Over the past two weeks, we gave you an opportunity to submit questions on homeland security to former 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton. Here are some of his responses:
Vancouver, Canada: Can the president be held accountable for not implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission if another attack happens?
Lee Hamilton: We look to our elected officials, both the president and the Congress, to provide the leadership and take the actions to make our country safer and more secure. They are the accountable officials. Some of our recommendations have been implemented, some have not, and some are a work in progress.
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New York, N.Y.: The recent terror plot in the United Kingdom exposes how vulnerable air travel still is. Short of shutting it down altogether—which is practically what happened at Heathrow Airport in London for awhile—what specific steps do you suggest for improving airport security?
First, we still do not screen passengers against a comprehensive terrorism watchlist before they get on an airplane. Because the government wants to protect sensitive information, it does not share all the names on its watchlist with the airlines. So the airlines screen passengers against an incomplete list. The sensible answer is for the government to do the name checking of all passengers.
Second, the main impediment to improved checked bag and cargo security is inadequate funding. If the president and Congress believe airline security to be a priority, they should request and provide funds, respectively, for the deployment of advanced “in-line” explosives-detection equipment [installed inside airports to screen baggage]. Such equipment has been shown to improve security and to significantly reduce operational costs.
Third, Congress needs to provide funding for the Transportation Security Administration to install explosive-detection trace portals or “puffer machines” [portals in which passengers stand for a few seconds while puffs of air are released, which are then collected and analyzed for traces of explosives] at more of the nation’s 441 commercial airports.
Alameda, Calif.: I’m still concerned about the lack of ocean- and air-freight-container security. For the price of two laptop computers I can ship 20,000 pounds in a 20-foot container from literally anywhere in the world to anywhere in the United States. What’s in that 20-foot container? Nobody knows.
As a government, we are still fighting the last war. Port security gets insufficient attention. We need to spell out and implement a national transportation strategy that outlines our risks and vulnerabilities and gives us better guidance on where to spend our scarce resources for better transportation security.
No hometown given: How much do you think the fact that terrorists haven’t hit our homeland since 9/11 is their choosing (or our luck)? How much of that do you think is due to our country’s preventive measures? In other words, how much difference do you think this administration is making when it comes to preventing terrorist attacks?
We simply do not know why we have not been hit because we do not know [what’s in] the minds of the terrorists. We can, and have, made some educated guesses. Our government certainly has taken positive steps since 9/11 to disrupt and deter terrorist attacks on our homeland, including the removal of Afghanistan as a terrorist sanctuary. Still, we have lost a sense of urgency: many of the commission’s recommendations remain partially implemented or unaddressed. We are certain that Islamic extremists want to hit our country again.
Sacramento, Calif.: You have stated that to implement all the commission’s recommendations would require an overwhelming amount of money. Would this be the case if we had not gone into Iraq?
It all comes down to a question of political will: do our leaders deem the commission’s recommendations necessary to improve the safety and security of the American people, or not? If not, what better course do they propose? The war in Iraq is a significant diversion from other national-security issues: it takes the time and attention of the president and his senior advisers, and it costs us over $7 billion each month.
Lee Hamilton, who served as co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Until 1999, he represented Indiana’s Ninth Congressional District for more than 30 years, during which time he was chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and chair of the Joint Economic Committee. He is also the co-author with Thomas Kean of “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission,” published by Knopf on Aug. 15.
