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 CONGRESSDAILY STAFF
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the appointment of a former federal prosecutor to the new post of "border czar," to oversee efforts to end drug-cartel violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and slow the tide of people crossing illegally into the United States. Napolitano named Alan Bersin, a former Justice Department official who was charged with cracking down on illegal immigration in the 1990s.
By AMY HARDER
Updated at 3:05 p.m.
President Obama today announced the nomination of Craig Fugate as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fugate is currently the director of the Florida division of Emergency Management. Before being appointed to this post in 2001 by then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), Fugate had a 15-year career in local government as a firefighter, paramedic and emergency manager for Alachua County, Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist (R) reappointed Fugate in December 2006.
Fugate will join Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at an event Thursday in New Orleans. DHS also announced today that Napolitano has appointed Jason McNamara as FEMA chief of staff. McNamara is currently director of emergency management at Dewberry, a consulting firm based in Arlington, Va.
If confirmed, Fugate will face the task of overseeing an agency widely criticized for its handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which has spurred a debate over whether FEMA should become a stand-alone agency again, as it was before DHS was formed. DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner argued against removing FEMA from DHS in a February report, as did a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies panel.
On Monday, President Obama announced the nomination of John Morton as assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Morton is currently serving as the acting deputy assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division at the Justice Department and has specialized in immigration enforcement.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also named Esther Olavarria as deputy assistant secretary for policy. Olavarria is joining DHS from the Center for American Progress, where she was a senior fellow and director of immigration policy.
See complete biographies, per the DHS press office, after the jump.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano Thursday appointed Mary Ellen Callahan, a partner at Hogan & Hartson, as the agency's chief privacy officer. Callahan has counseled clients on online and offline marketing issues as well as on Web site privacy policies and terms of use. She has written numerous comments on behalf of clients such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Online Publishers Association on rulemaking related to the FTC, federal anti-spam laws and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday evening that Rand Beers, who led President Obama's DHS agency review team during the transition, will act as acting deputy security until Jane Holl Lute is confirmed for the position. Beers has served under four presidents in various security and intelligence positions, including National Security Council director for counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics and director for peacekeeping.
By AMY HARDER
President Obama today announced his nomination of Ivan K. Fong as general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. Fong is currently chief legal officer and secretary for medical product company Cardinal Health. During his time as deputy associate attorney general under President Clinton, he wrote The Electronic Frontier: The Challenge Of Unlawful Conduct Involving The Use Of The Internet, a report on cyber crime policy.
Does this suggest that the new administration is placing more emphasis on cyber security? Perhaps. National Journal's Shane Harris examined this issue in a recent article (subscribers only). Any legal expertise would be helpful to DHS as it struggles with its own role in cyber security. The appointment could also signal that the government is aiming to articulate better what government is able to do with private networks.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano also named three members of her staff. David A. Martin, a member of Obama's DHS agency review team, will be Napolitano's principal deputy general counsel. Brian de Vallance will be the secretary's senior counselor; he was Napolitano's director of federal relations when she was Arizona governor. Sean Smith will be deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. He previously served as the Pennsylvania communications director for the Obama campaign.
President Obama announced on Friday that he intends to nominate Jane Holl Lute as Homeland Security Department deputy secretary. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also named Noah Kroloff as her chief of staff for policy and Jan Lesher as chief of staff for operations.
Lute is currently U.N. assistant secretary-general and has served under two presidents on the National Security Council staff at the White House. Both Kroloff and Lesher served under Napolitano while she was governor of Arizona.
By AMY HARDER
Michael Chertoff has helmed one of government's most controversial, criticized and crucial departments for nearly four years. Speaking to a small audience at Georgetown University's Riggs Library this morning, the outgoing secretary of Homeland Security offered a word of advice for his successor, Janet Napolitano, and reflected back on his time in the department.
"Nobody would have predicted that, following September 11, that there would have been no successful attack on American soil the following seven years," Chertoff said in his opening remarks. "I don't think that's an accident." His language echoed a similar argument put forth by President Bush on Wednesday, when he said "it's not a matter of luck" the country had avoided another attack.
Chertoff commended the transition efforts of both the incoming and outgoing teams, calling this the most "dedicated and effective transition" in the country's history. But he emphasized that a "lot of work" is ahead for the department, and for President-elect Obama's incoming administration overall.
"The threat of terrorism and extremist ideologies have not abated, vividly underscored last month in Mumbai," Chertoff said early in his speech. "This reminds us that this threat has not evaporated and we cannot turn the page on this."
