Protecting America

hile the nation's attention is focused on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the most enduring national security operations may be taking place here at home. Last month, employees at 22 federal agencies joined forces to create the Department of Homeland Security in what has been widely cited as the largest reorganization of the federal government in more than 50 years. A few weeks earlier, President Bush announced that the Central Intelligence Agency would establish a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, supported by the FBI, to serve as a kind of national clearinghouse for terrorism-related intelligence. In the meantime, the Defense Department has revised its command structure to better support homeland security requirements, and Pentagon officials are writing new doctrine to guide military operations on U.S. soil, in support of civilian agencies.

Change may be difficult, but you can't accuse the federal government of aiming low. It's hard to imagine three governmental changes more significant than the creation of a Cabinet-level department, the attempt to forge more productive relationships between intelligence collection and law enforcement, and the expansion of the military's role domestically. They all raise challenging legal and cultural questions about the evolving role of government in American society. In the following pages, Government Executive takes a look at some of the forces reshaping government in the new Homeland Security Department, the FBI and the military. In seeking to understand the process of change today, we may gain insight into the consequences of those changes in the future.

At the Homeland Security Department, one of the biggest challenges for agency officials will be to bring order to the nation's borders. Every day, thousands of people enter the country illegally. Most of them just walk across the 2,000-mile Southwest border from Mexico, through the private ranches, federal parkland and tribal areas that cover the territory between official crossing stations. Others enter the country with forged documents, or hidden in the hulls of ships or secret compartments in vehicles and rail cars, or any of the hundreds of clandestine ways immigration and border patrol officials routinely uncover. Most illegal immigrants are looking for work. Others are trafficking in drugs or weapons, or perhaps worse.

The department's new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection merges the operations of the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and the Border Patrol-35,000 employees and countless management and computer systems. Efforts by agency leaders to forge a common purpose among disparate and wary employee groups will be critical to any long-term homeland security plans.

At the FBI and the Defense Department, the homeland security mission is posing different challenges. Both agencies are redefining their roles in ways large and small. By law, the FBI is the only federal agency allowed to collect intelligence on American citizens. Congress expanded that authority following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the USA PATRIOT Act in an effort to enhance the FBI's ability to track potential terrorists. But the FBI's challenge is much greater than just collecting more information about potential terrorist suspects. The agency needs to become as adept at predicting and preventing attacks as it is at solving crimes after the fact.

Until Sept. 11, the Pentagon's role in domestic security was largely confined to supporting law enforcement agencies in counter-narcotics operations and providing emergency support during national emergencies and natural disasters. Last October, the Defense Department consolidated the military's homeland defense and civil support activities into a single organization called Northern Command. Not surprisingly, many Defense officials are reluctant to see the military's conventional war-fighting resources diverted to homeland security, especially when hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed overseas in Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Philippines and elsewhere. But given the military's comparatively vast resources for conducting aerial reconnaissance, intelligence analysis and other activities important in counter-terrorism, many in federal, state and local law enforcement want more support from Defense.

Substantially improving security at home will require a significant investment of money and attention, and unprecedented cooperation-on the part of lawmakers, administration officials, and managers and workers at all levels of government.

Some of the thorniest issues will be sorting out new relationships between agencies. As of late March, Northern Command officials said they had established no formal relationships with the Homeland Security Department, and while they've created an intelligence information center to help the command assess threats, they have not yet figured out how to coordinate the command's intelligence activities with a new Terrorist Threat Integration Center being run by the CIA and the FBI. Command officials note that interagency communication challenges are both technical and cultural, because agencies classify and value information in different ways, according to their own objectives.

Already, some security experts are questioning the government's commitment. Thus far, the tens of billions of dollars spent in the name of homeland security ($75 billion to $150 billion, depending on how you count it) have largely gone to pay for military operations overseas, to shore up military facilities at home and abroad, and to recover from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Those are important investments, but they don't do much to reduce the vulnerability to terrorism at home or deal with its consequences. Border control and anti-smuggling programs need more skilled personnel, better equipment and advanced communications technology. The men and women who fill the local police and fire departments, emergency medical teams and health departments face overwhelming challenges. Most of them need more sophisticated training, and access to better information and equipment-things that in some cases can only come from the federal government. If homeland security truly is a national priority, then adequate funding will have to be a priority as well.