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Diminishing homeland security
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Diminishing homeland security
Donald Devine
Only in the wacky world of Washington would a bill to strengthen homeland security in the wake of the September 11 attack end up with less power to provide security than beforehand. Yet, that is precisely what the United States Senate is planning to do as its first item of business immediately after Labor Day.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and his fellow Government Affairs Committee legislators want to create a new Department of Homeland Security that simply cannot function. For the first time in history, an American Cabinet secretary would not be able to assign the right people to handle the most vital missions. He will specifically be forbidden from melding the various units being assigned to the new department into a coherent operating agency. And this is in an organization supposedly responsible for protecting against terrorism.
How bad is it? For one, the Border Patrol is specifically forbidden to report to the new undersecretary for border and transportation protection. Instead, the new DHS secretary is ordered to keep all of the 170,000 employees of the new department in the same separate agencies at the same level of budget authority.
One might ask, why bother to create a new department to coordinate antiterrorism in the first place? Good question. After all, every previous secretary - even the less-than-critical Education Department - has had the authority to assign personnel where they can perform their duties most efficiently.
So, what is really going on? The real agenda of the Democrats, and a few Republicans, is to win points from their federal employee constituents and their allies, the big federal union bosses. According to the senior staffer involved in the negotiations in the House, the only item of contention or even interest by representatives was on employee and labor issues. No one was debating security issues at all.
The reason is that 40,000 bargaining unit potential members of 17 different federal unions will be transferred to the new department. The unions want to keep the dues and the special privileges that they have wheedled from a supine management over the years. They do not want little matters like national security to get in the way of coffee breaks, bargaining over whether an emergency really exists, or even whether employees will work at all on new assignments. The bill would even take away the president's existing power to exempt security agencies from time-consuming labor bargaining, which can often take years to settle the most mundane matters of what kind of work employees should be performing. In the meantime, nothing happens.
The committee bill would eliminate the president's authority to keep petty matters of union bargaining out of serious matters like homeland security - but it would not eliminate it for any other agency. If this is such a good idea, why not extend it to the FBI or the CIA?
Emergencies like terrorism simply do not allow the luxury of endless bargaining over what needs to be done. Denial of this presidential authority is simply to penalize him for having the temerity to ask for more flexibility in managing security matters in a federal bureaucracy. He also requested the power to harmonize the 22 different pay, classification, work appraisal, disciplinary and reward systems being transferred in from several odd departments. Imagine, having the nerve to be concerned about national security efficiency when important matters like union prerogatives and employee comfort are involved.
President George W. Bush had better follow through on his threatened veto or his credibility in Washington will be zero. If the Department of Homeland Security cannot be done right, it should not be done at all. Mr. Bush already has acceded too much on mandating tenured bureaucrats for airport security (have you not noticed the "improvement" in service?), signing an unconstitutional campaign reform bill, and taking credit for an education bill that was stripped of his best proposals. If he does not go to the mat on his No. 1 issue of protecting the nation from terrorism, everyone will know he can be rolled and that he will sign anything with an attractive title, no matter how silly.
Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, is on board, so all Mr. Bush must do is hold the Republicans. But Sens. George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Fred Thompson of Tennessee and George Voinovich of Ohio have not signed on.
Any who refuse to give the president the power to manage his new department simply must pay a severe political price. If President Bush cannot win a fight to keep security from getting worse than it was before the terrorist attack, it will be a failed presidency and, worse, an at-risk nation.
Donald Devine, former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020829-30455250.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Donald Devine
Only in the wacky world of Washington would a bill to strengthen homeland security in the wake of the September 11 attack end up with less power to provide security than beforehand. Yet, that is precisely what the United States Senate is planning to do as its first item of business immediately after Labor Day.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, and his fellow Government Affairs Committee legislators want to create a new Department of Homeland Security that simply cannot function. For the first time in history, an American Cabinet secretary would not be able to assign the right people to handle the most vital missions. He will specifically be forbidden from melding the various units being assigned to the new department into a coherent operating agency. And this is in an organization supposedly responsible for protecting against terrorism.
How bad is it? For one, the Border Patrol is specifically forbidden to report to the new undersecretary for border and transportation protection. Instead, the new DHS secretary is ordered to keep all of the 170,000 employees of the new department in the same separate agencies at the same level of budget authority.
One might ask, why bother to create a new department to coordinate antiterrorism in the first place? Good question. After all, every previous secretary - even the less-than-critical Education Department - has had the authority to assign personnel where they can perform their duties most efficiently.
So, what is really going on? The real agenda of the Democrats, and a few Republicans, is to win points from their federal employee constituents and their allies, the big federal union bosses. According to the senior staffer involved in the negotiations in the House, the only item of contention or even interest by representatives was on employee and labor issues. No one was debating security issues at all.
The reason is that 40,000 bargaining unit potential members of 17 different federal unions will be transferred to the new department. The unions want to keep the dues and the special privileges that they have wheedled from a supine management over the years. They do not want little matters like national security to get in the way of coffee breaks, bargaining over whether an emergency really exists, or even whether employees will work at all on new assignments. The bill would even take away the president's existing power to exempt security agencies from time-consuming labor bargaining, which can often take years to settle the most mundane matters of what kind of work employees should be performing. In the meantime, nothing happens.
The committee bill would eliminate the president's authority to keep petty matters of union bargaining out of serious matters like homeland security - but it would not eliminate it for any other agency. If this is such a good idea, why not extend it to the FBI or the CIA?
Emergencies like terrorism simply do not allow the luxury of endless bargaining over what needs to be done. Denial of this presidential authority is simply to penalize him for having the temerity to ask for more flexibility in managing security matters in a federal bureaucracy. He also requested the power to harmonize the 22 different pay, classification, work appraisal, disciplinary and reward systems being transferred in from several odd departments. Imagine, having the nerve to be concerned about national security efficiency when important matters like union prerogatives and employee comfort are involved.
