The Cost Of Security

ur country is built upon principles antithetical to the new needs of the anti-terrorism campaign. That's why our state of preparedness was so weak a year ago and why we remain hesitant to act boldly even after the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the barrage of warnings about more terrorism here.

We cherish our freedoms-to speak our minds, travel freely, live the lifestyles we choose and to keep our lives private. We tolerate only minimal governmental interference with these freedoms. And we don't cotton to much government at all, for that matter. Yes, we do like some of the benefits government brings, but we sure don't like "big government" or "bureaucracy."

It is easy to criticize large and proud institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for failure to share what they knew with others in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. But we should remember our long-standing resistance to government prying. In 1954, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was censured by the Senate for the smear tactics he had used to brand innocent people as communists. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, was hated by many because of the secret files he kept on politicians, media executives, Hollywood figures and others of whom he disapproved. Richard Nixon's list of enemies placed him in the pantheon of snoops even though the list eventually became the butt of jokes by people who voiced disappointment that they hadn't made the cut. Congress reined in the Internal Revenue Service just a few years ago to prevent agents from hotly pursuing citizens who might not have paid enough.

We don't like snoops, and we don't like secrecy either. Unannounced roundups of suspects whose identities aren't released, closed-door tribunals for alleged offenders, dead-of-night planning of major government reorganization, withdrawal of information from agency Web sites-all of this seems out of step with transparency, with government in the sunshine, with democratic ideals we've espoused for years.

The terrorist threat challenges these ideals. And it forces us to come to terms with the idea of bigger government. In these pages over the years, Government Executive's staff has detailed the deficiencies that exist in the sprawling government we have now-arguably "big" but also frequently "hollow," lacking in staff and resources to get the job done. The magnitude of the homeland security challenge, detailed in this issue, reinforces the point. Our staff looks at the challenges of border security, of transportation and other critical infrastructure protection, of equipping first responders effectively and of finding the technologies that can help with all of this. Every task demands more than government is prepared to provide. On the borders, for example, one expert says we need 40,000 agents, not the 10,000 now employed by the U.S. Border Patrol.

That's the troubling news. But there is heartening news as well. Planning this special issue of the magazine weeks ago, we thought to profile a broad cross-section of the people responsible for key homeland security duties. Singly and in the aggregate, these profiles impress the reader with the depth of experience these people bring to the job and with the extent of effort already expended by the executive branch on work essential to securing our nation.