The Challenge

t's probably fair to say there is no such thing as an ideal bureaucratic structure for dealing with terrorism. The threat is amorphous and constantly shifting. One day it's a bomb at an embassy, another day it's passenger jets flying into public buildings, or anthrax-laced mail causing death and fear across several states. Various commissions and blue-ribbon panels have reached different conclusions about how to effectively organize government to respond to the threat. In one area, though, agreement is unanimous: the federal government's existing structure is ill-suited for managing the threats of the 21st century.

In an attempt to change that, the White House has proposed the most ambitious restructuring of federal agencies in a half century. While the exact form of the new Department of Homeland Security still is being negotiated on Capitol Hill, it seems certain that by this time next year, much of the federal government will be in the throes of a massive overhaul, forging a large new bureaucracy, whose primary focus will be protecting Americans from terrorist attacks at home. As Sen. Fred Thompson, ranking member on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, observed in June, "Even advocates of smaller government realize that it is a mission vital to the security of this nation, the most important responsibility of this or any other government."

It's important to remember, however, that the proposed Homeland Security Department is not going to be created from whole cloth. The mission of homeland security, however it is ultimately defined, is not new. Federal agencies have been protecting borders, securing infrastructure, regulating the flow of goods and people entering the country and performing various other homeland security functions for years. Additionally, many key aspects of homeland security are performed by state and local officials and the private sector, and much of what makes or breaks a federal program occurs far from Washington. It might be useful for both legislators and bureaucrats to consider why those functions have been handled inefficiently before they simply are shifted onto a new organization chart.

In this issue we explore four important aspects of any future homeland security plan: border security; critical infrastructure protection-specifically, protection of the transportation sector; the promise and limitations of technology; and the ability of local firefighters, police and health care workers to respond to an attack. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the issues affecting security, but they are some of the most important. If the United States can't stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across the Southwest border, for example, what should that tell us about the government's ability to keep out terrorists and weapons of mass destruction? Addressing some of the problems agencies experience today in performing these vital missions might prevent their repetition in another department in the future.

VITAL INTERESTS

Consider the Coast Guard, which is slated to move from the Transportation Department into the new Homeland Security Department. The Coast Guard is generally regarded as one of the best-managed in the federal government, yet it has been so poorly funded over the last several years that it operates the third oldest fleet in the world. It trimmed more than $400 million from its budget between 1994 and 1998, driving up a huge backlog for routine maintenance on ships and aircraft that continues today. Eleven different agencies, departments and councils rely on the Coast Guard for mission-critical activities, pulling it in multiple directions. It is so strapped for resources that Coast Guard officials in Los Angeles have to borrow handheld radiation detectors from their colleagues at Customs when inspecting incoming vessels.

Other agencies suffer from similar shortages in personnel and equipment. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service both have too few inspectors and criminal investigators to adequately screen the people and goods entering the country. The Border Patrol, which is part of the INS, has seen its ranks double to nearly 10,000 agents since 1995. Yet the agency still is overwhelmed by the magnitude of its job-patrolling the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and the 4,000-mile border with Canada. Along the Southwest border alone, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than a half million people in the first six months of this fiscal year.

Even the 7-month-old Transportation Security Administration is beleaguered. Created expressly to shore up security across the transportation sector after Sept. 11, the agency has only until the end of the year to screen baggage and passengers at all of the nation's airports-a deadline that will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to meet. TSA officials say they hope to have 33,000 screeners in place by Nov. 19, but by June 1, the agency had hired just 1,248 of them. In order to meet its deadline, TSA would have to hire 7,000 to 8,000 screeners every month from July through the end of October, a highly unlikely prospect. In addition, members of Congress are so alarmed by the new agency's escalating costs they are threatening to force it to scale back. TSA has been under so much pressure to shore up airline security that other transportation sectors have been all but ignored by the agency.

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, has worked closely with many of the agencies likely to join the new Homeland Security Department. While he endorses the concept of putting these agencies into a single department focused on homeland security, he believes it will cost an enormous amount of money, at least initially, to make the department function effectively. The Border Patrol should be four times its current size and the Coast Guard should probably double in size, he says.

"There's no question it will cost a ton of money to establish this new agency," McCaffrey says. "The reason it will cost more, among other things, is we're going to finally say, 'Look, we'd better build an institution that's adequate to defend American vital interests."

MANAGEMENT ISSUES

The cumbersome, paperwork-intensive federal hiring process will make it difficult to replace these employees. It takes the Immigration and Naturalization Service from eight months to 13 months to hire and train a new Border Patrol agent. When the Transportation Security Administration hired away more than 600 agents from the Border Patrol this spring, the INS found itself with a large swath of surprise vacancies just as the country was trying to shore up border control.

Additionally, the government's rigid job classification system, which strictly defines employees' duties and responsibilities, makes it difficult to move employees around to different assignments when requirements change. Finding and keeping federal employees with sought-after skills has long been a problem for agencies. Agencies often don't even take advantage of the skills their current employees have, because they have no way of tracking those skills within the bureaucracy. For example, many federal employees have written to Government Executive in recent months expressing frustration that they cannot find jobs that would use their specialized language skills.

There are other challenges to homeland security that won't be solved with the creation of a new department. Among the most pressing are deficiencies in intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities. "The areas of most immediate concern, quite frankly even more than reorganization, in our battle against terrorism have to do with the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence information," says Thompson. "Clearly, the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence-related agencies are in need of substantial reform, a different mind-set and a different way of doing business. Reform must be done, not as part of homeland security legislation, but within those agencies themselves."

Under the administration's plan, the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies would be required to pass intelligence reports and analysis to the new secretary of Homeland Security, but it's not clear how that process would work. Even within those agencies, information doesn't always get shared with the people who need it. Prior to Sept. 11, FBI agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis were pursuing information about potential terrorists training at U.S. flight schools, but neither field office was informed about the other's work, and nobody in headquarters drew a connection between the two investigations.

The FBI clearly needs to upgrade its antiquated computer systems. Before he assumed office, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he wanted to bring the agency out of the technological Dark Ages it has long inhabited. Most field offices lack modern desktop computers and Internet access. Former FBI Director William Webster, who chaired a commission studying security failures at the agency after Special Agent Robert Hanssen was caught spying for Russia, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in April that the FBI's technology programs have been "under-financed for years. There's so much evolution in the computer world today that it's strange to me to think that, when companies are getting new equipment and new procedures every two or three years, the FBI would go along for 10 years trying to . . . limp along in an area where data was coming in at them from all directions."

It's not certain the FBI even knows what technology it already has. The Webster Commission found that about 80 different information systems operate within the bureau's various offices, but that figure was based on interviews with FBI personnel, who were able to give only rough estimates, one commission member says.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

The president wants the new department to be a model of interagency cooperation. But in order to realize that vision, the new Homeland Security CIO will have to devise an overarching technology blueprint that ensures data isn't kept in stand-alone repositories and isn't hoarded internally, as it has been in the past. The CIOs believe that without that blueprint, the new department will repeat the mistakes of the past. All of these reforms will cost money. That presents a problem for an administration that has vowed to pay for the new department out of existing budgets. As one former federal official observes: "You don't always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don't pay for."

-- Brian Friel, Matthew Weinstock and Shane Harris contributed to this report.

Defense officials say the new command will have a small staff responsible for planning and coordinating military defense in the event of an attack on the United States. Like the Defense Department's other regional combatant commands, it would assemble forces as needed from armed services units.