that restricts our ability to defend ourselves and not advance our moral standing at all.
NJ: What do you do with some of these prisoners who may not be prosecutable but are very dangerous?
Graham: That's the point. Some of them can be tried as war criminals, like [Khalid] Sheikh Mohammed. I think you try them in the military.... Some will be repatriated to third countries. Probably half of them are going to be kept in jail because they are part of al-Qaida. The evidence is not such you would submit [their cases] to a criminal court because of the sensitive nature of it, but we know they are part of the al-Qaida network and a judge agrees with the military that they are part of al-Qaida.You don't let those people go. You have a review process that keeps them in jail, constantly reviews their cases until they are no longer a threat. Sixty-one people have gone back to the fight after being released already.... Let me tell you -- closing Guantanamo Bay and moving them is the easy part. What to do with them is the hard part. We're talking about people who would kill us if they could.
NJ: Are you worried that Obama might be persuaded by critics on the left who want to pursue officials in the Bush administration who may have countenanced torture?
Graham: Yes, I am worried that the radical left who thinks that everybody at Guantanamo Bay is a victim and that Dick Cheney and George Bush are war criminals will have more sway [with the administration] than they deserve. But so far so good. I met with the administration on this issue.
NJ: Can President Obama withstand the pressure from the left on this issue?
Graham: This will be a good test. This is about a system that will render justice within our values, recognizing that we are at war. This is about a fresh start. If we're talking about prosecuting people because of political vendettas, then I think President Obama will have failed the test. If there is some competent evidence out there, somewhere, then that will be different, but this idea that policy disagreements lead to criminal [prosecution] will destroy our democracy. And I don't believe he is inclined to do that.
After more than 35 years in government -- as a career official at the Office of Management and Budget and director of the White House Office of Administration under President Clinton -- Frank Reeder built on his information security and public management expertise by founding a consulting company, The Reeder Group.
He's continued to share his knowledge as a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration and as a principal of the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government. But this past fall, he took on a new challenge -- serving as a member of Barack Obama's agency review team for OMB.
Reeder spoke with Government Executive staff correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg on Wednesday. Edited excerpts follow.
GE: What made this transition different from others you've experienced?
Reeder: My sense is this was a dramatically different transition for I think three reasons. Number one, these are extraordinary times. The administration had to be ready go, not simply take the honeymoon period to look around and see what needed to be done.The second reason was the incoming administration was an order of magnitude better prepared in two ways. One was a very clearly articulated agenda throughout the campaign. The only thing remotely comparable to that I experienced was the Reagan transition. There was a clear understanding of what the transition team wanted. The principals understood key things like who are the key appointments to make [and] the talent bank was well under way, which allowed them to do things in November that normally don't happen until December.
The third factor -- and the last time I can remember anything approximating this might have been in 1960-61 -- was a set of public expectations and good feelings that [Obama] was a candidate who said he wanted to make government cool again, as opposed to [Ronald Reagan] who said in his inaugural that government isn't the solution, it's the problem.
[In addition, President] Bush said to his administration on Nov. 5, "I want you to cooperate." He said it like he meant it. It's one advantage of having a well-disciplined administration. By golly, they cooperated. The agencies I worked with were, with minor exceptions, extraordinarily cooperative. The appointees got out of the way [and] made it possible for the transition team to interact directly with the career staff.
Continue reading Transition Adviser Looks Back On The Process.
President Obama is settling his family into the White House, issuing executive orders left and right, and ensuring his Cabinet nominees are confirmed smoothly by the Senate. On the face of it, that's how Obama is spending his first few days as commander in chief. What else should the freshly sworn-in president be doing this week and next? Jeremy Mayer, director of the George Mason University public policy master's program, spoke with NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder and offered some speculation. Mayer is an expert in media politics, foreign policy and other presidential topics. Edited excerpts follow.
