Adfero Group HSPI

While the United States successfully thwarted another attempted bombing of a domestic inbound aircraft by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the disrupted plot should tell Americans two important things: our intelligence and security agencies are doing excellent work, and continued vigilance is the price of security. We need every available tool to combat and protect against terrorists, and this means speeding up the rate at which America procures and implements counter-terrorism technology.

The CIA’s recent success in interrupting an al Qaeda-inspired plot to destroy an airplane bound for the United States with a non-metallic bomb is an important victory for American security. It is also a harsh reminder that while many of America’s terrorist enemies are dead, jailed or on the run, others remain committed to turning the aviation system against us. What does that mean for America’s ongoing aviation security efforts?

Once again, America is officially under attack. According to multiple reports, including an “incident response” report from the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), U.S. natural gas pipeline companies are at the center of a major cyber attack campaign. While I’m certain that some in Congress will use this latest cyber attack campaign as fodder to further their cyber security legislation, I do not believe we can legislate our way out of this problem.

A significant part of America’s homeland security efforts is preparing to resist, mitigate and recover from disasters manmade and natural. With the private sector owning the vast majority of U.S. infrastructure, as well as the critical role businesses play in the community and the economy, private sector preparedness has long been a priority, since the 9/11 Commission issued its final report. It has taken a long time, however, for DHS’ Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Program to gain momentum.

The U.S. Secret Service, the TSA and the U.S. Military have all been involved in recent public relations disasters that exposed poor choices on the part of federal employees and disrupted the public trust in government agencies. Fallout continues over the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia. News reports of TSA agents breaking rules and laws are ongoing. Military personnel have been caught in photos urinating on dead bodies and in other offensive acts. Why did these incidents occur and what can be done to ensure they do not happen again?

Sunday’s LA Times contains a story that every Member of Congress and homeland security stakeholder ought to read. For the first time that I can remember, AMO Chief Michael Kostelnik, CBP’s main evangelist for acquiring Predator UAVs for border enforcement, admits that the results have NOT been impressive, especially in helping capture illegal drug runners.

It is always difficult to fully absorb the lessons from wide-scale crises in the wake of the catastrophe. Information is often incomplete or contradictory, or still evolving. Learning these lessons, however, provides an opportunity to address the shortfalls of catastrophic disaster response.

The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute welcomes you to join an HSPI Policy and Research Forum event featuring Kip Hawley, Former Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and author of “Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security.”

By Doug Doan
I previously criticized Kip Hawley for being too timid and for his rather late conversion to understanding TSA security is ineffective, expensive, and demeaning. My key point is that the problems that plague DHS/CBP/TSA are not so much policy driven, but leadership issues. Or, put more bluntly, a succession of poor and timid leaders that are unwilling to make difficult choices or align themselves with unpopular, but wiser, policies until they are safely out of office and pursuing consultant fees. This piece is in response to Jeff Sural’s recent post on Hawley and TSA.

The United States has changed the world in many ways. Our inventions, innovations and enterprising national nature impact people around the world every day, and for decades, one of the biggest feathers in America’s cap was our space program. For those of us who were fortunate enough to be a part of the program, the Shuttle’s final tour of America has been a slow, painful goodbye, but as with all things, the end of one era is also the beginning of another.

Complaints about the TSA are numerous and perpetual. Everyone from the Congressional committees who created TSA to self-described security experts to the most recently inconvenienced passenger has a story, and an opinion, about what needs to be changed. But when a thoughtful critique, and significant suggestions for reform, come from someone who led the agency for three-plus years, we may finally be getting somewhere. Former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley’s piece this weekend in the Wall Street Journal should have excited anyone who follows the travails of TSA. Mostly silent on the subject since he left in 2009 as the fourth TSA administrator, Kip unleashed a whopper of a critique.

On Monday, one of the Obama Administration’s heavies took to the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post to fight for cyber security. John Brennan, the President’s senior advisor on counterterrorism and homeland security, published a pretty impassioned piece reminding the Nation that cyber treats are real. Personally, I thought we were beyond the debate about the existence of the cyber threat and our need for better cyber defenses, cyber hygiene, training, and public-private info sharing. I guess there are still nay-sayers out there.

Since investigative reporter Josh Bernstein filed his story, “License to Terrorize: Failure to safeguard against sophisticated phony IDs leaves opening for bad guys to slip through air security,” the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has neither responded to nor acknowledged the report, and refused Bernstein an interview. But as much as TSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) want to hide from the shocking revelations of Bernstein’s investigation — that anyone with a good fake ID can make it through TSA security checkpoints as long as the name on the fake ID matches the name on the boarding pass — ignoring the problem will not make it go away.

By Doug Doan
Former TSA Boss Kip Hawley has written an important, but flawed, new book, telling us that TSA is a broken agency in need of urgent reform. The book offers thoughtful recommendations for reform, which is why I find it all so sad. The one big issue that Hawley does not much discuss is why he never tried to implement any of these urgent reforms while he was in charge of the very agency that he now tells us, correctly, is broken. And every other DHS senior leader, from the former Secretaries at DHS, Commissioners of CBP, and TSA, has either started, or joined, a consulting company advocating urgent reforms to the very organization that they once led. Let’s also admit that every one of them had the opportunity to implement the reforms that they now advocate in exchange for huge consulting fees.

Once again, I was honored to do a presentation for the DHS-sponsored Center for Homeland Security and Defense. This long-term, comprehensive course introduces operational leaders from law enforcement, fire fighting, emergency services, public health, and federal agencies to a wide array of issues, and propels them to intellectually “punch above their weights” in a way they makes them even bigger assets to the Nation than they were when they began. These folks are like sponges – they push one another and their instructors, demand proof, and are skeptical in a healthy way.

For the past month, the Homeland Security Show I host is spotlighting issues in homeland security without the interlude of media packaging stories into three minute segments or subjected to political hyperbole from Capitol Hill. This is not a show about thrillers, even if some of the content is more twisted and strange than most science fiction. Here is a rundown of my guests and show topics and some of our upcoming broadcasts.

When I was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, every time we tried to do something – like develop cyber security capabilities – we were accused of cravenly seeking new budget allocations. Yet, the only reason I have been, am now, and will continue to push cyber as a key issue is that I believe it is one. In a recent Foreign Policy article, Thomas Rid argues the cyber threat is not real. I sincerely wish he were correct. He is sincerely wrong. Denying threats does not make them go away.

The EPA was set to disregard the counsel of the Department of Justice, water system owners/operators and security experts by posting the non-Off-site Consequence Analysis (non-OCA) sections of the water sector’s RMPs this summer. Amid industry outcry, the EPA changed course and decided to postpone re-establishing public Internet access for certain highly security sensitive categories of information collected by its Risk Management Plan (RMP) Program. Irwin Fletcher said, “It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong. I am NOT a big man.” Such is the case with the EPA.

In Security Debrief’s annual April Fools coverage, we’ve collected some stories the rest of the media somehow missed.

Despite Defense Department budget cuts and ongoing military operations, pirates in the waters off the coast of Somalia won’t see a decrease in naval military presence any time soon. NATO allies recently agreed to continue through 2014 the Ocean Shield operation – a counter-piracy naval operation off the Horn of Africa protecting merchant ships from pirate attack. This is welcome news to many ship owners and charters, which have seen an increase in the number of pirate attacks in the Indian Ocean. The pirate threat and the international response seem only to be escalating.