A growing number of scholars argue that the new administration should overturn a key decision by President George W. Bush administration’s decision in 2002 to create a Homeland Security Council (HSC). Until the September 11 attacks, the National Security Council (NSC) coordinated the handful of institutions, (including the Department of Defense) that protected the United States from its adversaries. Bush responded to al Qaeda’s attacks by organizing a sprawling parallel system of institutions to protect the United States from terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is only part of that system. The Bush administration also assigned terrorism prevention functions to the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Health and Human Services, Interior, and other federal institutions which had never before played such significant roles in securing the United States from attack. Bush capped this parallel security system with the HSC to help guide and coordinate its activities.

A spate of recent studies argue that creating the HSC was a mistake and that the new administration should subsume the Council within the NSC. Such a merger, however, would impede the reforms that are most vital for securing the United States against future terrorist attacks and hurricanes or other natural hazards.

The terrible wake-up call of 9/11 brought homeland security and homeland defense into full focus for a nation ill-prepared for the threat of transnational terrorism. Our nation has done much to meet that threat, yet much more still needs to be done. Balancing security concerns against those of individual liberties, ensuring parallel commitments to law enforcement and defense remain complementary but distinct, are just two of the issues of concern. In this spirit, the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership partnered with The George Washington University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Heritage Foundation to conduct the first annual Homeland Defense/Homeland Security conference. The conference was an ambitious endeavor, designed to draw on a cross-section of experience from the partner institutions, their supporters, and their audiences in addressing the issues at hand. This volume is a reflection of those discussions.

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) draft National Response Framework proposes much-needed improvements for disaster preparedness and response. As currently written, however, the framework also ignores--and is likely to subvert--key changes that Congress enacted in Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. Congress had compelling reasons to adopt those changes. The draft framework overlooks the concerns that helped shape the legislation Congress enacted, and would put the nation at risk to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to Katrina.

I will open my testimony by examining the framework's most glaring departure from the reforms Congress enacted in 2006: the proposal that disaster preparedness and response efforts be led by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, rather than by the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA). I will then briefly explain why I believe Congress made the correct decision in assigning that leadership responsibility and authority to the FEMA Administrator, and why the shift proposed by the draft framework would put the emergency management system at such risk. I will conclude by raising some additional issues that the Subcommittee may wish to consider as it reviews the draft framework, especially those involving the uncertainties that continue to surround response to catastrophic events.

Through efforts like the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. government and many of the Day After Workshop participants, including us, have long sought to prevent nuclear weapons and fissile materials from falling into new and threatening hands, especially terrorists. But we all know that these efforts have not reduced the probability to zero. It is also a common refrain among policy thinkers concerned with the growing nuclear threat--again, ourselves included--to frame the issue of prevention in terms of a provocative question, "On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in a U.S. city, what will we wish we had done to prevent it?"

But our Preventive Defense "Day After Workshop" asked a different question: "What will we actually do on the day after prevention fails?" What will we want to do? How can we prepare now to be able to do it? We asked the distinguished participants in the Workshop to catapult themselves vividly and concretely into the aftermath of a nuclear detonation on a U.S. city. The needed actions by government and the public on the Day After will fall into two categories: actions to recover from the first detonation, and actions to prevent a second detonation. The Workshop addressed both types of action in as much detail, including technical detail, as possible. Topics included emergency response, evacuation and sheltering, immediate radiation effects, follow-on threats to the first nuclear weapon, attribution and retaliation, and the long process of cleanup--especially the uniquely difficult problem of fallout and residual radioactivity.

This paper analyzes what might be expected to happen if a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in a U.S. city; the example used for this analysis is San Francisco. The analysis draws from research projects the author has done in recent years for the Department of Homeland Security and other government organizations, including observing and providing critique on TOPOFF 2 (Top Officials), an exercise of federal, state, and local emergency response systems to terrorist attacks. The paper summarizes a number of talks the author has given to students and professionals working on security issues.

Recently, post-explosion nuclear forensics, or nuclear attribution, has gained a new spotlight within the scientific and policymaking community working on nuclear weapons. Academics are beginning to ask whether post-explosion forensics might create a replacement for an international nonproliferation regime or at least offer a fallback option to deter states and individuals from selling nuclear materials. This paper examines current attribution technology from unclassified literature and finds the technology to be well developed but not foolproof, such that nuclear attribution currently provides little deterrent value. If current capabilities were publicized more thoroughly, and if the post-explosion process of assessing the evidence were internationalized, states and intermediate actors might be deterred more effectively. This paper also discusses the development of a nuclear fingerprint database; while useful, its impact on deterrence would be minimal.

This article is based on the author's undergraduate honors thesis, completed during 2005-2006 in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security.

We have learned little from the cataclysms of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to catastrophe, America is living on borrowed time--and squandering it.

The truth is, acts of terror cannot always be prevented, and nature continues to show its fury in frighteningly unpredictable ways. Resiliency, argues Flynn, must now become our national motto. With chilling frankness and clarity, Flynn paints an all-too-real scenario of the threats we face within our own borders. A terrorist attack on a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas into Boston Harbor could kill thousands and leave millions more of New Englanders without power or heat. The destruction of a ship with a cargo of oil in Long Beach, California, could bring the West Coast economy to its knees and endanger the surrounding population. But even these alarmingly plausible terrorist scenarios pale in comparison to the potential destruction wrought by a major earthquake or hurricane.

Our growing exposure to man-made and natural perils is largely rooted in our own negligence, as we take for granted the infrastructure handed down to us by earlier generations. Once the envy of the world, this infrastructure is now crumbling. After decades of neglect, our public health system leaves us at the mercy of microbes that could kill millions in the next flu pandemic. Flash flooding could wipe out a fifty-year-old dam north of Phoenix, placing thousands of homes and lives at risk. The next San Francisco earthquake could destroy century-old levees, contaminating the freshwater supply that most of California relies on for survival.

It doesn't have to be this way. The Edge of Disaster tells us what we can do about it, as individuals and as a society. We can--and, Flynn argues, we must--construct a more resilient nation. With the wounds of recent national tragedies still unhealed, the time to act is now. By tackling head-on, eyes open the perils that lie before us, we can remain true to our most important and endearing national trait: our sense of optimism about the future and our conviction that we can change it for the better for ourselves--and our children.

Testimony before the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on "Five- and Ten-Year Homeland Security Goals." In the afternoon session on 30 January 2007, the subcommittee heard from Brian Michael Jenkins, of RAND Corporation; Paul Stockton, of CISAC at Stanford University; James Carafano, of the Heritage Foundation; and Randall Yim, former director of the Homeland Security Institute.

Congress and the Administration have made great progress in securing the Nation since 9/11. Major challenges remain, however, both for responding to the flaws revealed by Hurricane Katrina and--at least as important--anticipating and preparing for the threats to come. We cannot meet those challenges by following the path we are on today.

Four changes will get us on a better path. First, we need to rethink the meaning of homeland security and the priorities within it. Second, we need to recast the division of labor in homeland security, and go much further to capitalize on the advantages that states and localities have over the federal government in securing the Nation. Third, we should build deeper integration within the Department of Homeland Security--through means I will propose today that would produce benefits far beyond the Department. Finally, we need to consider more comprehensive ways to bring risk-based analysis to bear on homeland security decisions, and thereby gain the greatest possible impact from the resources you invest in this constrained fiscal environment.