Q. What is unique about how the Obama administration has handled these past few days compared to past presidents?
Mayer: As far as the first two days of this administration, they have had triumph of image, which is important. One of the other tasks of the first week of an administration is to start the honeymoon well. If you want to carry a metaphor way beyond where it should go, if this is the honeymoon period and America is the bride and Obama the husband, we're checking into the honeymoon hotel this first week, and you don't want logistical problems.... The image that has been conveyed is crucial. He has done a very good job of making sure that the pictures that go across and the message that comes out are very positive and uplifting and patriotic. I think you have to go back to [Ronald] Reagan's inaugural to find one that has been this successful. That has really attracted the attention of the nation.
Q. What's the most important aspect of a president's few days on the job?
Mayer: The most important thing you can do is avoid mistakes. Do nothing that gets you off message. The classic early-days mistake is [Bill] Clinton and his statements about gays in the military, which was not in his top three priorities. The preparation for that issue had not been done with the military leadership. And so, even in the late transition and early days, it just created such a distraction.
You also are still working in these days to get your nominees through the Senate. And, the work that you did on vetting in the last two months is now shown to be good or bad. So, you've seen presidencies like George Bush the elder's torn up by things like the [John] Tower nomination [as Defense secretary], where you expend a lot of political capital whether you win or lose. So, a tough Senate vote in these first few days is a bad sign, or nominees going down in flames like Zoe Baird [Clinton's first choice for attorney general].
Q. How are the confirmation hearings of Obama's Cabinet choices going?
Mayer: You could say that the best decision Obama has made so far is pulling the plug on [Commerce nominee Bill] Richardson. As bad as [Timothy] Geithner and [Eric] Holder and [Hillary Rodham] Clinton are getting it -- and they're not getting it very bad -- Richardson would have been a bloodbath. And I don't know if it was Richardson's side or the Obama side that recognized this, but they pulled the plug. Right away. They made a mistake in not realizing how serious the investigation was, but they made a good decision to stop the bleeding right away.
President Obama is set to sign executive orders today calling for the shutdown of the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. But in a recent interview with NationalJournal.com's Mary Gilbert, the Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes explained that closing Guantanamo is more complicated than simply shuttering the doors: The new administration must decide what to do with the approximately 250 prisoners still held there, as well as lay out a policy for what the U.S. should do with future "enemy combatants" captured on the battlefield of the war on terror.
Read the complete interview here. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ: Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both advocated closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, yet it will still be open when Barack Obama is inaugurated. Why has shuttering Guantanamo been so difficult?Wittes: If it were easy, it would've happened already.... It hasn't happened because there are some significant and profound obstacles to doing it. And broadly speaking, they are the following: One, a certain group can't be sent home who we would like to send home, and other countries won't take them.... Two, we have so far failed as a political and legal culture to create a trial system that has shown itself capable of handling more than a small number of these people in a criminal process. Three, irrespective of how effective our trial system is, there is probably some group of people there who are too dangerous to release and against whom a criminal case is not plausible. And four, if you bring detainees to the United States, you lose the benefit, as a government, of certain legal arguments that currently inhibit the release of detainees into the general population of the United States....
If you take those things together, you have a pretty significant set of barriers, some of which... you can work through and some of which it's less clear how easily you can work through.
NJ: How long will it take for the new administration to close Guantanamo? What is a realistic time frame?
Wittes: I assume that most people, when they say "close Guantanamo" they're using it as a proxy.... They're talking about ending a certain approach to detentions in the war on terrorism and replacing it with something. They're talking about something a little bit more grandiose and significant than simply moving people from one detention site to another.... And I don't even know how to talk about it in terms of a time frame. You talk about it in terms of a list of things that you would have to get done, a list of tasks, a process, a bunch of issues that you would have to sort through.
As a new, tech-savvy president prepares to take the reins in Washington, federal IT contractors are positioning themselves to be a part of the action. Microsoft Federal, for instance, has established the temporary post of "chief transition officer" to help the company forge a working relationship with the incoming administration.
