Janet Napolitano, the new Homeland Security chief, says
'We Are Prepared and Resilient'
by Jonathan Alter
published: 05/24/2009
When swine flu suddenly erupted in Mexico last month, raising immediate fears of a pandemic, Janet Napolitano, 51, the new Secretary of Homeland Security, was the reassuring face of the administration. As cases spread across the U.S., she issued updates and appeared on television news shows, providing briefings, tamping down panic, and giving Americans the information they needed.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2002 after the government failed to “ connect the dots” on the 9/11 hijackers, but terrorism is only one of its concerns. Napolitano, a former prosecutor and governor of Arizona, is charged with protecting U.S. territory from a variety of foreign and domestic threats—including those that can be planned for, such as the onset of hurricane season, and those that come out of nowhere, like swine flu. “We spend our time thinking about how we increase the safety and security of the U.S.,” she says.
The DHS consolidated 22 federal agencies that handle hundreds of critical functions, including terrorism prevention, immigration, customs, border patrol, airport security, cyber security, nuclear security, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). With more than 200,000 employees, it is now the third-largest Cabinet agency and constantly on the firing line. Napolitano’s job covers everything from battling corruption among Mexican border officials to deciding whether American cities have enough radiation detectors.
Napolitano refuses to prioritize among the threats. Job one, she insists, is to “help keep the nation in a state of readiness and help assure the American people that we are prepared and resilient.”
Security Without Fear
One of the first things the new secretary has done since she succeeded Michael Chertoff is to change the tone of the department. “A constant state of readiness is not a constant state of fear,” she says in a thinly veiled jab at the policies of the Bush Administration. “If we keep piling hypothetical on hypothetical, pretty soon we could be paralyzed as a nation, which is exactly and ironically what the terrorists want.”
For that reason, Napolitano is reviewing those color-coded threat levels. “The colors have become almost something to make fun of,” she points out, “which is the opposite of what you want to achieve.”
Napolitano also uses the word “terrorism” far less often than her predecessors—and “war on terror” not at all. In fact, she sparked a controversy during her Congressional confirmation hearing by referring to DHS’s role in preparing for natural disasters and “man-caused disasters.”
“The issue is not words,” she insists. “The issue is what we’re doing as a country. We’re not going to be throwing words out there as if that’s the same thing as being ready—truly ready.”
Napolitano firmly supported the President’s decision to ban torture in CIA interrogations of terror suspects. “Our No. 1 priority is consistent with the Constitution,” she says, “but also with our duty to protect security.”
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