For New Chief, a New Approach to Homeland Security
By ERIC LIPTON
The New York Times
July 18, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 16 - As he rushed from White House briefings to Capitol Hill hearings, television interviews and staff meetings, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff nearly talked himself hoarse over the last 10 days.
His message, delivered between sips of coffee to soothe his sore throat, was consistent. The nation's antiterrorism efforts must be based on assessments of risk, not on formulas that sprinkle dollars around and not on reaction to bombings elsewhere.
"We as a nation must make tough choices about how to invest finite human and financial capital to obtain the optimal state of preparedness," he said in a speech on Wednesday.
But not all liked what they were hearing, whether it was his emphasis on security for aviation over mass transit, or his plan to reorganize his agency.
"If the department was a house, what you've done is the equivalent of patching the walls," Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, told Mr. Chertoff on Thursday during a House hearing. "Unfortunately, the joists of the house were cracked and left untouched."
Mr. Chertoff agrees that his two-year-old department, which was cobbled together from 22 agencies, needs an overhaul.
"I feel like we are racing the clock," Mr. Chertoff said as he slid into a black sport utility vehicle between briefings and interviews one day last week. "I know the terrorists are working fast here. Every day we are not doing as much as we can, as fast as we can, is a day that we are falling behind."
After five months of a relatively low-profile tenure leading the department, Mr. Chertoff, a former appeals court judge, Justice Department official and prosecutor, stepped out this month, detailing an agenda that provoked some opposition in Congress. It is a clash that may have been inevitable. The strong-willed, blunt-spoken Mr. Chertoff is the first to admit that he is not a politician. Several Democrats condemned him this week for remarking that a plane used as a missile could kill 3,000 people, while a subway bomb "may kill 30 people."
"He is a smart man. He is a thoughtful man. He is a capable man," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Thursday on the Senate floor. "But when I read the statements he made this morning, I was aghast."
While politicians and security experts generally agree that Mr. Chertoff is off to a worthy start, it is unclear if he has the political skills to win over Congress and the managerial skills to correct the internal rivalries, gross misspending and haphazard initiatives that critics from both parties say have made his agency dysfunctional.
Some who have worked with him believe he is up to the job.
"He realizes the stakes of the game," said Adm. James Loy, the former Coast Guard commandant who had served as a top deputy to former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, as well as Mr. Chertoff, before retiring in March. "He realizes that he and his department are under the gun to produce."
Soon after he was named to his post, Mr. Chertoff began articulating a new approach for his department. To explain his antiterrorism calculus, he would mention a small bridge in Basking Ridge, N.J., near his family's former home.
"A terrorist attack on the two-lane bridge down the street from my house is bad but has a relatively low consequence compared to an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge," Mr. Chertoff said in a speech in Washington in March. "At the other end of the spectrum, even a remote threat to detonate a nuclear bomb is a high-level priority because of the catastrophic effect."
If the nation wants to try to prevent the most nightmarish attacks, he said, it must focus on the most consequential threats.
Translating this premise into action has consumed Mr. Chertoff since he arrived in his post. The changes have literally started at the top.
Unlike Mr. Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania whose advisers often came from the political world, Mr. Chertoff has chosen for his inner circle mostly mid-30's, Ivy League graduates. John F. Wood, 35, his chief of staff, is the prototype. Like Mr. Chertoff, he is a graduate of Harvard Law School and had worked at the Justice Department.
There are more seasoned bureaucrats as well, like Michael P. Jackson, 51, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Transportation who is now Mr. Chertoff's second in command.
While Mr. Ridge was often criticized for his unwillingness to butt heads - allowing tensions between divisions at Homeland Security to fester - Mr. Chertoff has proven to be the opposite, several senior department officials said.
At gatherings of his team, Mr. Chertoff routinely interrupts presentations to demand that staff members get to the point, and insists on resolving disagreements to settle on a plan of action, participants said. He is impatient with how long it takes to redirect a ship as large as his department, with its 180,000 employees and operations across the nation.
One of the biggest hurdles to imposing his vision, though, has been Congress.
The department spends nearly half of its $38.5 billion budget on border, immigration and transportation security. About 20 percent goes to the Coast Guard. And 15 percent goes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The largest remaining chunk is more than $2 billion a year given to local and state governments for antiterrorism efforts. Mr. Chertoff has asked Congress to allow the department to distribute those dollars almost exclusively on a basis of risk - meaning a state like North Dakota, with few high-profile targets, would see very little money while New York would receive a large grant.
The House largely agreed to the request in May. But the Senate, led by two members from small states, voted last week to maintain a formula guaranteeing sizable minimum grants for every state. Congress has not backed Mr. Chertoff's requests to consolidate management of disparate security screening programs and to cut nearly in half the funds for a unit to coordinate efforts to prevent a domestic nuclear attack.
Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, who led the charge to maintain sizable grants for small states, said, "He is not going to bend to satisfy those of us that don't agree with him, and that does not trouble me a bit."
Mr. Chertoff has been able to make more modest administrative and policy changes on his own, including cutting the number of cities eligible to apply for port security grants to 66 from about 360 - removing places like Martha's Vineyard - and rewriting the formula so that the ports at highest risk will most likely receive the biggest grants.
He and his staff also resolved a conflict with undercover federal air marshals who had complained that their identities were obvious; strict rules on how the marshals dress and cut their hair were relaxed. And citing improved security, he eliminated as of Friday a rule requiring passengers to remain in their seats for 30 minutes after flying out of or before flying into Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.
The change in management style has been perhaps the most profound, as was demonstrated when bombs went off in London on July 7. Mr. Chertoff said he recommended to President Bush raising the alert level just for mass transit, not for the nation at large, as was typical under Mr. Ridge. Soon after, when Mr. Chertoff held a news conference to announce the security measure, he chose his words carefully.
"It was not a sense of breathless alarm, but as kind of a common-sense thing," Mr. Chertoff said, describing the news conference.
This stands in contrast to some of the ominous news conferences held by Mr. Ridge and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, or the much-ridiculed suggestion by Mr. Ridge that Americans buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal themselves in their homes if necessary.
Even those who think Mr. Chertoff is moving sensibly agree he faces a formidable task in figuring out a way to "manage a monster," as Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, described it during his confirmation hearing in February.
"Whether or not he can build national confidence in the department, that's the challenge for him," Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said in an interview last week. "He's not a sound-bite leader, that is for sure." |