Nextgov's Allan Holmes spoke recently with Microsoft's new "CTO," Carolyn Brubaker, about what this new position entails -- and about the potential role of President-elect Obama's yet-to-be-named chief technology officer.
Nextgov: What have you heard about what the role of the chief technology officer might be?
Brubaker: We're not quite sure what that's going to look like now, but from some of the information we are getting it looks like it's going to be an external adviser, someone who's really advising on national technology issues, with the primary goal of citizen outreach and engagement. That's a big objective of President-elect Obama's.They have an intense group of leaders who are looking at technology. We have received some inquiries, and from what I can tell they're just not only looking at technology, they're looking at reforming the process.
Nextgov: Are you saying the CTO will be more involved in using social networking technologies to engage the public rather than getting into the weeds of government to use IT to improve operations?
Brubaker: From some of the thoughts that have been shared [with us], it seems like that's probably the way it will be shaped. The CTO would really focus on citizen engagement and participation in government. I speculate that there will be a fairly structured group [in the Office of Management and Budget] that's really going to pay close attention to the inner workings of government and use technology to guide that. The CTO will really have more of a national perspective on goals.
The full interview is available at Nextgov. Lost In Transition has previously discussed the new CTO position with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Google's Vinton Cerf.
NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder recently interviewed Secret Service agent and spokesman Malcolm Wiley on how the agency is leading security efforts for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Almost 60 law enforcement agencies are teaming up for the event and related festivities; Wiley discussed the comprehensive nature of security planning and the necessity of a "360-degree plan" -- "we want to protect everything around us, everything above us and everything below us."
Read the complete interview here. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ:How do you go about coordinating security for such a large event with so many different agencies?
Wiley: One of the first things we do is to create a steering committee. That steering committee is made up of command-level folks from the different agencies who are going to have a hand in putting together the plan. What's done after that is we create a set of subcommittees. For this particular event, there are 23 different subcommittees, each who have a piece of the security puzzle. So for instance, we have subcommittees that are responsible for air space security, for civil disturbance, for prisoner processing, for credentialing.
NJ: Nick Trotta, assistant director of the Secret Service's Protective Division, was quoted in a recent article saying that race is a factor, but not a security factor. How has Obama's race factored into the Service's approach to this inauguration?
Wiley: The fact that Barack Obama is an African-American is something that's not lost on us as an agency. We understand the historic nature of this event.... But again, what that means is that we look at it as just a part of our larger security puzzle. There are several things that we look at, and several things that we consider when putting together a plan. Him being an African-American and factors related to that are just a piece of that larger puzzle.
If you wanted to propose the most significant changes in the U.S. national security architecture in half a century, James Locher III would be a logical choice to lead the effort. A key architect of the Goldwater-Nichols defense reforms of the 1980s, Locher went on to cajole warring factions in the Balkans to embrace a joint national security system. As executive director of the Project on National Security Reform, Locher this week unveiled a blueprint for a revamped 21st-century national security system. He recently spoke with National Journal's James Kitfield. Edited excerpts from that interview follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ: With so many burning crises already in their inbox, why would a new Obama administration and Congress want to undertake fundamental national security reforms?
Locher: Well, I think Republicans and Democrats alike agree that the system is broken, and that makes people receptive to change. They watched the 9/11 attacks, and the problems the United States encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. All of those setbacks are not coincidental. They have organizational root causes. And if we don't address those causes and adjust a badly misaligned national security structure, we'll continue to suffer major setbacks time after time.
NJ: What do you consider the root cause of those failures?
Locher: In simple terms, the challenges we confront in the 21st century are horizontal problems whose solutions require collaborative work across the government. Yet we're trying to deal with those challenges with a government that is vertically oriented into stove-piped agencies and departments. The boundaries between those agencies are non-permeable, rigid and bureaucratic. There are powerful incentives designed into the system that reinforce an inward-looking culture where people are not rewarded for putting the national interest above the agency interest. In fact, mavericks who do so often put their careers at risk.
