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Despite years of study, nation remains unprepared to thwart future terror attacks
My View
Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON -- As America recovers from Sept. 11's terrorist devastation, there's this to ponder: "We are not prepared for the next attack," says former Sen. Gary Hart. "That's all I can say, and I'll keep on saying it." Maybe now, more people will listen. The state of "homeland defense" in the United States has been studied over and over again in the past five years, by think tanks, the Pentagon and a bipartisan national commission that Hart co-chaired for three years. And there has been progress. "Not enough," Hart said. "Some 40 different federal agencies have taken some steps, many of them tentative, but that's hardly good news" for the thousands killed or missing in last week's hijackings and terror attacks. "A lot of really good planning has been going on," said retired Army Col. Bill Taylor, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But we are very slow to implement, we have other priorities, and the whole process is ... very costly. "We're not moving fast enough," he said, "and we got caught with our pants down." In a prediction that now rings eerily, the Hart-Rudman commission's final report in January said a catastrophic attack would take place on U.S. soil in the next 25 years. It recommended formation of a new agency that would combine the missions of the National Guard, Border Patrol, Customs Service, Coast Guard and others now working in a huge and uncoordinated effort to defend the nation's people and infrastructure -- and to respond to attack. "We Americans ... sometimes have to get hit with a two-by-four to get with it," said former Sen. Warren Rudman, Hart's co-chair on the U.S Commission on National Security/21st Century. "I have no doubt that we will get with it." A Pentagon study in the summer of 2000, also released several months ago, looked at the possibilities of biological attacks, information warfare such as cyberattacks, and nuclear attacks -- and found it doubtful the nation could prevent any of them. "The battlefields of the 21st century now include U.S. homeland in addition to foreign soil" and civilian as well as military targets, the study said. It said the United States is better prepared at mopping up after the fact, figuring out who did it and then retaliating, than it is at detecting and preventing incidents. The latest study, released Thursday by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, urges that a single public official oversee all efforts to combat terrorism. "We can't just be sitting around letting various agencies twiddle their thumbs," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. "We need one person to be in charge, to coordinate it." One of several studies by the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that, compared to five years ago, measurable progress has been made in missile defense, the protection of critical infrastructure and defense against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism. Other studies note that protection against computer attacks has been improved but remains inadequate. Also, training has been given in recent years to first-on-the-scene workers from state and local governments such as firefighters, police and medical workers who might respond to an attack on American soil. Still, one study says fewer than 3 percent of hospital workers are trained so far. Officials have stockpiles of some vaccines and antidotes. Despite those and other advances, analysts say, lack of coordination and jurisdictional disputes have meant weaknesses in homeland defense. Responsibility is shared by a range of federal, state and local jurisdictions for defending U.S. shores and the nation's air traffic, computer networks, water supplies, highways, transit systems and other infrastructure. Several bills are pending in the House, including one that would act on the Hart-Rudman Commission recommendation to create a new Cabinet-level "National Homeland Security Agency." "The whole is less than the sum of its parts. ... No one is in charge," said Frank Cilluffo, a CSIS specialist on terrorism who worked on one of the center's studies. "We've been spending quite a bit of money, but it hasn't been money best spent because we don't have an individual orchestrator ... who can bring it all together." After receiving the Hart-Rudman report, President Bush asked Vice President Dick Cheney to consider the issue of homeland defense and a report is expected by October.
On the Net: Report on CSIS: http://www.csis.org/burke/hd/index.htm
Copyright 2001, Dodge City Daily Globe. All rights reserved.
"Never cease in the fight for peace, justice, and equality for all people. Be persistent in all that you do and don't allow anyone to sway you from your conscience.".....Leonard Peltier
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