Department of Homeland Security Heeding 9/11 Commission's Recommendations

For those of us who have had the opportunity to read the 9/11 Report, the findings of the Commission were quite startling. Even before September 11th 2001, the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community knew that the chance of an impending, catastrophic attack on U.S. soil was likely.

In fact, a domestic attack had already occurred in 1993 when Ramzi Yousef attempted to unsuccessfully topple the World Trade Center towers with a truck bomb, which injured a thousand Americans, killing six. Next, our humanitarian expedition to Somalia resulted in two black hawk helicopters being shot down by people we now know had links to al Qaeda. Then came August 1998, when our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed killing 224 people. This was followed by the attack on the USS Cole on October 2000 which killed 17 American sailors. These attacks culminated to a crescendo on that fateful day we will never forget on September 11th, 2001.

Those events prompted the creation of the 9/11 Commission to investigate, report, and recommend their findings to the American people to explain in better detail, how and why the attacks happened that day. The purpose of this post is to show how far the Department Homeland Security (DHS) has been able to meet the recommendations as outlined by the 9/11 Commission Report.

The 9/11 Report identified four major areas of concern when it was first published two years ago: (1) the lack of imagination; (2) ineffective policy; (3) limited capabilities and (4) inadequate management by our intelligence community. In short, the Commission illustrated the lack of coordination and information sharing among intelligence agencies, especially between the FBI and CIA. These agencies’ disparate cultures and jurisdictions allowed al Qaeda operatives to slip through the system, giving them the opportunity to plan and execute the attacks. The 9/11 Executive Summary encapsulates the effects of decentralization and lack of coordination best:

“Those working counterterrorism matters did so despite limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, perceived legal barriers to sharing information, and inadequate resources.”

To address the above concerns, the 9/11 Commission outlined the following recommendations to establish a better system to prevent terrorist attacks:

• Target terrorist travel, develop an intelligence and security strategy.
• Design a comprehensive screening system that addresses common problems and sets common standards.
• Determine, with leadership from the president, guidelines for gathering an sharing information in the new security systems that are needed, guidelines that integrate safeguards for privacy and other essential liberties.
• Base federal funding for emergency preparedness solely on risks and vulnerabilities.
• Make homeland security funding contingent on the adoption of an incident command system to strengthen teamwork in a crisis, including a regional approach.

With these recommendations in mind, I had a unique opportunity to recently hear from a high ranking official from DHS speak about the importance of building coordination and cooperation across government agencies and the private sector (For security’s sake, I will keep the official’s name anonymous). From his talk I was able to ascertain whether or not DHS was actually heeding the recommendations set forth by the 9/11 Commission. I discovered that DHS was in fact on track.

This official held the intelligence community’s longstanding culture accountable for the problem of coordination and the ensuing intelligence failures that led up to the attacks on 9/11. Prior to 9/11, the self interests of these agencies drove them to maintain their missions, organizational identities and jurisdictions. As long as these agencies continued to compete for resources and prestige, cooperation and information sharing remained difficult to achieve. So how has DHS been able to improve these management and cultural barriers?

The official recounted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which followed the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that brought 22 agencies under the same umbrella, as a monumental achievement. "Never has there been a restructuring of federal agencies this massive since the New Deal," the official said. This new department has centralized the intelligence community by creating a system of networks and incentives that allow for interagency cooperation while maintaining a form of decentralization that allows each agency to continue to do what they do best. For example, cooperation is achieved by the expansion of the National Crime Information Center, more commonly known as NCIC. This computerized database of documented criminal justice information is available to virtually every law enforcement and intelligence agency worldwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Decentralization is also maintained as each agency continues to perform their assigned tasks, but critical intelligence is passed to DHS intermediaries where analysts attempt to piece the puzzle together through coordination with other agencies.

Homeland security funding is also on the right track, thanks to Michael Chertoff. Funding is now based on risk assessment of critical infrastructure. The Urban Area Security Initiatives (UASI) homeland security grants are now distributed to metropolitan regions rather than individual cities to force cooperation and coordination across jurisdictional lines. To better address coordination for first responders, DHS is currently in the process of completing a National Asset Database (NADB). According to the official, this database will allow first-responders to develop emergency action plans, brining all the strategies and initiatives into one database allowing first-responders to react more quickly and effectively during terrorist attacks. DHS is also critically examining ways to reduce threats by changing critical infrastructure vulnerabilities based on economic and social consequences of potential targets.

According to this official, we are securing our country more effectively as evidenced by al Qaeda’s shift of attacks from hard to softer targets. From the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11, to train stations in Madrid and London on 2/11/04 and 7/7/05 respectively, to hotels in Amman on 11/9/05, Jordan. This is a clear indicator that governments around the world are better securing critical infrastructure, making it difficult for terrorists to assualt high-profile targets.

Clearly, DHS is on the right path as it takes the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and turns them into reality. While we may never know of the successes that DHS has had in preventing terrorist attacks, our only guage of their success lies in the fact there has not been an attack since 9/11. This means that the federal government is doing its job in keeping the country secure. However, this does not mean that we ought to relax our guard; rather it calls for more increased vigilance on our part. While DHS continues to move forward in securing our country, it is imperative that we remain vigilant too; our country's safety depends on it.

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