President George W. Bush had better follow through on his threatened veto or his credibility in Washington will be zero. If the Department of Homeland Security cannot be done right, it should not be done at all. Mr. Bush already has acceded too much on mandating tenured bureaucrats for airport security (have you not noticed the "improvement" in service?), signing an unconstitutional campaign reform bill, and taking credit for an education bill that was stripped of his best proposals. If he does not go to the mat on his No. 1 issue of protecting the nation from terrorism, everyone will know he can be rolled and that he will sign anything with an attractive title, no matter how silly.
Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, is on board, so all Mr. Bush must do is hold the Republicans. But Sens. George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Fred Thompson of Tennessee and George Voinovich of Ohio have not signed on.
Any who refuse to give the president the power to manage his new department simply must pay a severe political price. If President Bush cannot win a fight to keep security from getting worse than it was before the terrorist attack, it will be a failed presidency and, worse, an at-risk nation.
Donald Devine, former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020829-30455250.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Terror attacks change the legal rights landscape after 9/11
August 28, 2002 Posted: 1:13 PM EDT (1713 GMT)
(AP) -- The government has imposed many new limits on Americans' legal rights as it fights a war on terror, fundamentally altering the nation's delicate balance between liberty and security.
The changes -- including the authority in terror cases to imprison Americans indefinitely, without charges or defense lawyers -- substantially expand the government's ability to investigate, arrest, try and detain.
They grant law enforcement easier access to Americans' personal lives while keeping many government operations secret. And the idea that law-abiding citizens can freely associate with other law-abiding citizens without the threat of government surveillance no longer holds.
The Bush administration will not abuse these far-reaching powers, said Viet Dinh, an assistant U.S. attorney general: "I think security exists for liberty to flourish and liberty cannot exist without order and security," Dinh said.
Still, even supporters are wary.
"One has to pray that those powers are used responsibly," said Charlie Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and money laundering expert in Miami who said the new provisions could help intercept terrorists' finances.
MORE STORIES
Ashcroft: FBI may get more surveillance power
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Seattle man indicted
U.S.: Iran harboring al Qaeda
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Italy freezes 'terror' funds
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EXTRA INFORMATION
Gallery: Destruction and rebirth at the Pentagon
Timeline: Osama - Dead or alive?
Timeline: U.S. military mistakes in Afghanistan
Homeland Security Terror Warning System
In-Depth: Terror on Tape
Fallen servicemen
Most wanted terrorists
The USA Patriot Act, hurriedly adopted by Congress and signed by Bush six weeks after the terror attacks, tipped laws in the government's favor in 350 subject areas involving 40 federal agencies. (More on the Patriot Act)
The Bush administration has since imposed other legal changes without congressional consent, such as allowing federal agents to monitor attorney-client conversations in federal prisons, and encouraging bureaucrats to deny public access to many documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The FBI can monitor political and religious meetings inside the United States now, even when there's no suspicion a crime has been committed -- a policy abandoned in the 1970s amid outrage over J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists.
The American Civil Liberties Union, media companies and other organizations are challenging many of the changes, and judges have ruled against the administration in a few early cases. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on any of the challenges.
"Are we any safer as a nation? I don't know," said Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director. "Are we less free? You bet."
In a poll conducted for The Associated Press by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pennsylvania, 63 percent said they were concerned that the new measures could end up restricting Americans' individual freedoms. Of those, 30 percent of the 1,001 responding adults were "very concerned" and 33 percent "somewhat concerned."
The telephone poll taken August 2-6 has an error margin of 3 percentage points.
"I don't think government should interfere too much in our lives," said Kelly Beaver, 19, a student in North Carolina.
But Arizona caregiver Daniel Martell, 42, said he wasn't concerned at all -- "To me, it's not restricting my freedom. There's all kinds of things going on every day to protect freedom."
Americans may never know how valid their concerns are, since everything about terror-related investigations is secret. The administration isn't required to disclose how it is implementing the fundamental changes, making oversight -- let alone court challenges -- exceedingly difficult.
The Patriot Act allows "black bag" searches for medical and financial records, computer and telephone communications, even for the books Americans borrow from the library.
Judges approve these top-secret warrants in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Established to target "foreign powers," FISA now also applies to U.S. citizens, who are no longer protected by the bread-and-butter legal standard of probable cause -- prosecutors need only say the search will assist a terror probe.
Dinh credited these changes with reducing the risk of terror, but he wouldn't reveal specifics. "Many of our successes will have to be celebrated in secret," he said.
However, even the FISA court isn't bulletproof. In an opinion announced August 22, FISA judges said the FBI has misled the court 75 times in the past and said the Justice Department has wrongly shared intelligence information with criminal prosecutors who are supposed to meet a tougher standard for evidence.
The administration is appealing that decision to a secret FISA appellate panel, saying it undermines powers Congress granted under the Patriot Act.
While the bulk of the government's terror investigations are classified, it is known that thousands of Middle Eastern men who entered the United States since 2000 have been questioned and detained. Many were quietly deported after immigration hearings that are no longer public.
On Tuesday, the administration suffered another blow when a federal appeals panel in Cincinnati ruled these secret immigration hearings unconstitutional.
"Democracies die behind closed doors," these judges said. "When the government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation."
The administration -- which says the president's prosecution of the terror war can't be challenged and that civilian courts have no authority over the detentions -- hasn't decided whether to appeal.
Some of the new surveillance measures expire by 2006, but Congress can extend them if the open-ended war on terror continues.
"At what time is this war over?" Dinh said. "That I cannot answer."
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/08/28/inv.legal.rights.ap/index.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878