AFI Research Intelligence Briefing for the 8th June 2002

President Bush embraces 'Big Brother' ideals
 
In the most sweeping changes to be proposed to the United States Intelligence Community in 50 years, President Bush will ask Congress to approve the creation of a supra-national security organization the sole mission of which is to protect the American homeland. This new cabinet position is intended to have the power to instruct the existing agencies, taking control of the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Border Patrol, the US Coast Guard, the Presidential Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the newly created Transportation Security Agency, to ensure greater levels of co-operation and information sharing and to remove the unhelpful competitive attitude that has long bedevilled providing the United States with a comprehensive and interlocking security environment.  However, it would appear that even if Congress is moved to accept this highly expensive proposal, it will have little chance of achieving even the muddled aims of The Whitehouse. Inter-agency rivalry will be difficult to dismiss, as will the independence of the major intelligence gatherers. It is also unlikely that one single overall controlling body will do any better than the management of the individual agencies, they will after all be trying to make new pots with the same limited amounts of suitable clay.

It would also review and disseminate intelligence from the existing agencies, however the CIA, NSA, DIA and even the FBI have suffered greatly from the dearth of suitable analysts, photo-interpreters, field officers, linguists and counter-terrorist experts.
Simply inventing a new organization, a Department of Homeland Security, will not magically solve the problems of a critical lack of good recruits. The very idea of a new security department with a total of 170,000 personnel and a combined budget of over $37 billion in a democratic society smacks of Orwell at his most disturbing. Linked with new cyber-security measures, increasingly invasive internal security and the finger-printing and monitoring of certainly overseas visitors to the United States, ethnically targeted of course, the distinct impression is that 'Big Brother' has finally arrived in the Land of the Free!
 
United States in danger of over-reacting to terrorist threat
 
The new Homeland Security department would cover four major areas: border and transportation security; emergency preparedness and response; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures; and information analysis and infrastructure protection, as well as providing aid to state and local governments in training and equipping fire fighters and police to face future terrorist threats.It would also co-ordinate communications with the general public, corporate business, organizations and all levels of government regarding terrorist threats and security preparedness. The new department, if granted Congressional approval would be operational by late 2002 and would compliment the DoD's creation of the new Northern Command, effectively the military's equivalent of 'Homeland Security' and due to be fully established by the Ist of October 2002.
 
The United States would appear to be in grave danger of grossly over-reacting to the terrorist threat and by the creation of what could easily eventually become a virtual Police State it is risking very effectively doing Osama Bin-Ladins work for him by undermining the most important elements of a free state and dismantling much of its democratic infrastructure. The United States has far too much to offer the world for a retreat into a stockade of 'Homeland Security' to be welcomed by its allies. While the war against terrorism must be prosecuted firmly and for as long as necessary, the essential values the United States believes it is fighting for must remain paramount, otherwise the terrorist will undoubtedly prevail in its wish to see the destruction of a free and democratic America.
 
Richard M. Bennett
 
 
 
 

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ESPIONAGE- An encyclopedia of Spies and Secrets, ISBN 1 85227 942 7
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FIGHTING FORCES a review of the worlds leading Armies, including many in the Middle East, published in September 2001 which is available from Barrons of New York www.barronseduc.com  ISBN 0-7641-5343-9

Both written by Richard M. Bennett
 

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