While stressing the importance of looking ahead, Chertoff also said that the "past is prologue, and to understand what we must do we must understand where we've come from." To that end, he credited Bush and the policies he put in place, like passing the PATRIOT Act and establishing DHS, for helping prevent further attacks.
"If I learned anything these past eight years," Chertoff said, "it's that swift, strong, unequivocal action is the absolute first requirement" when responding to any type of incident.
While DHS holds an event like this every year, Chertoff said he wanted to take a different approach this time, recounting details from his years in the Bush administration and thanking his fellow employees of DHS. He took time to reflect on some of his experiences, including spending a night on an iceberg with the Coast Guard and riding horses in Arizona with Border Patrol agents. "I would also like to tell my successor," Chertoff said, "that a special treat is in store for her."
At various times throughout his nearly hour-long speech, the outgoing secretary implicitly defended his department, more or less acknowledging the widespread criticism it has received since its founding in March 2003. Disagreeing with critics who have claimed the PATRIOT Act was a "midnight deal," swiftly and discreetly passed in Congress, Chertoff called the legislation "well-thought out and a very, very thoroughly discussed package of measures."
Continue reading Chertoff Offers Advice To Incoming DHS Secretary.
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.
By AMY HARDER
Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Homeland Security nominee Janet Napolitano will be briefed this afternoon on a new report released today that projects a nuclear or biological attack will occur somewhere around the world by 2013.
The report, conducted by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, aims to serve as road map for President-elect Barack Obama's administration to prevent biological and nuclear terrorism. In its findings, the report focuses on the "poorly governed parts of Pakistan" where the commission concluded the risks to the U.S. are increasing.
Former Sens. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Jim Talent, R-Mo., have led the commission's efforts, which built upon findings by the 9/11 Commission, another congressionally mandated study. The group has conducted more than 200 interviews with national security experts, held eight major commission meetings and took several trips to regions deemed risks, such as Russia, since May.
The timing of the report's release, in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last weekend, further drives home the risk of all types of terrorism. "If those people had access to a biological or nuclear weapon they would have multiplied by orders of magnitude the deaths they could have inflicted," Graham told an AP reporter.
The report predicts that terrorists will more likely attack with biological, rather than nuclear, weapons because nuclear facilities are more closely guarded. "The commission believes that the U.S. government needs to move more aggressively to limit the proliferation of biological weapons and reduce the prospect of a bioterror attack," the report states.
By AMY HARDER
Following in the wake of last week's Mumbai terrorist attacks, President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team at a press conference this morning in Chicago. With unrest between India and Pakistan rising over the weekend, Obama addressed the situation briefly but declined to comment further when pressed by a reporter.
"This is one of those times that I reiterate that there is one president at a time," the president-elect said. "We will be engaged in delicate diplomacy in the next several days and weeks. It would be inappropriate for me to comment, but what I can so unequivocally is that both myself and the team that stands beside are absolutely committed eliminating the threat of terrorism."
That team includes several appointments that had been rumored for weeks -- Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Eric Holder as attorney general, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Department secretary, Obama's campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations and Gen. Jim Jones as national security adviser.
After announcing Clinton as his secretary of State, Obama was asked about "belittling" her international experience while on the campaign trial. "This is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were formed over the course of the campaign," Obama quipped in response. "If you look at statements that [Clinton] and I have made outside of the heat of the campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure." He added that in making his decision, he never experienced a "light bulb moment"; rather, once their primary battle was over, he started thinking of ways they could work together.
Continue reading Obama Stresses Pragmatism Of Security Appointees.
By SHANE HARRIS
Several news organizations are reporting this morning that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is President-Elect Obama's pick to head the Homeland Security Department. If the reports are accurate, the choice would not come as a huge surprise -- Napolitano's name was floated early, and when the incoming administration signaled its interest in Eric Holder for attorney general (the other post Napolitano had been mentioned for), she naturally came into focus for DHS.
But if it's not surprising that Obama might turn to a trusted governor for this position, it is significant. DHS is the federal government's point of contact with state and local governments on disaster preparedness and counterterrorism issues. (The FBI also plays a significant role on the latter.) The first DHS secretary was a governor -- Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania -- but the current secretary, Michael Chertoff, was an attorney and judge. Some have argued that governors have a more intimate understanding of state and local governments' concerns, and therefore are a more natural choice to head the vast, often unwieldy department.
DHS is such a young department that one can't say with certainty what kind of experience best suits a secretary. But if nothing else, putting a governor in charge may appeal to state and local officials, who will feel that one of their own is in charge.
